Wu Chih-p’u

1906

Kaifeng, China

Immediately following the New Fourth Army Incident in January 1941 (see under Yeh T’ing), the army was reorganized. The Sixth Detachment was reorganized into the Fourth Division under P’eng’s command. Some time during the remaining years of the war, Wu became director of the division's Political Department. The Fourth Division controlled an area the Communists called the North Huai Military District. It was bounded on the south by the Huai River, on the west by the Tientsin-Pukow Railway, on the north by a line running from the Grand Canal to Hsu-chou (Kiangsu), and on the east by the Grand Canal. Wu was with P'eng when the latter was killed in 1944, and several years later he co-authored a brief sketch of P’eng’s career, which appeared in one of the better known collections of biographies of Chinese Communist “martyrs.” Wu apparently remained in the region north of the Huai River in the immediate postwar period. During the first year of the civil war, Communist guerrilla units in this area were hard pressed by the Nationalists, but in mid-1947 the Communists took to the offensive when Liu Po- ch’eng’s armies crossed the Yellow River in a southward thrust which carried to the Ta-pieh Mountains on the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei border. In the course of this offensive the Central Plains Liberated Area was set up; this area, in turn, was subdivided into three sections, one of which was the Honan-Anhwei-Kiangsu (HAK) Border Region. The executive arm of the Border Region was known as the HAK Administrative Office; Wu was made the director and retained the post until 1949 when this part of China was conquered by the PL A. In the meantime, northern Honan was the scene of numerous battles, many of them in the region around Kaifeng on the important Lunghai Railway. The city fell to the Communists in June 1948; it was retaken by the Nationalists, but was finally captured by the PLA in October 1948. In 1948-49 Wu was the Kaifeng mayor, and it was there in March 1949 that the Communists, having conquered the entire area, established the Central Plains Provisional People's Government under the chairmanship of Teng Tzu-hui. Wu was made one of the two vice-chairmen. At the second conference of the Central Plains Government, held in Kaifeng in May 1949, Wu was appointed the first Communist governor of Honan, China's third most populous province. In the wake of the southward advance of the PLA, the Central Plains capital was moved to Wuhan in June 1949; Wu retained his vice-chairmanship with this short-lived government, but he remained in Honan to carry out his duties as governor, a post he was to hold for 12 more years. (Kaifeng was the Honan capital until October 1954, after which it was transferred to Chengchow.) He was also president of Honan University (located in Kaifeng) from 1949 to about the end of 1950. In September 1949 Wu was in Peking where, as a representative of the Central China Liberated Area, he attended the inaugural session of the CPPCC, the body that established the national government on October 1. A few days later, he was elected a member of the First Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (to 1954). In early February 1950 the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee (CSMAC) was established in Wuhan as the successor to the Central Plains Government. Wu was a member of the CSMAC, which had jurisdiction over Honan, Hupeh, Hunan, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, and Kwangsi provinces, and he retained his membership in 1953-54, when the CSMAC was redesignated the Central-South Administrative Committee. Later in 1950 he received two national-level posts. The first of these was membership on the Board of Directors of the newly established All-China Federation of Cooperatives (see under Ch’eng Tzu-hua) from mid-1950 to mid-1954. Secondly, hs was made a deputy director under Tseng Shan of the Huai River Harnessing Commission when it was established in October 1950 as a subordinate body of the Ministry of Water Conservancy in Peking. The work of the commission presumably received priority attention, because earlier m 1950 Mao Tse-tung pledged, in a widely publicized statement, that the taming of the Huai was to be one of the major tasks in central China. Because of serious water control problems in Honan caused by both the Huai and Yellow Rivers, Wu was frequently involved during the 1950's in related tasks. Thus, in mid-1952, mid-1953, and again in May 1957, he was put in charge of hastily created Yellow River “flood prevention headquarters” necessitated by heavy rainfall. Similarly, he was among the dignitaries who spoke in April 1957 when work commenced on the huge and highly important Sanmen Gorge Dam, astride the Yellow River on the Honan-Shansi border. In February 1955 and again in December 1958, Wu was re-elected governor of Honan, and from the mid-fifties to the early sixties he was regularly reported in the provincial press in connection with his varied duties as the governor. At the Eighth National Party Congress in September 1956, Wu was a member of the ad hoc credentials committee, and he also submitted a report on the income of members of the agricultural producer cooperatives. At the close of the congress he was one of only 33 men elected a full member of the Party Central Committee who had never previously been an alternate member. In terms of the CCP hierarchy in Honan, this created a rather unusual situation, because First Secretary P’an Fu-sheng, Wu’s immediate superior, was only elected to alternate Central Committee membership at the congress. However, a year and a half later the Honan Party apparatus underwent a major shakeup at the second session of the Eighth National Party Congress (May 1958). P'in Fu- sheng was “exposed” as a “right opportunist” and was described as the former first secretary in Honan. The details were soon forthcoming; in early June, with Wu in the chair as the new Honan first secretary, a session of the CCP Honan Committee was convened. Among the numerous charges against P’an (described at length in his biography) was his opposition to the rapid pace of agricultural collectivization in Honan. Wu came into the spotlight of the national press in mid-1958 in connection with the campaign to replace cooperatives with the famous people’s communes. The reasons for Wu’s sudden prominence were twofold. First, the commune movement was launched in Honan with the establishment of the much publicized “Sputnik” Commune, and second, Mao Tse-tung made a personal inspection trip to Honan in August 1958. As reported in the press, Wu exuded confidence about the commune program; Mao agreed: “Correct. If there is a commune like the one he had just visited, then there can be many of them!” One writer has observed that Wu’s advance in power in Honan may have been because of his “precociousness” in anticipating the commune movement. In the days that followed, a spate of articles extolling the new campaign were published by many national and provincial leaders. By 1959 Wu had assumed two new positions in Honan, both of which had been held by the now deposed P'an Fu-sheng until the previous spring. First, in February 1959 Wu was elected chairman of the Honan Provincial Committee of the CPPCC, and three months later he was identified as political commissar of the Honan Military District. Thus, with the assumption of the latter post, Wu headed the Honan government and CCP hierarchies, and he was also the top provincial PLA political officer. A year later, in April 1960, he led the CCP delegation to the 12th Congress of the Finnish Communist Party. This was a somewhat unusual assignment in view of the fact that most such missions have been led by Party leaders working in Peking.

