Background
Nothing is known about his background.
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Wang Kuo-ch’iian
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By early 1950 he was serving as the ranking Party secretary for Jehol province, a position he was to hold for six years. In December 1955 Jehol was abolished, with its territory being incorporated into Inner Mongolia, Hopeh, and Liaoning. But before it was dissolved, Wang held almost all positions of importance in the province.
Education
He was educated locally.
Career
By early 1950 he was serving as the ranking Party secretary for Jehol province, a position he was to hold for six years. In December 1955 Jehol was abolished, with its territory being incorporated into Inner Mongolia, Hopeh, and Liaoning. But before it was dissolved, Wang held almost all positions of importance in the province. He was named in June 1951 to the Jehol Provincial People’s Government and two months later was named to chair the provincial Economic Planning Committee. He relinquished the latter post in January 1953, but then in February 1955 he succeeded to the provincial governorship. In the same month he was also elected chairman of the First Jehol Committee of the quasi-legislative CPPCC. Finally, he was elected as a Jehol deputy to the First NPC (1954-1959).
Little is known about Wang’s work in Jehol. However, he did contribute an article about the provincial “struggle against bureaucratism,” which appeared in the June 13, 1953, issue of the Shenyang (Mukden) Tung-pei jih-pao (Northeast daily) and a major report on provincial affairs delivered at the congress session in February 1955, at which time he became the Jehol governor. Wang surrendered all his positions in Jehol, of course, when the province was abolished in December 1955, although apparently the deputies from Jehol (Wang among them) were allowed to sit in the NPC even after the province was dissolved.
In June 1957 Wang was named to succeed Tseng Yung-ch’iian as ambassador to East Germany, a position he formally assumed in August of that year and one in which he would remain for six and a half years. His tour there was largely uneventful, the published record revealing mainly the normal negotiations of agreements and attendance at various protocol functions. The agreements or protocols signed by Wang included one related to public health (December 1957), a trade protocol (March 1960), and a cultural cooperation agreement (August 1962), each of these being signed in Germany. He also participated in talks in Peking held with East German Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl in January 1959, negotiations that culminated in a consular convention and a long-term trade agreement. On five occasions (1958, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963) he was an official PRC representative to the important annual Leipzig spring trade fair.
Early in 1964 Wang and his wife left Berlin for home he was formally replaced in February by Chang Hai-feng. Just two months later he was named to succeed Wang Ping-nan as ambassador to Poland. He presented his credentials in Warsaw in July 1964. The assignment in Poland has been of peculiar significance since 1955 because from that year the Chinese ambassador in Warsaw has been the negotiator for the Chinese side in the Sino-American's ambassadorial-lever talks (see under Wang Ping-nan). By the time of Wang Kuo- ch'lian's arrival in 1964 these talks had assumed added significance in view of the intensification of the war in Vietnam. Wang held his first talk with his American counterpart, Ambassador John Cabot, on July 29, 1964, it was the 123rd such session held between the two sides. If the assignment of Wang to these talks is not an attestation of his abilities, it is at least an affirmation by the Peking hierarchy of their trust in his loyalty. A reporter for the London Observer (September 19, 1965) described Ambassador Wang as a “neatly attired” six-footer in his fifties, who had once been a political commissar in the Chinese Red Army.
As a general practice men stationed abroad do not serve in the NPC. An exception seems to have been made in the case of Wang, who, as already noted, was a Jehol deputy to the First NPC (1954-1959). While in Germany he was named to the Second NPC (1959-1964) as a deputy from Hopeh (one of the provinces that absorbed a portion of Jehol). And soon after his arrival in Warsaw he was named as a deputy from his native Honan to the Third NPC, which opened in December 1964.
Politics
During his tenure in Berlin, several top Chinese Communist officials visited there. For example, Tung Pi-wu was in Berlin in July 1958 for the Fifth Congress of the East German Socialist Unity (Communist) Party, and Nieh Jung-chen and Ho Lung led PRC delegations to the 10th and 12th anniversary celebrations of the “German Democratic Republic” in 1959 and 1961, respectively. Yet it is almost certain that the major highlight of his stay in Berlin occurred in January 1963 when Wu Hsiu- ch'iian was in Germany for the Sixth Congress of the Socialist Unity Party. This was the last of four congresses in East Europe attended by Wu, each of which featured violent verbal battles between the Chinese and Soviet delegates as part of the Sino-Soviet rift (see under Wu Hsiu- ch’iian). Chinese-East German government-to- government relations ostensibly remained the same after this congress (where the Germans had openly sided with the Russians), but in fact relations deteriorated during Wang’s last year in Berlin. The deterioration was perhaps best illustrated by a rather bizarre occurrence in December 1963, just a month before Wang left for home. According to a Western news source, Wang had the locks in the Chinese embassy changed by locksmiths called in from West Germany.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1957
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June, 1957