K’ang Sheng

Background

K’ang was born in Chu-ch’eng, located some 40 miles west of the Shantung port city of Tsingtao. His father was a well-to-do landlord. K’ang’s original name was Chao Yun; he later changed this to Chao Jung and then to K’ang Sheng.

Education

He received a primary school education in Shantung and later he attended the middle school attached to Shanghai University. The university had been founded in the latter half of 1923 by Yu Yu-jen, a KMT official, but it soon came under the domination of such prominent Communists as Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai, Teng Chung- hsia, Yun Tai-ying, Chang T’ai-lei, and Jen Pi-shih. During the school’s rather brief history (it was closed in June 1925), it served as a training ground for scores of Youth League and young CCP members. K’ang later attended the university itself, and while there he joined the Communist Youth League.

Career

K’ang joined the CCP in 1924, and by early 1925 he was working as a labor organizer in Shanghai together with Teng Chung-hsia, Li Li- san, and others. From the time K’ang entered the CCP until his assignment to the Comintern in Moscow in the thirties, his life in Shanghai was shrouded in the secrecy which might be expected of an underground organizer. During the years 1925-1927 he remained in the labor field when it was particularly active in Shanghai (see under Li Li-san), and during approximately this same period K’ang was also director of the Organization Department of the CCP Shanghai District Committee. He stayed in Shanghai after Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-Communist coup in April 1927, and it was probably at that time that he first became directly associated with Party’s intelligence and security organs. K’ang’s colleagues in this work included Li K’o- nung and K’o Ch’ing-shih; his knowledge of the inner-workings of the Party apparatus in Shanghai in the late twenties and early thirties was revealed in a Moscow-published collection of essays (1936) on CCP “martyrs” to which K’ang contributed short biographies on Ch’en Yen-nien and Lo Teng-hsien.

K’ang was arrested in Shanghai in 1930, and according to one account he quickly gained his release through the intervention of Ting Wei-fen, a prominent KMT leader from Shantung, whose nephew had also been apprehended by the authorities. In any event, he appears to have taken part in the Party’s Fourth Plenum in Shanghai in January 1931. It was at this plenum that the so-called Russian-returned student faction (see under Ch’en Shao-yu and Ch’in Pang-hsien) gained control of the Party apparatus and took over most of the leading Party posts. Although K’ang is not known to have had any particular ties with this group, he was made director of the Party’s Organization Department. Moreover, some reports assert that K’ang was placed on the Politburo in 1931 (presumably at the Fourth Plenum). However, it should be noted that there is no other high-ranking Party official about whom there are such widely conflicting reports concerning Politburo membership. K’ang remained in the Shanghai underground after the Fourth Plenum, and toward the end of 1932 or early 1933 he was living in the French Concession in Shanghai. It was at this time that his “secret house” was used as a shelter by Ch’en Keng when the latter came to Shanghai for medical treatment during the winter of 1932.

K’ang learned Russian during his stay in Moscow, and he is also said to have a limited knowledge of English and German. In 1937 he was called back to the Communist capital at Yenan in north Shensi. En route home he passed through Tihwa (now Urumchi) where he and Ch’en Shao-yii allegedly negotiated with Sheng Shih-ts’ai, the semi-independent Sinkiang warlord, in an attempt to work out closer political relations between the Communists at Yenan and Sheng, a mission that was only partially successful (see under Teng Fa and Ch’en T’an-ch’iu).“

Back in Yenan, K’ang was attached to the Party Organization Department where he may have worked at various times under such Party stalwarts as Li Fu-ch’un, Ch’in Pang-hsien, Liu Shao-ch’i, and Ch’en Yun. Once again there are reports that he assumed (or reassumed) a seat as a member (or alternate member) of the Politburo, and still others that he also became a member of the Party Secretariat. But perhaps most important is the fact that he returned to his special field of security and intelligence work. For reasons of security the Communists have published very little about the chief security organ, the Social Affairs Department (She-hui pu), but it is probable that K’ang headed this important organ from the late 1930’s until about 1946 when he was replaced by Li K’o-nung. Although there is further uncertainty and ambiguity of data, K’ang was also known to have held a high position in one of the leading Party schools in Yenan. Communist leader Ch’in Pang-hsien, in an interview with Edgar Snow in July 1938, stated that the “Communist Party School” was under K’ang Sheng and Ch’en Shao-yii and had about 500 students enrolled. Other reports state that K’ang was vice-president of the “Central Party School” during the Sino-Japanese War period. K’ang apparently retained some connections with the labor movement in the Communist-held areas of the northwest. He was described in a Party newspaper as a “labor leader” when he spoke in Yenan on February 7, 1942, on the 19th anniversary of the February Seventh (1923) Incident. (In this incident, described in the biography of Teng Chung-hsia, a number of Communist labor officials lost their lives when warlord Wu P’ei-fu suppressed the activities of the Peking-Hankow Railway Workers’ Trade Union.)

