Background
Nothing is known about her background.
Nothing is known about her background.
She first came to prominence prior to the establishment of the PRC (October 1949) when she spoke at a council meeting of the Communist International Union of Students in Paris in September 1948. At that time she was identified as an official of the “Liberated Areas Students’ Union,” presumably in Yenan in the northwest, or possibly in one of the Communist-held areas in Manchuria, then almost completely conquered by the Communists.
In the spring of 1949 Ou was given assignments in the two main youth organizations, the New Democratic Youth League and the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth. In the former she was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee, she became a Standing Committee member in 1951 and an alternate secretary in 1952. Also, from 1950 to about 1953 she was head of the League’s International Liaison Department. Within the Federation of Democratic Youth, Ou was elected (in 1949) to the Standing Committee of the first National Committee. In the summer of 1953, both of these youth organizations held congresses. Within the Federation she was elected as a vicechairman (one of four) and in the Youth League as a member of the Secretariat (one of nine). In each case she was the only woman elected to these key positions and thus in the mid-1950’s appears to haye been the ranking woman youth leader. Four years later (1957), having by then moved on to other work, Ou was only re-elected to the Central Committee within the League (and not elected to any post at the 1964 congress), she was not elected to any position in the Federation at its congress in 1958.
Ou’s work in youth affairs in the 1950’s was equaled by her activity in the peace movement. The China Peace Committee, established in 1949 was reorganized in October 1950, at which time Ou was elected to the National Committee. During another reorganization, in July 1958, she was elevated to the Standing Committee of the National Committee and, more important, was named as secretary-general to replace Liao Ch'eng-chih (a member of the CCP Central Committee). The Peace Committee, one of the most important and active of the Chinese Communist mass organizations, is headed by a chairman and several vice-chairmen of considerable stature and importance (e.g., Kuo Mo-jo and Liao Ch’eng-chih), the multiple responsibilities of these men probably means that they can only devote a small portion of their time to the day-by-day duties of the Peace Committee. Apparently, therefore, since 1958 (when she became secretary-general) this has made her the principal agent in the execution of the policies of the Committee decided at a higher level.
Apart from work in the youth and peace movements, Ou has received several other official and semi-official positions in the early and mid- 1950’s. When the All-China Federation of Democratic Women (ACFDW) held its second congress in April 1953 she was elected to the Standing Committee, and four years later (1957) was re-elected to this same body (which was renamed the Presidium). She has retained this position within the National Women's Federation, as the ACFDW has been known since the September 1957 congress. In May 1954 she was named to the Standing Committee of the newly established Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, a post to which she was re-elected in April 1959. In December 1954 she was selected for membership on the national Council of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association and was then renamed to the Council in 1959. At the official level, Miss Ou was elected a deputy from Kwangsi to the First NPC (1954-1959), she was re-elected to the Second NPC (1959-1964) and to the Third NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965 at the close of this session she was elevated to membership on the NPC Standing Committee. She has also made appearances at some of the many conferences held in China. To mention a random but typical example, she was a member of the presidium (steering committee) for a national conference of “young activists in building socialism” held in Peking in September 1955.
Between 1958 and 1962 Ou was given four new positions which, if not very important, were illustrative of her role as an official advocate of “peace and friendship.” She was appointed to the expanded Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee of China in July 1958 and was then named to the national Councils (board of directors) of the China-Iraq Friendship Association (FA), the China-Africa Peopled FA, and the China-Cuba FA, formed, respectively, in September 1958, April I960, and December 1962. (Within the structure of the China-Cuba FA she was also named to the Standing Committee). Ou continues to hold all these positions. In one or another of her numerous posts she is often on hand in Peking to host the huge number of peace and friendship delegations which constantly visit Peking. A typical example occurred in the fall of 1964 when she escorted “noted American Negro leader Robert Williams” and his wife around China and was present when Williams met with Party General Secretary Teng Hsiao-p’ing.
But Ou’s most important work from the early 1950's has been as an international liaison official with emphasis on the Communist-backed peace movement. Organizationally, this has meant her active participation in the numerous meetings of the Communist World Peace Council. Her record of travels has been statistically impressive: including the above-mentioned trip to France in 1948, Ou made 13 trips abroad to 11 different nations between 1948 and 1963. Eight of these 14 trips were to meetings of the World Peace Council or one of its offshoots. These eight journeys took her to Czechoslovakia (April 1949), Austria (December 1952 and March 1962), Sweden (July 1958 and May 1959), the USSR (February 1959 and July 1962), and India (March 1961). Befitting her role as a youth leader in the late 1940's and 1950's, she attended the Third World Youth Congress in Rumania in mid-1953 and the Fifth World Youth and Students' Festival in Warsaw in mid-1955 in both instances she was a deputy leader of large delegations. (In 1954 she was identified as a council member of the Communist World Federation of Democratic Youth, but she has probably relinquished this post.) Miss Ou has also been a member of two of the more important delegations sent abroad in recent years. The first was from November 1956 to January 1957 when she accompanied Politburo member P’eng Chen on an extensive tour of the USSR and five of the East European satellite nations (Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Albania, and Yugoslavia). Officially, this was a delegation representing the NPC, but in fact it was obviously an attempt to bolster “Socialist solidarity,” coming as it did a few weeks after the Soviet image was badly tarnished by the Hungarian Rebellion (see under P'eng Chen). The other important mission occurred in June 1963 when Ou was a deputy leader under Yang Yun-yii to a World Women's Congress' held in Moscow. At this juncture the Sino-Soviet dispute had broken into the open, with a resulting verbal brawl in Moscow between the Soviet and Chinese factions (see under Yang Yun-yii).
