Teng Hsiao-p’ing

Background

Teng was born in Kuang-an, which is on one of the Yangtze River tributaries in Szechwan district.

Education

In 1924 Teng joined the CCP. Many years later he told journalist Edgar Snow that he never attended school in France, but that he had been a worker. By the mid-1920’s many of the Communists in France left for home, often by the way of the Soviet Union. Teng went to Moscow in 1926 where he studied for several months. In this same year north China warlord Feng Yii-hsiang was in Moscow seeking further Soviet support for his mancuvcrings against other north China alliances of warlords. The Russians were quite willing to entertain requests for support as a means of gaining influence with Feng. At the same time, Feng was in contact with top KMT officials and their Communist allies in Canton, both of whom were wooing Feng. This threesided courtship of Feng had begun in 1925, and by mid-1926 it had become a matter of urgency as the Nationalists, with an active assist from the CCP, launched the Northern Expedition. The reason the Nationalists and Communists were so eager to enlist Feng into the cause of the national revolution was because he controlled the Kuo- minchun (Nationalist army), one of the most powerful military forces in north China. In August an arrangement was worked out in Canton by Feng’s representatives to enlist the Kuomin-chlin into the National Revolutionary Army. Feng then left Moscow for home, and immediately after arriving in China in September he formally swore to an oath to support of the revolutionary cause.In 1924 Teng joined the CCP. Many years later he told journalist Edgar Snow that he never attended school in France, but that he had been a worker.

By the mid-1920’s many of the Communists in France left for home, often by the way of the Soviet Union. Teng went to Moscow in 1926 where he studied for several months.4 In this same year north China warlord Feng Yii-hsiang was in Moscow seeking further Soviet support for his mancuvcrings against other north China alliances of warlords. The Russians were quite willing to entertain requests for support as a means of gaining influence with Feng. At the same time, Feng was in contact with top KMT officials and their Communist allies in Canton, both of whom were wooing Feng. This threesided courtship of Feng had begun in 1925, and by mid-1926 it had become a matter of urgency as the Nationalists, with an active assist from the CCP, launched the Northern Expedition. The reason the Nationalists and Communists were so eager to enlist Feng into the cause of the national revolution was because he controlled the Kuo- minchun (Nationalist army), one of the most powerful military forces in north China. In August an arrangement was worked out in Canton by Feng’s representatives to enlist the Kuomin-chlin into the National Revolutionary Army. Feng then left Moscow for home, and immediately after arriving in China in September he formally swore to an oath to support of the revolutionary cause.

Career

Teng had been in Moscow while these intricate maneuvers were taking place, but given his youthfulness and relative obscurity in the Communist movement, it is doubtful if he was involved in any direct fashion. It is equally doubtful, as claimed in one Communist account, that he played a significant role in getting Feng to swear his allegiance to the revolutionary cause. Nonetheless, having returned to China at approximately the same time as Feng, he was among the many young CCP members assigned to work with the Kuominchiin.

Teng served in the Political Department and he also taught at the school. Among his colleagues were Liu Chih-tan and Liu Po-chien. (The latter, like Teng, studied in both France and Moscow, in the early 1930's he headed an army corps' political department in the First Front Army led by Chu Te, and he continued to be a Red Army political officer until his death in early 1935.) Kao Kang and Hsi Chung-hsun were among the academy students and Wei Kung-chih, who later married the important Communist military commander Yeh Chien-ying, worked in the Political Department.

By October 1930 Teng was in Kiangsi where he had been made chief-of-staflf in the Third Army Corps of P'eng Te-huai, one of the main elements in the First Front Army. In the early summer of the next year, not long after the Communists had repelled the KMT's Second Annihilation Campaign, Teng was still with P'cng, who was then in command of his corps in the Hsing-kuo hsien area of central Kiangsi. Sometime in the same year Teng was posted to Juichin, the Communist capital, and there he edited a Red Army newspaper. In the early months of 1933 Teng was among those who came under severe attack as supporters of Lo Ming. Lo, a Communist official in Fukien, was accused by the Russian- returned student faction led by Ch'in Pang-hsien of fostering defeatist policies in face of the continuing attacks by the Nationalists on the Communist strongholds. Like many others accused of following the so-called Lo Ming line, Teng was soon restored to duty, and in the latter part of 1933 he was lecturing on Party history at the Red Army Academy in Juichin.

