Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
Although little is known of Meng's early training, he speaks English well and is regarded by Americans who have known him as an efficient person with leadership qualities.
His connections with the cooperative movement began in the late thirties. Indusco was formed in August 1938 in Hankow as a means of stimulating the small-scale industry that was so vital to China following the loss of most of her industrial centers to Japan early in the war. It was informally sponsored by the Nationalist Government (which also contributed a share of the finances), as well as by contributions from charitable and labor organizations from all over the world. Such prominent persons as H. H. Kung and Sung Cheng-ling (Mme. Sun Yat- sen) were among the backers of the organization. Indusco reached its peak in 1941, at which time it had over 1,800 member societies with more than 29,000 members in areas held by both the Nationalists and Communists. By that same year Meng was director of the Indusco office in Loyang, Honan. Journalist Graham Peck, who was in Loyang in the fall of 1941, records that Meng was so harassed by the KMT secret police that he was forced to flee to Chungking.
In order to revitalize the organization, an Association for the Advancement of Indusco was established in June 1943, with H. H. Kung as president and a three-member committee in charge of the actual work. Meng was one of the three members, and from this year he also served as director of the Kweilin (Kwangsi) Office. During the last stages of the war Meng went to Chungking where he worked briefly for the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI). Eric Chou, a former correspondent for the Hong Kong Ta-kung pao (Communist), claims that a friend of his, then employed by OWI in Chungking, had managed to bring a number of Communists into U.S. agencies in China. He specifically mentioned Meng as among these Communists. In view of Meng's later record with the Communists, it is probable that he was, in fact, a secret member of the CCP during the Si no-Japanese War. In 1945 Meng transferred to the United States Information Service and worked until 1946 in Peking and Mukden. Then, late in 1946, he went to the Communist-held areas.
Meng next emerged in 1949 as the chairman of the Supply and Consumer Cooperatives Commission under the jurisdiction of the North China People's Government (NCPG). By the time Meng assumed this post (March 1949) the NCPG had moved from Shih-chia-chuang (Hopeh) to Peking, which the Communists had occupied in late January. In the summer of 1949 he participated in the formation of the China New Economic Research Association, being named to the Standing Committee when it was formed in July 1949. However, little was heard of this organization in later years. As in the case of most NCPG officials, Meng was given an assignment under the central government following its establishment in October 1949. In accordance with his past experience, he was named as director of the Central Cooperatives Enterprise Administration (CCEA), one of the subordinate units of the most important economic organ of the new cabinet, the Finance and Economics Committee. In October 1950 Ch’eng Tzu-hua became director of the CCEA. Meng, in turn, was dropped back to the post of deputy director, thus giving way to a far more senior Party member. He retained his post as deputy director until the Cooperatives Administration was abolished in September 1952. At the same time that he held his post in the CCEA, Meng was also a member of the government’s Finance and Economics Committee, a post he held from October 1949 until the central government was reorganized in the early fall of 1954.
In the interim, beginning in 1952, Meng was engaged in further endeavors, both foreign and domestic, to promote China’s economy. In an attempt to break through the economic blockade of the Communist bloc (imposed by Western nations in response to the Korean War), the Communists organized a large “international economic conference” in Moscow. Meng was named as a member of the Chinese delegation to this conference, held in Moscow in April 1952. The delegation was led by Nan Han-ch’en, then the director of the People’s Bank of China. Immediately upon the return of the group to Peking, a permanent organization was formed in China. Entitled the China Committee for the Promotion of International Trade, it was formally inaugurated with Nan Han,ch’en as its chairman on May 4, 1952, with “its objective the implementation of the Moscow International Economic Conference and the promotion of foreign trade. In practice, however, the Committee has been mainly used as the organization to promote economic ties with nations not having diplomatic relations with Peking. Since its formation in 1952, Meng has been one of its members, representing the Federation of Cooperatives.
