Shen Yen-ping

Background

Nothing is known about his background.

Education

His financial difficulties forced him to end his formal education.

Career

Shen then became a proofreader for the famous Commercial Press in Shanghai. This position afforded him the opportunity to gain a wide familiarity with foreign literature, especially the works of European writers. Within a short time Shen became associated with a number of young intellectuals of the May Fourth period, including Chou Tso-jen (a brother of Lu Hsun) and Cheng Chen-to. Cheng became an important cultural and education official in the Communist administration after 1949. In November 1920 these men and a few others founded the important Wen-hsueh yen-chiu hui (Literary Research Society). This was established for the express purpose of creating a new literature, appraising traditional literature, and introducing Western literature.

When the Northern Expedition got underway in mid-1926, Shen joined as a propagandist in the General Political Department of the National Revolutionary Army. After the capture of the Wuhan cities in the fall, Shen became editor of the Min-kuo jih-pao (Republic daily), apparently working with Mao Tse-tung's younger brother, Mao Tse-min, who is known to have managed the paper for a period in 1927. Shen remained in Wuhan until the KMT-CCP split in 1927, after which he spent a brief time in Killing, a Kiangsi resbrt town, recuperating from an illness. Later in the same year he went to Shanghai where he remained for most of the next decade. It was also in this year that he began to use the pen-name Mao Tun (literally, “contradictions”), this is only one of the scores of pen-names Shen used over the years, but it is the one best known to students of Chinese literature. In January 1926, immediately after the Second KMT Congress, Shen was appointed secretary of the department.

During the mid-1930's China's left-wing writers were in ready agreement about their distaste for the KMT, and they were in complete accord in their hostility to Japan. Nonetheless, the league members and their followers were constantly beset by a variety of disputes, many of them petty and personal. The most serious of these took place in 1936 after the league was dissolved in the early part of the year. This dispute, wryly labeled the Battle of Two Slogans by Tsi-an Hsia, pitted CCP member Chou Yang against the more iree-spirited Lu Hsun. Chou’s slogan, “literature for national defense,” was countered by Lu’s “people’s literature for the national revolutionary struggle. Chou advocated strict Party discipline for all writers, and Lu argued that writers should maintain their creative independence while supporting the anti-Japanese resistance movement. The debate generated more heat than light, and it has confounded the many literary historians who have attempted to unravel the affiliations of the various participants. It appears that Shen Yenping initially leaned to Chou Yang's side, but after Chou suggested that dissenters would be regarded as traitors, he tended to support Lu Hsun. In any event, the bickering ended when the contenders agreed upon a compromise manifesto in October 1936.

In 1941, after his return to Chungking, Shen became a member of the Cultural Work Committee under the Political Training Department. The committee was headed by Kuo Mo-jo. In theory, this was a position of some influence, because the Training Department was subordinate to the government’s important National Military Council. In fact, however, the KMT was deeply distrustful of the left-wing intellectuals. Shen’s post, therefore, was essentially a sinecure. This distrust led in March 1945 to the dissolution of the Cultural Work Committee, according to the Communists, this action represented the KMT's reply to the persistent demands by the intellectuals for a democratic coalition government.”

After the war Shen returned to Shanghai where he edited a literary journal and contributed to the various uthird force publications, which became increasingly critical of the KMT. In 1946 he was invited to lecture on Chinese literature in the USSR, an invitation tendered by the Soviet Union's All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. He left Shanghai in late 1946 and returned there in early April 1947. By then the Nationalists were locked in their life-or-death struggle with the Communists, a fact which made the KMT increasingly less tolerant of criticisms from any quarter. The dissolution by the KMT of the China Democratic League in October 1947 served as a signal to the leftist intellectuals that it was no longer safe to remain on the mainland. As a consequence, in the final weeks of the year Shen and many others left for Hong Kong. There, for the next year, he edited still another literary journal and contributed to the Communist press.

