Sports leader Jung Kao-t’ang was probably born about 1910 to judge from the date he was in college. His original name was Jung Ch’ien-hsiang, and he was also known as Kao T’ang as late as the early 1950’s. A 1958 article in the Communist press noted that Jung had entertained his colleagues by singing Shensi folk songs, thereby suggesting his place of nativity, although he may simply have become familiar with the Shensi dialect and folklore during war-time days in Yenan.
A large number of the NLVC students came from the best schools in Peking, especially Peking and Tsinghua Universities. Jung is known to have studied engineering at the latter, but there are no indications that he utilized this training in his later career.
Jung’s first apparent contact with the Chinese left-wing occurred in the winter of 1935-36 when he was a participant in the December Ninth Movement, which derives its name from student demonstrations that began on December 9, 1935, in opposition to Japanese incursions into north China. One outgrowth of the movement was the formation of the National Liberation Vanguard of China (NLVC), an organization originally motivated by nationalism but soon captured by the Communist apparatus in north China (see under Li Ch’ang). The NLVC carried out a variety of activities aimed at arousing the general populace to the dangers of Japanese imperialism. For example, NLVC members journeyed into the countryside around Peking to explain world events to simple peasants and also organized groups to visit and entertain Chinese armies stationed in north China. One favorite tactic of the NLVC was to present a play with a patriotic theme, after which more politically oriented speeches would be made to the gathered assembly. A ranking Communist, writing in 1961, stated that Jung wrote one such play which was particularly popular and that it helped the NLVC recruit new members.
No record is available of Jung’s wartime activities, but he must have impressed some of the more senior Communists in the northwest with his loyalty or capabilities, or both. This became evident in 1946 when he was given responsible positions under the Peking Executive Headquarters, the organization established under the cease-fire agreement by the Nationalists, Communists, and Americans in January 1946. Holding the rank of colonel, Jung served as head of the Personnel Section and concurrently as director of the Administrative Section of the Communist delegation.
When the truce broke down in early 1947 the Communist delegation in Peking returned to the Communist capital of Yenan. Once more, Jung fades from the record, but then he reappears in Peking in 1949 to assume a number of key positions within the New Democratic Youth League (NDYL). At the first League congress in April 1949 he was elected to the Central Committee, as well as to the Standing Committee, then consisting of only nine members. Moreover, before the year was out, he assumed four additional posts within the League: director, Students Department (1949-C.1950); director, Staff Office (1949-C.1953); director, Social Services Department (1949-c. 1953); and secretary-general (1949-1951).
The last post was clearly the most important because several of the other top youth leaders of that period (e.g., Feng Wen-pin, Liao Ch’eng-chih, Chiang Nan-hsiang) all had important collateral duties, which of necessity lessened the amount of time they could devote to the League. In brief, it appears that in the early years of the League Jung was one of the most important of its leaders in terms of the day-to-day management of the organization. In October 1951 the League underwent a slight reorganization, during which a Secretariat was created. Jung was named to this Secretariat, and following the second congress of the League in June-July 1953, he was re-elected to it (as well as to the Standing Committee of the Central Committee at the Congress). However, by 1953 Jung had become more deeply involved in other activities, and his role in the Youth League was nominal after this time. He was dropped from the Secretariat and the Standing Committee at the 1957 Youth League congress (when the organization was re-named as the Communist Youth League), and then at the next congress (1964) he was dropped from the Central Committee, thus bringing to a close his career as a youth leader. Paralleling his work in the Youth League, Jung also served from 1949 to 1953 as a National Committee member of the other important youth organization, the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth.
Although Jung’s time has been devoted chiefly to athletic endeavors, he has held several other official and semi-official posts over the years and has served on various ad hoc committees. From October 1950 to July 1958 he was a National Committee member of the China Peace Committee. In May 1954 he was named to the Standing Committee of the newly organized Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, a position he still holds. Four years later a parallel body was formed under the government known as the Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Jung was named as a member in March 1958 and still retains the post. Also in 1954 he was elected a Hopeh deputy to the First NPC; he was re-elected for the Second NPC (1959-1964) and again for the Third NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965. In September 1955 he chaired the presidium (steering committee) of a huge nationwide conference of “Young Activists in Socialist Construction” and in the fall of 1959 served as a presidium member for a national conference of “advanced” (or “progressive”) workers. In September 1958 the China-(East) Germany Friendship Association was established with Jung as one of the vice-chairmen, another position he continues to hold. His only known writing of importance is an article entitled “Let Physical Culture Better Serve Socialist Construction” that he wrote for Hung-ch’i (Red flag), June 1, 1960, in which he asserted that 100 million Chinese were taking part in organized athletic programs.
The central government was organized at the initial session of the CPPCC in September 1949, a meeting Jung attended as a representative of the Youth League. During this session he served on the ad hoc committee to draft the Common Program of the CPPCC, a committee headed by Chou En-lai. The Common Program was one of the principal documents ratified at the CPPCC session and served as the precursor of the Constitution adopted in September 1954. Jung received no job under the central government, but in the following month (October 1949) he took part in the organization of the All-China Athletic Federation (sometimes called the China Olympic Committee and officially renamed the All-China Sports Federation in July 1964). He was named secretary-general of the Preparatory Committee as well as one of the vice-chairmen under Chairman Feng Wen-pin, a prominent youth leader of the period and also Jung’s superior in the Youth League. He was also selected as a vice-chairman and secretary-general when the organization was formally established in June 1952 and was then re-elected to the vice-chairmanship during a reorganization of October 1956.
Following the 1956 reorganization, the Athletic Federation was placed under the titular leadership of the elderly Ma Yueh-han (John Ma), the father of modern sports in China and a long-time professor of physical education at Tsinghua University. Because American-educated Ma (d. October 1966) was not a Party member, it has been evident that from about the mid-1950’s Jung Kao-t’ang has been, in fact, the single most important figure in Chinese sports, a situation that can be illustrated in a number of ways. As in all Communist countries, the Chinese Communists have placed a premium on the organization of sports, making heavy investments in such things as new gymnasiums and stadiums of impressive size. Paralleling this, the government established at the cabinet level the Physical Culture and Sports Commission in November 1952 under the veteran PLA leader Ho Lung, later to be a PLA marshal and a Party Politburo member. Ho, of course, has had only a limited amount of time to devote to the Commission, and thus it has probably been Jung, the Commission secretary-general by 1953, who has played the most significant role in the daily operations of this body.
One of the obvious by-products of a large investment in sports has been a much increased participation in international athletic events. The Chinese Communists have, become increasingly active in this field and have, in many respects, been quite successful, especially in competition with other Asians. Jung has played a singularly important role in these activities. He has been a member or more frequently a leader of sports delegations or teams which have been abroad nine times from 1952 to early 1965. Briefly, these trips include visits to: Finland, July-August 1952, for the 15th Olympic Games (in which the Chinese Communists only partially participated); the USSR, July 1954, for a Soviet sports festival; France, June 1955, for a meeting of the International Olympics Committee; Japan, March-April 1956, for the 23rd World Table Tennis Championship matches and for a meeting of the International Table Tennis Federation; Japan, October 1962, for table tennis matches; Indonesia, October-November 1963, for the first Games of the New Emerging Forces (GAN- EFO); Cuba and Albania, February-March 1964, for meetings with Cuban and Albanian sportsmen and sports officials; and Yugoslavia, April 1965, for the 28th World Table Tennis Championship matches.
