Hu Sheng

1911

Su-chou, China

Hu began to write professionally in the mid-thirties and had a number of essays on history and political science published in Shanghai magazines and newspapers. After the war began in 1937 he went to Chung-king where he continued to write on public affairs. By this time he was probably already a member of the CCP. In 1941 he went to Hong Kong but left the city after it fell to the Japanese in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Returning to Chungking, Hu began to write for the important Communist newspaper, the Hsiti-hua jih-pao (New China daily), and also edited the paper’s cultural column. After the war Hu returned to Hong Kong where he continued to write and engage in CCP-sponsored cultural and literary work in association with such important Party intellectuals as Ch’iao Kuan-hua. In 1946 he published his first full-length Marxian work, entitled (in translation) Systems of Thought and Study. Two years later he was one of the Party promoters of a “rectification” campaign conducted in the city against deviants from then current Party literary policies. Following the surrender of Peking to the Communists in January 1949, he moved to Peking. There he was assigned to the North China People’s Government (NCPG), the government organ, headed by veteran Party leader Tung Pi-wu, that administered Communist-held portions of north China until it was absorbed by the new national government in October 1949. Under the NCPG Hu served as a vice-chairman of a committee to “compile and examine” textbooks, an activity not dissimilar to his previous work in Hong Kong. In the spring and summer of 1949, Hu was a major participant in the detailed preparations to establish the central PRC government and various “people’s” and professional organizations. In May he was elected to the National Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth and two months later he attended a nationwide conference of literary and art workers, serving as a member of a committee to draft the constitution and other important documents for the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, which was formed at that time. It was also in July that he became one of two secretaries for the Preparatory Committee of the China New Philosophy Research Association, and a few days later he was named as a deputy secretary-general of the Preparatory Committee for the All-China Social Science Workers’ Conference. One outgrowth of this conference was the establishment of a liaison office to organize a number of social science associations, including the above-mentioned New Philosophy Research Association; Hu was made a deputy director of the liaison office. (Later, when the Chinese Philosophy Association was established as a permanent organization in March 1951, he was named to the national council and still retains the position.) Hu’s concentration on work with the Chinese intelligentsia even before the inauguration of the central government was a forerunner of his work in the ensuing years. Because so many of the important intellectuals in the early days of the PRC were non-Communists, the Party required the services of special cadre to deal with this class. Thus, in the late forties and early fifties, Hu directed most of his intellectual and organizational efforts toward this end. Later, however, as the regime began to rear its own generation of intellectuals, his principal activities were directed more toward the intelligentsia within the Party. Hu received his first assignments in the new central government when it was inaugurated at the first session of the CPPCC (the organization that set up the national government in September 1949), meetings that he attended as an alternate delegate from the Social Science Workers’ Conference described above. In the following month he was named to the Council of the newly established China Association for the Reform of the Written Language. In December he received two assignments in the Publications Administration, which was headed by veteran publisher and editor Hu Yii-chih. The Administration was directly subordinate to the Government Administration Council (the cabinet) and had charge of the publication of books and periodicals on a nationwide basis. Hu served as director of the Staff Office as well as deputy director of the Compilation and Examination Bureau, posts he held until January 1951. In the meantime, Hu had already begun contributing to Hsueh-hsi (Study), the major political and theoretical Party journal from its establishment in September 1949 until it was replaced by Hung-ch’i (Red flag) in 1958. In his article for the inaugural issue of Hsueh-hsi, he wrote on the relations between the Taipings and the West. Most of his later contributions, however, dealt with the Chinese Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism. Together with Yii Kuang- yuan and Wang Hui-te, he published in Hsueh-hsi one of the longest series of articles that has ever appeared in a Chinese Communist publication. Under the general title “Lectures on the Fundamental Knowledge of the Social Sciences,” the series ran in 29 issues from October 1950 until March 1952, covering such topics as “class struggle,” “the state and revolution,” and “strategy and tactics of the Communist Party.” Several of these articles dealt with the “five-anti” movement, directed against businessmen and industrialists over the winter of 1951. Hu, in the interim, had become a deputy secretary-general of the Party’s Propaganda Department by 1950; he presumably held this post until mid-195 8 when he was identified as a deputy director, a post he still retains. Closely related to propaganda work was a position he received in February 1952 when a Study (hsueh- hsi) Committee was formed under the auspices of the CPPCC to encourage the study of Marxism-Leninism and the “thought of Mao Tse- tung”; he served on this committee until it was disbanded in 1954. By the spring of 1953, he was affiliated with the Marxist-Leninist Institute in Peking, the CCP’s most important school for training Party cadres and ideologues and known in later years as the Higher Party School. In August-September of that year he attended the Communist Fourth World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest, his only known trip abroad after 1949. In the period from 1952 to 1954 Hu became an editorial board member of three important Party publications. He was identified in August 1952 in this capacity on the Hsueh-hsi board (although he may have been a member before this date), and then in 1953 and 1954 he joined the boards of Li-shih yen-chiu (Historical research) and Hsin chien-she (New construction), respectively. He presumably continues to hold the latter two posts. All these posts were, of course, closely related to his work in the Propaganda Department, the organization that directs the editorial policies of Chinese Communist publications. Hu, in the interim, had become a deputy secretary-general of the Party’s Propaganda Department by 1950; he presumably held this post until mid-195 8 when he was identified as a deputy director, a post he still retains. Closely related to propaganda work was a position he received in February 1952 when a Study (hsueh- hsi) Committee was formed under the auspices of the CPPCC to encourage the study of Marxism-Leninism and the “thought of Mao Tse- tung”; he served on this committee until it was disbanded in 1954. By the spring of 1953, he was affiliated with the Marxist-Leninist Institute in Peking, the CCP’s most important school for training Party cadres and ideologues and known in later years as the Higher Party School. In August-September of that year he attended the Communist Fourth World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest, his only known trip abroad after 1949. In the period from 1952 to 1954 Hu became an editorial board member of three important Party publications. He was identified in August 1952 in this capacity on the Hsueh-hsi board (although he may have been a member before this date), and then in 1953 and 1954 he joined the boards of Li-shih yen-chiu (Historical research) and Hsin chien-she (New construction), respectively. He presumably continues to hold the latter two posts. All these posts were, of course, closely related to his work in the Propaganda Department, the organization that directs the editorial policies of Chinese Communist publications.

