Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
Wu graduated from a middle school and then became active in the Communist movement by 1930 when he studied at a secret Party school in the French concession in Shanghai. Among his fellow students at the school was Li Ch’iang, presently a vice-minister of Foreign Trade. After this training, Wu, already a Party member, was sent to the Kiangsi Soviet area where he became the political director of the Red Army Central Radio Station. He almost certainly made the Long March of 1934-35, because by the mid-1930’s he was stationed with Red Army units in northern Shensi.
During the Si no-Japanese War the Communist Eighth Route Army had a Liaison Office in Sian, capital of Shensi. Wu worked in this office where he served under one of the ranking Communists of the period, Lin Po-ch'u, who for a period headed this office. One of Wu’s principal tasks in this job was to arrange for supplies to be sent to Communist forces in north Shensi, where the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army was located. Japanese government reports also claim that he served during the war as a liaison officer for the New Fourth Army stationed in east-central China. At some time before the war ended he was also in Yenan where his knowledge of communications was again utilized; he was reported to have been in charge of Communist radio activities in the Communist capital.
In July 1945 a decision was taken in Yenan to establish relief organizations for the Communist-held areas, and by January 1946 such organizations had been established on a preparatory basis in eight of the Communist “liberated areas.” In April 1946 in Peking the China Liberated Areas Relief Association (CLARA) was formally established; the Communists were able to take these organizational steps in the city of Peking by virtue of the cease-fire agreement that had been worked out between Communists and Nationalists in January 1946 by U.S. General George C. Marshall. In the meantime, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) had already begun operations in China during the final stages of the war in cooperation with the China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRRA), which was sponsored by the Chinese Nationalist Government. With the formation of the Communist-backed CLARA in April 1946, Wu was named as the CLARA secretary-general and when the CLARA gained permission to open an office in Shanghai (July 1946), Wu was made the head of this office, a position which presumably brought him into regular contact with UNRRA officials.
Under the terms of the above-mentioned truce agreement, the Peking Executive Headquarters was established, and under this Headquarters were a number of specialized organs, one of which was the Relief Liaison Group. Concurrently with his CLARA tasks in Shanghai, Wu was also named as the Communist representative on the Relief Liaison Group, holding the simulated rank of major general. CCP-KMT relations had, by 1947, deteriorated into full-scale civil war and although the Peking Executive Headquarters was dissolved early in 1947, Wu and other CLARA officials were allowed to remain in Shanghai. Finally, however, they were expelled in December 1947 and sent to Communist-held areas. Yenan, the Communist capital, had been captured in early 1947, but in November 1947 (just one month prior to Wu’s expulsion from Shanghai) the Communists had captured the important city of Shihchiachuang in southwest Hopeh. Wu's men from Shanghai and other CLARA officials who had been in Yenan were united in Shihchiachuang where they were to remain until September 1949 when they moved to Peking, then in Communist hands. (In that same month Wu attended the first session of the CPPCC in Peking, at which time the PRC was established.
In October 1956, Wu was appointed as a vice-minister of Public Health, the minister at the time was Miss Li Te-ch’Uan, under whom he was also serving in the Red Cross Society. When the State Council underwent a major reshuffle of personnel in September 1959, he was not reappointed. However, shortly afterwards he was again named as a vice-minister (January 1959). Although he held this government position during the late 1950's and early 1960's, most of his time was apparently devoted to his quasi-official positions in the mass organizations and, further, he received still more such positions during this period. He was named, in July 1958, to National Committee membership on the China Peace Committee and to Standing Committee membership in March 1960 within the China-Latin America Friendship Association. He was also often in attendance when foreign visitors were in China, particularly if some aspect of relief and rehabilitation work was involved. Since 1959 Wu has also served on the CPPCC National Committee. CPPCC membership is by either political parties or by functional groups, logically, Wu has been a representative of relief and welfare organizations, serving on the Third National Committee (1959-1964) and then reelected to the Fourth Committee, which first met in late 1964.
In September 1962, at the 10th Party Plenum, it was decided to strengthen the work of the Party Control Commissions at all levels and to expand the size of the Central Control Commission headed by Politburo member Tung Pi-wu, one of the Party founders. Membership on the commission is governed in part by functional categories (i.e., military men, Party propagandists, women leaders). Wu was named to the commission at this time (as well as to alternate Standing Committee membership), so that he probably has major responsibilities for discipline and inspection in the many relief and welfare organizations in China. Not long afterwards (April 1963) he was removed as a vice-minister of Public Health, but his prior appointment to the Control Commission suggests that he was being relieved of administrative tasks in favor of the more important work on the Control Commission. As in the case of many members of this sensitive commission, he has not made many public appearances since his appointment.
In 1950 the Communists were making a serious bid for membership in the United Nations, and during that year a number of appointments (all in vain) were made to the UN and its subordinate organizations. One such appointment was made in August 1950 when Wu was appointed as Peking’s representative-designate to the International Children Emergency Fund. In the same month he was named to the Standing Committee of the Chinese Red Cross Society. In October 1961 he was elevated to a vice-presidency, but in view of the fact that Miss Li Te-ch'uan, who was of little political power, was president of the society until 1965, it is apparent that Wu was and is one of the most important leaders within this organization.
It was in October 1950 that Wu took the first of six trips abroad, each directly or closely related to the Red Cross Society. He led a Chinese government delegation to the 21st Council meeting of the International Red Cross (IRC) in Monaco (Li Te-ch’iian led the Chinese Red Cross Society delegation). He was a member of another delegation to an IRC meeting in Toronto in July-August 1952 (thereby becoming one of the few Chinese Communists to have visited North America) and led a group to Geneva in December 1952 for still another Red Cross meeting. In October-November 1954 he visited Japan as a member of Li Te-ch’iian’s Red Cross Society delegation; he led another Red Cross group to Yugoslavia in September 1957; and finally, in November-December 1961, he headed a group to Japan for talks with survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and to tour areas hit by a typhoon. This last trip was made as an official of the Chinese People’s Relief Administration.