As a logical outgrowth of these activities, Meng received a series of appointments between 1954 and 1965, each related to international relations. In December 1954 he was elected to the Second Council of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (and re-elected in May 1959). In November 1956 he was named as the director of the newly created International Relations Research Institute (Kuo-chi kuan-hsi yen-chiu so) under the Academy of Sciences not to be confused with the International Relations Institute (Wai-chiao hsueh-yuan), which has been headed by Foreign Minister Ch'en I since 1961. Meng was also named to the Standing Committee of the reorganized and expanded China Peace Committee in July 1958 and was identified by August 1961 as a Council member of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs. He became a member of the Council of the newly formed Asia-Africa Society of China in April 1962, and when the various subordinate bodies of the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC were staffed in early 1965, Meng was appointed as a deputy director of the International Problems Section.
Although Meng’s activities since the mid-1950’s have centered on the development of international relations, he has received a few other assignments that relate mainly to domestic affairs. From May 1957 to November 1958 he served as a member of the State Council Scientific Planning Commission and in 1964 he was named as a representative of social science organizations to membership on the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC, which opened its initial session in December 1964. Also, from the mid-1950's (presumably to date) he has served as a member of the Editorial Board of Ching-chi yen-chiu (Economic research), Peking's leading economic journal.
As part of a series of efforts to pressure the United Nations into recognition of the legitimacy of the PRC as a U.N. member, the Chinese Communists made a number of appointments to the United Nations and its constituent agencies. In 1950 Premier Chou En-lai appointed Meng to two U.N. posts, in May, he informed the United Nations that Meng had been appointed as Peking's delegate to the Trusteeship Council, and in August he named Meng as a member of the Chinese delegation to the United Nations led by Chang Wen-fien, a top specialist in foreign affairs. These efforts, of course, were futile, and Meng continued with his work in the cooperatives movement. Already a senior official in the government effort to promote cooperatives, Meng received parallel assignments in 1950-1952 in the counterpart “people’s” organization established in July 1950. In that month the Chinese formed the All-China Federation of Cooperatives (ACFC), with Meng as a member of the provisional Board of Directors. A few weeks later he gave an official report (September 15) before the Government Administration Council (the cabinet) on the results of the conference that established the ACFC. And, when the provisional Board of the ACFC held its first major meeting in November, Meng delivered the keynote address, a report that was reprinted in the semi-official gazette. At the close of the meeting, his position in the cooperatives movement was reaffirmed when he was named to the ACFC Standing Committee as well as to one of the deputy directorships, a post that placed him under Po I-po, a top economic leader. The ACFC also established a number of subordinate organs in 1951-52. In addition to his ACFC deputy directorship Meng also served as the director of both the Trade Bureau (1951-c. 1952) and the Supply Bureau (c. 1952-1954).
When the ACFC was permanently established in July 1952, Meng retained his post as a deputy director. The Federation underwent a major reorganization and was renamed the AllChina Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives in July 1954; Meng was once again elected a deputy director. However, he was phased out of the organization in about 1955 and since that time has had no direct connections with it. Before breaking off his relations with the Federation, however, Meng led two delegations of the organization abroad. The first was to Budapest for the Third National Congress of the Hungarian Farm Products Marketing Cooperative Society in April 1954 and the second was to Moscow in June 1954 to attend the Soviet Consumer Cooperative Congress.
Until 1952, Meng’s work for the PRC had centered almost exclusively on economic matters. Since that year, however, he was engaged in a rather wide variety of other activities, most of them related to international relations. In December 1952 he attended the Communist-backed World Peace Congress in Vienna and in November 1953 he was once again in Vienna for a meeting of the permanent World Peace Council (WPC). It was also in 1953 that he first became a member of the WPC, a position he may still retain. He was abroad once more in connection with the WPC in May 1959 when he traveled to Stockholm for meetings marking the 10th anniversary of the ‘‘world peace movement” and in March 1961 when he journeyed to New Delhi for a WPC meeting. Closely related to his work with the WPC was his participation in the efforts of the PRC to improve relations with Asian and African nations. The first of the major Chinese efforts in this direction occurred in April 1955 when a delegation was sent to New Delhi for the “Asian Countries Conference,” a meeting that was partially Communist-dominated and one intended to set the tone for the more famous Bandung Conference held later that month. Meng went to New Delhi as a member of a large delegation led by Kuo Mo-jo. From this conference came the series of Afro-Asian Conferences, the first of which was held in Cairo in December 1957-January 1958. Mcng did not attend this conference, but he did attend the Second Afro-Asian Conference held in Conakry, Guinea, in April 1960.