Immediately after the congress, several organizations were set up under the ACFLAC (see under Kuo Mo-jo). The most important of these, the All-China Association of Literary Workers (known since 1953 as the Union of Chinese Writers) was established on July 23, 1949. Shen was elected the chairman, and he was re-elected at the Second All-China Congress of Writers in September-October 1953. He continues to hold this post, and since December 1956 he has also been first secretary of the Writers, Union Secretariat, which was set up at that time. The ACFLAC and the Writers’ Union publish several of the most important literary journals in China, including Jen-min wen-hsueh (People’s literature), Wen I-pao (Literary gazette), Shih-k'ati (Poetry), I-wen (literally translated literature, but often rendered “world literature”) Wen-i hsueh-hsi (Literary studies), as well as the English-language monthly Chinese Literature. Shen has contributed frequently to these and many other literary journals. Moreover, he has been editor of both Chinese Literature and I-wen since 1953, and from October 1949 through June 1953 (after which he was replaced by Shao Ch'uan-lin), he edited Jen-min wen-hsueh.

It was also in July 1949 that Shen was elected a member of the Preparatory Committee of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. In the previous month, at a meeting chaired by Mao Tse-tung, he had been made a member of a similar body to prepare for the convocation of the CPPCC. Representing the ACFLAC, Shen attended the inaugural session in September of the CPPCC, the organization which brought the central government into existence on October 1. He was made a member of the CPPCC’s Standing Committee and the important Central People’s Government Council, both of which were chaired by Mao. He was also made a vice-chairman under Kuo Mo-jo of the Culture and Education Committee, one of the four most important committees subordinate to Chou En-lai’s

Government Administration Council (the cabinet). Finally, and most important in terms of his governmental duties, Shen was appointed minister of Culture. He was one of the very few government administrators who continuously headed the same ministry for the first 15 years of the PRC. Like most top government officials, Shen was also given assignments in various “mass” and professional organizations. From 1949 to 1950 he was a vice-chairman (again under Kuo) of the China Peace Committee (and since 1950 he has been a Standing Committee member). He was also named in 1949 to the Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (and since 1954 he has been a vicechairman), and to the Standing Committee of the Association for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language (to 1954).

As already noted, Shen's involvement in foreign affairs during the early years of the PRC was primarily in relation to the activities of the World Peace Council. However, after the mid-1950’s he was more frequently utilized in terms of his special competence as a literary figure. In this capacity he led a group of Chinese authors to the Conference of Asian Writers in New Delhi in December 1956. In November 1957 he accompanied Mao Tse-tung to Moscow as an official member of the delegation to the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution. Shen concurrently headed a sub-delegation of cultural figures, and while there his group negotiated and signed the plan for cultural cooperation during 1956.

Shen was back in the Soviet Union in October 1958 heading a 21-member delegation to the Afro-Asian Writers' Conference held in Tashkent. At this meeting, which was a follow-up of the conference held two years earlier in India, it was decided that the delegations would form liaison bodies after returning home. This was done in Peking in April 1959 with the formation of the China Committee for Liaison with the Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian writers (located in Colombo, Ceylon). Shen was elected chairman of the Chinese committee. He also led the Chinese delegation to the Second Afro-Asian Writers' Conference, held in Cairo in February 1962. In the meantime, in May 1959, Shen headed a delegation to Moscow for the Third Congress of Soviet Writers, and in August-September 1960 he led a cultural delegation to Poland. (Shen has chaired the China-Poland Friendship Association since its formation in September 1958). He took his last trip abroad in July 1962 when, in his 66th year, he led a delegation to the World Congress for General Disarmament and Peace in Moscow.

