Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
He was educated locally.
Because of seven post-1960 trips abroad, Wu might now be described as an Afro-Asian specialist. Among these trips were those to two extremely important conferences, the second and third Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Conferences (see under Yang Shuo) held in Guinea in April 1960 and Tanganyika in January 1963 and led by Central Committee members Liao Ch'eng-chih and Liu Ning-i, respectively. Wu was also one of the observers at the Third All-African People’s Conference held in Cairo in March 1961. He has also been a participant in the Communist-sponsored peace movement, he attended a ''general disarmament and peace's conference in Moscow in July 1962 and the 10th "World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Japan in July-August 1964. Like many Chinese Communist travelers during the early 1960’s, Wu attended conferences at which his colleagues openly clashed with Soviet delegates. Two examples include the above-mentioned conferences in Tanganyika and Japan (see under Liu Ning-i).
Wu’s main organizational affiliation through the 1950's was with the two leading youth organizations, the New Democratic Youth League (NDYL, known as the Communist Youth League after 1957) and the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth (ACFDY, renamed the All-China Youth Federation in 1958). In the NDYL, the training ground for CCP members, Wu served as the deputy director of the International Liaison Department from 1950 to 1953 when he was promoted to director, holding this post until at least 1957. And in the ACFDY he served as director of its International Liaison Department from 1953 to 1958, thus being placed in control of international youth liaison work (in the two key youth organizations) for most of the mid-1950’s. Within the Youth League he was also a Central Committee member from the congress held in 1953 to that held in 1964, and from 1957 to 1964 was a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee. Similarly, in the ACFDY he was a member of the National Committee from 1953 to 1962, of the Standing Committee from 1958 to 1962 and was one of the vicechairmen from 1958 to 1962. Although these affiliations carry into 1962 and 1964 (when youth congresses were held), he had virtually nothing to do with youth work by 1960.
Finally, in December 1964 he was added to one more “people’s” association dealing with external relations, the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, Wu was elected to the Standing Committee of the National Council at the Institute’s fourth congress. Wu’s career reached a new plateau by January 1964 when he was identified as a leading functionary” of a department under the Party Central Committee. This phrase is used for a number of fairly senior Party officials who work in fields which the Chinese apparently wish to conceal. From the outlines of Wu's career, however, it is probable that he works in a Party international liaison office, perhaps with an emphasis on African affairs. Tt seems significant that the first two times he was identified in this post it was in connection with a visiting Algerian official. In fact, it is probable that he already held this post in December 1963 when he accompanied Foreign Minister Ch'en I to Kenya for its independence celebrations.
In late 1964, Wu received two more appointments, one official and one more in a semi-official “peopie’s” organization. In September he was elected a deputy from Anhwei to the Third NPC, which opened its first session in December 1964, and in October he was named to the Board of Directors of the Political Science and Law Association of China.
From 1954, Wu began to participate in the “people’s” organizations which unofficially manage a large and increasingly important segment of Chinese foreign affairs. In May 1954 he became a member of the board of directors of the newly formed Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, a post he presumably continues to hold. When an ad hoc preparatory committee was formed in January 1956 to participate in the 16th Olympic Games (held in Melbourne), Wu was named as a member, although the effort proved to be in vain because the Chinese Communists did not take part in the games. He was a member of another ad hoc committee in 1956, this one formed in November, to ltsupport Egypt's resistance to aggression” by Israel, England, and France over the Suez Canal. In April 1960, he was named to the council of the newly established China-Africa Peopled Friendship Association. This was formed just a few days after Wu left with Central Committee member Liao Ch’eng-chih to attend the second Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Guinea. Less than a year later, in January 1961, he was added as a member of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Committee of China, that is, of the national chapter of the international Afro-Asian Peopled Solidarity Council in which he had already been participating.