Background
Han was born about 1911 in Kirin Province in Manchuria.
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Han Kuang
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He graduated from a middle school, presumably in Manchuria, and was admitted into the Communist Youth League in 1930. In 1936 Han went to the Soviet Union where he reportedly studied at Moscow University. He knows Russian and is also said to have some understanding of English.
Career
He joined the CCP in 1931, the year the Japanese invaded Manchuria. He remained there for a time working in the Communist youth movement, becoming successively a regional committee secretary, a special committee secretary, and a provincial secretary-general of the Manchurian branch of the Youth League. From 1933 to 1935 he was a member of the local resistance forces in Manchuria, where the Communists formed a very active nucleus. He was connected with the Allied Anti-Japanese Army (see under Chou Pao-chung), formed in 1935 from the various guerrilla units that had been operating in Manchuria. This Army had seven subordinate armies and five guerrilla units; Han served with both the First and Third Armies. The former was led by Yang Ching-yu, a prominent Communist who was killed in 1940.
Chu Te-hai, a member of the Korean national minority group from Kirin, was also associated with the Manchurian branch of the Youth League and the Anti-Japanese Allied Army. Chu joined the CCP the same year as Han and also went to the USSR in 1936 to study. Available accounts do not connect the two men’s activities, but it is possible that they were colleagues during those years. The duration of Han’s stay in Moscow is not known, but by 1938 he was working for the Party in Sinkiang. There, using the alias of Han Ming-kuang, he directed propaganda for the Anti-Imperialist Association organized by Sheng Shih-ts’ai, the Nationalist Governor of Sinkiang. He also served in Sinkiang briefly as a deputy magistrate of a hsien. From the mid-1930’s to the 1942-43 period, Sheng Shih-ts’ai cooperated closely with both the Russian and Chinese Communists. Taking advantage of these relations, the Chinese Communists sent a number of top men to Sinkiang iq the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, including Teng Fa, Ch’en T’an-ch’iu, and Mao Tse-min (Mao Tse-tung’s brother). Most of these men were ultimately arrested and executed by Sheng (see under Ch’en T’an-ch’iu), but fortunately for Han Kuang he was ordered to Yenan in 1940, where he worked as a section chief and secretary-general of the Party’s United Front Work Department, the organization charged with the task of gaining maximum cooperation from both non-Party intellectuals and the national minorities.
Han’s whereabouts during the last years of the war are not clear. Apparently he was working in some underground capacity in his native Manchuria. Soon after the end of the war he was assigned to the Port Arthur-Dairen area. These important cities, situated on the Kwan-tung Peninsula, were occupied by the Soviet Union immediately after the war. Although the August 1945 treaty between the Chinese Nationalists and the Russians provided for joint control of Dairen and Port Arthur, the Russians effectively blocked any Nationalist participation in the management of the Kwantung Peninsula. Instead, the Russians allowed the entry of a number of Chinese Communist officials to set up Communist-controlled organizations. Han was among those officials, and between 1946 and about 1953 he was a key leader in the Kwantung Peninsula where he held a wide variety of positions. By 1946 he was serving as the head of the “Democratic Youth Federation” for Dairen, as secretary for the Party Committee in that city, and as president of the Construction (Chien-kuo) College in Dairen.
In 1947 Han became a vice-chairman of the Kwantung Administrative Office, the organization governing the Port Arthur-Dairen area; he succeeded to the chairmanship of this office in 1949. In the meantime, in 1948 he had assumed two additional posts of importance when he became head of the Port Arthur-Dairen Public Security Bureau and deputy secretary of the Party Committee for these two cities. From about 1949 Han served as second in command of this area under Ouyang Ch’in, a Party veteran about 10 years senior to Han, who was the ranking Party secretary there. As already noted, Han became chairman of the Kwantung Administrative Office in 1949 (which in April of that year was redesignated the Port Arthur-Dairen Administrative Office), and in that same year also assumed the task of heading the Office’s Economic Planning Bureau. In November 1950, the Administrative Office was renamed the Darien-Port Arthur People’s Government, with Han continuing to serve as the head of this government, a post he held until Ouyang Ch’in replaced him in February 1953.
