Background
Hu Yii-chih was born in 1910 in China.
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Hu Yii-chih
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Education
Hu Yii-chih was educated locally.
Career
When war broke out in mid-1937, Hu Yii-chih remained in Shanghai, using the pages of Tsou T’ao-fen’s Ti K’ang (Resistance) to oppose the Japanese. But in 1938 he went to Wuhan to join the Nationalist Government, working under Kuo Mo-jo in the Third Section of the Political Training Department, which was subordinate to the National Military Council. He soon went to Changsha and then Kweilin where he took part in establishing Kuo-chi hsin-wen she (International news agency), an important news organization discussed in the biography of journalist Fan Ch’ang-chiang. He spent the years 1939 and 1940 in Hong Kong where he helped to organize the Hua-shang pao (Commercial daily). In 1940 Hu Yii-chih left for Southeast Asia where he was to spend most of the decade. With the support of Singapore millionaire Ch’en Chia-keng (Tan Kah-kee), he edited the N art-yang shang-pao (South Seas commercial daily) until February 1942 when the city fell to the Japanese. He fled to Sumatra, spending the next three years moving from place to place to avoid arrest by the J apanese.
Soon after the war ended Hu Yii-chih returned to Singapore where he continued to work for the next two and a half years as an editor and publisher, again with the support of Tan Kah-kee. He was also chairman of the local branch of the China Democratic League from 1946 to 1948. In the spring of 1948 he returned to Hong Kong where for a few months he was an editorial board member of the pro-Communist newsletter Far Eastern Bulletin. In the fall he entered Communist-held areas of north China. After Peking was surrendered to the Communists in January 1949, Hu Yii-chih went there, and in June he became editor of the Kuang-ming jih-pao (Kwangming daily). This important newspaper was then the organ of the China Democratic League, but in later years it was placed under the joint direction of the eight "democratic" (i.e., non-Communist) political parties of which the League was one. Hu Yii-chih was given his first government post in June when the Communists, under the chairmanship of Mao Tse-tung, established the CPPCC Preparatory Committee.
Hu Yii-chih served as a member of this body, and in the following month he received two other posts on preparatory committees of organizations whose tasks were closely connected with his career. The first of these was a vice-chairmanship of the Returned Overseas Chinese Federation, a post he held until 1956. Second, he became a vice-chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the All-China Journalists’ Association, holding this post until the organization was permanently established in 1954. In September 1949, representing the China Democratic League, Hu Yii-chih attended the inaugural meeting of the CPPCC, the organization that brought the new central government into existence on October 1. When the major government assignments were made later in October, he became a member of the Culture and Education Committee, one of the four major committees under Chou En-lai’s Government Administration Council (the cabinet). His most important assignment, however, was as director of the Publications Administration, which was subordinate to the Culture and Education Committee.
Like most persons who held top posts in the government hierarchy, Hu Yii-chih also received other positions in the numerous “mass” and professional organizations established in the late months of 1949. He was made a member of the China Peace Committee’s National Committee, an Executive Board member of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, and a member of the Standing Council of the Association for Reforming the Chinese Written Language (to 1954). In December 1949 he became a vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs. In the same month the China Democratic League held its first major meeting after the conquest of the mainland by the Communists. Since that time he has been a member of the League’s Standing Committee, and in the early fifties he held top posts in its Organization and Overseas Chinese Affairs Departments. He was the League’s secretary-general from 1953 to 1958, and he has again held this post since December 1963. In addition, he has been a vice-chairman since December 1958.
When the First NPC met in September 1954 to inaugurate the constitutional government, Hu Yii-chih attended as a deputy from Shanghai. He represented Liaoning in the Second NPC (1959-1964) and also in the Third Congress, which opened in December 1964. Between 1954 and 1956 he received three posts in a field that has been one of his major concerns since his youth language reform. In November 1954 he became the only vice-chairman under Chairman Wu Yii-chang of the State Council’s Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language. And since early 1956 he has been a member of both the Central Work Committee for the Popularization of Standard Spoken Chinese (p’u-t’ung-hua) and the National Association for the Elimination of Illiteracy. In December 1954 Hu Yii-chih was elected as a China Democratic League delegate to the Second National Committee of the CPPCC, and he was re-elected to the Third and Fourth National Committees, which opened in 1959 and 1964, respectively.
Politics
During the PRC’s first five years, Hu Yii-chih devoted most of his time to the Publications Administration, an organization that was clearly given high priority as the Communists attempted to organize the publishing industry to disseminate their educational, cultural, and propaganda materials. His reports before the First and Second National Publishing Conferences (September 1950 and October 1952) provide useful research materials for those periods. These materials were published by the Foreign Language Press in 1952 in a pamphlet entitled Culture, Education and Health in New China, the essence of which was also published in an article by Hu Yii-chih for People’s China.
In 1951-1954 he received four new posts. He was made president of the China Esperanto Association when it was formed in March 1951, and in May 1952 he became a Standing Committee member of the newly established China-India Friendship Association. Third, he was made a member of the Board of Directors of the China News Service (Chung-kuo hsin-wen-she). This news organization was established on October 1, 1952, and is concerned mainly with news relating to overseas Chinese. Finally, he has been a Standing Committee member of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries since its formation in May 1954.
Connections
Shen and Hu were married in Singapore in 1941.
- Spouse:
- Shen Tzu-chiu
A native of Hangchow, Chekiang, and trained in Japan, Shen has paralleled her husband’s career in many ways. She too, for example, has served in the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, the China Peace Committee, and the government’s Culture and Education Committee. Shen has been a member of the National Women’s Federation since 1949 and a deputy from Chekiang since 1954. Since the establishment of the PRC she has visited Korea (1952), Bulgaria (1958), the Soviet Union (1960), and Indonesia and Burma (with her husband in 1961).
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1956
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1954
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February, 1942
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1938
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1946 - 1948
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1949
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1949
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December, 1949
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