Background
He was born into a peasant family in T’ung-ch’eng hsien in south-western Anhwei, an area just east of the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei (Oyüwan) Soviet in the early thirties.
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Huang Chen
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Huang went to school in An-ch’ing (Anking), Anhwei, a Yangtze River port city about 30 miles south of his native T’ung-ch’eng. Afterwards, he graduated from Hsin-hua (“New China”?) Fine Arts Academy in Shanghai; he is one of the few Chinese Communists to have received training of this sort.
Career
Huang became a Party member at the age of 23 (1931), and was a political commissar at the divisional level during the Kiangsi period from 1931 to 1934 when the Communist soviet capital was at Juichin in southeast Kiangsi. He fought with the army of Mao Tse-tung and Chu Te at this time. He is known to have participated in the fifth and last of the Annihilation Campaigns waged against the Communists in central China by the Nationalists. During the fifth campaign, which opened in October 1933, Huang commanded his own force, the 13th Regiment, which belonged to the Third Army Corps commanded by P’eng Te-huai and T’eng Tai-yuan. During the Long March (1934-35) Huang served as a propaganda worker with the Fifth Red Army Corps, a unit of the First Front Army led by Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung. While on the Long March, Huang wrote two plays that were staged for the soldiers during a rest period just after the Red armies had made the difficult crossing of the Upper Yangtze in the spring of 1935. This dramatic crossing of the Chin-sha (Golden Sand) River, which forms the boundary between Yunnan and Szechwan Provinces is now described as one of the milestones of the Long March. When Mao’s forces reached Shensi at the end of the March, Huang served as a member of a small liaison group that made contact with the 15th Army Corps, which had already been operating in the province for several years before the Long Marchers arrived. Through the efforts of this small group, the two armies met and merged in late October 1935 (see under Hsu Hai-tung).
In Sino-Japanese War times Huang was attached to Liu Po-ch’eng’s 129th Division, one of the three divisions that made up the Communist Eighth Route Army of north China. In 1938 he was among those studying conditions for beginning political work in the areas of south and central Hopeh, into which the 129th Division expanded during the course of the year.8 Huang worked with Liu’s division during the war and immediate postwar years and apparently spent the war period in the important border region territory controlled by the 129th Division, for by 1944 he had risen to the rank of deputy director of the Party Political Department for the Military Region of the Shansi-Hopeh-Shantung-Honan (Chin-Chi-Lu-Yu) Border Region Government (see under Liu Po-ch’eng). In 1945 he was a deputy director of the Political Department at the T’ai-hang Military Region base, the mountain base in southern Shansi, which belonged to the original T’ai-hang T’ai-yueh Military Base of the 129th Division.
After the end of the Sino-Japanese War he served on the Communist delegation to the Peking Executive Headquarters created by the Cease-fire Agreement signed in January 1946 to implement the terms of the agreement. Holding the simulated rank of major-general, he was also a member of the Headquarters field team, which operated in the Hsin-hsiang area in Honan north of the Yellow River.
He was taken prisoner there by the Nationalists at one point when the attempts for negotiation in his Hsin-hsiang area had broken down. Then in 1947, with the resumption of civil war between the two parties, Huang went back to the Red Army and became political commissar of the Ninth Column of the PLA force stationed in the Chin-Chi-Lu-Yii area that he knew so well. The Ninth Column belonged to the military force commanded by Ch’en Keng, an important contingent of Liu Po-ch’eng’s army known as the Central Plains PLA. This army expanded into central China after 1947 and then moved on into the Southwest but Huang’s connection with it seems to have ended about 1947.
