Background
Ts'ao Chu-ju, a finance specialist, was born about 1904.
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Ts’ao Chii-ju
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He was educated locally.
Career
Ts’ao was brought from Manchuria to Peking in the fall of 1949 when the first staff assignments were being made in the central government. When the national government was established in 1949, the key economic organ under the Government Administration Council (the cabinet) was the Finance and Economics Committee (FEC), headed by China's top economic specialist, Ch'en Yun. Ts'o was named to membership on the FEC in October 1949, a position he held until the constitutional government was inaugurated in the fall of 1954. The FEC, in turn, had a number of important subordinate bodies, the most important of which was probably the Central Financial and Economic Planning Bureau, in many ways the direct predecessor of the State Planning Commission, which was established in 1952. Ts'o was named in October 1949 as a deputy director of the Planning Bureau, holding the position until it was abolished in August 1952.
In 1950 Ts’ao received the first two of several appointments in Chinese banking circles. In March 1950 he was named as a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank of China, the institution in charge of banking abroad and subordinate to the People's Bank of China, the main financial institution in China. Two months later he was also named to the Board of the Bank of Communications. In each case he was appointed as a representative of the Bank’s “public shares,” the other members obstensibly representing “private shares.” Ts’ao apparently continues to serve on both boards (see below). He was elevated to the Standing Committee in the Bank of China in November 1954, a position to which he was re-elected in May 1957. However, since that date he has not been directly identified with the activities of this overseas banking organization.
As already described, Ts’ao was a member from 1949 of the Finance and Economics Committee. In April 1951 he was made a deputy secretary-general of the Committee, serving until 1952 under Secretary-General Hsueh Mu-ch’iao and, after August 1952, subordinate to Sung Shao-wen, both important economic specialists. More important, in September 1953 he was named as a deputy director of the Peopled Bank of China, a bank under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. Then, in November 1954, he replaced Ntm Han-ch’en as the director, a position he was to hold for over a decade. Under the government reorganization in the fall of 1954, the People’s Bank was placed under the State Council at an administrative level one notch below the ministries.
Apart from his involvement in international banking matters, Ts’ao has naturally played a major role in domestic fiscal affairs in his capacity as head of the People's Bank. It was he who, on February 17, 1955, gave the official explanations for the issuance of “new people’s banknotes” before the State CounciL Soon after he was interviewed by the press on this revaluation of Chinese currency, an interview that was printed in the important Communist annual yearbook. He has also been a rather frequent participant in national conferences related to economics and finance. He spoke, for example, at a national conference in October-November of “advanced workers’ in the field of credits and loans, addressing them on the relationship of national economic development and banking activities. Once again, his remarks were reprinted in the annual yearbook. In addition to the publication of these two speeches, Ts'ao is also the author of an article summing up financial developments in the PRC during the first decade of its existence, the article was printed in both the Peking Ta-kung pao (October 12, 1959) and thoJMJP (November 1, 1959).
Although the major portion of his career has been devoted to the executive branch of government, Ts'ao served as a Tsinghai deputy to the Second NPC (1959-1964). He was not, however, re-elected to the Third NPC, which opened in December 1964, but at this same time was selected as a “specially invited personage” to sit on the Fourth National Committee of the quasilegislative CPPCC. And, when the first session of the National Committee closed in January 1965，he was also named to the governing Standing Committee as a member. In September 1959 Ts’ao received still another post, being named as a member of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission under the State Council. This appointment is probably explained by Ts’ao’s iong ties with the Bank of China, which handles many of the remittances from overseas Chinese, an important source of capital for the PRC.
Ts'ao appeared regularly through 1964 in activities related to the work of the Peopled Bank of China. But then in February 1965 he was removed from his position as director (no replacement being named). From at least 1957 he had concurrently served as secretary of the Party Committee in the bank, a position that he probably relinquished when he was removed as the bank director. It is also not clear if he retains his seat on the board of the Bank of China (subordinate to the People’s Bank) and the Bank of Communications.
Politics
Ts’ao’s activities with the People’s Bank were wide in range. For example, he was a regular participant in negotiations with foreign banking circles. In May 1954 in Peking he signed three separate agreements with the North Koreans regarding rates of currency and remittances between the Peopled Bank of China and the Central Bank of Korea. Over the next several years he signed similar agreements with officials from North Vietnam (November 1955 and June 1959), Rumania (February 1959), and Indonesia (October 1963). In June 1958 he also exchanged letters with the Norwegian ambassador regarding payments between the People’s Bank and a Norwegian counterpart. He was also frequently involved in negotiations with visiting economic delegations that went to China in search of aid. An example of this occurred in November-December 1960 when Ernesto Che Guevara, then head of the National Bank of Cuba, went to Peking, a visit resulting in a large-scale loan to Cuba and a commitment to buy large quantities of Cuban sugar. Ts’ao’s activities in international finance took him abroad in June 1962, when he led a three-member delegation to Australia (thus becoming one of the extremely few Chinese Communists to have visited that nation). Australian officials described this as a “private” visit to discuss central banking and to return an earlier visit to Peking by the governor of the Commonwealth Bank.2 It would seem probable that Ts’ao also discussed details in the financing of the huge amount of grain that China was buying from Australia at that time.
Career
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1949
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1950
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1953
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1959 - 1964