Wu Heng, one of Communist China’s more important science administrators, was a student in the mid-thirties when large numbers of students participated in activities opposing continuing Japanese incursions into China.
Education
Anti-Japanese developments reached a peak in late 1935 when students staged large demonstrations in Peking. Because the demonstrations broke out on December 9, 1935, this event came to be known as the December Ninth Movement (see under Li Ch'ing). Early in 1936 the more leftwing elements among the students formed the National Liberation Vanguard of China (NLVC) and by the spring of 1936 this organization was largely under Communist control. Li Ch'ang, a top student official in the NLVC, has written that Wu was working in Hsu-chou (Su-chow) in northwest Kiangsu where he and others urallied a number of students” from Peking and Tientsin who, “together with the local youths, actively carried out” work to arouse the Chinese populace to resist the Japanese. From the context of Li Ch'ang's article, it is not possible to know the exact period he was referring to, but apparently he meant the days immediately following the start of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937 when hundreds of NLVC members fled from metropolitan areas in east and north China. In any event, later references to Wu Heng as a geologist suggest that he was a geology student in one of the major Chinese cities some time between late 1935 and 1937.
Career
Nothing further is known of Wu's career until 1949 when he was working in Heilungkiang province as head of the Department of Industry. Four more years passed before he was again identified, this time as a member of a delegation of Chinese scientists that visited the Soviet Union to inspect the state of Soviet science. The group, led by Ch’ien San-ch’iang, one of China’s greatest scientists (a nuclear physicist), remained in the Soviet Union from February to May 1953. In the following year the Chinese Academy of Sciences initiated the first steps in the establishment of four specialized departments. Wu was named (April 1954) as a deputy director of a preparatory body charged with the task of establishing the academy’s Department of Technology. However, when the departments were fully organized in May-June 1955, Wu was transferred from the Technology Department to the Department of Biology, Geology, and Geography where he became a member of the Department’s Standing Committee a more logical assignment in view of his background as a geologist. (In subsequent years, this department has undergone a number of changes, and since 1961 has been known as the Department of Earth Sciences.)
In the interim, Wu had become a deputy secretary-general of the Academy of Sciences by mid-1954 and in this capacity gave a report before a July 1954 forum of the Academy on the “exchange of experiences” in the study of Soviet sciences. He received his first appointment in the national government in March 1956 when he was named as a deputy secretary-general of the newly established Scientific Planning Commission. The commission was headed by Vicepremier Ch'in I until May 1957 and thereafter by science administrator Nieh Jung-chen. In November 1958 this commission was merged with the National Technological Commission to form the Scientific and Technological Commission; Nieh Jung-chcn was named as chairman, and Wu was one of his vice-chairmen; Wu still retains the position and it occupies most of his time. While the Scientific Planning Commission still existed, Wu participated in two important scientific meetings; at a March 1958 meeting of the commission he reported on research work in 1957 and the plans for 1958, and in November 1958 he presided over another conference dealing with the availability of scientific materials and information.
Although Wu’s major contribution to the PRC after 1959 has been in the field of international scientific and technical liaison, he has continued to play a limited role in domestic scientific affairs. In November 1959 Wu spoke at the first conference on stratigraphy (a branch of geology dealing with the life of past ages as recorded by fossil animals and plants) and was elected as a vice-chairman of the National Stratigraphic Committee. In October 1963 he gave a report before another conference, this one dealing with the publication of books on chemical engineering. Also, in the same month, he spoke at a conference on the exchange of materials among various ministries and scientific research institutions of higher learning in north China. In the latter part of 1963 the Communists referred to an exhibition of scientific and technical information that was sponsored by the China Scientific and Technological Information Research Institute. Wu was named as the director of the preparatory committee for this institute, a fact revealed in the semi-official 1964 yearbook. In the meantime, presumably owing to his heavy work schedule or the State Council’s Scientific and Technological Commission, he was removed (c.1962) as a deputy secretary-general of the Academy of Sciences.
Politics
Beginning in 1959 Wu began to devote a large amount of time to foreign liaison concerning scientific and technical cooperation. With exceptions, most of this work has been with other Communist nations and has frequently taken him abroad. In the five and a half year period from late 1959 to mid-1965, Wu negotiated and signed no less than 21 scientific and technical cooperation agreements. Six of these were signed with the USSR (February I960, June 1961, October 1961, June 1962, June 1963, and June 1965) and five with North Vietnam (December 1959, November 1960, July 1961, July 1962, and July 1963). Among the other Communist countries, one each was signed with the Mongolians (June 1962), the Poles (June 1964), the Rumanians (July 1964), and the East Germans (July 1964). The remaining six were signed with Indonesia (May 1964 and March 1965), the United Arab Republic (August 1964 and January 1965), Algeria (December 1964), and Cambodia (March 1965). About half of these negotiations took place abroad, and thus Wu is among the more experienced of Peking’s scientific administrators in terms of first-hand contact with foreign scientific achievements. To negotiate these agreements, he visited Moscow (1960, 1961, 1962), Hanoi (1961, 1963), Warsaw (1964), Bucharest (1964), East Berlin (1964), Algiers (1964), Cairo (1965), Jakarta (1965), and Phnom Penh (1965).