Background
Wei Kuo-ch’ing was born about 1914, although one source uses the year 1908. He is one of the very few members of a national minority group to have risen to the Party Central Committee.
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Wei Kuo-ch’ing
Edit ProfileEducation
Wei Kuo-ch’ing was educated locally.
Career
Wei was not heard of again until 1938, by which time he was a troop commander in the Communist New Fourth Army in east-central China. This assignment suggests that he did not make the Long March to the northwest, because the New Fourth Army, activated in 1938, was recruited largely from military forces that remained in central-south China when the Chu- Mao armies left Kiangsi in 1934. However, after the start of the Sino-Japanesc War, two units from the Eighth Route Army were sent from Shansi to join the New Fourth Army; these were recruited from troops which had made the Long March. Because Wei had connections with both of these units in the 1940’s, it is possible that he made the Long March before joining the New Fourth Army. One of the Eighth Route Army units, under the command of P'eng Hsueh-feng, left Shansi in the fall of 1938 and was incorporated into the New Fourth Army in June 1939. In August 1940 when P’eng’s unit (then called the Sixth Detachment) was at Ko- yang in north Anhwei, it was joined by a second and larger unit sent from the Eighth Route Army. This second force became the Third Division under Huang K'o-ch'eng after the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941 (see under Yeh Ting). In 1941 Wei was a commander in the division's Eighth Brigade, and in that same year the division moved eastward and made its headquarters in Fou-ning, in northeast Kiangsu east of the Grand Canal. Three years later, however, Wei was identified as a commander of the New Fourth Army's Fourth Division, which was operating north of the Huai River. The Fourth Division was commanded by P'eng Hsueh-feng until 1944. By the following year Wei was deputy commander of the Fourth Division.
In the immediate postwar period Wei remained in the area north of the Huai River. In early 1946, under the terms of the cease-fire agreement worked out by U.S. Special Envoy George C. Marshall, special field teams were stationed in many cities to supervise the truce. Holding the simulated rank of major-general, Wei was the Communist representative to the field team at Hsu-chou, an important rail center in northwest Kiangsu. However, in the latter half of 1946, as the truce began to collapse, many of the Communist representatives to the various field teams returned to their military units. Wei now took command of the Second Column under the East China PLA and in this capacity he took part in the victorious Huai-Hai Campaign fought in the closing weeks of 1948 and early 1949 in and around Hsu-chou. At approximately this time Wei became deputy political commissar of the 10th Army Group, one of the major components of Ch'en Fs Third Field Army (the new name for the East China PLA).
Wei continued to be the Foochow mayor until the spring of 1951 and apparently held his other posts in Fukien until the mid-1950’s. However, he received very little attention in the press in the early 1950's, perhaps because he held a particularly sensitive post; in sending a message of condolence at the time of Stalin’s funeral in March 1953, Wei was identified as “a commander” of Public Security forces. There is rather little information on the Public Security troops, but it is known that their functions include the protection of vital installations, particularly in borderland or coastal regions. And, because of its proximity to Taiwan, the Fukien coast has been a sensitive area to the Communists since they conquered the province in 1949.
In 1954 Wei was elected a deputy from his native Kwangsi to the First NPC. He was reelected to the Second NPC (1959-1964) and again to the Third NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965. At the close of the initial session of the First NPC in September 1954, Wei was elected to membership on the Standing Committee, which is responsible for the affairs of the congress between the annual sessions. At the same time, he was made a member of the National Defense Council, the military advisory organ with little authority but considerable prestige. He has twice been renamed to the Council (1959 and 1965). In the following month (October 1954), when assignments under the reorganized government were made, Wei was appointed a vice-chairman of the State Councirs Nationalities Affairs Commission. His appointment obviously related to his Chuang nationality, just as Ulanfu’s Mongol origins accounted for his being made the commission chairman. Wei assumed still another position in 1954 when he was selected for membership on the Second Executive Committee of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (SSFA), then a very active organization. He was named to the Third Committee in May 1959, but after the early 1960's, the SSFA became relatively inactive in the wake of the Sino-Soviet rift.
