Ou Meng-chueh

Background

Nothing is known about her background.

Education

In 1923-24, while attending the K'an Wei Middle School for Girls in Canton, Ou probably made her first contact with Communism through one of her teachers, Tan T’en-tu, who was then working for the Party. In 1926 Ou joined the CCP while enrolled (1924-1926) at Kwangtung University, known after 1926 as Sun Yat-scn University. She engaged in Party work while a student there and a year later she accompanied Su Chao-cheng, P’eng P’ai, and Ch’en Yen-nien (all leading Party members in South China) to the Fifth National Party Congress held at Hankow in April-May 1927.

Career

It is not clear whether Ou attended the Congress, if so, she was among the fewer than 100 Party members who were present. The Congress approved continued support for the “left” KMT Government, which had been established at Wuhan in late 1926. However, in mid-1927 a complete break occurred between the CCP and the KMT. By August Ou had returned to Canton to work with the Party underground, which was preparing for the Canton Commune (see under Chang T’ai-lei). The resulting coup which took place in December 1927 was a fiasco, costing the lives of some of the CCP's most important leaders and many of its members and followers. Miss Ou was among those who escaped.

Nothing is known of Ou’s activities for the next two decades, but by the late 1940, she was apparently working in one of the Communist- held areas of north China. In any event, she was a member of the delegation led by Ts’ai Ch’ang to the Second Congress of the Communist-dominated Women’s International Democratic Federation, held in Budapest in early December 1948. The delegation went to Hungary in November and returned to Peking on February 9, 1949, just a few days after the city had been surrendered to the Communists by the Nationalists. Immediately after her return, Ou went to work for the Preparatory Committee for the inaugural Congress of the All-China Federation of Democratic Women (ACFDW). At the close of the Congress, held in Peking in March-April 1949, she was elected a member of the First Executive Committee, which directs the work of the Federation between congresses. She held this seat for the term of the First Committee (1949-1953), serving also on the Committee's Standing Committee until sometime in early 1951. For a brief time in 1949 Ou was the ACFDW secretary-general, but she was soon succeeded by Teng Ying-ch’ao, the wife of Chou En-lai. Ou served on the Presidium for the Second ACFDW Congress in April 1953 and was re-elected to the Second Executive Committee. The Third Congress of September 1957 elected her to the Third Executive Committee, upon which she still serves, but she has been less active in the Federation since 1957. Ou has also worked in the provincial and municipal branches of the women’s movement, being chairman of the Kwangtung Women's Federation from February 1954 to 1957 and of the Canton Women’s Federation from December 1955 to 1957.

Although she was active in the Kwangtung Government for the next several years, she was not re-elected to the Council by the Kwangtung Congress of December 1963. When the People’s Supervision Committee for Kwangtung was set up in March 1951, Ou was named a vice-chairman, by mid-1953 she had become chairman, but the committee seems to have been abolished sometime in 1954. The committee was originally charged with “accepting complaints” about provincial government officials and overseeing their performance. In a similar capacity Ou served on the People’s Supervision Committee of the Central-South Administrative Committee in 1953 and 1954.

Though Ou has worked principally in Kwangtung, she has also represented the provincial government in Peking. She attended the first session of the First CPPCC (September 1949), which inaugurated the PRC, as a representative from the “South China Liberated Area.” During the session she served on the committee, headed by Chou En-lai, which drafted the Common Program, it served as a draft constitution until one was formally adopted in 1954. In April 1953 she was appointed to the Kwangtung Election Committee. Such committees were responsible for holding provincial elections to select delegates to the legislative body of the soon-to-be-created constitutional government. When the elections were held, Ou became a Kwangtung deputy for the term of the First NPC (1954-1959). Although she was not re-elected to the Second NPC (1959-1964), she was again elected from Kwangtung to the Third NPC, whose first session opened in December 1964. On the provincial level she was elected in December 1960 as chairman of the Second Kwangtung Committee of the CPPCC, replacing Tao Chu, then first secretary of the provincial CCP Committee, she was re-elected in December 1963 to chair the Third Kwangtung Committee, a post she continues to hold.

