Fan Ch’ang-chiang, whose original name was Fan Hsi-t’ien, was born in the city of Nei-chiang, which lies midway between Chungking and Chengtu, the Szechwan capital. He comes from a landed gentry family and his father, once an army company commander, served as a local government official in the Fan home town.
Young Fan attended a middle school in Chengtu, studied at a KMT-sponsored academy in Nanking, and also studied privately and attended some classes at Peking University. He began to free-lance as a journalist while studying in Peking about 1930.
He joined the famous Tientsin Ta-kung pao in the early thirties and quickly became one of China’s most famed journalists. He spent much of the early and mid-thirties traveling in north and northwest China (including a trip to the Communist headquarters in Yenan in early 1937) and from these travels produced numerous articles and books, many of them describing and exposing Japan’s continuing encroachments in these areas. He covered the early phases of the Sino-Japanese War in north China, and then went to Changsha, Hunan, where he helped establish the Kuo-chi hsin-wen she (International news agency) in 1938. When Changsha fell to the Japanese in 1939, he moved the Kuo-chi hsin-wen she to Kweilin, Kwangsi. There Fan became closely associated with Communist circles, and it was probably about the year 1940 that he joined the CCP. In any event, by 1941 Fan was taking instructions from Communist officials in Kweilin. (For a discussion of the large Communist organization in Kweilin at this time, see the biography of Li K’o-nung.) Following the New Fourth Army Incident in January 1941 (see under Yeh T’ing), the Communist liaison office in Kweilin was ordered out of the city by the KMT. Apparently fearing the arrest of their men and supporters in Kweilin, the CCP ordered them to flee. Under direct instructions from Chou En- lai, Fan went to Hong Kong. About this same time (1941), he severed his connections with the Ta-kung pao, allegedly because of ideological differences. In Hong Kong he helped establish and edit the Hua-shang pao (Commercial newspaper) and also continued to direct the Kuo-chi hsin-wen. According to Western journalist Israel Epstein (who ultimately joined and worked for the Communists), the dispatches of the Kuo-chi hsin-wen were an important source of news about China for the overseas Chinese press, as well as the Western press.
Fan was in Hong Kong less than a year when it fell to the Japanese in the closing days of 1941. By 1942 he was sent to the Kiangsu-Anhwei Border Region, an area under the control of Ch’en I’s New Fourth Army. There Fan worked with the central China branch of the New China News Agency (NCNA) and also directed a school of journalism at Huai-yin, Kiangsu. After the war ended in 1945 he was sent to Shanghai where he worked briefly as a spokesman for the Communists. From 1946 to early 1947 he headed the NCNA office in Nanking where the Communists operated openly as nominal participants in the affairs of the Nationalist Government. However, when the truce between the CCP and KMT completely broke down in early 1947, all Communist officials were ordered to leave Shanghai, Nanking, and other major cities. Like most Communists Fan went to Yenan to continue his work with the NCNA. However, almost immediately after he arrived in Yenan it fell to Nationalist armies. He apparently remained with Communist units in north Shensi, but by the winter of 1948-49 he was editing the JMJP in the Shih-chia-chuang area in western Hopeh. The JMJP was then the organ of the Party’s North China Bureau, but after it moved to Peking in early 1949 it became the main organ of the Party Central Committee. In May of that year Fan was elected a member of the National Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth, then headed by Liao Ch’eng-chih who, as another prominent official in the NCNA, had probably been associated with Fan for several years. Fan was not re-elected to the Second National Committee of the Youth Federation in 1953, but by that time he was holding more responsible positions with the central government.
Fan was in Hong Kong less than a year when it fell to the Japanese in the closing days of 1941. By 1942 he was sent to the Kiangsu-Anhwei Border Region, an area under the control of Ch’en I’s New Fourth Army. There Fan worked with the central China branch of the New China News Agency (NCNA) and also directed a school of journalism at Huai-yin, Kiangsu. After the war ended in 1945 he was sent to Shanghai where he worked briefly as a spokesman for the Communists. From 1946 to early 1947 he headed the NCNA office in Nanking where the Communists operated openly as nominal participants in the affairs of the Nationalist Government. However, when the truce between the CCP and KMT completely broke down in early 1947, all Communist officials were ordered to leave Shanghai, Nanking, and other major cities. Like most Communists Fan went to Yenan to continue his work with the NCNA. However, almost immediately after he arrived in Yenan it fell to Nationalist armies. He apparently remained with Communist units in north Shensi, but by the winter of 1948-49 he was editing the JMJP in the Shih-chia-chuang area in western Hopeh. The JMJP was then the organ of the Party’s North China Bureau, but after it moved to Peking in early 1949 it became the main organ of the Party Central Committee.
In April 1952 Fan was assigned to the Culture and Education Committee (CEC) of the Government Administration Council, and for the next 13 years he devoted much of his time to this organization and its successors. Until 1954 he was a CEC deputy secretary-general, here again serving under Hu Ch’iao-mu and later Ch’ien Chiin-jui. Then, following the establishment of the constitutional government, Fan was named a deputy director of the Second Stall Office as it was now known. He was re-appointed in September 1959 when the name changed again, this time to the Culture and Education Office. Serving under two of the PRC’s most important education-cultural specialists, Lin Feng and Chang Chi-ch’un, Fan held the deputy-directorship until July 1965. It was in his capacity as a CEC official that Fan signed a Sino-German cultural cooperation agreement in East Berlin in February 1953. He had gone to Germany after attending the Communist-sponsored World Peace Congress in Vienna in December 1952, serving as deputy secretary-general of the Chinese delegation led by the widow of Sun Yat-sen, Sung Ch’ing-ling.
