Background
Li was born about 1910 in Feng-jun hsien, Hopeh, midway between Peking and the coastal city of Chinwangtao (Ch’in-huang-tao).
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Li Chieh-po
Edit ProfileEducation
Described by the Communists as an “intellectual,” he joined the CCP at an early age, possibly while still a student. After the KMT-CCP split in 1927, Li worked as a laborer on ihe railways and in the coal mines in the Peking-Tientsin-T’ang-shan area and later became a labor organizer in these enterprises. Sometime between the Japanese takeover in Manchuria (1931) and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1937), he worked in the Party underground in Manchuria where he was reportedly imprisoned for a time by the Japanese.
Career
When war broke out in 1937 Li went to Shansi where he worked for the League of Self-Sacrifice for National Salvation, an organization established by Shansi warlord Yen Hsi-shan, but strongly influenced by the Communists (see under Po I-po). Later he was transferred to Yenan, probably about 1940. American journalist Edgar Snow, interviewing Li in 1960, reported that he was a “veteran of Yenan Academy,” presumably a reference to Yenan University, which was established in 1941 through a merger of several schools in the Yenan area. Snow also reported that Li had been a “protégé” of Politburo member Liu Shao-ch’i for 20 years (i.e., from about 1940). After studying at the Yenan school Li became a member of the Party Central Committee’s Industrial Workers’ Committee (Chih-kung wei-yuan-hui), then headed by top labor leader Teng Fa In this capacity he had close connections with the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region Labor Federation, which had been created in 1940. The federation claimed a membership of 55,000, of whom 63 per cent were farm laborers, 22 per cent handicraft workers, and only 15 per cent industrial workers. In the spring of 1945 the federation joined with other labor organizations in Communist-held bases in north China to establish the Liberated Areas Trade Union Federation Preparatory Committee. Teng Fa was named chairman of the Preparatory Committee, with Li serving as its secretary-general.
By 1948 Li had returned to Manchuria, then almost wholly under Communist control, where he played an important role in Party efforts to reactivate the labor movement. After several months of preparation these efforts resulted in the convocation of the Sixth National Labor Congress, which purported to be a continuation of the congresses supported by both the Communists and Nationalists in the 1920’s. The Fifth Congress had been held secretly in Shanghai in 1929, whereas the Sixth Congress met in Communist-held Harbin in August 1948. Li, who by now had 20 years’ experience in the labor movement, was a dominant figure at the meetings. In his capacity as a member of the Northeast Trade Union Council and as secretary-general of the Liberated Areas Trade Union he served on the preparatory committee for the Sixth Congress. He also served on the Congress presidium (steering committee) and gave the report on the work of the Credentials Committee, which had selected the 500 delegates to the Congress. Li was elected to the Executive Committee and to the smaller and more important Standing Committee of the All-China Federation of Labor (ACFL). He also served as the ACFL secretary-general until the spring of 1949 when he relinquished the post to Hsu Chih-chen.
In addition to the national organization, the ACFL has a number of constituent trade unions. Li has centered his activity on the transportation workers, whom he represented at a number of meetings of the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), held in Europe (see below). From 1949 to 1950 he was chairman of the preparatory committee of the China Railway Workers’ Trade Union and, when the union was formally established in February 1950, became its first chairman. He continued in this post until 1956 when he was succeeded by Wang Chih-chieh, another labor leader.
In late 1949, Li entered a new phase of his career as a specialist in international liaison with the world Communist labor movement a phase that occupied much of his time over the next eight years. This began in December 1949 when he was a member of the Chinese delegation to the WFTU-sponsored Trade Unions’ International of Land and Air Transport Workers, which met in Bucharest. He was made a member of the Executive Committee of the Land and Air Transport Workers’ International at this time and was promoted to a vice-chairmanship by June 1952. More important, from the spring of 1950 until 1957, he served on the WFTU Executive Committee.
Reflecting Li’s active role in the international relations of the ACFTU, he succeeded Liu Ning-i by mid-1955 as head of its International Liaison Department. He was replaced in this position by Ch’en Yu in 1957. It was also in 1957 that Li began to be phased out of the higher echelons of the trade union movement, although the death of a colleague brought about a reversal of this situation in 1958 (see below). Li attended the Eighth National Congress of the ACFTU in December 1957 where he served as a member of the Congress presidium (steering committee). Although he was re-elected to the Executive Committee, he was neither re-elected to the permanent Presidium nor to the Secretariat, the two key organs of the ACFTU. Another indication of a change in career em-phasis was his identification in February 1958 as a deputy director under Yang Shang-k’un of the Party Central Committee’s important Staff Office. Not long afterward, in May 1958, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee at the second session of the Eighth Party Congress. However, the death of ACFTU Chairman Lai Jo-yii in the same month necessitated a major shift in the Federation’s leadership. Liu Ning-i was named to replace Lai Jo-yii, and Li Chieh-po was made one of the vice-chairmen. He was also returned to membership on the Federation’s Presidium and Secretariat. The effect of these changes was to make Li one of the two or three most important labor leaders in China. Owing to his transfer back to a top executive post in the ACFTU it is likely that Li was removed from his position in the Party Staff Office. In any event, he has apparently not been active in the department since the single identification in 1958.