Teng had been elevated to the post of deputy political commissar. The corps was then led by Lin Piao, the commander, and Nieh Jung-chen, the political commissar. When war with Japan broke out in mid-1937, the Communists reorganized their forces into the Eighth Route Army. In the early weeks of the war Teng was in northeast Shansi, which was then the temporary locale of the army headquarters. Journalist Agnes Smedley, who was with the Eighth Route Army for several months early in the war, saw Teng there, identifying him as the assistant to Jen Pi-shih, the director of the General Political Department. Soon afterwards, however, Teng became political commissar of the 129th division, one of the three major components of the Eighth Route Army. The division was led by Liu Po-ch'eng, a man with whom Teng would be closely associated for the next decade and a half. The 129th Division operated for much of the war in the T’ai-hang Mountains on the Shansi-Hopeh border, and it was the mainstay force for the Communists, Shansi-Hopeh- Shantung-Honan Border Region. U.S. Military Observer Evans Carlson met Teng, then on an inspection tour, in Nan-kung, south Hopeh, in the spring of 1938.

In the last two months of 1949, the Second Field Army pushed into Szechwan, Kweichow, Sikang, and Yunnan, in operations coordinated with elements of the First Field Army led by Ho Lung. This four-province area formed the new base for the Second Field Army (and the Southwest Military Region), the Party's Southwest Bureau, and the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee (SWIVIAC). Military and political authority was divided roughly between the three top leaders in this area-Teng, Liu, and Ho. Liu continued to command the Second Field Army and Ho commanded the military region. Teng was political commissar of both the army and the military region, as well as the ranking secretary of the CCP Bureau. The last major step in the consolidation of Communist authority in the southwest took place in July 1950 with the inauguration of the SWMAC. Liu was named chairman, and Teng and Ho were made vice-chairmen. In addition, Teng was given the chairmanship of the SWMAC’s Finance and Economics Committee.

In mid-1952 Teng was transferred to Peking, and within the space of a few short years he emerged as one of the towering political figures in China. The first of his many new appointments came in August when he became a vice-premier of Chou En-lai's Government Administration Council (the cabinet). From the establishment of the PRC to the reorganization of the national government in September 1954, Teng was the only vice-premier added to the original four (Ch'en Yun, Tung Pi-wu, Kuo Mo-jo and Huang Yen-p'ei). In November 1952, in preparation for the inauguration of the First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957), the State Planning Commission was set up under the chairmanship of the ill-fated Kao Kang. Teng was appointed one of the 15 members, a post he held until 1954.

In November 1953, Teng was part of the six-man group headed by Chou En-lai which negotiated a highly important agreement with the North Koreans. This provided for grants to Korea of approximately $340,000,000 to assist in reconstruction work in the wake of the Korean War, which had ended shortly before this. Teng delivered the draft report on the budget for 1954 on June 16, 1954. Three days later he was succeeded by Li Hsien-nien as minister of Finance, and at the same time he was removed as a vice-chairman of the Finance and Economics Committee.

Teng was identified as the Party secretary-general. Then, in March 1955, the CCP convened a national conference. Teng delivered one of the two major reports, a denunciation of an alleged “anti-Party bloc” led hy Politburo member Kao Kang and Organization Department director Jao Shu-shih. Teng's report was not published, but the resolution on the “anti-Party Sloe” was presumably a summation of his remarks. The purge of Kao and Jao, the most celebrated affair of its kind in the first decade and a half of the PRC, is described in detail in their biographies. The fact that Teng was selected to deliver the denunciatory report suggests that he played a major role in the downfall of Kao and Jao. In any event, a few days later (April 4), Teng was elevated to membership on the Politburo at the Party's Fifth Plenum. (Lin Piao was also elected to the Politburo on this occasion, but there docs not seem to be any link between Lin and the Kao-Jao case.)

