politician Member of Secretariat
From her college days at the Changsha Provincial Girls’ Normal School she seems to have reacted against authority, it is reported that she was expelled from this school because she insisted on bobbing her hair. Later, however, she attended and graduated from Peking University.
After the close of the Sino-Japanese War, Ts’ao went to Shanghai where she engaged in editorial work in the economic research department of the Bank of China and edited a magazine known as Hsien-tai fu-nii (Modern women). She also took part in the activities of the China Democratic League, one of the most important of the several non-Communist and non-KMT political organizations. Apparently her work in the League took her to Hong Kong, because she is known to have been a resident of the city in 1948. In November of that year, Ts'ao left for the Communist-controlled areas in Manchuria, and almost immediately after the fall of Peking to the Communists she arrived in the capital (February 25, 1949).
After Ts’ao’s arrival in Peking she became occupied in many activities, most of them centering around the womens movement. From her first days in the capital she was active in the preparations for the convocation of the first women’s congress (March-Aprii 1949). At the close of the congress she was named to the Executive Committee and the more important Standing Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Women (ACFDW). In 1952 she became a deputy secretary-general of the Federation, and when the small and exclusive Secretariat was formed in April 1955, Ts’ao was named as one of the members of the body charged with the daily execution of the affairs of the Federation. She was also in charge of two of the departments subordinate to the ACFDW, for about the first year in the life of the Federation there was a department known as the “KMT-con- trolled Areas Work Department,” which Ts’ao headed presumably because of her previous connections developed in Chungking, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, where she was acquainted with all shades of Chinese political opinion. The other department Ts'ao headed was the Women's Welfare Department, she held the post from 1949 to a reorganization in 1952.
She was named to the Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, then one of the most active organizations in China (but after the Sino-Soviet rift became apparent about 1960 it faded into near oblivion). Ts'ao was reelected to the Executive Committee in 1954 and 1959 and continues to hold this position. In addition, she was a deputy director of the SSFA Organization Department from 1949 to 1954 and in 1953-54 was a deputy director of the International Liaison Department. She was also elected to the National Committee of the China Peace Committee (another post she continues to hold) and was named to the Standing Committee of the Preparatory Committee for the t4China New Political Science Research Association.” A few years later (April 1953), this was formally organized into the Political Science and Law Association of China, with Ts'ao as one of the members of the National Council. She has been subsequently re-elected to the National Council, most recently in October 1964.
Other assignments received by Ts’ao in the early years of the PRC can be summarized as follows: councillor of the Councillor’s Office, Government Administration Council (GAC), 1949-1954, member, Chinese People's Relief Administration, 1950 to date; member, Board of Directors, Red Cross Society of China, 1950 to date, member, National Committee, Chinese People's Committee in Defense of Children, 1951 to date, member, Labor Employment Committee, GAC, 1952-1954, deputy secretary-general, Committee for the Implementation of the Marriage Law, 1953-54.
In 1954 she was elected as a deputy from her native Hunan to the First NPC, which adopted the PRC Constitution at its first session in September 1954. She was subsequently re-elected to the Second NPC (1959-1964) and to the Third NPC, which held its initial session in December 1964-January 1965. During this latter session she served on the Credentials Committee, and at the close of the meetings in January 1965 she was elevated to membership on the NPC Standing Committee. Although this could presage a greater involvement in domestic affairs, it is clear that Ts’ao’s major contribution to the PRC has been in the field of international relations, with a special emphasis on the Communist-backed women’s movement. Aside from her numerous journeys outside China, her specialization in foreign affairs is further reflected at home where she very frequently serves as hostess for the ever-increasing number of foreign visitors to China. Random but typical appearances occurred in October 1961 when she was present as Chou En-lai received a Cuban women's delegation and in October 1964 at which time Ts’ao attended a small reception given for the Queen of Burundi by Liu Shao-ch’i.
In the summer and fall of 1949, a number of semi-official “people’s” organizations were being established, as well as the government of the PRC. Ts'ao was busily engaged in these activities, beginning with the Preparatory Committee of the CPPCC, which met in June under the chairmanship of Mao Tse-tung. In September she was present for the first session of the CPPCC, at which time the PRC was established. She attended as a representative of the China National Salvation Association and was subesquently elected as an ACFDW representative to the second and third National Committees of the CPPCC, which existed from 1954 to 1964. She was not, however, re-elected to the Fourth CPPCC, which opened in late 1964. Ts’ao’s other activity in 1949 centered about the establishment of three “people’s” organizations, each of them formed in October 1949.
It was also in the early 1950's that Ts'ao made the first of her many trips abroad. Between 1950 and 1964 she went abroad on 18 occasions, visiting 16 different nations in Asia, Europe and Africa. The majority of these journeys (13 of the 18) have been involved with the Communist- backed international womens movement, led by the Womens International Democratic Federation (WIDF), of which Ts'ao has been a General Council alternate member since 1954. She attended large congresses of the WIDF in Denmark (June 1953), Austria (June 1958), and the USSR (June 1963), as well as meetings of the WIDF Council in Geneva in January 1954 and February 1955, a WIDF-backed “world congress of mothers” held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in July 1955; and celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of “International Women’s Day” held in Denmark in April 1960. She has also attended the two Afro-Asian Women’s Conferences, one held in Ceylon in February 1958 and the other in Cairo in January 1961. Though these can be considered offshoots of the WIDF, the rift between the Chinese and Russians has made almost all Afro-Asian organizations the battleground in struggles for allegiance to either Moscow or Peking. Finally, Ts'ao has been a member or the leader of women's friendship delegations to Korea (for a congress of Korean women in August 1954), France (July 1955), India (December 1956-January 1957), and Africa (where she visited Mali, Ghana, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar from March to June 1964).
Sometime in the early 1930's Ts'o married Tso Kung, a protege of Sun Fo (the son of Sun Yat-sen), who became a member of the Nationalist Legislative Yuan in the 1940’s, later she married Wang K’un-lun who became a vice-mayor of Peking under the Communists in 1955.
