Background
He was born in P'o-yang on the eastern shore of Lake P'o-yang in north Kiangsi.
He was born in P'o-yang on the eastern shore of Lake P'o-yang in north Kiangsi.
According to his obituary, which is the source for most of the pre-1949 data on his career, he began his “patriotic activities” as a youth, joining the Communist Youth League in 1927 and the CCP in 1932. In the following year he was engaged in Youth League activities as the secretary of the League Work Committee in Chang-chia-k’ou (Kalgan), the capital of Chahar. During the next few years he organized revolutionary activities in Peking and Tientsin, work that brought him into association with Huang Ching, one of the most important Communist operatives in those two cities in the early and mid-thirties. In an article written under the name P'eng Wen-lung, P'eng revealed that he had spent some time in jail in Shanghai during his younger years.
Possibly under instructions from the CCP, P'eng was enrolled as a student in 1935 at Fu-jen (Catholic) University in Peking. On December 9, 1935, large-scale student demonstrations broke out in Peking in opposition to Nationalist policies vis-a-vis Japan, policies that the students felt had failed to halt Japanese encroachments into north China. These demonstrations marked the beginning of what Communist histories describe as the December Ninth Movement.
At this time P’eng was associated with the Peking Students' Federation, which had been formed secretly in October 1935. It is uncertain whether he took part in the December Ninth demonstrations, but Communist accounts claim that he was involved in planning for even larger demonstrations staged one week later, planning work that included colleagues Huang Ching, Yao I-lin, and Miss Kuo Ming-ch'iu (see under Lin Feng, her husband). According to the Communist account, after the second demonstrations (December 16), the dean of Peking Normal University was sent to negotiate with the Students' Federation. Together with Huang Ching and Yao I-lin, P'cng took part in these unsuccessful talks. (For further information on the December Ninth Movement, see under Li Ch'eng.)
It is not clear if P’eng remained as a student in Peking after the events of late 1935, but by the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War (July 1937) he was assigned as a Party official in the Shansi- Hopeh border area, which was under the jurisdiction of Liu Po-ch'eng's 129th Division of the Communist Eighth Route Army. His first post was as secretary of the Party's West Hopeh Local Committee in the T’ai-hang Mountain area on the Shansi-Hopeh border where he was secretary of the Party's Wu-hsiang (hsien) Local Committee in east-central Shansi. His subsequent wartime posts included membership on the Tai-hang Region Party Committee and the directorship of the Committee's Departments of Popular Movements (min-yun) and Propaganda. His obituary credits him with “distinguished contributions” to the mobilization of the masses, to antiJapanese guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines, and to the establishment and consolidation of bases in areas largely controlled by the Japanese.
P’eng spent part of the war years in Yenan (c. 1942-1945) where he was on close terms with Party elder Hsu TVli. Hsu was then president of the Natural Sciences Institute (Tzu-jan k’o-hsweh yuan) and it appears that P'eng also worked there. After hostilities ended in 1945 P’eng returned to the T’ai-hang Mountain area where he became political commissar of the Third Column in the forces led by Liu Po-ch’eng and Teng Hsiao-p’ing. The Liu-Teng forces pushed southward into central China in the late forties in a move coordinated with the Communist army in east China led by Ch'en I. During this southward drive P’eng served briefly (c. 1948-49) as secretary of the Party's West Anhwei Committee. In the latter half of 1949 Liu’s field army moved into southwest China, but at this juncture P’eng was detached from military service and sent to Peking to be deputy director of the Tax Bureau of the Peking municipal government.
After less than a year in Peking P'eng was reassigned in mid-1950 to Szechwan where he was to remain for the next four years. Szechwan was unique among Chinese provinces in that it was divided for administrative purposes (until August 1952) into four sectors north, east, south, and west Szechwan. P'eng was assigned to South Szechwan where the government apparatus was known as the South Szechwan People’s Administrative Office (SSPAO), with its capital at Lu-chou (Lu-hsien) on the Min River. He became a member of the SSPAO in July 1950 as well as head of its Finance and Economics Committee. From 1950 to 1952 he was also second secretary of the South Szechwan CCP Committee and the deputy political commissar of the South Szechwan Military District. P'eng was probably the second most important official in south Szechwan politically outranked only by Li Ta-chang, who was the head of the SSPAO, the political commissar, and probably the Party first secretary.
In 1954 P'eng made his first trip abroad when he attended May Day celebrations in Moscow as a member of an ACFTU delegation. Not long afterward he was transferred to Peking where he became (October 1954) a vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission headed by Li Fu- ch’un, one of Peking’s top economic specialist. During a partial government reorganization in May 1956 the Ministry of Heavy Industry was abolished, with its functions divided between three new ministries, one of them the Ministry of Chemical Industry. P'eng was appointed as the minister (and retained the post until his death in 1961), while at the same time continuing as a vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission.
P’eng remained active until October 1961 when he made his last public appearance. One month later, on November 14, 1961, he died of lung cancer in Peking.
Despite the importance of his positions in the national bureaucracy, P’eng was infrequently mentioned in the Chinese press in the late fifties. Nonetheless, at the Party’s Eighth National Congress (second session) in May 1958, he was elected an alternate member of the Party Central Committee. The Party Congress endorsed the economic Great Leap Forward, which had been launched earlier in 1958. It was in the spirit of the Great Leap that P'eng wrote We Want to Wrestle with All Capitalistic Countries in the Chemical IndustryM for the JMJP of May 29, 1958, an article that appeared just six days after the Congress closed. He is also the author of an article entitled tlBuiId Up Our Agro-chemical Industry” for the Party’s leading journal, Hung-ch'i (Red flag, issue of February 1, 1959). In November-December 1958 P'eng was among the Central Committee members in Wuhan for the Sixth Party Plenum, at which the excesses of the Great Leap Forward were partially cut back. In the following year he was a member of the preparatory committee for a large national conference of advanced workers in industrial fields, and when the conference was held in Octobcr-Novcmber 1959 he served on the presidium (steering committee). A month before the conference was held, the central government underwent another reorganization, P'eng was dropped from his vice-chairmanship in the State Planning Commission, but just six months later (March 1960) he was reappointed. In November of 1960 he made his second trip abroad, leading a chemical industry delegation to Poland where his group remained for three weeks.
In addition to his assignments in south Szechwan, P'eng had responsibilities in the governmental administration for the entire southwest area the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee (SWMAC). From the formation of the SWMAC under the chairmanship of Liu Po-ch’eng in July 1950，P’eng was a SWMAC member and in 1951 he was also appointed to membership on the SWMAC's Land Reform Committee, which was chaired by Chang Chi- ch'un. P'eng continued in both posts following the reorganization of the SWMAC into the Southwest Administrative Committee in February 1953. Following the dissolution of the four administrative areas of Szechwan in August 1952, P’eng was transferred from Lu-chou to Chungking where the capital of the SWMAC-SWAC was located. There he became a member of the Chungking branch of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and from 1953 to 1954 he was also second secretary of the Chungking CCP Committee. In the latter post he served under Secretary Ts'ao Ti-ch'iu, who was also the Chungking mayor (and, in 1965, the Shanghai mayor).
