Background
Li was born in Hui-ch’ang hsien, Kiangsi, a rural district about 25 miles south-west of Juichin.
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Li Ching-ch’iian
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Li Ching-ch’iian was not particularly prominent when the Communists came to power in 1949, but within a decade he was a Politburo member and the chief Communist leader in southwest China. A veteran of the Kiangsi Soviet and the Long March, he served in the Shansi-Suiyuan area during the Sino-Japanese War and took part in the conquest of Szechwan in 1949.
Education
In the mid-twenties he studied at the Peasant Movement Training Institute. Although nominally under KMT jurisdiction, the Institute, which was located in Canton, was dominated by the Communists. Li was a student there about 1926 when Mao Tse-tung headed the school.
Career
Nothing further is known of Li’s career until 1931 when he was back in his native Kiangsi as a political commissar of a guards regiment in the First Front Army led by Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung. Three years later he was head of the Political Department of the Fouth Division in P’eng Te-huai’s Third Army Corps, one of the main components of the First Front Army. In the fail of 1934 Li embarked on the Long March, but when the Chu-Mao forces met those of Chang Kuo-t’ao in Szechwan in mid-1935, Li left Mao, as did Chu Te, Liu Po-ch’eng, and others, to follow Chang Kuo-t’ao into Sikang. In mid-1936 Chang’s forces were joined in Sikang by units led by Ho Lung. Chang recalls that Li was assigned to Ho’s Second Front Army as a political commissar and that he was an intelligent, energetic, and versatile officer. The forces led by Chang and Ho did not join Mao in north Shensi until the latter part of 1936.
Soon after the Communists reached north Shensi, Li graduated from the Communists’ Anti-Japanese Military and Political Academy (K’ang- ta). With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 he was sent to the Shansi-Suiyuan border where Ho Lung’s 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army was stationed. Ho’s original base was expanded during the war to cover large areas in northwest Shansi, the Ta-ch’ing mountain district in Suiyuan, and western Chahar. The history of the 120th Division, with which Li remained throughout the war, is contained in Ho Lung’s biography. From 1937 Li was the political commissar of the Suiyuan-Mongolian Military Region as well as a member of the Suiyuan Party Committee. Early in 1938 Ho’s forces cooperated with the KMT 35th Army against the Japanese, but when the latter withdrew in the spring, the Communists joined forces with the local resistance groups known as Battle Mobilization Committees and continued to fight against the Japanese. Li was in charge of a detachment in Ho’s 120th Division, which was sent north into the Ta-ch’ing Mountain area in August 1938. He apparently remained in this region throughout most of the war, although journalist Harrison Forman met him in Sui-te, Shensi (north of Yenan), in 1944. Li was then political commissar of the Sui-te branch of K’ang-ta. Forman described him as an “old battle-scarred veteran.” Li was back in the Shansi-Suiyuan area in the 1946-47 period as political commissar and secretary of the CCP Committee. In 1947 he was also reported serving as secretary-general of the headquarters in Ho Lung’s Joint Defense Command for the Shansi-Suiyuan and Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia area. This special command had been created during the war (see under Ho Lung) and was head-quartered in Yenan until the Nationalists captured the city in March 1947 during the civil war.
Li remained in the northwest until the fall of 1949 when the Red armies began to move into the southwest, territory not yet under their control when the central government was established in October 1949. The thrust into Szechwan was led by the Second Field Army under Liu Po-ch’eng and Teng Hsiae-p’ing, who moved in from the east, while a portion of the North-west PLA under Ho Lung came in from the north. Li took part in Ho Lung’s operations as political commissar of the 18th Corps, a unit commanded by Chou Shih-ti. On December 27 the Communist armies led by Chou and Li occupied Chengtu, the Szechwan capital.
Immediately after these successes the Communists established civil and military organs to administer the newly conquered territory. On the first day of 1950 Li became chairman of the Chengtu Military Control Commission, and at approximately this same time he also became a deputy political commissar of the Southwest Military Region (SWMR) under Political Commissar Teng Hsiao-p’ing. The SWMR was in charge of military affairs in Szechwan, Yunnan, Kweichow, and Sikang provinces, and when the PLA began to push into Tibet in the latter part of 1950 the military operations there were carried out under its jurisdiction. Szechwan was unique in the first three years of the PRC in that it was divided into four sectors for administrative purposes. During the first half of 1950 Li became the dominant figure in west Szechwan, by February 1950 he was identified as the political commissar of the West Szechwan Military District, and in the following month he became chairman of the West Szechwan People’s Administrative Office (WSPAO), the civil administration for the area until 1952. Soon after, in June 1950, he was named as chairman of the Finance and Economics Committee, one of the most important subordinate organs of the WSPAO. On the regional administrative level, paralleling the Southwest Military Region, the Communists established (July 1950) the South-west Military and Administrative Committee (SWMAC) under Chairman Liu Po-ch’eng. Li was named to membership on the SWMAC, and when it was reorganized into the Southwest Administrative Committee in February 1953, he was reappointed. He held this position until the regional administrations were abolished in 1954.