When the new central government was formed in the fall of 1949, K’ang became a member of the Central People’s Government Council, the most important organ of government until 1954. He was also named to the First Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (1949-1954). As the Communists consolidated their position in east China, the East China Military and Administrative Committee (ECMAC) was established (January 1950). K’ang was named as a member of the ECMAC (with jurisdiction over Shantung) and when the ECMAC was reorganized into the East China Administrative Committee (ECAC) in December 1952, he was reappointed. Despite all these important appointments at the central, regional, and provincial levels, K’ang made no public appearances from 1949 to the end of 1954. Illness or further involvement in security work may explain this prolonged absence from the limelight. It may also be noteworthy that K’ang’s reappearance in late 1954 coincided with the purge of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih, the latter being the chairman of the ECMAC-ECAC, to which K’ang was assigned. One of the major figures purged with Kao and Jao was Hsiang Ming, the Shantung CCP Sub-bureau second secretary, who on occasion served as the acting secretary for K’ang. (For a discussion of Hsiang Ming, see under Kao Kang.)

Kang’s political fortunes rose sharply at the 10th Party Plenum, held in September 1962. At that time two military figures were removed from the Party’s Central Secretariat, T’an Cheng and Huang K’o-ch’eng. It may be significant that Huang had been a close colleague of P’eng Te- haui. Three new members were added to the Secretariat: Lu Ting-i, Lo Jui-ch’ing, and K’ang. The highly important Secretariat, headed by Teng Hsiao-p’ing, is responsible for the daily execution-pf policies laid down by the Politburo. K’ang received his first post in the national legislature in 1958 when he was elected a deputy from his native Shantung to the Second NPC (1959-1964). He was re-elected in 1964, and when the Third NPC closed its first session in January 1965, K’ang was elevated to a vice-chairmanship of the NPC Standing Committee. A year and a half later, in the early stages of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, K’ang was identified as the “adviser” to the Cultural Revolution Group under the CCP Central Committee (July 1966), and within a few weeks he was also identified as a member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee. These new posts placed K’ang among the half-dozen top leaders in China.

Politics

K’ang was relieved of his Shanghai assignments in 1933 and sent to Moscow where he studied Soviet security and intelligence techniques and also acted as a CCP representative to the Comintern. Writing in September 1933 for a Comintern publication, K’ang claimed there were two million trade union members in the Soviet areas of China, and that the CCP had 300,000 members, of whom 20 per cent were industrial workers. Three months later he attended the 13th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI), as did Ch’en Shao-yii (Wang Ming), one of the Russian-returned student faction leaders. Both men gave lengthy speeches at the meeting, and their addresses were published in several languages and countries in the following months; one such edition was published in New York in April 1934 by the Workers Library Publishers (their names being romanized “Wan Ming” and “Kang Sin”). K’ang’s speech, though shorter and less important than the one given by his colleague, is a useful (though obviously exaggerated) account of the Chinese revolutionary movement outside Communist-controlled areas (or, in K’ang’s phrase, in “non-Soviet China”). In particular, it contains a considerable amount of information about the resistance movement in Japanese-controlled Manchuria and the growth of Party and trade union work in other “non Soviet” areas. One of the main themes of the speech was the necessity to “mobilize” the entire nation against Japan, and in this regard he pledged the support of the CCP in the event of a “military attack by Japanese imperialism upon the Soviet Union.”