In May 1954, upon the formation of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (CPACRFC), Fan was appointed to the Association’s Standing Committee and still retains the position. In December of the same year he was named to the National Committee of the quasi-legislative CPPCC, in conjunction with his association with the China Peace Committee and the CPACRFC, Fan was named to the CPPCC as a representative of “public bodies for peace and friendship with foreign countries.” Also in conjunction with this aspect of his activities, he has been a Standing Committee member of the China-Latin American Friendship Association since its formation in March 1960 and president of the China-Mongolia Friendship Association since August 1961.
Fan’s career underwent a major change in 1956 when he entered the field of science administration, a role that has brought him into continuing contact with such important science administrators as Nieh Jung-chen, Wu Heng, Chang Chin-fu, P’ei Li-sheng, and Tu Jen-sheng. Fan’s initial assignment was as deputy secretary-general of the State Council’s Scientific Planning Commission, established in March 1956. Fourteen months later he replaced Chang Chin-fu as secretary-general, retaining this post until the Commission was merged with the State Technological Commission in November 1958 to form the Scientific and Technological Commission. Since the 1958 merger Fan has been a vice-chairman under Chairman Nieh Jung-chen. Two months prior to this merger, two professional scientific societies were also merged to form the China Scientific and Technical Association. Here Fan serves as a vice-chairman under Chairman Li Szu-kuang, who also heads the Ministry of Geology. As described above, Fan had served in the Second CPPCC (1954-1958) as a representative of “peace and friendship” associations, but as a consequence of his career reorientation he was named to membership on the Second National Committee (1959—1964) as a delegate from the Scientific and Technical Association. He again represented the Association on the Fourth National Committee, which held its first session in December 1964 - January 1965, and in early 1965 he was also appointed as a deputy director of the CPPCC’s Scientific and Technical Section, which is charged with the task of stimulating scientific inquiry among the CPPCC members, many of whom are highly qualified non-Communist scientists.
Fan frequently participates in conferences related to science. For example, in November 1962 he spoke before a national conference on the use of science films for educational purposes, and in February 1964 he was a featured speaker at the inauguration of the Chinese Society of Aeronautics. In 1963-64 he was very active in the establishment of the Peking Center of the World Federation of Scientific Workers (WFSW). The Communist-dominated WFSW, of which the Chinese Scientific and Technical Association is a member, initially endorsed the plan to establish the Peking Center as an Asian branch of the WFSW. However, reflecting the rapidly worsening Sino-Soviet relations, the Chinese quickly began to transform the Center into a pawn in the dispute, a fact that became fairly evident in August 1964 when the Chinese staged the “1964 Peking Symposium,” attended by 367 delegates, almost all of them from Asian, African, and Latin American countries. Although the meetings were not without scientific merit, the general atmosphere at the Symposium reflected the continuing attempt by the Chinese to emphasize various aspects of their foreign policy. For example, a major theme stressed throughout the meetings was the necessity of the underdeveloped nations to rely upon their own endeavors, the inference being that these nations could not rely upon the “developed” nations (e.g., the Soviet Union) to assist them. The large Chinese delegation that attended the Symposium was composed of both qualified scientists and Party science administrators; delegation leader Chou P’ei-yuan typified the former category and Fan the latter.
Fan was a National Committee member of the former until 1958 and an Executive Board member of the latter until 1954. In December 1949 he was also appointed to head the Peking Journalism School, but it is not known how long he held this assignment.
In May of that year Fan was elected a member of the National Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth, then headed by Liao Ch’eng-chih who, as another prominent official in the NCNA, had probably been associated with Fan for several years. Fan was not re-elected to the Second National Committee of the Youth Federation in 1953, but by that time he was holding more responsible positions with the central government. Party’s East China Bureau. Fan’s work in Shanghai was of short duration, and by the time assignments were being made to the the newly formed central government (October 1, 1949), he was back in the capital. He was made a deputy director of the Press Administration under the Government Administration Council (the cabinet). The Administration was headed by top propagandist Hu Ch’iao-mu and had jurisdiction over the NCNA and nationwide radio broadcasting. Fan retained this post until the Administration was abolished in August 1952. Also in October 1949 he was named to two of the most active “mass” organizations, the China Peace Committee and the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association.
Closely related to his assignment as a science administrator, Fan holds two other positions of importance. He has been a member of a special committee to popularize “standard spoken Chinese” (p’u-t'ung-hua) since it was formed in
February 1956, and he has also served as a member of the State Council’s Spare-Time Education Committee since its establishment in January 1960. Although Fan is a writer by profession, his contributions to the national press since 1949 have been marginal. A typical example appeared in the October 4, 1962, issue of the JMJP in which Fan wrote a prosaic summary of Sino-Mongolian relations to mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Sino- Mongolian Economic and Cultural Cooperation Agreement.
In private life, Fan has been married to Shen P’u since the early forties. His wife is the daughter of Shen Chiin-ju, a prominent lawyer and educator who joined the PRC government in 1949 and from that year to 1954 served as president of the Supreme People’s Court. Predictably, when Fan’s father-in-law died in June 1963, Fan was a member of his funeral committee and a participant in the memorial services held in his honor.
