Background
Hu was born of a wealthy landowning family in Yen-ch’eng hsien, Kiangsu, also the home of Communist propagandist Ch’iao Kuan-hua. His father, Hu Ch’i-tung, was a political leader of some prominence and once served as a member of the Peking Parliament. Hu Ch’iao-mu’s original name was Hu Ting-hsin and he has also been widely known by the pen name Ch’iao Mu. At the outset of any discussion of Hu, it must be noted that both he and Ch’iao Kuan-hua used the nom-de-plume Ch’iao Mu for a number of years in the thirties and forties. Because both men were prolific writers and propagandists, the use of the same pseudonym led to considerable confusion and erroneous statements about their careers. The Communists have distinguished between them by nicknaming Hu Ch’iao-mu as Pei (“north”) Ch’iao-mu and Ch’iao Kuan-hua as Nan (“south”) Ch’iao-mu. Fortunately, the confusion ended after 1949 when both men dropped “Ch’iao Mu” as a pen name.
Education
As a youth, Hu graduated from a middle school in Yang-chou (Kiangsu) and then studied in Peking from 1930 to 1932 in the physics department of Tsinghua University, one of China’s leading schools. Contrary to numerous reports, however, he did not graduate. It was probably at Tsinghua, a missionary-run school, that Hu learned English. In the period from 1932 to the outbreak of war in 1937, Hu spent time in both Hangchow (Chekiang) and Shanghai. He attended Chekiang University in 1932, and for most of the period from 1933 to 1937 he was active as a specialist in propaganda and cultural activities for the CCP in Shanghai. It was probably during these years that he joined the Party.
Career
Hu apparently spent most of the mid-thirties in Shanghai, but he was known to have been in Hangchow in 1934 (and perhaps 1935-36). In a Communist account of 1931, he is credited with having led Chekiang University students in the “struggles” against “reactionaries” and against a “facist education.” It appears that he was still in the Hangchow area in late 1935 when students at the university protested against KMT policies they regarded as a surrender to continuing Japanese aggression in north China. The student activities in Hangchow were part of a nationwide protest known as the “December Ninth Movement,” which began in Peking and quickly spread to the rest of the nation (see under Li Ch’ang).
When the war broke out in mid-1937 Hu went to the Communist headquarters in Yenan where, in association with youth leader Feng Wen-pin, he directed a youth training class in north Shensi. During the war years he was also dean of school affairs of the Mao Tse-tung Youth Cadre School in Yenan and an editor of Chung-kuo ch’ing-nien (China youth), one of the most important journals published in Yenan. During the latter stages of the war Hu was a “political secretary” to Mao Tse-tung. It was apparently in this capacity that he accompanied Mao from Yenan to Chungking where Mao held talks with Chiang Kai-shek on KMT-CCP problems. These negotiations, held from late August to early October 1945 (immediately after the Japanese surrender), had been arranged in large part through the efforts of U.S. Ambassador Patrick Hurley. (See under Mao Tse-tung.) While in Chungking Hu served as one of the editors of Hsin-hua jih-pao (New China daily), the important organ of the CCP.
Hu’s exact whereabouts in the late forties are not known in detail, but he was among those who left Yenan with Mao Tse-tung when the Communist capital was captured by the Nationalists in March 1947. He presumably remained with the Maoist leadership in northwest and later north China. He was in Peking soon after the “liberation” in January 1949, and that spring he was elected to posts in the two major Communist youth organizations, the New Democratic Youth League (NDYL) and the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth (ACFDY). In the former, Hu became a member of the Central Committee and in the latter a member of the National Committee, retaining these positions until mid-1953 when both organizations held their second congresses. In the summer and fall of 1949 he was also very active in the work leading to the establishment of the numerous “mass” organizations as well as the central government. In July he attended three important conferences; one of these was a gathering of over 800 literary
and art “workers,” and a second was a conference of social scientists. But most important was his participation in a conference of the Preparatory Committee of the All-China Journalists Association (ACJA). Hu presided over this conference, made the keynote speech, and was elected president of the Preparatory Committee; he held the post until succeeded by Teng T’o in 1954. Hu took part in the work of the CPPCC (the organization that brought the central government into existence on October 1) from the time the CPPCC Preparatory Committee was established under Mao Tse-tung’s chairmanship in June 1949.
When the assignments to the new government administration were made in October 1949, Hu became a member and the secretary-general of the Cultural and Education Committee of the Government Administration Council (GAC). He retained his membership until 1954 but relinquished the secretary-generalship to Ch’ien Chiin-jui, another specialist in educational affairs, in November 1952. Another major assignment received in October 1949 was the directorship of the Press Administration, a post he held until its abolition in August 1952. The Press Administration, subordinate to the Culture and Education Committee, had a wide range of duties, including jurisdiction over the New China News Agency (NCNA) and Radio Peking. Among his subordinates in the Press Administration were some of Peking’s top specialists in propaganda and journalism, including Ch’iao Kuan-hua, Fan Ch’ang-chiang, and Wu Leng-hsi.
