Background
Nothing is known about his background.
politician CCP member vice-Minister
Nothing is known about his background.
Wang Tao-han was educated locally.
Sometime toward the end of the civil war with the Nationalists Wang moved southward into Chekiang and was named as vice-chairman of the Hangchow Military Control Commission after the city fell to the Communists on May 3, 1949. In this same year he also assumed two important posts in the Chekiang governmental structure, as director of both the Finance and Commerce Departments. Prior to the formal establishment in January 1950 of the East China Military and Administrative Committee (EC- MAC), the Communists had set up various ad hoc organs under the East China Military Region. One such organ was the East China Finance and Economics Committee, subordinate to which was an Industry Department headed by Wang. Then, with the formation of the ECMAC in January 1950, the Industry Department was placed under the jurisdiction of the ECMAC, with Wang retaining his directorship. In addition, he was named as a member of the ECMAC’s Finance and Economics Committee. He was officially appointed to both these posts in February 1950 and held both to November 1952.
Wang was transferred from Chekiang to Shanghai by 1951, and in that year he was named a member of the Shanghai Finance and Economics Committee. The only other press reports about Wang during this period both occurred in November 1951 when Jie attended the fourth ECMAC meeting and spoke on increasing production at a meeting of the ECMAC Industry Department, of which he was the head.
In August 1952 several new ministries were formed under the national government, one of them the First Ministry of Machine Building, a ministry created from sections of the Ministry of Heavy Industry. Wang was named as a viceminister, and although this ministry has subsequently undergone a series of reorganizations he has remained in his post. Wang made his first trip abroad as a member of the important group led by Chou En-lai to Moscow for the negotiations of August-September 1952, which led to the return of the Chinese Changchun (Manchuria) Railway to China and the extension of the term of joint use of Port Arthur as a naval base.
In addition to his negotiations with foreign technical specialists, Wang assumed other posts and engaged in other important activities dating from the mid-1950’s. He served from November 1953 as a member of the Standing Committee of the First Executive Committee of the AllChina Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC), an organization established to foster greater participation from the men who were China’s foremost industrialists and merchants in the pre-1949 period. In all such organizations the CCP has placed its own men, the selection of Wang for such a post probably rested on his technical background. Nonetheless, when the Second Executive Committee of the ACFIC was formed in December 1956 he was dropped from membership. From 1954 Wang has also been a senior oflBcial of the China Mechanical Engineering Society, he was named as a vice-chairman at the society's second congress in August 1954 and was then promoted to chairman in 1962, a post he continues to hold. This is one of a number of learned societies subordinate to the China Scientific and Technical Association, of which Wang has been a member of the National Committee since its reorganization in September 1958.
Wang was also reported from time to time in the mid-1950’s to be working with trade unions and “advanced” workers. For example, he attended the First National Congress of the First Machine Building Trade Union in August 1955 and gave a report before the National Conference of Outstanding Workers in the Machine Building Industry the following April.
In response to China's growing interest in foreign trade and aid, a Bureau for Economic Relations with Foreign Countries was formed in 1960 under the State Council. Four years later this was raised to a commission, and not long after Wang was named (October 1964) as a vice-chairman under Fang I, a Central Committee alternate and specialist in aid and trade matters. If this commission parallels a similar one in the Soviet Union it will concentrate on aid programs as opposed to trade which is handled by the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Still another indication of Wang's increasing ties with affairs abroad came in December 1964 when he was named as a member of the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC as a representative of “peace and friendship association with foreign countries”.
Beginning in 1953, Peking established joint committees with each of the other bloc nations to facilitate scientific liaison. For example, the “Sino-Czech Joint Committee for Scientific and Technical Cooperation” was formed in 1953. These committees have met approximately every six months, with the site alternating between Peking and the other capitals in the bloc. Wang has been the key Chinese official (“chairman of the Chinese side”) on the joint committees for Sino-Czech and Sino-East German liaison. In this role he has signed agreements, which typically provide for such things as the exchange of blueprints or personnel, in the following years and cities. June 1953: Peking-Czechoslovakia; October 1953: Berlin-East Germany; June 1954: Peking_East Germany; July 1958: Berlin-East Germany; August 1958: Prague-Czechoslovakia; May 1959: Peking-Czechoslovakia, April 1960: Peking-East Germany, February 1961: Prague- Czechoslovakia, July 1962: Peking-Czechoslo- vakia and Prague-Czechoslovakia.