Politics

Shen continued in the employ of the Commercial Press until 1925. However, he relinquished the editorship of Hsiao-shuo yueh-pao in late 1922, partly to play a more active role in politics and partly because the editorial board of the Commercial Press feared that Shen’s militancy would damage the reputation of their prestigious press. He had by then already shown a considerable interest in the Communist movement and had been a regular contributor to Communist- dominated and left-wing publications. In 1922 Shen, as well as Liu Shao-ch’i, lectured at the P’ing-min nii-hsiao (Popular Girls’ School), which was headed by Li Ta, one of the founders of the CCP in 1921. In 1923-24 Shen was among the teachers at Shanghai University (see under Ch’U Ch’iu-pai). This institute, though ostensibly under joint KMT-CCP management, was dominated by the Communists, it proved to be an important training center for the CCP and Youth League, and its faculty included some of the most important early Communist leaders. By the end of 1925 Shen was in Canton, then the revolutionary heart of China, where the KMT and the CCP were working together in relative harmony. Both he and Mao Tse-tung worked in the KMT Propaganda Department.

After the war began Shen left Shanghai, and for the next two years he spent much of his time in Hankow, which in 1937-38 served as the provisional capital. There in March 1938 Shen, Kuo Mo-jo, and 40-odd other literary figures established the All-China Resistance Association of Art and Literary Workers, which published anti-Japanese propaganda materials and sent writers to front line areas to report on the war effort. Shen was in Chungking for a while in 1938, but then in 1939 he went to Sinkiang where, until 1941, he was dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Sinkiang University. During the first half of the Sino-Japanese War, Sinkiang warlord Sheng Shih-ts’ai had rather close ties with the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists, as well as the Russians (see under Teng Fa and Ch’en T’an-ch’iu). However, by the 1941-42 period Sheng came to have deep misgivings apparently with considerable justification about his ties with the Yenan Communists. In later years Sheng claimed that Shen and many others were attempting to subvert his rule.8 Shen left Sinkiang in 1941 for Kweilin and then Chungking, only a year before a number of his colleagues were imprisoned by Sheng Shih-ts'i.

Shen left Hong Kong in December 1948 for Manchuria, then almost completely under Communist control. Two months later, in February 1949, he arrived in Peking with a large group of intellectuals and dissident KMT generals and politicians. They were accorded an elaborate welcome by the Communist authorities, who were eager to gain their allegiance. In late March Shen took part in establishing a preparatory committee for the convocation of a nationwide conference of writers and artists. The three top spots on the committee went to Kuo Mo-jo, the chairman, and Shen and literary czar Chou Yang, the two vice-chairmen. When the Congress of Literary and Art Workers was held in July, these three held identical posts on the congress presidium, and at the close of the meetings they were again given the three top posts in the newly formed All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles (ACFLAC). During the congress Shen spoke on the literary movement in KMT-controllcd areas over the previous decade.

Membership

In early 1953 the Communists took the first major organizational steps toward the convocation of a national congress and the adoption of a constitution. In January and February, respectively, Shen was named to membership on committees to draft a national constitution (chaired by Mao Tse-tung) and to arrange for nationwide elections (chaired by Liu Shao-ch’i). In the next year, when these tasks were completed, Shen was elected a deputy from Shantung to the First NPC, which held its inaugural session in September 1954. He was returned from Shantung to the next two congresses, which opened their first sessions in April 1959 and December 1964.

Since June 1955 Shen has been a member of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences (headed by Kuo Mo-jo) under the Academy of Sciences, and from May 1957 to November 1958 he was a member of the State Council’s Scientific Planning Commission. He was also involved in the program to reform the Chinese language, an activity which reached its peak in the mid-1950’s. In January 1956 he was made a member of a committee to popularize standard spoken Chinese (p'u-fung-hua), in the following month he was named to membership on the National Association for the Elimination of Illiteracy and he was also made a member in October of another committee to examine a plan for a phonetic written language.

Connections

K’ung Te-chih, Shen’s wife, was still living in 1965, but she has not been active politically in the post-1949 period. Shen's daughter, who studied at Yenan University during the war years, died toward the end of the war. He is known to have had at least two sons who had reportedly taken part in “revolutionary work,” but nothing more is known about them.

Spouse:

K’ung Te-chih