Politics
Although Han’s pas't record gave little indication that he would qualify as a science administrator, he has devoted most of his time to this field since coming to Peking. First appointed a vice-chairman of the State Technological Commission in January 1957, he was also made a member in May of that year of the Scientific Planning Commission, serving under Vice-Premier Nieh Jung-chen. Both commissions were under the State Council. When Technological Commission Chairman Huang Ching died in February 1958, Han became the commission’s acting chairman. He remained in that post until the two commissions were merged in November 1958 to become the Scientific and Technological Commission headed by Nieh Jung-chen, under whom Han has continued to serve as a vice-chairman. In April 1959 he was elected to the Third National Committee of the CPPCC as a representative of the China Scientific and Technical Association, and at the close of the first session he was named to membership on the CPPCC’s Standing Committee. However, when the Fourth National Committee was formed in late 1964, Han was not reappointed. In the more important NPC Han has played a more significant role. As already described, he was elected from Fushun to the First NPC (1954-1959). He was transferred to the Liaoning constituency for the Second NPC (1959-1964) and once again transferred this time to Heilungkiang for the Third NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965. He served on the Budget Committee for this session and gave a speech on the need to apply the results of scientific research to industrial and agricultural production. Finally, at the close of the meetings (lanuary 1965), he was elevated to the Standing Committee, the ruling body, which meets regularly between the annual sessions of the NPC. Since his arrival in Peking over the winter of 1956-57, Han has frequently taken part in meetings related to science and technology. To cite a random but typical example, he presided over a meeting in Peking in June 1964 at which more than 1,400 awards were given for new industrial products. He has also played a role of some significance in the promotion of scientific and technological ties with foreign countries. Specifically, he has signed at least three agreements providing for scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union (October 1959), North Vietnam (November 1960), and Rumania (June 1963). An article by Han entitled “Several Problems Concerning Technical Work in Industry” was published in the top Party journal, Hung-ch’i (Red flag, December 16, 1961 ),x and was also reproduced in the 1962 edition of the authoritative Jen-min shou-ts’e (People’s hand-book).
Membership
In August 1949, just prior to the establishment of the national government in Peking, the Chinese Communists established the Northeast People’s Government. Han was named as a member of this government, and when it was re-organized into the Northeast Administrative Committee in January 1953 he was reappointed to membership and also named a vice-chairman of its Finance and Economics Committee. He held both posts until the regional committees were abolished in 1954. The whereabouts of Han after his removal as mayor of Port Arthur-Dairen in February 1953 are not clear. The only clue comes' from his election in mid-1954 as a deputy to the First NPC from the important industrial city of Fushun in present-day Liaoning. In any event, he could not have been there long, because in August 1954 he became governor of Heilungkiang in northern Manchuria. This appointment came just a few days after Han, identified simply as a “responsible person,” had spoken at a meeting on August 1, 1954, in Harbin at which time Heilungkiang and Sungkiang Provinces were merged into a “new” Heilungkiang Province. At this same time, Han was also named as a deputy secretary of the Heilungkiang Party Committee, serving once again under Ouyang Ch’in, who had also been transferred to Heilungkiang.
The transfer of Ouyang and Han to Heilung-kiang was not fortuitous. The previous ranking party secretary, Chao Te-tsun, was implicated in the Kao Kang “plot,” which formally came to light in early 1955. However, it is clear that the activities of Kao and his accomplices were known to the Party center by at least mid-1954, thus necessitating the changes in the Heilungkiang hierarchy. Han was promoted to second secretary of the Heilungkiang Party Committee by January 1955, and then at the Eighth National Party Congress in September 1956 he was selected as an alternate member of the Central Committee. In the same month he was relieved from his posts in Heilungkiang, being replaced as governor by his long-time colleague Ouyang Ch’in, and shortly thereafter Han was transferred to Peking to enter a new phase in his career.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communis
Education
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1936
Career
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1933 - 1935
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1946 - 1953
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1947