Wu Chih-p’u

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political leader CCP member

Background

Wu is a native of Ch'i-hsien, located some 30 miles southeast of Kaifeng in Honan province.

Education

Aside from the report that he was once an elementary school teacher, nothing is known of his early career. In the spring of 1938, not long after the Sino-Japanesc War began, Wu was leading a detachment of Communist guerrilla troops in eastern Honan (his native region). Later that year the important Communist military officer P’eng Hsueh-feng was sent from Shansi to east Honan at the head of another detachment. Although there is no documentation, it appears that Wu's guerrillas were merged with those led by P'eng. During the course of the next year, 1939, P'eng's troops moved eastward into Anhwei province and were designated the Sixth Detachment of the Communists New Fourth Army.

Career

Immediately following the New Fourth Army Incident in January 1941 (see under Yeh T’ing), the army was reorganized. The Sixth Detachment was reorganized into the Fourth Division under P’eng’s command. Some time during the remaining years of the war, Wu became director of the division's Political Department. The Fourth Division controlled an area the Communists called the North Huai Military District. It was bounded on the south by the Huai River, on the west by the Tientsin-Pukow Railway, on the north by a line running from the Grand Canal to Hsu-chou (Kiangsu), and on the east by the Grand Canal. Wu was with P'eng when the latter was killed in 1944, and several years later he co-authored a brief sketch of P’eng’s career, which appeared in one of the better known collections of biographies of Chinese Communist “martyrs.”

Wu apparently remained in the region north of the Huai River in the immediate postwar period. During the first year of the civil war, Communist guerrilla units in this area were hard pressed by the Nationalists, but in mid-1947 the Communists took to the offensive when Liu Po- ch’eng’s armies crossed the Yellow River in a southward thrust which carried to the Ta-pieh Mountains on the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei border. In the course of this offensive the Central Plains Liberated Area was set up; this area, in turn, was subdivided into three sections, one of which was the Honan-Anhwei-Kiangsu (HAK) Border Region. The executive arm of the Border Region was known as the HAK Administrative Office; Wu was made the director and retained the post until 1949 when this part of China was conquered by the PL A. In the meantime, northern Honan was the scene of numerous battles, many of them in the region around Kaifeng on the important Lunghai Railway. The city fell to the Communists in June 1948; it was retaken by the Nationalists, but was finally captured by the PLA in October 1948. In 1948-49 Wu was the Kaifeng mayor, and it was there in March 1949 that the Communists, having conquered the entire area, established the Central Plains Provisional People's Government under the chairmanship of Teng Tzu-hui. Wu was made one of the two vice-chairmen.

At the second conference of the Central Plains Government, held in Kaifeng in May 1949, Wu was appointed the first Communist governor of Honan, China's third most populous province. In the wake of the southward advance of the PLA, the Central Plains capital was moved to Wuhan in June 1949; Wu retained his vice-chairmanship with this short-lived government, but he remained in Honan to carry out his duties as governor, a post he was to hold for 12 more years. (Kaifeng was the Honan capital until October 1954, after which it was transferred to Chengchow.) He was also president of Honan University (located in Kaifeng) from 1949 to about the end of 1950. In September 1949 Wu was in Peking where, as a representative of the Central China Liberated Area, he attended the inaugural session of the CPPCC, the body that established the national government on October 1. A few days later, he was elected a member of the First Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (to 1954).

