Background
According to someone who knew him at that time, he was born about 1924 and had been active in youth affairs in Yenan sometime prior to the Communist conquest of the mainland in 1949.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Hu Ch’i-li
Edit ProfileEducation
In the mid-fifties he was ostensibly a student at Peking University (Peita), China’s foremost institute of higher learning, but those who knew him believed he was there principally as a representative of the New Democratic Youth League (NDYL). He was, in fact, identified in July 1954 as the secretary of the Peita NDYL chapter.
Career
Hu became more active at the national level early in 1956 when he replaced T’ien Te-min as chairman of the All-China Students’ Federation (ACSF), a position he retained until January 1965. A great portion of Hu’s time in this nine-year span was devoted to the affairs of the ACSF. Within two years of receiving his ACSF position, Hu was admitted to the higher councils of two related organizations, the Communist Youth League (CYL) and the All-China Youth Federation (ACYF). He was elected a CYL Central Committee alternate member in May 1957 at a League congress; at the next congress (June 1964), Hu was elected a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee, as well as an alternate secretary of the important League Secretariat. He has made comparable progress on the hierarchical ladder of the Youth Federation. At an ACYF Congress in April 1958 he was elected to the Standing Committee of the National Committee; he was renamed to this position in April 1962 and then in January 1965 was elevated to a vice-chairmanship.
As in the case of almost all Chinese Communist delegates of the 1960’s, Hu came into open conflict with Soviet or Soviet-backed representatives on at least one occasion. At the meetings in Brazil in July 1963 (cited above), he advocated the necessity of “national liberation” movements in underdeveloped nations (then a much-employed slogan of Peking) and called for a resolution asserting that “imperialism for aggression and war will never change.” During these same years many youth or student groups visited China from various parts of the world-signing with their Chinese counterparts joint communiqués, which inevitably denounced the United States. Hu was the signatory to five such statements with groups from Japan (October 1960 and June 1964), Cuba (December 1960), Ecuador (December 1960), and Palestine (September 1964). Aside from these groups he has been mentioned in the press in connection with scores of other youth and student delegations that have visited China.
Technically, Hu held no official position in the government until 1959. In April of that year he became a member of the Third National Committee of the CPPCC as a representative of the All-China Youth Federation. As such, he spoke at the first session of the Third CPPCC (April 1959), condemning the Indian “expansionists” for utilizing the Tibetan rebellion (of March 1959) to “interfere in China’s internal affairs.” Hu was not re-appointed to the CPPCC in 1964, but that same year he was elected as a Heilungkiang deputy to the more important NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965.
Politics
Hu’s increasingly active role in international affairs made him a logical candidate for membership in several quasi-official (or “mass”) organizations devoted to foreign relations. He has received (and still retains) the following positions: member, National Committee, China Peace Committee, July 1958; council member, China-Latin America Friendship Association, March 1960; council member, China-Africa People’s Friendship Association, April 1960. And, like so many other Chinese leaders, he has attended a host of rallies protesting one fact or another of U.S. foreign policy. A typical example was his presence at a rally of 400,000 before the Cuban embassy in Peking in November 1962 (during the peak of the U.S. Soviet missile crisis). Similarly, he has written articles and served on ad hoc organizations related to foreign affairs. For instance, he co-authored an article for the August 10, 1956, issue of Chung-kuo ch’ing-nien pao (Chinese youth daily) supporting Egypt’s “resistance to aggression over the Suez Canal”; and, following the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt that fall, he served as a member of the “Chinese People’s Committee in Support of Egypt’s Resistance to Aggression” (November 1956).
Membership
As an elite member of the youth and student world in Communist China, Hu has frequently traveled abroad as a representative of one of the organizations described above. Usually a ranking member or a leader of the delegations, he has been in the following nations since 1954, 1954: North Korea, National Conference of Korean Youth Activists, July; 1956: Czechoslovakia, Fourth World Student Congress, August; 1958: United Arab Republic, at the invitation of the Cairo University Union, February-March; 1960: Morocco, Czechoslovakia, Tunisia, Fifth Conference of the National Union of Moroccan Students; Czechoslovakia (purpose unknown), July; Fourth Congress of the General Union of Algerian Muslim Students and the Congress of the National Union of Tunisian Students (both held in Tunisia), July-August; 1961: USSR, meetings of the Permanent Secretariat for the World Youth Forum, March; 1962: Cuba, First National Congress of the Association of Insurgent Youth of Cuba, March-April; celebrations for fourth anniversary of Cuban Revolution, December; Czechoslovakia, purpose unknown, December; 1963: Brazil, a students’ seminar on underdeveloped nations and the 26th Congress of the National Student’s Union of Brazil, July.
-
Born
-
Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
-
Political Party
Chinese Communist Party