Politics
In September 1950, Li led an 11-member delegation of the China Railway Union to Warsaw for an executive committee session of the Trade Unions’ International of Land and Air Transport Workers. He ended his affiliation with this organization about 1953 but continued connections with the WFTU Executive Committee until 1957. In October 1953, Li was re-elected to the Committee at the Third WFTU Congress in Vienna, which he attended as secretary-general of the Chinese delegation headed by Liu Ning-i. The Fourth WFTU Congress was held in Leipzig in October 1957, at which time Li was dropped from the Executive Committee.
When the Seventh National Congress of the ACFL met in Peking in May 1953, its name was changed to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). It was attended by over 800 delegates and 73 foreign observers, including Louis Saillant, the secretary-general of the WFTU. As in the case of the 1948 labor congress, Li played an active role in the 1953 meetings. He served as a member of the presidium (steering committee) for the Congress and also presented a report on Chinese railway workers. At the close of the meetings he assumed more important posts than he had previously held. He was re-elected to both the Executive Committee and the permanent Presidium (the new designation for the Standing Committee). In addition, he was elected to the permanent Secretariat. The Presidium is responsible for carrying out the decisions of the Executive Committee when the latter is not in session, and the Secretariat is charged with the task of attending to the routine work under the direction of the Presidium.
Because of his extensive connections with the international labor movement, particularly in the early and mid-1950’s, Li has frequently traveled abroad. In addition to the already described visits to Bucharest, Warsaw, and Vienna (1949-1953), he participated in the following delegations. 1951: secretary-general, Chinese people’s “comfort” delegation to North Korea, May; member, Chinese delegation to the fifth session of the General Council of the WFTU, East Berlin, November; 1953: leader, WFTU delegation to the ninth session of the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) in Bandung, Indonesia, February, 1954: chief, WFTU delegation to the 10th session of ECAFE in Kandy, Ceylon, February, chief, Chinese trade union delegation to India to study labor problems, February-March, 1955: chief, WFTU delegation of “observers” to an ECAFE meeting in Japan, March-April, 1960: deputy-chief (under Li Te-ch’iian), Chinese delegation to 15th anniversary of “liberation of Korea”, 1961: leader, 10-member Chinese trade union delegation to Japan at the invitation of the General Confederation of Trade Unions (SOHYO), January-February (he attended the 29th Congress of the Japan Mine Workers’ Union, an affiliate of SOHYO, speaking before the Congress on February 6), 1963: leader, Chinese trade union delegation to Colombo, Ceylon, to attend the 16th annual meeting of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation, December.
Although Li’s activities have been overwhelmingly concentrated in the labor field, he has also held posts in both the executive and legislative branches of government. Representing the labor federation he attended the first session of the CPPCC in September 1949 when the central government was brought into existence. He did not participate in the Second CPPCC (1954-1959), but when the Third National Committee of the CPPCC was established in April 1959, he was named to both the National and Standing Committees. He was again named to the National Committee (but not the Standing Committee) for the Fourth National Committee, which first met in December 1964-January.
In 1954 he was elected to the First NPC as a deputy from Tientsin and attended the first session in September 1954, which inaugurated the constitutional government. He was also in the Second NPC (1959-1964) as a deputy from Hopeh (which had absorbed the Tientsin constituency in the interim). In the executive branch of government he has served as vice-chairman of the Spare-time Education Commission, which was established in February 1960 under the State Council. When interviewed by Edgar Snow in 1960, Li made it clear that he devoted a great deal of time to the problem of spare-time education. He claimed, for example, that the ACFTU operated “almost as many schools as the Ministry of Education. In fact, you might call the Trade Union Federation a ministry of part-time education.”
Membership
Although less important than his role in either the trade union movement or the government, the affairs of the “people’s” organizations have taken some of Li’s time. He was a member of the First Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association from 1949 to 1954, and from 1950 to 1954 he served on the Supervisory Committee of the All-China Federation of Cooperatives. From 1954 to at least 1959 he was a member of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and he has been a Council member of the China-Korea Friendship Association since 1960.
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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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1937
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1949 - 1950
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1949
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1949
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1958