Politics

In December 1929 Teng and his colleagues, including Chang Yun-i, established the Seventh Red Army and the Yu Chiang (Right River) Soviet in the vicinity of Pai-se. Teng became the army political commissar as well as secretary of the army's front-line committee. (Some sources dispute the Communists’ assertion that Teng was the political commissar.) Not long after this, in early 1930, an uprising of KMT troops led to the formation of the Eighth Red Army and the Tso Chiang (Left River) Soviet. However, this soviet was soon crushed, and the remnants from the Eighth Army retreated to the Pai-se area where they were merged into the Seventh Army. In describing these events to Edgar Snow, Teng mentioned that the Communists in Kwangsi uhad relations with the Annamite rebels who began the worker-peasant rebellion in 1930's and that French airplanes had bombed areas where Teng was working. These rebels were apparently the members of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party who, in February 1930, sparked an antiFrench rebellion, and many of whom, after the revolt was crushed, fled northward into China. These ties with Vietnamese are noteworthy if only because so few Chinese Communist sources make any mention of Vietnam, despite its proximity.

In the meantime, Teng was steadily rising in the national hierarchy. Already a member of the CPPCC National Committee, he was elevated to membership on the Standing Committee in February 1953. Dating from approximately this same period, Teng began to make regular public appearances with Mao and the other top Party and government leaders and to deliver reports at national conferences. For example, he spoke before the Second National Supervision Work Conference in February 1953 and the National Communications Conference in August of the same year. He added to his positions in September 1953 when he replaced Po I-po as head of the Finance Ministry and he also became a new vice-chairman of the central government's Finance and Economics Committee.

Until the mid-1950’s relatively few foreign Communist party leaders visited Peking. But after this period, presumably as a reflection of the growing Chinese independence from Moscow, more and more foreign Communist party leaders visited China. This situation naturally called for high-level Chinese leaders to participate in talks with these visitors. Within a brief period it became apparent that Teng was among those who took part in these talks most frequently, often in conjunction with Liu Shao-ch’i, Wu Hsiu-ch'iian, and Yang Shang-k’un. In this connection, therefore, Teng was a logical person to attend the historic 20th CPSU Congress when it was held in Moscow in February 1956. Chu Te led the delegation and Teng was the number two man at the proceedings which heard Khrushchev's famous denunciation of Stalin and the worst trappings of Stalinism. Not long before this, at the CCP's Sixth Plenum in October 1955, Teng had spoken on the question of convening the Eighth National Congress. His plenum speech is not available, but in view of his role at the Congress, convened in September 1956, it appears that he was in charge of the preparations.

Membership

The CCP held the Seventh National Congress in Yenan from April to June 1945. Like most of the principal Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army officers, Teng was elected a member of the Central Committee, very probably in absentia. For about a year after the end of the war, the troops led by Liu Po-ch'eng in the Shansi-Hopeh- Shantung-Honan Border Region saw relatively little action. Rather, this period was characterized by a strengthening of these forces and tactical maneuverings designed to prepare them for the coming battles with the KMT armies. This border area was of vital significance because it was astride key north-south and east-west communications, particularly the rail lines.

Throughout 1953 and the first half of 1954, many of the highest leaders of state were involved in the preparations to convene a national legislative body. This work was carried out by three new committees, one to draft an election law, another to draft a constitution, and a third to supervise nationwide elections. The importance of these committees established in early 1953 can be judged in part from the fact that each was chaired by one of Peking's three most important leaders: Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-ch'i, and Chou En-lai. Significantly, only Teng was a member of all three bodies (and he was concurrently secretary-general of the last mentioned). Moreover, he seems to have been the driving force behind the three committees, for example, Teng delivered the explanatory report on the Election Law in February, just three weeks before it was promulgated, and in September 1953 and again in April 1954, he delivered progress reports on the program to hold elections.

Connections

Teng is married to Cho Lin. She has not been politically active and has confined her public appearances to those ceremonial occasions when her husband met with foreign visitors who had been accompanied by their wives. A former minor PRC official who knew Teng claimed that he had two sons in Peking University in 1961.

Spouse:

Cho Lin