His original name was Hsing P’ing-chou, but he has been more widely known by his revolutionary pseudonyms: Hsu Ping and Hsing Hsi-p’ing. He was born into a well-to-do gentry family in Nan-kung hsien, located in southern Hopeh, one account describes the Hsing family as one of the wealthiest in Peking. His father was a member of the Peking parliament in the first decade after the 1911 Revolution.
After his education in China, Hsu sought graduate training in Europe, being there in the early 1920’s when a number of Chinese students, some already influenced by Marxism, were furthering their acquaintance with Western education by studying abroad. Most of the students went to France, though a smaller number, among them Chu Te, went to Germany. Hsu went to Berlin about 1920, enrolling at the University of Berlin to study economics. Like Chu Te, he joined the Communist Party while in Germany. From Berlin he went to the Soviet Union in the winter of 1925 and there enrolled at Chung-shan (Sun Yat-sen) University, which in the 1920’s attracted a number of Chinese students coming to study about revolutionary activities. Hsu spent two years at Chung-shan, returning in 1927 to China, where he went to work for the CCP in Shantung. However, he was soon arrested by the provincial warlord, Sun Liang-ch’eng, who held him prisoner from about 1928 to 1930.
As soon as he was released, Hsu joined the Communist underground, first in Shanghai, later in Peking. While in Peking he was also a professor at Tung-pei (Northeastern) University, the former Manchurian institution which was moved to Peking after the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and which continued to enroll a number of former northeastern students, many of whom were sympathetic to Manchurian warlord Chang Hsueh-liang. American journalist Edgar Snow, who knew Hsu as a professor at Tung-pei in 1936, recounts a story of Hsu’s bringing him a letter of introduction to Mao Tse-tung before he made the trip to Yenan, which resulted in his book Red Star over China. When he returned to China in 1960, Snow again saw Hsu and learned that the letter had been “authorized” by Liu Shao-ch’i, head of the Party Bureau for north China in 1936. It had been written by K’o Ch’ing- shih, the late mayor of Shanghai, who was then an assistant to Liu in the North China Bureau. Some sources claim that Hsu made the Long March to northwest China (1934-35) before going to Peking, but what is known of his personal history prior to that time suggests that this is incorrect.
During the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War, Hsu apparently spent a good deal of time translating some of the major works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, including the Communist Manifesto and Stalin’s Problems of Leninism/ At least three of his translations were published in Yenan (1938 and 1939), suggesting that he may have been working there then. However, by no later than 1940 Hsu was serving as a secretary to Chou En-lai, the Party’s chief representative in wartime Chungking. While there, Hsu also worked for the Hsin-hua jih-pao (New China daily), the important Communist daily published in Chungking. In addition, he served as a contact between the CCP and Korean Communists then in Chungking, whom the Chinese Communists were attempting to influence. Through the efforts of Hsu and others, the CCP was able to have significant numbers of Korean Communists transferred to the Communist-held areas in north and northwest China, where many of them fought in the CCP-lcd armies. In retrospect, however, it seems that Hsu’s most important activity in Chungking may have been in gaining the acquaintance of political and intellectual leaders who belonged to neither the CCP nor the KMT; after the PRC came into existence in 1949 Hsu’s principal task was in working with non-Party intellectuals, many of whom lived and worked in Chungking during the war.
After hostilities ended in 1945 and the Marshall Mission was established in the winter of 1945-46, Hsu was transferred to Peking to become secretary of the Communist delegation at the Peking Executive Headquarters. The Executive Headquarters were closed in early 1947 when relations between the Nationalists and Communists had broken down and it became evident that the terms of the January 1946 ceasefire agreement would not be implemented. Hsu was then transferred to Shantung, where the Communists were beginning to take over the entire province. He served there briefly in 194849 as a vice-mayor of the Communist Tsinan Municipal Government; concurrently, in the spring of 1948 he was secretary-general of the Wei- hsien People’s Government in the Tsinan area.
In the early fall of 1950 Hsu received a post which was apparently closely related to his united front work; in September 1950 the PRC created the Ministry of Personnel under the direction of An Tzu-wen, a top Party operative and then the deputy director of the Party’s Organization Department. One of the vice-ministerships was given to Sun Ch’i-meng, a leader of the China Democratic National Construction Association, one of the eight above-mentioned “democratic” political parties. Hsu was given the other vice-ministership, suggesting that his role was to oversee the selection of personnel drawn from the non-Communist intellectual community. He held this post until September 1954 when the ministry was disbanded.
