Background
P’ei Li-sheng was born in 1897 in Shansi.
P’ei Li-sheng was born in 1897 in Shansi.
According to Japanese sources, which also credit him with a degree from Moscow University and, following his return to China, with underground work in his native Shansi and in Shanghai.
He worked at Shansi Administrative Office (a governmental organ) with the Taiyuan Municipal People’s Government in order to unify and strengthen their leadership and to support the fighting front. P'ei was named as the Taiyuan mayor even though the Communists did not capture the city for another month (April 1949). He held this post only for a brief period, but from this time until his transfer to Peking in 1956, P'ei held a number of important positions within both the government and Party hierarchies in Shansi. The Shansi government was formally established over the winter of 1949-50, at which time P’ei was named to head the provincial Industry Department (until June 1952). More important, he was appointed as a vice-governor, serving first under Ch’eng Tzu-hua and (from February 1951) under Lai Jo-yii, both senior Party leaders. Still another post held by P'ei in the early fifties in the Shansi government was as a vice-chairman of the Finance and Economics Committee.
In late 1951 Governor Lai Jo-yii was transferred to Peking to work with the All-China Federation of Labor. Therefore, in December 1951, P'ei succeeded Lai as governor, retaining the post until April 1956 when he too was transferred to Peking. Within the Party structure in Shansi, P’ei rose from membership on the Shansi Party Standing Committee in 1953 to second deputy secretary in the same year, and then to second secretary from 1953 until transferred in 1956. Shansi was subordinated to the multi-provincial government organization known as the North China Administrative Committee; P'ei was a member of this body from January 1953, retaining membership until its dissolution in the late summer of 1954.
P'ei was mentioned in the press with the frequency generally accorded to an official of his stature attending meetings of the Shansi Government Council, inspecting agricultural or industrial enterprises, greeting visitors to Taiyuan, and similar activities. For example, he gave the major report on the work of the government at a Shansi government congress held in February 1955. The year before he had headed the ad hoc committee formed in Shansi to discuss the draft constitution of the PRC, which was ultimately adopted in September 1954 at the First NPC.
In early 1956, in an attempt to quicken the pace of scientific development, the Communist government established the Scientific Planning Commission under the State Council, with P’ei as one of the members, a post he held until the commission was merged with another in November 1958. A more important but closely selated appointment was made by August 1956 when he was named as one of the secretaries-general of the Academy of Sciences. He remained in this position until August 1960 when he was elevated to a vice-presidency within the Academy, replacing T'ao Meng-ho, a distinguished scientist who died in April I960. P’ei remains in this position, and as of 1965 was one of six vice-presidents.
From the time he came to the Academy in 1956, P'ei has been one of the senior Party functionaries working in scientific administration, being associated with other such science administrators as Chang Chin-fu, Fan Ch'ang-chiang, and Tu Jun-sheng. A vignette of P’ei has been provided by J. Tuzo Wilson, professor of geophysics at the University of Toronto, who visited China in 1958 where he encountered P'ei on several occasions. Wilson described him perhaps with irony, as a “doctor” and as being “austere and commanding.” He told of a banquet given by P’ei in his honor. Although there were a number of distinguished Chinese scientists present, P'ei was 44th the most commanding personality present. He conducted himself with the greatest dignity, although the fact that he was an agriculturist suggested that he came from peasant stock. He spoke no English, and I do not think he knew the West.”
In April 1959 P’ei was named as a “specially invited delegate to the Third National Committee of the CPPCC, soon afterward he was named a deputy chief of the Science and Technical Section of the CPPCC. (However, when the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC was formed in December 1964-January 1965, P'ei was not again named to the national committee.) In November 1959, at the first stratigraphic conference, P’ei was named as a vice-chairman, although nothing in his background suggests that he is qualified to hold such a position in terms of technical competence. More frequently he is mentioned in the press in connection with work requiring political rather than scientific competence. For example, he served on the preparatory committee for a conference of “advanced units” in agriculture, and when the conference was convened in December 1958 he served on the presidium (steering committee). Similarly, P'ei is often on hand to welcome visiting scientific delegations from abroad and spends much time entertaining them during their stay in China.
In February 1960 P'i led a five-member delegation of the Academy to Moscow where, on February 20, he signed an agreement of cooperation for 1960 between the Chinese and Soviet academies. While in Moscow he served concurrently as a member of the delegation led by Liu Ch’ang-sheng (a Central Committee member) to mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance, the accord which formed the cornerstone of relations during the 1950's (but the force of which was weakened with the Sino-Soviet rift of the early 19605s). Four years later, P'i was the signatory to another agreement, on February 6, 1964, he signed a cooperation agreement between the academies in China and North Korea, as well as the cooperation plan for 1964. Later in 1964 he was elected as a deputy from his native Shansi to the Third NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965.