In the decade from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties, Li assumed new posts and relinquished others. In January 1955 he became the chairman of the Szechwan CPPCC Committee and in the same month stepped down as the provincial governor, being replaced by Li Ta-chang, another important Szechwan political figure. He was, however, elected at this same time to membership on the Szechwan Provincial People’s Government Council, a position he probably still holds. A decade later other changes took place concerning his affiliation with the CPPCC and the NPC. As already described, Li had served on the National Committee of the CPPCC from 1954 to 1964. In December 1964-January 1965, when both the CPPCC and the NPC held national meetings, Li was transferred, in effect, from the CPPCC to the more important NPC. He attended the Third NPC as a deputy from Szechwan, and at the close of the meetings in January 1965 was elected a vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, the body that exercises the powers of the Congress between the annual sessions. Paralleling this shift, at the provincial level he was replaced in late 1965 as the chairman of the Szechwan CPPCC Committee by Liao Chih-kao. Liao also replaced Li in the spring of 1965 as Szechwan Party first secretary.
Politics
Although Li received little national press attention in the early years of the PRC, his later career indicates that his superiors approved of his work. This was illustrated in the latter half of 1952 following the abolition of the four sectors of Szechwan and the restoration of the province as a single administrative unit. Within less than a year Li held the key positions of power in China’s most heavily populated province, beginning in August 1952 when he became the Szechwan governor. Two months later, when the Szechwan Military District was established, he was named as the political commissar (which, in normal Chinese Communist practice, is a more important post than that of the commander). Most important, he became the ranking Party secretary of the Szechwan CCP Committee, a position he was to hold for the next 13 years.
Already the top Szechwan leader by 1952, within two years Li was to be the key figure for the entire southwest region. This rise to regional supremacy resulted from the permanent transfer to Peking from the southwest of a number of the Party’s most significant leaders, particularly Teng Hsiao-p’ing, Liu Po-ch’eng, and Ho Lung. Li’s importance has been demonstrated in a number of ways, especially by the fact that he appears to have attended virtually every significant meeting of the Party and other organizations in the southwest since 1954. Similarly, he has usually headed the regional and provincial inspection teams that the Communists so often establish to investigate the state of industry or agriculture.
Following the abolition of the greater administrative areas in 1954, parallel changes were made in the military regions. As described above, Li had been a deputy political commissar of the Southwest Military Region and political commissar of the Szechwan Military District. After the 1954 reorganization the SWMR was abolished and the Szechwan Military District became known as the Chengtu Military Region, with its jurisdiction limited to the province of Szechwan. It is not clear whether Li continued to serve as political commissar of the Chengtu region in the middle and late fifties, and by the early sixties another man held this post. However, in 1964 Li was identified as the first political commissar for the region. His primacy in the southwest was given formal expression following the Party’s decision in January 1961 to re-create the regional Party bureaus. By the summer of that year Li was identified as first secretary of the Southwest Bureau, responsible for Party affairs in Szechwan, Kweichow, Yun-nan, and (presumably) Tibet.
Although Li’s involvement in foreign affairs has been minimal, he did participate in one of the most important international conferences in the history of the PRC. This occurred in November-December 1960 when he accompanied Liu Shao-ch’i to Moscow. Ostensibly, the delegation went to attend the 43rd anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution. Far more important, however, was their presence at the “Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties,” attended by delegates from 81 parties. The conference was held in an atmosphere of rising tensions in the Sino-Soviet dispute and was described by one authority (writing in late 1961) as “probably the most important gathering of its kind in the entire history of Communism.” Briefly stated, the Chinese urged an aggressive bloc posture vis-á-vis the West, characterized by a determination to foment wars of national liberation.” The importance the Chinese attached to the meeetings can be gauged from the composition of their delegation. In addition to Liu Shao-ch’i and Li, the group included Teng Hsiao-p’ing, P’eng Chen, Lu Ting-i, and K’ang Sheng, all members or alternates of the Politburo.
Membership
Although Li’s major work since 1949 has been in the southwest, he has also been involved in the national bureaucracy. He received his first national post in December 1954 when he was named as a Party representative to the Second National Committee of the quasi-legislative CPPCC. He was re-elected to the Third National Committee (1959-64) but has not served with this organization since the Fourth Committee was formed in late 1964 (see below).
His stature within the national Party hierarchy was confirmed at the historic Eighth Party Congress in September 1956. Li was named to the 63-member Congress Presidium (steering committee), and, more important, to the Congress Credentials Committee. Li spoke before the Congress about industry and agriculture in Szechwan and the need to work out a careful balance between production by the peasants of basic agricultural crops and subsidiary products. At the close of the Congress he was elected a member of the Central Committee. Li was one of the 33 persons elected to full membership who had been neither a full nor an alternate member of the Seventh Central Committee elected in 1945. He reached a new peak in his career at the fifth plenum of the Central Committee in May 1958 when he was elevated to Politburo membership together with K’o Ch’ing-shih and T’an Chen- lin.
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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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1936
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1937
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1946 - 1947
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1950
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June, 1950
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1965