Just a few days after his official removal as ambassador to Hungary, Huang was named as Peking's ambassador to Indonesia. He presented his credentials to President Sukarno on November 29, 1954, and remained in this post six and a half years, far longer than the average tour of duty for a Chinese Communist ambassador. His stay in Jakarta was marked by both high and low points. The most flourishing period, from Huang’s viewpoint, occurred in April 1955 when he was a member of Chou En-lai’s delegation to the famous Afro-Asian (“Bandung”) Conference, meetings from which the Chinese emerged with a very positive image throughout much of
Asia. Riding the crest of the goodwill established at Bandung, the Chinese immediately invited Indonesian Prime Minister Ali Sastroamid-jojo to China. Huang accompanied the prime minister to China and took part in the elaborate festivities arranged in his honor, including the formation (on June 1, 1955) of the Sino-Indonesian Friendship Association. On at least four other occasions Huang returned to China, two of them visits of consequence. In August 1956 he went back to Peking to prepare for the visit to China of President Sukarno (Septcmber-October 1956) and was frequently reported in the press during the time of Sukarno’s visit. Huang’s second important home visit took place in June 1958 when, together with several other PRC ambassadors, he returned briefly to Peking at the time of the Middle Eastern crisis in 1958 (when U.S. and British military forces were sent to Lebanon and Jordan).
On April 22, 1961, Huang Chen was named as a vice-minister of Foreign Affairs. Two weeks later he left Jakarta for Peking and was officially removed as ambassador to Indonesia on June 4, being replaced by Yao Chung-ming (q.v.) shortly thereafter. For the three years that Huang was a vice-minister he devoted most of his time to relations with the Afro-Asian world. His work in the Foreign Ministry was highlighted by four trips abroad. The first was a whirlwind tour of Burma, Indonesia, Ceylon, the U.A.R., Ghana, and Guinea in November-December 1962 to explain to premiers and heads of state in these nations the Chinese version of the Sino-Indian conflict, which had broken into open warfare. In the following April-May he accompanied Liu Shao-ch’i and Ch’en I on a quick friendship tour of Indonesia, Burma, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. More important, he accompanied Chou En-lai on his much publicized visit to 10 nations in Africa (the U.A.R., Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somali), plus a quick side trip to Albania. After returning to south China for a brief respite, the same group (Huang included) made brief visits to Burma, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Finally, in April 1964 he accompanied Foreign Minister Ch’en I to Jakarta to attend preparatory meetings for the Second Afro-Asian Conference the conference that ultimately collapsed in late 1965 owing to the combination of the overthrow of the president of Algeria (where the meetings were to have been held) and the continuing squabbles between Moscow and Peking as each side sought to influence the tone of the conference.
Politics
When the central government was formed in the fall of 1949, Huang was working in the General Political Department of the People’s Revolutionary Military Council, then the highest military organ of the PRC. It was to represent the Political Department that Huang was named as a member of the preparatory committee of the All-China Athletic Federation when it was formed in October 1949. However, he was reassigned to the Foreign Ministry in 1950 and in June of that year was named as Peking’s first ambassador to Hungary; he presented his credentials in Budapest on August 24, 1950. Huang’s tour of duty in Budapest was largely uneventful. Most of the Sino-Hungarian negotiations during his tenure as ambassador (1950-1954) took place in Peking of the 12 agreements signed during this period, all but two were negotiated and signed in Peking. Most of the public appearances Huang made in Hungary were of a protocol nature for example, attending exhibitions put on by the embassy in Budapest to illustrate the achievements of “new China.” After negotiating and signing a trade agreement in April 1954, he returned to China. He was officially removed as ambassador in September 1954, being replaced by Hao Te-ch’ing.
Personality
As already noted, Huang studied at a fine arts academy in Shanghai. During the Long March he made sketches of the military action and the daily life of the troops, which were later published in a collection. He is said to maintain an active interest in the arts. Huang’s niece is Miss Huang Sung-k’ang, who is the author of a work on Lu Hsun, modern China’s most famous writer, published in Amsterdam in 1957 under the title Lu Hsun and the New Culture Movement of Modern China.
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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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1931 - 1934
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1934 - 1935
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1946
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April 22, 1961