In early 1952 Hsu received still another assignment closely related to the activities of the non-Party intellectuals when he was made a member (February 1952) of the newly established Study (hsueh-hsi) Committee under the direction of Party elder Lin Po-ch’ii. The work of this committee has been involved mainly with the establishment of special forums and training institutes where non-Party persons are required to undergo certain periods of training. The committee was disbanded when the Second CPPCC was created in December 1954, but then it was re-created in March 1956 at which time Hsu was elevated to a vice-chairmanship, retaining the post until the creation of the Fourth CPPCC in January 1965; during this period (1956-1965) Hsu served under Li Wei-han, his superior in the Party’s United Front Department. In the interim, Hsu had received new and significant assignments under the main CPPCC organization; by May 1953 he was identified as a deputy secretary-general of the CPPCC National Committee, which once again placed him under Li Wei-han, the secretary-general. Then, when the Second National Committee of the CPPCC was formed in 1954, Hsu was placed on the National Committee (as a Party representative) and, in addition, he replaced Li Wei-han as the secretary-general. He was again named to these two positions when the Third CPPCC was established in April 1959. Finally, when the Fourth CPPCC was created in January 1965, he was again named to a vice-chairmanship; however, he relinquished the secretary-generalship to another specialist in united front work, P’ing Chieh-san.
Although the CPPCC was theoretically the supreme state organ prior to the inauguration of the constitutional government in 1954, at that time its legislative authority devolved to the NPC. Within the latter Hsu has served as a deputy to the three NPC’s, which opened their initial sessions in September 1954, April 1959, and December 1964, respectively; he was a delegate from Shantung to the First and Second NPC’s, but was changed to the Kweichow constituency for the Third NPC. Moreover, on each occasion he was named to membership on the NPC Standing Committee, which carries out the work of the Congress when it is not in session.
Hsu played a major role in the earliest days of the Communist civil administration of Peking. On January 1, 1949, as the Communist armies stood poised at the gates of the city, they officially formed their municipal government. Veteran military commander Yeh Chien-ying was named as mayor and Hsu as his vice-mayor. Immediately after Peking was surrendered (January 31) and the Communists moved in, they formed a Joint Administrative Office to administer the city. Yeh was also named to head this special body, and under it the Communists established three committees. To gain maximum political support the CCP created a system of dual CCP- KMT leadership for each of the three committees. The Communist co-heads of the military and financial committees were, respectively, T’ao Chu and Jung Tzu-ho, while Hsu was named as the chief CCP representative on the political and cultural committee, ostensibly sharing leadership with Chiao Shih-tsai, who had been an assistant to General Fu Tso-i, the KMT officer who peacefully surrendered Peking.
When the Communists convened the First CPPCC in September 1949 to establish the central government, Hsu attended as an alternate CCP delegate. Although his role in the First CPPCC was minimal in the early stages of this organization, in the period after 1952 he was to play an extremely active role (see below). In the same month that the central government came into existence (October 1949), Hsu was named as an Executive Board member of the newly created Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (SSFA), then a highly active organization. He retained this post until the second conference of the SSFA in December 1954. However, the most important post Hsu received in 1949 was that of a deputy directorship of the Party’s United Front Work Department. Since then he has devoted the major portion of his time to the department and thus has been a key figure in the continuing efforts of the CCP to gain the allegiance of the non-Party intellectuals and of the leading figures in the eight non-Communist “democratic” parties for example, the China Democratic League. Hsu’s work in the Party’s united front activities culminated in early 1965 when he replaced Li Wei-han as the department director (see below).
Hsu’s long record as a CCP member was given official recognition at the Eighth National Party Congress held in September 1956 when he was elected an alternate member of the Party Central Committee. Apart from his work for the Party and the government legislative branches, Hsu has also been a fairly active participant in united front work in fields in which the CCP has special interests and wishes to secure the support of nonParty elements. For example, since the reorganization of the China Peace Committee in October 1950, he has been a member of the Standing Committee. Similarly, in another field, he was a deputy leader of a delegation led by military veteran Ho Lung to North Korea to inspect and “comfort” Chinese troops in October-December 1953. Also, from 1957 to 1958, Hsu took an active part in the Party-promoted “rectification” campaign, leading a number of forums that nonParty persons were required to attend. Because united front work is in many ways intrinsically linked with pre-1949 China, Hsu is also called upon to lend his name to various ad hoc committees established to commemorate past events or persons. A classic example of this occurred in 1956 when he served as a member of a preparatory committee established to commemorate Sun Yat-sen’s 90th birthday, and exactly nine years later he was named as a vice-chairman of the committee preparing for similar events in 1966 marking the centennial of Sun’s birth. Similarly, in September 1961 he was a deputy secretary- general of the preparatory committee formed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution.
