Background
Nothing is known about his background.
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Lai Chi-fa
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A native of Szechwan, he first came to prominence in 1948 with the establishment of the North China People’s Government (NCPG).
Career
From 1950 to 1956, Lai’s attention was devoted mainly to the important Ministry of Heavy Industry. From March 1950 to August 1952 he was head of the ministry’s Staff Office, serving under Minister Li Fu-ch’un, a top economic specialist. When Wang Ho-shou replaced Li in August 1952, Lai was promoted to vice-minister. In this capacity he took part in the transfer of the Soviet shares to China of the Sino-Soviet Joint Stock Non-ferrous and Rare Metals Company. This company had operated mainly in Sinkiang from 1950, the decision to transfer it to sole Chinese jurisdiction came during the Khrushchev- Bulganin visit to China in September-October 1954. On December 30, 1954, Lai officiated at a meeting in Urumchi, the Sinkiang capital, in celebration of the transfer, at which time he presented medals to Soviet experts who had worked for the company.
In the interim, Lai was elected as a Chungking deputy to the First NPC (1954-1959), being re-elected from Szechwan to serve in the Second (1959-1964). He was not, however, elected to the Third NPC, which opened in late 1964. In May 1955 Lai made his only known trip abroad when he accompanied the then Defense Minister P’eng Te-huai to celebrations marking the “liberation” of Germany. P’eng went on to Poland for a Warsaw Pact meeting and then stopped over briefly in Moscow, but apparently Lai did not make this portion of the trip.
In May 1956 the Ministry of Heavy Industry was abolished, with its various departments being placed under other and sometimes new ministries. One of the new ministries was the Ministry of Building Materials Industry, and Lai was given the portfolio. The ministry and, by implication, Lai came under serious criticism on November 30, 1957, when the JMJP reported shortcomings at Kuan-chuang, a small industrial town a few miles east of Peking. Almost all the 15,000 people at Kuan-chuang were working in enterprises (e.g., a cement research institute) directly subordinate to Lai’s ministry.
In response to these criticisms the State Council dispatched an investigation team to Kuan-chuang in early December. Several weeks went by, and then the January 14 to 16, 1958, issues of the JMJP carried a series of articles on the “state of anarchy” which prevailed at Kuan-chuang. The ministry (but not Lai personally) was criticized for “bourgeois” and “rightist” thinking and conservatism, and a demand was made for strengthening ideological work, claiming that the neglect of such work was at the root of the anarchy. Lai himself wrote a piece for the JMJP on January 15, the criticisms were phrased in the collective “we,” but he took his own ministry seriously to task. On the following day, at a mass meeting held in Kuan-chuang, it was’ announced that 29 “counterrevolutionaries and criminals” were arrested. At about the end of April, Lai spoke at a meeting at Kuan-chuang celebrating the “victory” in the struggle. Most of these events, of course, transpired during the peak of the 1957-58 rectification movement, and the difficulties at Kuan-chuang may have been somewhat exaggerated in order to set an example.
In the interim, in the midst of these investigations and charges, there was a partial reorganization of the State Council. On February 11, 1958, Lai’s ministry was merged with two others (the ministries of Building and of Urban Construction) to form a new Ministry of Building. Lai was not given any post after the reorganization. In the summer of 1958 he was re-elected to the NPC, and the following spring he represented the CCP on the Third CPPCC, and was subsequently elected to the CPPCC Standing Committee (1959-1964). Then in September 1959, during still another State Council reorganization, Lai was named as a vice-minister of the Ministry of Building (under Minister Liu Hsiu-feng), the ministry which had taken over Lai’s Ministry of Building Materials Industry a year and a half earlier. In sum, it appears that the Kuan-chuang incident did not inflict any major damage on Lai’s career.
In late 1964 Lai was named to the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC. Previously he had served as a CCP representative to the CPPCC, but on this occasion he was named to represent the China Scientific and Technical Association. Although Lai is not known to have any previous ties with this association, his technically oriented career would make him a suitable person to serve as its representative. At the close of the first session of the Fourth CPPCC in January 1965, he was again named to the Standing Committee. Two months later the Ministry of Building was divided into a new Ministry of Building and the Ministry of Building Materials Industry. Lai, who had been a vice-minister of Building, was now transferred to head the Ministry of Building Materials Industry and thus returned to the same post he had lost eight years earlier.
Politics
Lai’s public appearances after 1959 are rather few, yet they do not suggest a pattern of activities for a man in political trouble. He has occasionally served as a host for visiting groups (such as a Cuban building delegation in April- May 1961) and participated in negotiations leading to the signing of a protocol by the Sino- Polish Joint Standing Commission on Scientific and Technical Cooperation in September 1961. For the Peking Kung-jen jih-pao (Daily worker), January 22, 1963, he wrote “Building Departments Must Provide More Vigorous Aid for Agriculture,” and Chien-chu (Building), no. 8, April 23, 1963, carried a report entitled “Penetratingly Unfold the Movement for Production Increase and Economy, Comprehensively Step Up Enterprise Management Work,” which Lai delivered at a conference of heads of building engineering departments and bureaus on March 25, 1963.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1952
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1954 - 1959
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1959 - 1964
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1964