Education
He studied the classics at an “old fashioned Confucian school” and then, during his middle school years, developed an interest in biology and mathematics. Still later, at Peking University, Sung studied history and political science. He was a student there when the Japanese occupied Manchuria (1931), after which he became deeply involved in the anti-Japanese student movement. Because of these activities he was arrested the day before his scheduled graduation in 1933, kept in prison for nearly a year, Sung was allowed to graduate in 1934. He then returned to Shansi and became a high school teacher in Taiyuan, the provincial capital.
Career
By the mid-1930’s Yen Hsi-shan the famous warlord-governor of Shansi, was becoming increasingly apprehensive of the steady incursions into north China by the Japanese. In early 1936, to strengthen his position in the province, Yen organized the Force for the Promotion of Justice (Chu-chang kung-tao fuan, usually known as the Justice Force). This was conceived of as an anticommunist mass organization, but by 1936 it had already been “infiltrated by younger and more liberal elements who would soon show how little they were in sympathy with its goals.” Among the younger elements were Sung and Niu P’ei-tsung. (Niu'a 1932 graduate in economics from Tsinghua University in Peking, later became a vice-governor of Honan under the Communists, and since 1954 he has been a leading figure in economic affairs in the PRC). By the middle of 1936 Yen was reportedly engaged in secret negotiations with the Communists to ally together against the Japanese (see under P’eng Hsueh-feng and Po I-po), and according to Sung's account, Yen had actually worked out a truce with the Communists by June 1936. As Japanese pressures continued, the younger elements of the Justice Force (presumably including Sung), persuaded Yen to form still another organization. This was the League for National Salvation through Sacrifice (Hsi-shcng chiu-kuo t’ung-meng-hui, best known by its short title, Sacrifice League), which was formed in September 1936 on the fifth anniversary of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.
Song was among the more active members of the Sacrifice League, and by approximately the outbreak of War in July 1937, he was also serving as chairman of the Civil and Military Training Committee and the Propaganda Section in Yen Hsi-shan’s provincial administration. When the Japanese invaded Shansi in the earliest days of the war, Yen sent Sung to Wu-fai hsien (Yen's native district) to become the hsien magistrate. At this juncture, elements from the Communists’ 115th Division led by Nieh Jung-chen were also in northeast Shansi. Nieh and Sung conferred about means to bring order out of the administrative chaos that was enveloping north Shansi. Sung then assumed the chairmanship of a preparatory committee which, with the approval of Yen Hsi-shan, was to convene a conference to inaugurate a multi-provincial, emergency administration. This in turn led to the convocation of a conference at Fu-p'ing, located in west Hopeh, due east of Wu-fai. The famous Fu-p’ing Conference was held in mid-January 1938 and was attended by more than 140 delegates from 39 hsien in Shansi, Hopeh, and Chahar provinces; some were local magistrates, some military representatives of the Nationalist and Communist forces, but most were from the various mass organizations, especially the Sacrifice League and a wide variety of other local “salvation” organizations. Sung’s inaugural address centered upon the theme of organizing all facets of society to resist the Japanese. He noted that, in contrast to the situation only two months earlier, there were already five military areas with “more than 20,000 armed people,” and 6070,0 “warriors who constantly attack the enemy.
The conference established the Shansi-Chahar- Hopeh (Chin-Ch'i-Chi) Border Region and set up a nine-member administrative committee. Sung headed this committee, but it quickly became apparent that the dominant figure was the veteran Communist military leader Nieh Jung- chen. In speaking to a number of foreign visitors at this time and in the ensuing years, Sung and his colleagues were quick to note that the Communists did not hold a majority of seats on the administrative committee. Sung himself emphasized that he was not a Communist. (It is not known when he was admitted to the CCP, but he was definitely a member by the early 1950’s, and probably long before that.) Of the other seven committee members, three later became members or alternates of the CCP Central Committee (Lii Cheng-ts'o, Sun Chih-yuan, and Chang Su). Moreover, three of the remaining four members went on to hold positions of considerable significance after the Communists came to power in 1949. Hu Jen-k’uei worked for many years in the Foreign Trade Ministry, and in 1962 was appointed president of the Peking Forestry College. Li Chieh-yung was elected a vice-governor of Kiangsi in 1955, and Lou Ning-hsien has been a vice-mayor of Tientsin since 1958 and a vice-president of Nankai University since 1964. In brief, of the original nine members, only the KMT representative did not work for the Communists after 1949.
Peking was surrendered to the Communists in late January 1949, and one month later the NCPG was moved there. Sung made this move too, and in April he was named to a five-man committee to deal with the question of changes in the government structure. At this juncture, in the absence of a central government, the NCPG served in many respects as a national administration. However, this became academic in October 1949 when the PRC was established in Peking and, within a few weeks, the central government absorbed the NCPG. As a delegate from the “North China Liberated Areas,” Sung attended the inaugural session of the CPPCC, the body that inaugurated the national government on October 1. He was appointed a member of the Government Administration Council's (GAC) Finance and Economics Committee, which was headed by the top economic specialist of that period, Ch’en Yun. Moreover, subordinate to this committee, Sung was made director of the Central Financial and Economics Planning Bureau. The bureau was abolished in August 1952, but at the same time that Sung lost this post he replaced Hsueh Mu-ch'iao as secretary-general of the Finance and Economics Committee.