Hu Sheng

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politician

Background

Hu was born in Su-chou (Soochow), Kiangsu, not far west of Shanghai.

Education

He was trained at Peking University, presumably in philosophy or the social sciences.

Career

Hu began to write professionally in the mid-thirties and had a number of essays on history and political science published in Shanghai magazines and newspapers. After the war began in 1937 he went to Chung-king where he continued to write on public affairs. By this time he was probably already a member of the CCP. In 1941 he went to Hong Kong but left the city after it fell to the Japanese in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Returning to Chungking, Hu began to write for the important Communist newspaper, the Hsiti-hua jih-pao (New China daily), and also edited the paper’s cultural column.

After the war Hu returned to Hong Kong where he continued to write and engage in CCP-sponsored cultural and literary work in association with such important Party intellectuals as Ch’iao Kuan-hua. In 1946 he published his first full-length Marxian work, entitled (in translation) Systems of Thought and Study. Two years later he was one of the Party promoters of a “rectification” campaign conducted in the city against deviants from then current Party literary policies. Following the surrender of Peking to the Communists in January 1949, he moved to Peking. There he was assigned to the North China People’s Government (NCPG), the government organ, headed by veteran Party leader Tung Pi-wu, that administered Communist-held portions of north China until it was absorbed by the new national government in October 1949.

