Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
Wu Kai-chih was educated locally.
There are no further accounts of Wu's activities until October 1949 when the PRC was established and he was appointed a deputy chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court in tiie new central government. Wu was identified at that time as a Party member and the former'' director of the Military Legal Section (chiin-fa ch'u) under the PLA General Headquarters. When established in 1949, the Supreme Court was headed by Shen Chiin-ju, a well-known leader of the China Democratic League. The only other deputy chief justice, Chang Chih-jang, is also a non-Communist, and thus Wu was the only senior court official who belonged to the CCP. One of Wu's few public appearances as deputy chief justice occurred in July- August 1950 when he spoke at the First National Legal Conference on the subject of trials by people’s courts. From 1949 to 1954 he was also a member of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (chaired by Tung Pi-wu), one of the most important subordinate organs of the Government Administration Council (the cabinet). Wu attended the third session of the First CPPCC in October-November 1951. A major topic discussed at this meeting was the necessity to economize in view of the strains placed upon the economy by the Korean War. Soon afterwards, in December 1951, the Central Austerity Examination Committee was established under the chairmanship of economic specialist Po I-po. Wu was named to membership on this committee, which was quite active in late 1951 and the first half of 1952.
In September 1954, at the initial session of the First NPC, the Supreme Court was reorganized and Wu was dropped as a deputy chief justice. He attended the First NPC (1954-1959) as a deputy from Shantung but was not re-elected to the Second NPC, which first met in April 1959. In December 1954 he became a member of the Second National Committee of the CPPCC as a representative of the CCP. He was again a Party representative to the Third CPPCC National Committee (1959-1964), but on the Fourth National Committee, which opened its first session in December 1964 he attended as a “specially invited person” rather than as a Party representative. In addition, for the second through the fourth CPPCC terms he has served on the Standing Committee, the governing body when the National Committee is not in session. From 1957 to 1959 Wu was also a member of the CPPCC’s Local Work Committee, which investigates the activities of the provincial and municipal branches of the CPPCC.
Wu received his first important Party post in 1956. At the first plenary session of the Eighth Central Committee (held September 28, the day after the Eighth Party Congress closed), he was named to membership on the Party’s Central Control Commission, which is headed by one of his former superiors, Tung Pi-wu. Five years later, in 1961, he was identified as a member of the Commission’s Standing Committee, thus being placed among the principal officers of this important organization, which is responsible for Party supervision and discipline. Since then Wu’s activities have seldom been reported in the Chinese press, probably because of the element of security that surrounds the work of the Control Commission.