In January-February 1934 the Chinese Soviet Republic convened the Second All-China Congress of Soviets in Juichin, southeast Kiangsi. K’ang was still in Moscow, but he was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee, the leading political organ of the Republic. In that same year he also wrote a preface for the copy of Mao Tse-tung’s speech at the congress, which was published in Moscow for a Comintern audience.0 In July-August 1935 K’ang was a delegate to the Seventh Comintern Congress in Moscow. He was again among the speakers, and he was also elected an alternate member of both the ECCI and the ECCI Presidium. Ch’en Shao- yii, Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, and Chang Kuo- t’ao were elected full ECCI members, and Ch’in Pang-hsien, like K’ang, was elected an alternate. K’ang was thus on hand for the important meeting which set the course for the Comintern’s “united front against fascism” a policy developed in the wake of the rise of Hitler (and one that was equally relevant to Chinese of many political persuasions because of the increasing encroachments upon China’s sovereignty by the Japanese militarists). In the period after the 1935 Comintern Congress, K’ang was called upon to take up his pen in defense of the “united front” against Japan. For example, he and Ch’en Shao-yii, in a joint article, denounced as specious comparisons between Lenin’s acceptance of the famous 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany (buying time by sacrificing space) and the situation in China vis-à-vis Japan. Their argument, in brief, was that all Chinese must stand and fight. This article appeared in the Chiu-kuo shih-pao (Salvation times), published in Paris by Wu Yii-chang, and was quoted in a Comintern journal in early 1936.

Since his re-emergence over the winter of 1954-55, K’ang’s activities have been prominently featured in the Chinese press. His work has been devoted to two different types of activities a somewhat unusual combination of duties in the field of higher education and liaison with foreign Communist parties. In the former category, for example, in February 1956 he became a vice-chairman of a newly organized committee to promote the usage of the “common national language” (p’u-t’ung-hua) and from time to time (especially in the late fifties) he appeared at educational conferences. More important, however, has been his work as a senior liaison official with foreign Communist parties and as a major figure in the Sino-Soviet dispute. His first assignment in this field was in March 1956 when he led a delegation to East Germany to attend the Third Congress of the Socialist Unity Party (i.e., the East German Communist Party). In January- February 1959 he was in Moscow as a member of Chou En-lai’s delegation to the 21st Congress of the CPSU. K’ang was back in Moscow in February 1960 leading the Chinese “observer” delegation to the Warsaw Treaty Political Consultative Committee. His speech at the meetings was a milestone in the Sino-Soviet dispute; prior to this time Chinese commentary on Soviet policies had been couched in highly veiled language. Now, however, although the Soviets were not specifically mentioned by name, K’ang made it plain that Peking strongly disagreed with Soviet policies vis-à-vis the West (particularly regarding disarmament) and intended to follow a more independent policy, which would ultimately become a major factor in the Sino-Soviet rift of the sixties. In particular, he stated that any disarmament agreement reached without Peking’s participation would not have any “binding force on China.” In sharp contrast, the declaration issued by the conference stated that the situation was now “more favorable than ever before” for reaching fruitful disarmament talks. The clash in Sino-Soviet views became far more evident in June 1960 at the Third Congress of the Rumanian Workers’ (Communist) Party in Bucharest; K’ang also attended this congress (see under P’eng Chen, the leader of the Chinese delegation).

Membership

Between these visits to Moscow and Bucharest in 1960 and the end of 1964, K’ang was a member of five other highly important delegations— each of which was deeply involved in the continuing Sino-Soviet rift. He was a member of the following delegations (see under the delegation leader for details) : USSR, November 1960, to attend the 43rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution, led by Liu Shao-ch’i; North Korea, September 1961, to attend the Fourth National Congress of the Korean Workers’ (Communist) Party, led by Teng Hsiao-p’ing; USSR, October 1961, to attend the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, led by Chou En-lai; USSR, July 1963, to hold bi-lateral talks with CPSU officials, led by Teng Hsiao-p’ing; USSR, November 1964, to attend the 47th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, led by Chou En-lai. In the interim, K’ang frequently took part in Peking in talks with visiting foreign Communist leaders as the Chinese attempted to present their case to these men.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Mao mentioned K’ang a second time in connection with the Red Army drive southward in early 1949 as the Communist forces stood poised north of the Yangtze River after the successful Huai-Hai campaign (see under Liu Po-ch’eng). In a directive of February 8 entitled “Turn the Army into a Working Force,” Mao’s instructions dealt mainly with the pending takeover of the cities and the uses to which the army should be put as a civil force. He continued: “We have talked at length with Comrade K’ang Sheng and asked him to hurry to the headquarters of the Second and Third Field Armies ... to confer with you . . . Turn all your rear-area work over to the Shantung Sub-bureau.” After carrying out this assignment, K’ang apparently proceeded directly to Shantung where, by March 1949, he was identified as the Shantung governor; before the year ended he had also become the political commissar of the Shantung Military District and secretary of the CCP Shantung Subbureau, thus becoming the dominant figure in his native province.