Under the NCPG Hu served as a vice-chairman of a committee to “compile and examine” textbooks, an activity not dissimilar to his previous work in Hong Kong. In the spring and summer of 1949, Hu was a major participant in the detailed preparations to establish the central PRC government and various “people’s” and professional organizations. In May he was elected to the National Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth and two months later he attended a nationwide conference of literary and art workers, serving as a member of a committee to draft the constitution and other important documents for the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, which was formed at that time. It was also in July that he became one of two secretaries for the Preparatory Committee of the China New Philosophy Research Association, and a few days later he was named as a deputy secretary-general of the Preparatory Committee for the All-China Social Science Workers’ Conference. One outgrowth of this conference was the establishment of a liaison office to organize a number of social science associations, including the above-mentioned New Philosophy Research Association; Hu was made a deputy director of the liaison office. (Later, when the Chinese Philosophy Association was established as a permanent organization in March 1951, he was named to the national council and still retains the position.)

Hu’s concentration on work with the Chinese intelligentsia even before the inauguration of the central government was a forerunner of his work in the ensuing years. Because so many of the important intellectuals in the early days of the PRC were non-Communists, the Party required the services of special cadre to deal with this class. Thus, in the late forties and early fifties, Hu directed most of his intellectual and organizational efforts toward this end. Later, however, as the regime began to rear its own generation of intellectuals, his principal activities were directed more toward the intelligentsia within the Party.

Hu received his first assignments in the new central government when it was inaugurated at the first session of the CPPCC (the organization that set up the national government in September 1949), meetings that he attended as an alternate delegate from the Social Science Workers’ Conference described above. In the following month he was named to the Council of the newly established China Association for the Reform of the Written Language. In December he received two assignments in the Publications Administration, which was headed by veteran publisher and editor Hu Yii-chih. The Administration was directly subordinate to the Government Administration Council (the cabinet) and had charge of the publication of books and periodicals on a nationwide basis. Hu served as director of the Staff Office as well as deputy director of the Compilation and Examination Bureau, posts he held until January 1951.

In the meantime, Hu had already begun contributing to Hsueh-hsi (Study), the major political and theoretical Party journal from its establishment in September 1949 until it was replaced by Hung-ch’i (Red flag) in 1958. In his article for the inaugural issue of Hsueh-hsi, he wrote on the relations between the Taipings and the West. Most of his later contributions, however, dealt with the Chinese Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism. Together with Yii Kuang- yuan and Wang Hui-te, he published in Hsueh-hsi one of the longest series of articles that has ever appeared in a Chinese Communist publication. Under the general title “Lectures on the Fundamental Knowledge of the Social Sciences,” the series ran in 29 issues from October 1950 until March 1952, covering such topics as “class struggle,” “the state and revolution,” and “strategy and tactics of the Communist Party.” Several of these articles dealt with the “five-anti” movement, directed against businessmen and industrialists over the winter of 1951.

Hu, in the interim, had become a deputy secretary-general of the Party’s Propaganda Department by 1950; he presumably held this post until mid-195 8 when he was identified as a deputy director, a post he still retains. Closely related to propaganda work was a position he received in February 1952 when a Study (hsueh- hsi) Committee was formed under the auspices of the CPPCC to encourage the study of Marxism-Leninism and the “thought of Mao Tse- tung”; he served on this committee until it was disbanded in 1954. By the spring of 1953, he was affiliated with the Marxist-Leninist Institute in Peking, the CCP’s most important school for training Party cadres and ideologues and known in later years as the Higher Party School. In August-September of that year he attended the Communist Fourth World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest, his only known trip abroad after 1949.

In the period from 1952 to 1954 Hu became an editorial board member of three important Party publications. He was identified in August 1952 in this capacity on the Hsueh-hsi board (although he may have been a member before this date), and then in 1953 and 1954 he joined the boards of Li-shih yen-chiu (Historical research) and Hsin chien-she (New construction), respectively. He presumably continues to hold the latter two posts. All these posts were, of course, closely related to his work in the Propaganda Department, the organization that directs the editorial policies of Chinese Communist publications.

