Background
Huang Yen was born in Liu-an hsien, the same hsien from which Ch’en Shao-yii (better known as Wang Ming) hails, but there is no known connection between Huang and Ch’en. Moreover, Ch’en is about 10 years senior to Huang.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Huang Yen
Edit ProfileEducation
Huang became associated with revolutionary activities while still a teenager. He reportedly led a unit in a peasants’ uprising in March 1931 in his native hsien and then participated in the formation of a “soviet” in that area. Liu-an hsien was in the important Oyiiwan Soviet district (see under Chang Kuo-t’ao), and presumably the “soviet” which Huang helped develop was incorporated into Oyiiwan.
Career
Nothing was heard of Huang for a decade until Japanese sources report that as of April 1941 he had served as director of a “joint defense office” west of the Tientsin-Pukow Railway; three years later he was serving as a deputy secretary of a Party Committee in the same region. In addition to providing a direct rail link between Tientsin and Nanking (situated on the south shore of the Yangtze directly across from Pukow), the Tientsin-Pukow rail line connected the North China Plain and the lower Yangtze valley, both fertile and heavily populated areas. By the end of the war Huang was, according to Japanese sources, secretary of the Huai-nan (south of the Huai River) Border Region Party Committee under the Central China Party Bureau. As the Communists were operating mainly in military formations in these East China areas, Huang was presumably serving under the command of the Second Division of the New Fourth Army, the division that controlled this area.
In the late 1940’s, as the Communists swept the mainland, Huang apparently devoted himself to the organization of the peasantry. He was serving as chairman of a preparatory committee for the North Anhwei Peasants’ Association, and attended the First CPPCC as a representative of peasant organizations in the “liberated areas.”
Until August 1952 Anhwei province was divided into northern and southern sections. Over the 1949-50 winter Huang assumed important assignments in the three major segments of the Communist power structure, the government, the Party, and the military. He became a deputy secretary of the North Anhwei Party Committee under Party Central Committee member Tseng Hsi-sheng, the ranking secretary, a post Huang held until August 1952. He also served with Tseng in the military structure, Tseng was the commander of the North Anhwei Military District, and Huang, for a brief time in early 1950, was a deputy political commissar. The third post, perhaps Huang’s most significant during this period, was as director of the North Anhwei People’s Administrative Office, the governmental organ.
In August 1952, north and south Anhwei were merged to form Anhwei province. In the govern-mental structure, Huang was named as a vice-governor under Tseng Hsi-sheng, holding this post until March 1955 when he replaced Tseng as governor. Huang was subsequently re-elected as governor in November 1958 and in September 1964. In the military sphere Japanese sources identified him as a deputy commander of the Anhwei Military District in August 1952, but no later information is available about this activity. Although Huang was not identified as a secretary of the Anhwei Party Committee until January 1957 (serving, once again, under first secretary Tseng Hsi-sheng), it is likely that he held this post from the 1952 period.
Huang has been fairly active in the NPC since its formation in 1954. He was an Anhwei deputy to the first through the third congresses which opened, respectively, in September 1954, April 1959, and December 1964. At a June 1956 session of the first congress he spoke on the Anhwei harvest and in April 1959 on an industrial “leap forward” in Anhwei.
Throughout the middle and late 1950’s, Huang was reported with regularity, and during this period assumed still two more posts, though both of apparently short duration. He was named in April 1958 as chairman of the Anhwei Provincial Election Committee, the body that directed the electoral work for the elections to the Second NPC late in 1958. Second, in December 1958 he was named as chairman of the Wuhu Committee for Building the Yangtze River Bridge, a committee inaugurated on December 9, 1958.
Politics
It is interesting that Huang was out of the news for over two years after being identified with Ch’en Yun in November 1960. This situation may have been due solely to the inadequate reports available, although two facts suggest difficulties in Anhwei during this period. First, Tseng Hsi-sheng, under whom Huang had served for many years, was transferred out of the province in late I960. He returned to Anhwei in 1961, only to disappear completely from the news in 1962, at which time Party Central Committee Li Pao-hua was assigned to Anhwei as the first secretary, replacing Tseng. Second, even though Huang reappeared in the news in early 1963, he was demoted from secretary to deputy secretary of the Anhwei Party Committee at least by October 1963, Such a procedure is quite abnormal and suggests that Huang became entangled in political difficulties affecting the Anhwei political hierarchy.
Despite the possible political difficulties of the early 1960 s, Huang was active again by early 1963 taking part in activities typical of a provincial leader of his stature. He was, to cite a few examples, on hand for May Day and National Day festivities in 1963 and attended the sessions of the Third Anhwei Congress of Women in May 1964.
-
Born
-
Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
-
Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
-
1941
-
1950
-
1954
-
1958