Background
Wang is a native of Lan-fien hsien, a few miles southeast of Sian, the Shensi capital.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Wang Feng
Edit ProfileEducation
He was one of the youngest men to rise to the level of the Party Central Committee. He graduated from Peking University, presumably in the mid-1930's and then apparently joined the Communists in his native Shensi.
Career
Wang presumably remained in the northwest during the late 1940's, for by 1949 he was holding an important post in the Northwest Party Bureau as director of the United Front Work Department. Following the establishment of the central government (October 1949) and the regional governments it created, Wang became chairman of the Nationalities Affairs Committee for the Northwest Military and Administrative Committee (established in January 1950), thus beginning the work upon which he has since concentrated. For the four years that the regional Committee existed, he held important positions in the northwest administration, serving as a member of both the Land Reform Committee (1950-1954) and the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (1952-1954). The Communists partially reorganized their regional administrations in 1953, changing the name of the NWMAC to the Northwest Administrative Committee (NWAC). Wang was named to membership on the NWAC and also continued to hold all three of his previous posts there until 1954 when regional governments were abolished.
From the early fifties Wang’s career centered on the program to integrate the non-Chinese minorities into the stream of Chinese life. He became president in March 1951 of the Northwest Institute for Nationalities (opened in Lanchow, Kansu, the previous August). He held this post at least until November 1957 and possibly until 1959. In November 1952, Wang was appointed as a vice-chairman of the Nationalities Affairs Commission, a central government organ under the jurisdiction of the Government Administration Council (GAC) until September 1954, when the GAC was renamed as the State Council. He was reappointed to the Commission in October 1954 and September 1959, he served from 1954 under Ulanfu, China's most important national minority leader. In spite of the Peking appointment in 1952, Wang did not move to the capital, but remained for a few more years in the Northwest.
Wang served as a deputy from Tsinghai to the First NPC (1954-1959) but was changed to the Sinkiang constituency for the Second NPC (1959-1964). At the fifth and final session of the First NPC (February 1958), he was elevated to the NPC Standing Committee, the governing body of the Congress when it is not in full session. This appointment became possible owing to the purge of several Standing Committee members, victims of the 1957-58 “rectification” campaign. At the same time that Wang was named to the NPC Standing Committee (February 1958), he made an important speech before the NPC Nationalities Committee on opposing “local nationalism,” the usual Communist term for separatist movements among the non-Chinese minorities. The Nationalities Committee of the NPC handles minority affairs for the Congress and is one of its permanent committees. Wang retained his position on the NPC Standing Committee in the Second NPC (1959-1964). At the first session of this Congress (April 1959), he was added to membership on its Nationalities Committee. Thus he served on both the State Council’s Nationalities Affairs Commission (the executive branch) and the NPC's Nationalities Committee (the legislative branch), the two most important government bodies concerned with minority affairs. He continues to sit on the State Councirs Nationalities Affairs Commission but was not reappointed to the NPC Nationalities Committee at the close of the initial session of the Third NPC (January 1965), possibly because of his transfer away from Peking.
Paralleling his rise in the national government, Wang advanced in the national Party organization (and moved to Peking) by February 1955 when he became a deputy director of the CCP United Front Work Department, a key organ of Party control that handles relations between the CCP and non-Party persons. It also handles some of the Party’s worfc with non-Chinese minorities. In May 1958, at the Second Session of the Eighth National Party Congress, he was elected as an alternate member of the Central Committee.
In April 1956, he was one of the deputy leaders under Vice-premier Ch’en I of the central government delegation sent to Tibet for the inauguration of the preparatory committee by which the Comrnunists were planning to bring the Tibetan Autonomous Region into existence. By mid-June the group returned to Peking, and in the following month it fell to Wang to give the formal report before the State Council describing the regulations for the new government to be established in Tibet. (The regional government was finally established in September 1965.)
In 1957-58, Wang was active in preparations to bring about the establishment of two other provincial-level “autonomous regions,” one for the Chuang minority in Kwangsi and the other for the Huis in Ninghsia. He took part in a March 1957 meeting in Peking, devoted to the establishment of the Kwangsi-Chuang Autonomous Region, and when the region was formally inaugurated in March 1958 he was on hand for the ceremonies in Nanning as a member of a central government delegation led by Politburo member Ho Lung. More important, however, was his participation in the establishment of the Ninghsia-Hui Autonomous Region, an area carved out of a portion of eastern Kansu with the capital at Yin-ch’uan, a center for the Huis (Chinese Muslims) of northwest China. He was present at Lanchow, Kansu, in May 1957 for meetings that dealt with the formation of the Hui region. By July 1958 Wang had become the first secretary of the Party’s “work” (i.e., preparatory) committee for the Ninghsia-Hui Autonomous Region, and when the Region was fully established in October 1958, he retained the first secretaryship of the Regional Party Committee. (As constituted in 1958, the region had a population of two million, a third of whom were of Hui origin.)
At the same time that Wang assumed the senior Party position for the Ninghsia-Hui Autonomous Region, Liu Ko-p’ing became chairman of the government apparatus of the region. Liu, a Hui, outranked Wang in the national Party structure owing to the fact that he was a full Central Committee member (from 1955) as opposed to Wang's status as an alternate member (from 1958). Moreover, Wang was serving at that time as a member of the NPC’s Nationalities Committee, a committee chaired by Liu. However, on the Party Committee for the Ninghsia-Hui Autonomous Region, Secretary Liu ostensibly served under First Secretary Wang (a Han Chinese).
In the fall of 1960, soon after the exposure of the political difficulties in Ninghsia, new problems arose in neighboring Kansu, then under the jurisdiction of Party First Secretary Chang Chung-liang, an alternate member of the Party Central Committee. Chang made his last appearance in November 1960 and by January 1961 Wang Feng was identified as the new first secretary for Kansu, a position he continues to hold. Unlike his tenure in Ninghsia (where he seldom remained), Wang has spent most of his time in Lanchow since assuming the senior Kansu Party post in 1961. He is frequently reported in the press in the activities normally associated with a provincial first secretary, such as making reports before Party and Youth League organizations, conducting inspections of industrial and agricultural production, and appearing at rallies marking Communist holidays. He received a significant promotion within the Party structure by February 1964 when he was identified as a secretary of the Northwest Party Bureau, where he serves under First Secretary Liu Lan-fao. As 3lreadynoted,Wangwasi deputy from Trsiiig-hai to the First NPC and from Sinkiang to the Second NPC. His constituency was again changed in 1964 when he was elected to the Third NPC from Kansu. However, when the Third NPC held its first session (December 1964-January 1965), he was not re-elected to the NPC Standing Committee nor to the NPC Nationalities Committee, probably because of his transfer from Peking to Kansu.
Politics
He first came to a degree of prominence in April 1946 when he attended the first session of the Third Assembly of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia (Shen-Kan-Ning) Border Region, held in Yenan. He served as a delegate from Hsin-cheng hsien together with Hsi Chung-hsun, an important Party leader who was then an alternate member of the Party Central Committee.
-
Born
-
Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
-
Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Education
-
1935
Career
-
1949
-
March, 1951
-
1954 - 1959
-
1960