Hu, in the interim, had become a deputy secretary-general of the Party’s Propaganda Department by 1950; he presumably held this post until mid-195 8 when he was identified as a deputy director, a post he still retains. Closely related to propaganda work was a position he received in February 1952 when a Study (hsueh- hsi) Committee was formed under the auspices of the CPPCC to encourage the study of Marxism-Leninism and the “thought of Mao Tse- tung”; he served on this committee until it was disbanded in 1954. By the spring of 1953, he was affiliated with the Marxist-Leninist Institute in Peking, the CCP’s most important school for training Party cadres and ideologues and known in later years as the Higher Party School. In August-September of that year he attended the Communist Fourth World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest, his only known trip abroad after 1949.

In the period from 1952 to 1954 Hu became an editorial board member of three important Party publications. He was identified in August 1952 in this capacity on the Hsueh-hsi board (although he may have been a member before this date), and then in 1953 and 1954 he joined the boards of Li-shih yen-chiu (Historical research) and Hsin chien-she (New construction), respectively. He presumably continues to hold the latter two posts. All these posts were, of course, closely related to his work in the Propaganda Department, the organization that directs the editorial policies of Chinese Communist publications.

Politics

Hu had served in the Youth Federation from 1949 until 1953. Although he did not participate in the Second National Committee (1953-1958), he was elected as a vice-chairman of the All-China Youth Federation at its third congress in April 1958; but when the Fourth Committee was organized (April 1962) he was once again dropped. It was also in 1958 (July) that he was named to the Standing Committee of the China Peace Committee, a position he continues to hold. Already a deputy director of the Party’s Propaganda Department (by June 1958), Hu was identified in September of that year as a deputy director of the Department’s Political Research Office, a position he may still retain.

In June 1958 the Party began to publish Hung-ch’i, a journal under the direct supervision of the Party Central Committee and edited by one of the top Party theoreticians and propagandists, alternate Politburo member Ch’en Po-ta. As already noted, Hung-ch'i replaced Hsueh-hsi (which suspended publication later in 1958) as the Party’s most important journal. Hung-ch’i and the daily JMJP, also an organ of the Central Committee, are the two most authoritative publications in Communist China. Hu immediately began to contribute articles to Hung-ch’i and was probably an editorial board member from its inception, in any case, by early 1961 he was specifically identified as a deputy ‘editor-in-chief. In addition to his extensive writings for Party journals, Hu has often been reported in the Communist press as a lecturer at various institutes of higher learning. For example, in 1957 he lectured on history at Peking University and in 1958 he lectured on philosophy at the so-called Institute of Journalism for Training Red and Expert Personnel. Hu is probably most famous for a book entitled Ti-kuo-chu-i yii Chung-kuo cheng-chih, which was published in 1948 and translated into English in 1955 under the title Imperialism and Chinese Politics.

The work deals with China’s reactions to the Western powers during the period from 1840 to 1924. (The sources employed by Hu in this study suggest a working knowledge of the English lan-guage.) He was also a chief editor of a history of the Taipings published under the auspices of the China New History Research Society in 1952. Hu’s work on the Taipings is part of a rather major historical effort in Communist historiography, one which views the rebellion “as a direct ancestor of the Chinese Communist revolutionary movement.” Under the Communists the Taiping Rebellion is interpreted “not only as a peasant revolution against the feudal Man-chu regime, but also as a struggle of the people against the foreign aggressors who assisted the Manchu ruling class in suppressing the revolutionary movement.”

Although Hu Sheng does not frequently appear in public, the nature of his work must bring him into rather close contact with many of the Party’s top figures. His earlier work for the Party put him in association with such veteran Party leaders as Ch’iao Kuan-hua, Tung Pi-wu, and Nieh Jung-chen. Presently, his assignments in the Propaganda Department and with Hung-ch’i place him directly under two alternate Politburo members, Lu Ting-i (the Propaganda Department director) and Ch’en Po-ta (the Hung-ch’i editor).

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Hu Sheng

Background

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Politics

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Career

1949

1950

1950

1952 - 1954