In 1950 and 1952, Sung was named to three specialized bodies to deal with various pressing economic and administrative problems. In early 1950 he was secretary-general of a board charged with the task of conducting a nationwide inventory of commodities, finances, and personnel. Two years later he was also secretary-general (under Li Fu-ch'un) of a committee set up to improve the efficiency of government organizations, and in July 1952 he was made a member of a committee to deal with problems of unemployment. His involvement with tasks of this sort was illustrated in an article that appeared in People's China (no. 7, April 1, 1952) and that reviewed various steps taken to “increase production and practice economy.”
Sung, who was still secretary-general of the GAC's Finance and Economics Committee, was given another important assignment in September 1953 when he was appointed a vice-minister of Light Industry. A year later, when the central government was reorganized, the Finance and Economics Committee was abolished, but Sung was reappointed (October 1954) to his viceministerial post. More important, he was appointed a deputy director of the State CounciFs Fourth Staff Office, which was responsible for coordinating the work of the various State Council organs involved in light industry and planning. As of that time Sung worked under economic administrator Chia T’o-fu who headed both the ministry of Light Industry and the Fourth Staff Office. In January 1955 Sung signed a protocol on science and technological cooperation with Hungary. He did this in his capacity as chairman of the Chinese side of the Sino-Hungarian Joint Committeee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation, but when the committee held its next meeting in 1956 these responsibilities were assumed by another man. In March 1956 Sung feceived one of his few positions not involved in economic affairs when he was appointed a member of the newly established National Association for the Elimination of Illiteracy.
Politics
The formation of the Chin-Ch’a-Chi Border Region was a landmark event in the post-Long March history of the Communists. Not only was it the first behind-enemy-lines governmental administration dominated by the Communists, but it also grew to be the “most complex and highly developed of all the Communist rear-area strongholds set up during the war.” The area was visited by many Western journalists and military officials, and it has been described in considerable detail in a number of Western sources, most notably by George E. Taylor and by the authors of a United States War Department report.
The new government was not able to remain for long at Fu-p'ing, because in March 1938 the Japanese moved into the city and destroyed it. Sung and his colleagues retreated to the Wu-fai area in northeast Shansi. It was moved again in late 1938, and three more times in the following year, but for the balance of the war it remained in the general vicinity of Wu-t’ai hsien. At the time he was chairman of the government, Sung was also director of the Border Region's Finance Office for a portion of the war and postwar years. After the inaugural conference in 1938, it was not until January 1943 that the first full-fledged congress of the Border Region was held. This was also presided over by Sung, who continued to head the government. The Chin-Ch'a-Chi headquarters was transferred to Kalgan, the capital of Chahar, after the city was occupied by the Communists in August 1945, and it was through the Kalgan area that Lin Piao funneled tens of thousands of troops and cadres into Manchuria from north and northwest China. When the city fell to Nationalist troops in October 1946, Sung and his colleagues were forced to move their administrative headquarters to rural areas.
In August 1948, with victory in sight, the Communists convened the North China Provisional Peopled Congress. The Shansi-Hopeh- Shantung-Honan (Chin-Chi-Lu-Yii) Border Region to the south had already been militarily linked by the Communist armies to Sung's administration, and thus the congress was convened to establish a corresponding civil government. Sung served on the congress presidium (steering committee) and delivered a report covering the work of the Chin-Ch'a-Chi Border Region during the previous two years. At the close of the meetings, he was elected a member of the North China People’s Government (NCPG), which was headed by Party veteran Tung Pi-wu. In the following month, when the organs of government were set up, he was appointed director of the Agriculture Department and a member (also under Tung Pi-wu) of the Finance and Economics. The capital was located at Shih-chia-chuang (Southwest Hopeh), which had been captured by the Communists in November 1947. Only a few months before the NCPG was created, Mao Tse-tung had set up the Party headquarters in P'ing-shan hsien, only a few miles from Shih-chia-chuang.
Like a number of colleagues in the major economic commissions and ministries, Sung shuffled from one post to another in the six-year period from 1956 to 1962. In November 1956 he was appointed a vice-chairman of the State Economic Commission, which is headed by Po I-po and which is in charge of annual planning (in contrast to the long-range planning done by the State Planning Commission). At approximately this time Sung was removed from his vice-ministerial post with the Ministry of Light Industry. In September 1958 he was appointed a vice-chairman of the newly created State Capital Construction Commission under Ch'en Yun. Exactly a year later he was reappointed to this post during a partial reorganization of the State Council, but at the same time he was dropped from both the Fourth Staff Office and the State Economic Commission.
In January 1961 the State Capital Construction Commission was abolished, Sung was the only one of the five vice-chairmen not given a comparable post in the State Planning Commission, which assumed the functions of the defunct Construction Commission. As a consequence, Sung was left with no known government post of significance. A year and a half passed before Sung was reported again, and then he received the anticlimactic post of deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai branch of the China Committee for the Promotion of International Trade (September 1962), the organization mainly responsible for foreign trade with nations not having diplomatic relations with Peking. Perhaps even more unusual, in October 1962 he was appointed as a vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission under Li Fu-ch'un. Most officials of this rank work in Peking, but Sung remained in Shanghai with the trade promotion organization through the mid-1960's. He was last reported in the mid-sixties in December 1964 when, as one of a group of “specially invited persons,” he was named to membership on the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC.
