Background
Little is known about his background.
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Mei I
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Mei I has become one of the most politically important journalists in Communist China. On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Mei was working as a newsman in Shanghai where, utilizing his knowledge of Russian, he also engaged in translation work for a small news service which translated Russian materials into Chinese.
Education
It may be that he was persuaded to join the Communist cause in the course of this work with Soviet documents. In any case, Japanese sources claim that during the Sino-Japanese War Mei remained in and around Shanghai as a Communist Party underground worker.
Career
Not long after the war ended, Mei was working in Nanking (spring 1946) for Chou En-lai, then head of the Communist delegation to the Nationalist-convened Political Consultative Conference in Nanking. Eric Chou, a former journalist for the Communist Ta-kung pao, has stated that Mei was among a group of ranking Communists (which included foreign affairs specialist Ch'iao Kuan-hua) who were attempting to influence Chinese newsmen covering the sessions of the Political Consultative Conference.
When the Communists withdrew their missions from Nanking and elsewhere because of the renewal of the civil war in 1946-47, Mei apparently went to Yenan where he was a New China News Agency (NCNA) staff member and director of its Broadcasting Department. From that time onward, his chief task for the Chinese Communist movement has been within the field of radio journalism. He was in Peking in 1949 to take part in the formation of mass organizations and the central government. Mei served on the preparatory committee for the All-China Youth Congress, and when this met in May 1949 he was elected a member of the National Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth (ACFDY) under Chairman Liao Ch'eng-chih, who, as head of the NCNA in the late 1940’s, was doubtless familiar with Mei. (When the ACFDY elected its second national committee in 1953, Mei was not re-elected.) In July 1949 he also participated in the establishment of the All-China Journalists’ Association (ACJA). An ACJA preparatory committee was formed at that time with Mei as one of the members, when it was established on a permanent basis in September 1954 Mei was elected as a vice-president, serving under Teng T'o and, after March 1960 under Jert-min jih-pao.
He has held a number of other positions of an official or semi-official nature. In May 1954 he was identified as a deputy editor-in-chief of the Jen-min jih-pao, the organ of the Party Central Committee, but the lack of later identification suggests that he no longer holds this position. From 1954 he has been a deputy to the NPC. He was a deputy to the First NPC (1954-1959) from his native Kwangtung, but then switched to Yunnan for the Second NPC (1959-1964). However, he was again elected from Kwangtung to the Third NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965. In February 1956 Mei was named to membership on the Central Work Committee for the Popularization of Standard Spoken Chinese, a committee subordinate to the State Council and headed by Vice-Premier.
However, nothing further has been heard of Mei's activity on this committee. In August 1960, at the close of a major conference of literary figures, Mei was selected as member of the third National Committee of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, a position he continues to hold. He also served briefly in about 1960-61 as a vice-chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the China Electronics Society.
As might be expected, Mei makes frequent appearances in Peking when foreign visitors are being entertained, particularly those having connections with radio or television broadcasting. And as head of the Broadcasting Bureau, he also makes appearances at domestic conferences dealing with this work. A typical example of this occurred in July 1959 when he went to Huhehot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, to speak at a conference on broadcasting in national minority areas.
Politics
As a delegate from the Youth Federation, Mei attended the first session of the CPPCC in September 1949, at which time the central government was organized. Several ad hoc committees were set up during the session; Mei served as a member of a special committee to draft the declaration outlining the results of the first CPPCC meetings, a committee headed by Kuo Mo-jo. In the weeks after the CPPCC meetings, a large number of appointments were made to staff the various government posts. In December of 1949 Mei was named as a deputy director of the Broadcasting Affairs Bureau, serving under Director Li Ch'iang. In September 1952 Mei was appointed to succeed Li Ch’iang as head of the Broadcasting Bureau. He has remained in this post from that time (although the name was slightly altered in November 1954 to “Broadcasting Affairs Administrative Bureau”. Although Mei’s bureau is not well known, it is the organization in charge of the internationally famous Radio Peking.
In September 1952 Mei led a delegation to a meeting of the Communist-sponsored International Broadcasting Organization (IBO) in Hungary, as well as to a meeting of its technical commission. In the next spring he was again abroad, this time in Prague, Czechoslovakia, for another meeting of the IBO in late April 1953. Mei was elected as IBO chairman and in this capacity presided over still another IBO meeting in Peking in Septembcr-October 1953. At the close of these sessions, he was elected an IBO vice-chairman for the year 1954. These two trips abroad were but the first of nine such journeys which took Mei to 13 different nations from 1952 through 1964, most of them directly in connection with journalism. In November 1957 he was a member of a cultural delegation to Moscow for the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution; in April 1959 he led a journalists' group to Warsaw, and in December 1961- January 1962 he took another such group to Cuba where he also attended a session of the Communist International Organization of Journalists. From Cuba Mei took his delegation to Ecuador, Chile, and Brazil February-March, thereby becoming one of the extremely few Chinese Communist leaders to have visited these Latin American nations. Mei then returned home in April 1962 after a brief visit in London at the invitation of the managing director of the British Commonwealth International Newsfilm Agency.
Mei's other trips abroad were to Indonesia (April-May 1963), North Korea (May-June 19M), North Vietnam (August-September and to Albania (November-December 1964). The journeys to North Korea and North Vietnam were routine journalistic visits, and the one to Albania was to attend the 20th anniversary of the Albanian “liberation” from the Nazis. However, the visit to Indonesia in the spring of 1963 was one of the more interesting and provocative trips made by a Chinese leader in recent years. This was to take part in the first Asian-African Journalists’ Conference. By 1963 the Sino-Soviet ideological rift was very much in the open, and the Chinese used this occasion to chastise the Soviets. Press reports from Jakarta claimed that the Chinese deliberately thwarted Soviet efforts to gain admission to the conference. Not long after, in the famous Soviet “open letter” to the Chinese of July 13, the Russians charged that the Chinese had prevented Soviet participation on the grounds that the Soviet Union was not an Asian nation.
Either during the trips abroad described above, or in Peking, Mei signed 15 agreements involving radio broadcasting or television between 1953 and 1964. Except where noted, these agreements were signed in Peking, and 13 of the 15 were with Communist nations: Czechoslovakia, Prague, May 1953, Bulgaria, October 1953, Hungary, October 1953 and January 1964, Poland, October 1953, Rumania, October 1953, Albania, September 1955, Poland, Warsaw, April 1959, Mongolia, May 1960, the USSR, May 1961, Cuba, Havana, January 1962, Indonesia, November 1962, Mali, August 1963, North Korea, May 1964 and December 1964. Mei, in brief, has signed almost all the international agreements concluded by the PRC with regard to cooperation in radio and television work.
Mei’s work in radio and television journalism has naturally brought him into the realm of foreign affairs, as his many visits abroad suggest. This has been given organizational expression in a number of ways, mainly through the complex network of people, or mass organizations which the PRC has established as auxiliary arms in the execution of foreign policy. For example, Mei is a ranking member in four different “friendship associations with foreign countries (or continents) from the dates of their formation: China-Rumania Friendship Association, September 1958; China-Latin America FA, March 1960, China-Africa People's FA, April 1960 and, China-Cuba FA, December 1962. He is a vice-chairman of the China-Rumania FA and a member of the Standing Committee of the other three. Earlier in May 1954, he was named to the Board of Directors of the Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, a position he probably continues to hold. In February 1958, the PRC created a governmental counterpart to this organization known as the Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, with Mei being appointed to membership on the Commission in March 1958.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party