By late 1949 Hu was also the managing director of the Party Central Committee’s major organ, the Jen-rnin jih-pao (People’s daily), but he relinquished this post to Fan Ch’ang-chiang in 1950. (There is some evidence that he was also the editor-in-chief of the JMJP.) In 1949 Hu had also headed the NCNA for a brief period, apparently succeeding Liao Ch’eng-chih. Hu, in turn, was replaced by Party journalist Ch’en K’o-han toward the end of the year. However, much the most important post held by Hu by 1949 was that of a deputy directorship of the Party’s Propaganda Department, headed by Lu Ting-i. Hu was in the department until at least late 1954.
Rounding out his appointments in 1949, Hu became a member of the Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (SSFA) when it was formed in October, after having served on the Association’s Preparatory Committee established the previous July. He continued his affiliation with the SSFA until December 1954. He also became vice-chairman of the China Association for the Reform of the (Chinese) Written Language upon its establishment in October 1949. This was a prelude to a considerable amount of work in the field of language reform in later years (see below).
In the meantime, Hu had taken part in the steps leading toward the establishment of a constitutional government in 1954. In 1953-54 he served as a member of the Committee to Draft the Constitution, which was headed by Mao Tse-tung, and when elections to the First NPC were held in 1954, Hu was elected a deputy from his native Kiangsu. At the close of the first
session of the First NPC in September 1954, he was named to membership on the NPC Standing Committee. He was re-elected to the Second NPC (1959-1964) and to the Third NPC, which closed its first session in early January 1965. In each case he was again named to the NPC Standing Committee. When the Academy of Sciences formed four major academic departments in May-June 1955, Hu became a member of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, another position he continues to hold.
Hu’s long Party career was given official recognition at the Eighth National Congress in September 1956 when he was elected a member of the Central Committee. He was one of 33 men elected to full membership who had been neither full nor alternate members on the Seventh Central Committee elected in Yenan in 1945. Immediately after the Congress, Hu was appointed an alternate member of the Party’s Central Secretariat. Headed by Teng Hsiao-p’ing, this important body is charged with the task of executing the policies decided upon by the Polit-buro. As originally constituted, the Secretariat had 10 members (seven full and three alternate members). Among this group Hu was the only one working in the field of propaganda and education, this situation was changed, however, in September 1962 when Propaganda Department Director Lu Ting-i was added as a member.
Politics
In view of Hu’s prominence as one of China’s top journalists, it was logical that he would represent Peking in the Communist-supported International Organization of Journalists (IOJ). At an IOJ meeting in Helsinki in September 1950, he was elected (apparently in absentia) as one of the IOJ vice-chairmen, a position he seems to have held until 1956 when Teng T’o was elected to the post. In October of 1950, Hu was added to the National Committee of the China Peace Committee (a post he held until the committee was reorganized in July 1958). Also by 1950 he must have been working on the book that has brought him lasting fame. Published in June 1951 on the eve of the Party’s 30th anniversary (July 1), Hu’s Chung-kuo kung-ch'an-tang te san-shih-nien (Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China) became an instant best seller, by the end of 1952 some 2.8 million copies had been sold. Less than six months after publication, his short volume had already become “required reading”; for example, when the Party issued a list of documents in November 1951 that intellectuals were required to study, Hu’s book was placed among the writings of such top Communists as Chou En-lai, Peng Chen, and fellow propagandist-historian Ch’en Po-ta. Hu’s history of the Party is, of course, purely a Maoist interpretation. All past contenders for Party leadership, like Ch’en Tu-hsiu, Li Li-san, and Ch’en Shao-yii, are severely criticized for their “erroneous lines,” whereas Mao’s leadership is invariably described as “correct.” Inconvenient chapters in Mao’s life are either glossed over or completely ignored. Whatever its shortcomings for the historian, Hu’s book will probably remain the standard interpretation as long as Mao lives.
In the early years of the PRC there were few events related to propaganda, publications, ideo-logical campaigns, and language reform in which Hu was not involved. In March 1951, for example, he delivered a major address before a national secondary education conference on patriotism “as guided by Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Tse-tung’s ideology.” On August 10, he reported to the GAC on the work of his Press Administration, and at nationwide conferences of publications administration and translation work (held, respectively, in August-September and November 1951), he delivered major reports. During the period from late 1951 until 1955 he was also deeply involved in various movements to “remold” the intellectuals, most notably the campaigns against Yii P’ing-po, an authority on the novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, and writer Hu Feng. In additional, after Hu Ch’iao-mu had presented a report before the CPPCC (January 5, 1952), the decision was made to create a Study (hsueh-hsi) Committee subordinate to the CPPCC. When the Committee was established in February to study the works of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and others, Hu was named as a member, retaining the post until the CPPCC was reorganized in late 1954.
Membership
When the CPPCC held its first session in September (which Hu attended as a representative of the ACJA), he served as a member of the presidium (steering committee), spoke about the work of the ACJA, and at the close of the meetings was elected to the CPPCC’s First National Committee. In February 1953 he was elevated to membership on the Standing Committee, but he dropped his affiliation with the organization in late 1954 when the Second National Committee was established.