To date Ou’s most important role has been in the Kwangtung Party Committee, and in the 1950 she was especially active in CCP organizational and control organs. In February 1952 she was identified as deputy director of the Organization Department of the CCP South China Sub-bureau, subordinate to the Central-South Bureau. She became director of the Organization Department and secretary of the subbureau’s Women’s Work Committee in 1954, holding these posts until the sub-bureau was abolished in July 1955. She then became prominently associated with the work of the Kwangtung Party Committee. By at least September 1955 and until sometime in 1958 she was director of the provincial Organization Department. In the aftermath of the purge of Party veterans Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih in 1954-55, national and provincial control commissions (whose establishment was provided for in the 1945 Party Constitution) were instituted to keep a close watch on intra-Party discipline. In September 1955 Ou became a member of the Party Control Commission for Kwangtung, a post she probably still holds.

Politics

In 1957-58 the political life of Communist China was disrupted by the nationwide “rectification” campaign, which led to the dismissal of many persons accused of being “rightists” or “local nationalists.” Kwangtung, noted for its hostility to rule by northern Chinese, allegedly harbored many persons who opposed rule from Peking. The most important of these were Ku Ta-tsen and Feng Pai-chii, alternate members of the Party Central Committee, who were also fellow secretaries of Ou on the Kwangtung Party Committee. Miss Ou, in an article entitled uWhat Have Been the Mistakes of Ku Ta-ts’un and Feng Pai-chii attacked the two men in a stinging denunciation written for the inaugural issue of a Kwangtung Party journal in 1958. Her article indicated that the kwangtung Party organization had been torn with factionalism for some time. Ku and Feng lost their posts as Kwangtung Party secretaries as a result of the accusations although they were not removed from the Party Central Committee.

The titles of other articles and speeches by Ou indicate her continuing involvement in supervisory aspects of Party work: Kwang- tung’s Fight against Localism Ends in Victory,” JMJP, June 6, 1958 and The Great Victory for the Thought of Mao Tse-tung,” Canton Nazi-fang jih-pao (Southern daily), October 4, 1960. In October 1963 Ou chaired a forum on ideological work and delivered a speech entitled “Strengthening the Ideological and Fighting Character of Literature and Art.

Membership

Paralleling her work in the women's movement was Ou's activity in the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (SSFA). When the Association was formed in October 1949, she became a member of its First Executive Board (1949-1954). She attended the Second SSFA Conference in December 1954 as a representative of the ACFDW but was not re-elected to any national post. On the provincial level, Ou was a member of the Kwangtung SSFA Branch as of November 1952 and was later twice identified as a vice-president, first in September 1957 and again in November 1960.

From its formation in October 1949 to its reorganization in October 1950, Ou was a member of the China Peace Committee. She was also identified in 1949 as director of the official New China News Agency’s South China Branch. In January 1953 she was named a vice-chairman of the Kwangtung provincial committee for the implementation of the Marriage Law.

Aside from her semi-official tasks, Ou also helped establish and develop the provincial government machinery in Kwangtung. She was appointed a member of a Kwangtung Provincial People’s Government Council in October 1949 and was re-elected to this post in February 1955.

In September 1956 Ou was elected by the Eighth National Party Congress in Peking to alternate membership on the CCP Central Committee. She was one of only eight women to receive this honor, the others being Ts’ai Ch’ang, Teng Ying-ch’ao, Ch’en Shao-min, Ch’ien Ying (full members), Chang Yun, Shuai Meng-ch'i, and Li Chien-chen (alternate members). Following this elevation at the national level, Ou was identified in January 1957 as a secretary of the Kwangtung Party Committee. She continues to hold this position, serving under First Secretary Tao Chu until 1965 and since then under Chao Tzu-yang.

Connections

She married Tan T’en-tu, but they were later divorced. Like his former wife, T'an presently works under the Kwangtung Provincial CCP Committee as a deputy director of the United Front Work Department.

Spouse:

Tan T’en-tu