Background
Li Che-jen was probably born about 1910 to judge from the period when he was a college student.
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Li Che-jen
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He was one of the more active participants in the December Ninth Movement, which took its name from a series of demonstrations which started among students in Peking on December 9, 1935, in opposition to Japanese incursions into North China. One outgrowth of the movement was the formation, early in 1936, of the National Liberation Vanguard of China (NLVC), initially composed mainly of students from north China colleges (see under Li Ch’ang). Li Che-jen was then a student at one of the schools in Tientsin and took part in the formation of the NLVC branch in Tientsin early in 1936. He was, in fact, probably the head of the Tientsin group. One of the first efforts of these students was to send teams into the countryside around Peking to explain to simple peasants the need for unity to oppose the Japanese. Li was among those who took part in such activities in early 1936. A year later, in February 1937, the NLVC held its first Congress in Peking a congress of 24 delegates representing a reported 6,000 youths. By this time the Communist Party was deeply involved, as suggested by the fact that P’eng Ch’en (then a senior Party official in north China) attended the congress. Li was among those elected as “responsible persons” in the headquarters of the NLVC in Peking.
Career
When the Japanese struck in force in mid-1937, the vast majority of students at institutes of higher learning in Peking fled the city. Li, almost certainly already a Communist Youth League member (and very possibly also a Party member), fled to the Communist-held areas. Eventually he was assigned to south Shansi and by the close of the war against Japan was working in the T’ai-yueh region (southern Shansi), which came under the military control of Liu Po-ch’cng’s 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army. It may also have put Li in contact with such important Party leaders as Po I-po and Li Hsueh-feng, then working in this same area.
When the Communists came to power in 1949, Li remained in north China, assuming (by at least July 1950) the post of head of the Research Section of the Party’s North China Bureau, the bureau then headed by Po I-po. Also, by April 1951, Li was concurrently a deputy director of the Finance and Economics Work Committee of the same bureau, a committee directed by Liu Lan-t’ao. In the latter capacity, Li delivered a major report at a conference in Peking in March 1951, devoted to the promotion of the sale of native products. It is not known how long he held these North China Bureau posts; perhaps it was until mid-1954 when the Bureau was abolished.
Li assumed two new posts in 1950, one semi-official and the other under the central government. In July 1950 he was elected a member of the provisional Board of Directors of the important mass organization known as the All China Federation of Cooperatives, whose task it was to stimulate economic relations between the countryside and the cities. He attended the first conference of the provisional Board in November 1950 and was selected as one of the seven members of the Standing Committee, he was also re-elected to the Board and its Standing Committee when the organization was formally inaugurated in July 1952. However, when the Federation was transformed into the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives in mid-1954, Li was removed from both posts. The other post he assumed in 1950 was as head of the Agriculture Department of the Ministry of North China Affairs. The ministry was established in September 1950 under Minister Liu Lan-t’ao, Li was appointed in November 1950 and held the post until December 1951 when the ministry was transformed into the North China Administrative Committee (NCAC), thereby being placed on an organizational basis closer to the other large administrative areas of China. Under the NCAC, which had jurisdiction oyer the five provinces of Hopeh, Shansi, Chahar, Pingyuan, and Suiyuan, Li was appointed to NCAC membership (December 1951), as director of the Trade Bureau (January 1952), and as a vice-chairman of the Finance and Economics Planning Committee (March 1952).
When the NCAC was reorganized in January 1953, he was transferred to the central government, being assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Trade where he was selected as a vice-minister, a post he was to hold until September 1959. At approximately this same period, he also took part in the establishment of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the organization designed to gain maximum cooperation from leading industrialists and businessmen, the majority of them non-Communists. Li served on the preparatory committee (from June 1952) and when the Federation was formally established at a nationwide meeting in October-November 1953, he was named to membership on the first Executive Committee, retaining this position until the next conference in December 1956.
The Bureau, headed by alternate Central Committee member Fang I, was in charge of China’s foreign aid program. When it was elevated to the commission (or ministerial) level in June 1964, Li was not reappointed. In the meantime, however, he had assumed other positions. In May 1963 the State Administrative Bureau of Supplies was established under the State Council to oversee the allocation of strategic materials in industry and agriculture. When a North Vietnamese technical delegation was in Peking in August 1963 to study supply work, Li was identified as an official in this Bureau (but without an exact title). Then in September he was officially appointed as a deputy director. In October 1964 the Bureau was elevated to the ministerial level and named the Ministry for the Allocation of Materials. In December Li was appointed as a vice-minister, a position he continues to hold. Another post of importance that he held in the 1963-64 period was membership on the State Economic Commission (September 1963 to December 1964), the organization charged with annual planning under the chairmanship of Po I-po, who was probably an associate of Li during the Sino-Japanese War period.
Politics
As a vice-minister of Foreign Trade, Li’s responsibilities were confined almost exclusively to trade with the Communist bloc, and with the USSR in particular. On four different occasions he led trade delegations to Moscow where he signed trade agreements or protocols in February 1955, December 1955, April 1957 and February 1959. He also headed trade groups abroad which led to the signing of agreements in Mongolia in April 1954 and in Poland in April 1957. Li also signed other trade pacts in Peking, each with a Communist nation excepting only an August 1956 accord with India, by which China agreed to the sale of rice. His concentration on trade with bloc countries was also illustrated in two articles he wrote; one was in the Tientsin Ta-kung pao (October 6, 1954) and the other in the English-language monthly China Reconstructs (August 1955). On at least two occasions during the period when he was a vice-minister of Foreign Trade, Li served as the acting minister in place of Yeh Chi-chuang. Also during this period he served as a Hunan deputy to the" First NPC (1954-1959) but was not re-elected to the Second NPC, which opened in April 1959.
When the central government underwent a reorganization in September 1959 Li was transferred from the Ministry of Foreign Trade to a vice-ministership in the Ministry of Commerce. He served briefly (until February 1960) under Ch'eng Tzu-hua but thereafter was under Minister Yao I-lin who, like Li, was an active participant in the December Ninth Movement in 1935. Virtually nothing was heard of Li during his year and a half in the Ministry of Commerce, and then in April 1961 he was again transferred, this time to the State Council’s Bureau for Economic Relations with Foreign Countries.
Personality
Li’s normal working life seems relatively unencumbered with the many protocol functions (e.g., banquets, airport farewells) that consume so much of the time of many Chinese leaders. Rather, he appears to be one of a growing corps of “technocrats” whose talents are mainly utilized in the governmental organizations requiring a fairly high degree of technical knowledge and ability.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party