Background
Kao Yang was a native of Liaoning in Manchuria.
Kao Yang was a native of Liaoning in Manchuria.
He begun his career in trade union work, as is suggested by the fact that when he first became known in 1950 he was serving in the Liaotung Provincial Labor Department and also by the fact that he was a member of the funeral committee for Lai Jo-yii, head of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, who died in 1958.
Kao’s career is first documented in the spring of 1950 when he was identified as a deputy secretary of the Shenyang (Mukden) CCP Committee, as well as head of the Organization Department of the same committee. He was holding both positions in May 1950 when he was named governor of Liaotung, a post he held until July 1952. Concurrent with this post he was from October 1950 director of the Liaotung Labor Department.
To judge from these important positions that Kao was given in both the government and Party in Liaotung, one of the most important of China’s industrial provinces, it would appear that he had already gained considerable recognition before 1950. From September 1951 until its reorganization in January 1953, Kao served as a member of the Northeast People’s Government, the Manchurian administration then headed by Kao Kang, who was officially purged in 1955. Kao Yang attended the third session of the First CPPCC in October- November 1951, one of the few reported events of his career at this stage.
In the spring of 1953 Kao replaced Chang Ch’i-lung as the ranking Party secretary in Liaotung, but when Liaotung was merged with Liao- hsi Province in mid-1954 to form Liaoning, he was dropped as CCP secretary. He was, however, elected to the First NPC in 1954 as a deputy from Liaoning; he also served in the Second NPC (1959-1964) and was again re-elected to the Third NPC, which began its first session in December 1964.
In the wake of the 1955 purge of Politburo member Kao Kang, the Party established a central Control Commission to tighten discipline and insure loyalty. At the time, only the name of the commission chairman, Politburo member Tung Pi-wu, was known. However, at the first plenum of the eighth Party Central Committee, held in September 1956 immediately after the historic Eighth Party Congress, Kao was named to the Commission. The Control Commission has members representing various fields of work, and thus it may be inferred from Kao’s career that his role was in connection with Party supervision of industrial enterprises, perhaps specializing in those located in Manchuria.
In January 1957 Kao was appointed as a vice-president of the Shenyang College of Physical Education, and in the fall of 1958 he was identified as one of the deputy directors of the Industrial Work Department of the Party’s Central Committee, a department that is one of the key CCP organs in controlling the economic sector.
For reasons that are not clear, Kao’s name was dropped from the official roster of the Control Commission in 1960. At first this seemed to be associated with the failures of the Great Leap Forward occurring that year. In the following year his membership on the commission was restored, but it was again dropped in 1962. However, the latter happening is more easily explained, because Kao was given an important ministerial appointment at this time. The former minister of Chemical Industry, P’eng T’ao, had died in November 1961, and in July 1962 Kao was named to succeed him, an appointment roughly coinciding with an increased attention to the importance of chemical fertilizers, which were especially necessary to support the greatly accelerated program to boost agricultural production.
Kao’s activities have never received much attention from the Chinese press, but he received somewhat better coverage in 1963 and 1964. His most significant appearances occurred in early 1963 when he attended a national agricultural science and technology conference and in December 1964 when he spoke before the first session of the Third NPC on the performance of the chemical industry in 1964, claiming that it had overfulfilled the State plan.