Background
Hsiung was born in Szechwan and by 1946 he was working in Chungking for the Hsin-hua jih-pao (New China daily), an organ of the CCP.
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Hsiung Fu
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He was educated locally.
Career
Hsiung next appeared on the public scene in July 1949 when he was among some 650 delegates who attended the All-China Congress of Literary and Art Workers, which established the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles under the chairmanship of Kuo Mo-jo. In the same month he attended a meeting which set up the Preparatory Committee of the AllChina News Workers Association. Named to the Preparatory Committee, Hsiung held this post until the All-China Journalists Association was established in September 1954. By early 1950 he had been transferred from Peking to Wuhan to become a deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the Party’s Central-South China Bureau, serving under Chao I-min. It is not known how long he held this post, but certainly no later than the mid-1950’s when the regional bureaus were dissolved. Another post assumed by Hsiung in 1950 was membership (until May 1953) on Chao I-min’s Culture and Education Committee of the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee (CSMAC). Hsiung continued to be associated with Chao into the 1960’s, both men being very active as liaison officials with foreign Communist party leaders. Hsiung held two further posts in the CSMAC structure; he was named in March 1950 as director of the News and Publications Bureau, a post he held until at least the latter part of 1952, and when a committee was formed in November 1951 to promote austerity in economic practices, Hsiung was appointed as a member under Chairman Teng Tzu-hui, an important official in economic work.
Still another position that Hsiung held after the Communist takeover was as director of the Ch’ang-chiang jih-pao (Yangtze daily) in Hankow, a newspaper ranking with the Canton Nan-fang jih-pao (South China daily) as one of the two most important papers in central-south China. A somewhat related post Hsiung held from at least 1951 was that of chairman of the Central-South Branch of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.
In about 1954 Hsiung was transferred to the national capital. In May of that year he was named to the Board of Directors of the newly formed Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, a post he probably still holds. In February 1955, during one of Peking’s frequent short-term campaigns, Hsiung served as a member and a secretary-general of the National Anti-Atomic Weapons Signature Campaign. And in December of the same year Hsiung journeyed to Japan as a deputy secretary-general of a scientific delegation led by Kuo Mo-jo to survey Japan’s scientific world. Hsiung was identified simply as a “research worker” in the Third (modern) Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, but it can be assumed that his role was more important than this modest title would suggest. The importance of the institute can be gauged from the fact that its director, Fan Wen-lan, is an alternate member of the CCP Central Committee and the Party’s most important practicing historian.
In February 1956 Hsiung became a member of the newly formed Asian (Afro-Asian from May 1958) Solidarity Committee. But his really significant climb in the Party hierarchy became apparent by April 1956, when he was identified as the secretary-general of the Party’s Propaganda Department, a field in which he had been active in central-south China in the early 1950’s. In the following month he was identified as a “responsible member” of a department under the Party Central Committee, a designation that at first glance appeared to be a euphemism for his post in the Propaganda Department. Subsequent evidence, however, suggests that it is an assignment in still another Central Committee department. The Chinese Communists have never referred to a department devoted solely to liaison with foreign Communist parties, but in May 1959 a Polish source identified an “International Liaison Department.” Hsiung’s work since 1956 strongly suggests that he belongs to just such a department.
Politics
By the winter of 1946-47 KMT-CCP relations had seriously worsened. At this juncture General Marshall, who had been attempting to mediate between the Nationalists and Communists, left China, thereby signaling the failure of the famous “Marshall Mission.” The Nationalists then closed the Hsin-hua jih-pao on February 28, 1947, ordering all Communists in Chungking, Shanghai, and Nanking to return to Yenan. Wu Yii-chang led the Party contingent from Chungking, flying to Yenan on March 8; Hsiung left at about this same time. Within a few days the Nationalists attacked and captured Yenan. Although details are lacking, Hsiung must have left Yenan for the north China hinterlands along with all the other Party leaders.
In mid-November 1956 Chou En-lai journeyed to Southeast Asia on a “friendship” tour. In late December he was suddenly called home and after a few days in Peking was dispatched to Moscow, apparently to act as mediator in the disputes Moscow was having with both the Poles and the Hungarians in the wake of the revolt in Hungary. Chou visited Warsaw and Budapest, went back to Moscow, and then returned to Southeast Asia to complete his tour there. Hsiung was not identified as a member of Chou’s delegation by official Chinese sources. However, Japanese sources claim he made the first two legs of Chou’s important tour, but British sources state that he only went to Moscow and Warsaw. In May 1961, acting as an “adviser,” Hsiung accompanied Foreign Minister Ch’en I to Geneva for the conference on Laos. Although the conference lasted for well over a year (counting a few periods of adjournment), Ch’en and Hsiung left for home in July 1961. While in Geneva and Moscow, Hsiung was among those reported in the company of such famed Soviet leaders as Khrushchev and Gromyko.
If the mission to Geneva presented difficulties, they were probably minor compared to those encountered on two trips taken in late 1962 and early 1963, when Sino-Soviet relations had seriously deteriorated and denunciations by each side were openly polemical. It was in this atmosphere that Hsiung accompanied a Party delegation led by Wu Hsiu-ch’iian to party congresses in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia from early November to mid-December 1962.
The delegation returned briefly to Peking, only to return to Europe in mid-January 1963 for an East German party congress. At all four congresses the Chinese were roundly castigated; delegates (including Soviet participants) booed the Chinese speeches and engaged in other provocative gestures. While Wu and Hsiung were in Czechoslovakia, Hsiung’s former associate in central-south China, Chao I-min, was at a Party Congress in Italy (December 1962), where he also faced the open hostility of most of the delegates.
This mission to East Europe further confirms Hsiung’s role as an international Communist liaison official. Delegation leader Wu Hsiu- ch’iian is the director of the “International Liaison Department” of the Central Committee according to the above-cited Polish Communist source and may thus be Hsiung’s immediate superior in the Party hierarchy. Hsiung’s major responsibilities are within the Party apparatus, but since December 1964 he has also held a seat on the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC as a representative of “organizations for peaceful and friendly relations with foreign countries.”
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party