In the interim, Wei had been transferred back to his native Kwangsi. Chang Yun-i, the Kwangsi governor, had been transferred to Peking in the fall of 1954 when the central government was reorganized. Wei was sent to Kwangsi to replace him and was formally elected governor in February 1955. There he shared power with Party First Secretaries Ch'en Man-yuan and Liu Chien- hsun (qq.v.). By January 1957 Wei was identified as a Party secretary in Kwangsi, he was promoted to second secretary by March 1961 and finally succeeded Liu Chien-hsun as first secretary in October 1961 (Liu having been transferred to Honan). In April 1957, possibly to relieve him of responsibilities normally exercised in Peking, Wei was removed as a vicechairman of the Nationalities Affairs Commission, and at about the same time also lost his post as a member of the NPC Standing Committee. In September of the same year, the first steps were taken to transform Kwangsi from a province to an “autonomous region” for the Chuang minorities. Wei was named to chair the preparatory committee (September 1957) and played a major role in the formal inauguration in March 1958 of the Kwangsi-Chuang Autonomous Region (KCAR). At the initial congress of the KCAR he made the keynote speech on the work of the region and was then elected KCAR chairman, a position he still retains.
By October 1961, as already noted, Wei was both chairman of the governmental apparatus for Kwangsi and the Party first secretary. Between 1962 and 1965 he received three further appointments, which gave him the dominant role within the KCAR. In December 1962 he was elected to the chairmanship of the Kwangsi Committee of the CPPCC. In February 1964 he became first political commissar of the Kwangsi Military District, and just one year later he was also identified as the first secretary of the Military District's Party Committee. In the early 1950's it was normal practice for one provincial official to hold several key concurrent positions within the Party, the government, and the army. However, by the late 1950's the increasing complexities of the society brought about a greater division of labor, with relatively few provincial officials holding important concurrent posts. Wei's multiplicity of positions, therefore, must be viewed as an exception, and presumably as a tribute to his abilities.
As a key official in Kwangsi, Wei has been frequently occupied with the tasks normally given to a man of his political stature making inspections, attending conferences, and hosting the numerous foreign visitors to Nanning, the regional capital. Because Nanning is a transportation center for travel to Southeast Asia, he is often mentioned by the press in connection with visits abroad of important Chinese leaders. For example, he was present in December 1961 for the departure to Vietnam of Marshal Yeh Chien-ying.
Achievements
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Two more national honors came to Wei in 1955 and 1956. In 1955 military orders were awarded for service in the Red Army from 1927 to 1950. Because his name was on a composite list, it is not certain that Wei received all three major orders, but in view of his lengthy military career it is likely that he did. More important, he was elected an alternate member of the Party Central Committee at the Eighth Party Congress held in September 1956.
Politics
Wei belongs to the Chuang minority, the largest ethnic minority in China, most of whom live in Kwangsi. It is possible that Wei was first attracted to the Communist Party through the efforts of Wei Pa-ch'iin (1894-1932), who was also a Chuang from Tung-lan hsien. Wei Pa- ch'iin founded a peasant training institute in the Tung-lan area in the mid-1920’s and later formed the Tung-lan Revolutionary Committee. This became the nucleus of the Communists' Seventh Red Army (see under Chang Yun-i). In 1930 this army moved from Kwangsi to the Kiangsi Soviet area where many of its units were merged with other Communist armies. In the same year, Wei Kuo-ch'ing was identified as a member of the First Army Corps, formed in mid-1930 under the leadership of Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung. Two years later, Wei was a regimental commander in P'ing Te-huai's Third Army Corps, one of the major components of the Chu-Mao forces (known by then as the First Front Army).
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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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1938
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1949
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1954
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1962 - 1965