Background
Nothing is known about his background.
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Li Ch’iang
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Li Ch’iang is known to have been a Party member as early as 1929. In that year the Party was searching for two persons to undergo training in telecommunications work. The only requirements were that they be Party members and college graduates. One of the two was to study the mechanical aspects of radio work and the other the operational side. Li, who must have been a college graduate, was selected to study the mechanical side of radio work. From the context of the Communist-published article on which this information is based, it is clear that Li had not received his college training in a technical field and therefore had to begin anew in this field.
Career
His telecommunications training took place in the French concession in Shanghai. Because would suggest that he was employed in covert communications work or, perhaps, in work at Radio Yenan during the Sino-Japanese War. In any event he maintained his specialization because in August 1948, when elected to the Sixth Executive Committee of the All-China Federation of Labor (a post he held until 1953), he was identified as a “radio specialist.” Furthermore, in late 1949 he was noted as having served as an engineer at the Research Institute of the “People’s Posts and Telecommunications Committee” in Moscow, presumably he was in Moscow in the 1948-49 period.
When the Communists were forming the central administration in 1949, Li took part in those phases requiring a technical background. For example, in July 1949 he was a member of the preparatory committee for the First All-China Natural Scientific Workers’ Conference. And in May 1949 he was serving as one of the four deputy-directors (under Wang Cheng, another telecommunications specialist) of the Telecommunications Bureau of the People’s Revolutionary Military Council (PRMC). When this bureau was transferred (with a slight alteration in the bureau title) from the PRMC to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (December 1949), Li was named as director. In the same month he was appointed as director of the Broadcasting Affairs Bureau under the Government Administration Council’s Press Administration. Among other activities, this bureau had control over Radio Peking. Li directed this bureau until the Press Administration was abolished in August 1952.
Shortly after receiving these appointments, Li was reported in Moscow (presumably in the entourage of the delegation taken there by Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai). On February 7, 1950, he signed two pacts, the Sino-Soviet Agreement on the Establishment of Telecommunications and the Sino-Soviet Agreement on the Exchange of Mail and Parcels, of historic significance if only because they were the first two official agreements signed between Soviet Russia and Communist China.
Already established as one of China’s senior communications specialists, it was natural that Li should have been designated in 1950 as Peking’s delegate to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and to the International High Frequency Broadcasting Conference held in Florence, Italy. However, political complications prevented the attendance of Chinese Communist delegations at the conferences.
In 1950 a Radio Bureau was established in the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and apparently absorbed the Telecommunications Bureau, which Li had headed since December 1949. In any event, Li was appointed director of the Radio Bureau in July 1950 and retained the post until 1952.
By mid-1952 Li had given up all his posts in telecommunications work and was transferred to the field of foreign trade. Such a change was not fortuitous. The growing complexities of the Chinese economy required an increased number of specialists to deal with foreign trade and aid problems, especially vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. It was in August 1952 that Li was appointed as a vice-minister of Foreign Trade, a post he still retains. In the same month, he took up the position of Commercial Counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Moscow. He was thus present in Moscow to serve as an adviser to a delegation led by Chou En-lai in August-September 1952 and was also on hand for the lengthy negotiations in Moscow conducted by Li Fu-ch’un, one of Peking’s leading economic specialists. These important talks culminated in agreements by which Moscow granted assistance for China’s First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957).
In the meantime, in October 1956 he was identified among a group of persons engaged in the work preparatory to the formation of the Institute of Electronics, under the Academy’s Department of Technical Sciences. Li was subsequently named to head this Institute but was replaced by early 1959. A related appointment was made in May 1957 when the State Council’s Scientific Planning Commission was reorganized. Li was named as a member and a deputy secretary-general, holding these positions until the Commission was merged with another organization in November 1958. He received still another post in this line of work in about 1959 when he was named a vice-chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the China Electronics Society, an organization under the China Scientific and Technical Association; Li held this post until about 1961.
Politics
Beginning in 1958 Li became particularly active in foreign trade negotiations, both in Peking and abroad. He was obviously assigned to conduct trade relations with Communist nations; of the many agreements and protocols he signed through 1964, every one was with a bloc nation. Li has visited the following countries to negotiate trade or aid agreements: Poland (1959), Czechoslovakia (1959), North Korea (1960, 1963), Mongolia (1960), the USSR (1961, 1962, 1963), and North Vietnam (1963). On all but two occasions he led the Chinese delegations. Perhaps the most difficult negotiations were with the USSR in view of the growing strains in the alliance during Li’s three visits to Moscow in the 1961-1963 period. In addition to these visits, he made two more trips to East Europe in 1964. In August he accompanied Vice-premier Li Hsien-nien to Rumania as a member of the delegation to the 20th anniversary celebration of the Rumanian “liberation”; the group utilized this visit to inspect a number of petroleum installations. And in October 1964 he accompanied another vice-premier, Ulanfu, on a visit to East Germany to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the founding of the East German regime.
In January 1960 the General Bureau for Economic Relations with Foreign Countries was established under the State Council, presumably to manage the Chinese foreign aid programs. No appointments were made to the bureau until April 1961, when Fang I was named as the director and Li as one of the deputy directors. In June 1964 this bureau was raised to the commission (or ministerial) level, but Li was not appointed as a vice-chairman until March 1965. In late 1964 he was elected as a deputy from Anhwei to the Third NPC, which held its first session at the end of the year and early 1965 was abroad on numerous occasions, usually in connection with trade union activities. He has been an alternate member of the CCP Central Committee since 1958.
Membership
Li remained in Moscow until 1955. Not long after his return to Peking he was selected to be a member of the Department of Technical Sciences, one of four departments established under the Academy of Sciences in June 1955. In June of the following year he became a member of the Chinese side on the Joint Committee for Sino-Soviet Scientific and Technical Cooperation (which meets once or twice a year in Moscow or Peking). In his capacity as acting chairman of the Joint Committee, Li signed protocols on cooperation at the fifth, sixth, and eighth sessions of the Committee, he took a nine-member delegation to Moscow for the fifth meeting in December 1956, whereas the sixth and eighth sessions were held in Peking in July 1957 and January 1959.
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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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1948
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May, 1949
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July, 1950 - 1952
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1956