In early February 1950 the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee (CSMAC) was established in Wuhan as the successor to the Central Plains Government. Wu was a member of the CSMAC, which had jurisdiction over Honan, Hupeh, Hunan, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, and Kwangsi provinces, and he retained his membership in 1953-54, when the CSMAC was redesignated the Central-South Administrative Committee. Later in 1950 he received two national-level posts. The first of these was membership on the Board of Directors of the newly established All-China Federation of Cooperatives (see under Ch’eng Tzu-hua) from mid-1950 to mid-1954. Secondly, hs was made a deputy director under Tseng Shan of the Huai River Harnessing Commission when it was established in October 1950 as a subordinate body of the Ministry of Water Conservancy in Peking. The work of the commission presumably received priority attention, because earlier m 1950 Mao Tse-tung pledged, in a widely publicized statement, that the taming of the Huai was to be one of the major tasks in central China. Because of serious water control problems in Honan caused by both the Huai and Yellow Rivers, Wu was frequently involved during the 1950's in related tasks. Thus, in mid-1952, mid-1953, and again in May 1957, he was put in charge of hastily created Yellow River “flood prevention headquarters” necessitated by heavy rainfall. Similarly, he was among the dignitaries who spoke in April 1957 when work commenced on the huge and highly important Sanmen Gorge Dam, astride the Yellow River on the Honan-Shansi border.

In February 1955 and again in December 1958, Wu was re-elected governor of Honan, and from the mid-fifties to the early sixties he was regularly reported in the provincial press in connection with his varied duties as the governor. At the Eighth National Party Congress in September 1956, Wu was a member of the ad hoc credentials committee, and he also submitted a report on the income of members of the agricultural producer cooperatives. At the close of the congress he was one of only 33 men elected a full member of the Party Central Committee who had never previously been an alternate member. In terms of the CCP hierarchy in Honan, this created a rather unusual situation, because First Secretary P’an Fu-sheng, Wu’s immediate superior, was only elected to alternate Central Committee membership at the congress. However, a year and a half later the Honan Party apparatus underwent a major shakeup at the second session of the Eighth National Party Congress (May 1958). P'in Fu- sheng was “exposed” as a “right opportunist” and was described as the former first secretary in Honan. The details were soon forthcoming; in early June, with Wu in the chair as the new Honan first secretary, a session of the CCP Honan Committee was convened. Among the numerous charges against P’an (described at length in his biography) was his opposition to the rapid pace of agricultural collectivization in Honan.

Wu came into the spotlight of the national press in mid-1958 in connection with the campaign to replace cooperatives with the famous people’s communes. The reasons for Wu’s sudden prominence were twofold. First, the commune movement was launched in Honan with the establishment of the much publicized “Sputnik” Commune, and second, Mao Tse-tung made a personal inspection trip to Honan in August 1958. As reported in the press, Wu exuded confidence about the commune program; Mao agreed: “Correct. If there is a commune like the one he had just visited, then there can be many of them!” One writer has observed that Wu’s advance in power in Honan may have been because of his “precociousness” in anticipating the commune movement. In the days that followed, a spate of articles extolling the new campaign were published by many national and provincial leaders.

By 1959 Wu had assumed two new positions in Honan, both of which had been held by the now deposed P'an Fu-sheng until the previous spring. First, in February 1959 Wu was elected chairman of the Honan Provincial Committee of the CPPCC, and three months later he was identified as political commissar of the Honan Military District. Thus, with the assumption of the latter post, Wu headed the Honan government and CCP hierarchies, and he was also the top provincial PLA political officer. A year later, in April 1960, he led the CCP delegation to the 12th Congress of the Finnish Communist Party. This was a somewhat unusual assignment in view of the fact that most such missions have been led by Party leaders working in Peking.

Politics

Most leading provincial officials in the early PRC years held concurrent posts in the CCP, government, and military hierarchies, but Wu*s activities seem to have been confined mainly to the governmental apparatus. (The leading Party and military official in those years was Chang Hsi and, after 1953, P'an Fu-sheng) However, Wu was identified as second secretary of the CCP Honan Committee in February- March 1954 when he gave a report to his Honan colleagues on the decisions taken at the Party Central Committee's Fourth Plenum, which had laid the groundwork for the purge of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih. Not long afterwards, he was elected a Honan deputy to the First NPC, and at its first session in September 1954 he was named a member of the NPC Credentials Committee. He was returned from Honan to the Second NPC (1959-1964) and once again served on the Credentials Committee.

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Wu Chih-p’u

Background

Education

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Politics

Born

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Career

1948 - 1949

May, 1949

September, 1949

February, 1959