Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
He was educated locally.
As head of a Communist-backed trade union in Shansi, he organized guerrilla units which were incorporated into the Eighth Route Army in 1938. He presumably operated mainly in Shansi during the war, because a decade later he was officially identified as the former chairman of the Shansi General Trade Union. This identification occurred in August 1948 at the Sixth Labor Congress held in Harbin. At that congress K’ang was elected to the Executive Committee and to alternate membership on the Standing Committee (which was re-entitled the Presidium at the 1953 labor congress) of the All-China Federation of Labor (ACFL). He was re-elected to the Executive Committee and promoted to full membership on the Presidium at the 1953 congress (after which the ACFL became known as the All-China Federation of Trade Unions). Finally, and most important, at the congress held in December 1957 he was elevated to membership on the Federation’s Secretariat, thus being placed among the most important of the trade union leaders in China. In the early years of the PRC the All-China Federation of Labor had regional branches. K’ang headed the “North China Work Committee” of the federation from its formation in April 1952 until he was transferred to Peking toward the latter part of 1953.
He was relieved of all his positions in Shansi in 1953 and transferred to Peking. There, in September 1953, he assumed the chairmanship of the Preparatory Committee of the First Machine Building Workers’ Trade Union, and when this union held its first congress in August 1955, he was named as the chairman. In February 1958 the “First” and “Second” Machine Building Unions were merged (to coincide with the merger of the government’s First and Second Ministries of Machine Building). K’ang was once again named as chairman, holding the post until the summer of 1959.
In the meantime K’ang had begun to take part in the international Communist labor union movement, an activity that was to occupy most of his time in the years ahead. In January 1950 he was elected chairman of the Agricultural and Forestry Workers’ Trade Unions International, one of the member unions of the Communist- dominated World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). This took place in Warsaw at the constituent conference which formed the union, but K’ang was apparently not a member of the Chinese delegation. In October 1953 he was a member of the delegation led by trade union leader Liu Ning-i to the Third Congress of the WFTU in Vienna, then the WFTU head-quarters. At that congress he was elected to the WFTU General Council, a position he probably still holds. In succeeding years he received more significant posts within the WFTU, in 1957 he became an alternate member of the Executive Committee and a full member in 1960.
Finally, in June 1962 he was named to the Secretariat, being placed as the second-ranking Chinese official below WFTU Vice-Chairman Liu Ch’ang-sheng. K’ang’s trip to Vienna in 1953 was a harbinger of things to come. Between that time and the end of 1964 he went abroad 18 times to 11 different nations. Of these 18 trips, 11 concerned trade union work, whereas the others were occasioned by meetings to promote activities such as disarmament or the Communist-backed peace movement. His travels have taken him to the USSR, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Cuba, Austria, Japan, the United Arab Republic, Indonesia, and North Vietnam. A few of these trips require some elucidation. In addition to the above-mentioned third WFTU Congress in 1953, K’ang attended the fourth and fifth congresses held, respectively, in Leipzig, East Germany, in October 1957 and in Moscow in December 1961, both times under leader Liu Ch’ang-sheng. In August 1956 and August 1962 he attended the second and eighth World Conferences against Nuclear Weapons in Japan. He led a group to Cairo in September 1958 to a conference to “support the Algerian workers and people” and to a conference of an almost identical title in Cuba in October- November 1960. But perhaps his most important journey abroad took place in November 1962 when he accompanied Central Committee member Wu Hsiu-ch’iian to Bulgaria for the Eighth National Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party. This was the first of four Party congresses which Wu attended in East Europe in the fall and winter of 1962-63.
It marked a turning point in Sino-Soviet relations in that the long-simmering ideological dispute broke into open verbal warfare between Peking and Moscow. It is not known what role K’ang may have played at the Bulgarian congress, but his mere presence was probably sufficient to label him in the eyes of Russians and East Europeans as an implacable advocate of an extremely harsh and tough foreign policy vis-à-vis the West. K’ang’s involvement in foreign affairs is further suggested by his membership on a delegation to a meeting in Hanoi in November-December 1964 with the cumbersome but revealing title, “International Conference for Solidarity with the People of Vietnam, against United States Imperialist Aggression and for the Defense of Peace.” Although his career has been clearly oriented toward foreign affairs, he has also had a hand in various domestic endeavors. Within the government he has served as a Shansi deputy in the First through the Third NPC’s, which 'opened their initial sessions in September 1954, April 1959, and December 1964, respectively. Further, he was named to the Bills Committee for the Second and Third Congresses. Within semi-official organizations he was named to membership on the councils (board of directors) of the China-Iraq Friendship Association (FA) and the China-Africa People’s FA from their formation (September 1958 and April 1960); he retains membership in both organizations. K’ang also makes appearances at the numerous conferences held in China, as, for example, in October 1959 when he served as a deputy secretary-general of a conference of “outstanding workers” in Peking.
Aside from his work in establishing the trade union organization in China, K’ang also participated both in the organization of the central government and the provincial government of his native Shansi in 1949. When Taiyuan, the Shansi capital, fell to Communist forces in April 1949, K’ang was named to membership on the Taiyuan Military Control Commission, then headed by General Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien. When the provincial government was formed later in 1949, K’ang was appointed as a member of the Shansi Government Council, and in August 1950 he was also appointed to membership on the Shansi Finance and Economics Committee. Furthermore, at the semi-official level, he was elected as chairman of the Shansi Provincial Trade Union Council, a position which, in effect, amounted to a reappointment because he had held this post in earlier years. K’ang went to Peking as a Federation of Labor delegate in September 1949 to attend the initial session of the CPPCC, the organization that brought the, central government into existence on October 1.