Yang Hsien-tung, a non-Communist, is one of Communist China’s leading agricultural experts and is a well-trained and highly experienced specialist in the production of cotton. He stands as a prime example of the utilization by the Communists of a person with special skills, which have a high priority in China.
Education
Although Yang’s father was a farmer, he was presumably wealthy enough to send his son to Nanking University where he spent the years from 1923 to 1927. Yang then worked as an experimental cotton grower for an experimental station in Hupeh (1928-29), then served during the period from 1930 to 1934 as technical director of the Hupeh Cotton Improvement Commission and, concurrently, as a member of the Cotton Industry Committee of China. Following this he went to the United States where he received a master's degree at Cornell in 1935 and a doctorate in 1937. He immediately returned to China, where he assumed the directorship of the Hupeh Cotton Improvement Station (1937- 1939).
Career
Presumably because of the wartime situation, Yang went to southwest China in 1939 where the Nationalist government had its provisional capital and assumed the position of director of the Department of Agricultural Economics of the Szechwan Provincial Agricultural Institute. He held this post until 1942 and then by 1943 was a research fellow and director of the Division of Marketing and Extension of the Wood Oil Research Institute, an organization subordinate to the Foreign Trade Commission in Chungking, the Nationalist capital. Also by 1943 he was a member of the China Cotton Improvement Association, an official of the Cotton vStatistical Association, and a member of the Agricultural Association of China.
At the end of the war Yang returned to Hupeh where he became the deputy director of the Hupeh Regional Office of the China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (19451948). Then, when the Communists conquered the mainland in 1949, he remained in Hupeh and offered his services to the new government. Prior to the establishment of the central Communist government in the early fall of 1949, Yang remained in Hupeh where he served as the dean of the College of Agriculture of Wuhan University. However, he took part in the formation of the national government in the latter half of 1949 and since that time has remained in Peking. He attended the initial meetings of the CPPCC in September 1949 as a representative of the ^Central China Liberated Area, and when the central government was staffed in the next month, he was made a vice-minister of Agriculture. As of the raid-1960's, Yang was the only person at the ministerial or vice-ministerial level who had served continuously in the Ministry of Agriculture since the establishment of the central government in 1949. Yang is one of the exceedingly few men who have served at this level in any ministry for this length of time, presumably because of his reliability and competence.
In his capacity as a veteran agronomist, Yang has attended a large number of conferences related to the production of cotton, China most important industrial crop. He spoke, for example, on ways to improve cotton-growing techniques at a conference in March 1954, and in August 1956 he headed the Chinese delegation at the eighth International Plant Quarantine and Protection Conference held in Peking. Similar instances occurred in February 1961 when he journeyed to Wuchang, Hupeh, to address another conference dealing with the improvement of agricultural production, and in December 1961 when he spoke in Changsha, Hunan, at the first National Conference of the China Crops Society.
Yang has also been an especially prominent figure in several of the learned societies devoted to agriculture. From about 1953 to 1956 he headed the preparatory committee of the important China Society of Agronomy, and when this organization was established on a permanent basis in March 1956, he was named as the president, a position he still retains. Like most learned societies, the Society of Agronomy was subordinate to the All-China Federation of Scientific Societies (ACFSS). In the central organization of the ACFSS, Yang served from 1953 to 1958 as a deputy director of the Organization Department. And when the ACFSS was merged with another organization to form the China Scientific and Technical Association (September 1958), Yang was elected to its National Committee, another position he continues to hold. He was also a speaker at the inaugural- meeting in February 1956 of the preparatory committee of the China Agricultural Mechanization Association, although he has not held any senior position in the national headquarters of this body. In an apparent attempt to coordinate all phases of agricultural research, the Communists established the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in March 1957 under the presidency of the late Ting Ying, one of China's top rice-growing experts. Yang was named at this time to the advisory Academic Committee of the newly founded Academy.
Politics
Although he has been an active participant in the affairs of the academic community, Yang's major assignments have centered around his work as a government official. In addition to his post as a vice-minister of Agriculture, he received two additional assignments in the midfifties one in the executive branch of government and the other in the legislative branch. In the period from May 1957 to November 1958 he served as a member of the State Council’s Scientific Planning Commission, headed by science administrator and Vice-premier Nieh Jung-chen. His legislative post has been as a deputy from Honan, a cotton-growing province, to the First NPC (1954-1959), to the Second NPC (1959-1964), as well as the Third NPC, which opened in December 1964. Yang has been a more active participant than most in the annual sessions of the NPC, having served as a member of the Motions Examination Committee, which is convened on an ad hoc basis during each session of the NPC. He has also been a speaker before the full Congress sessions; for example, at a session of the Second NPC in April 1959, Yang addressed the Congress, claiming that in 1958 China had surpassed the United States in cotton production.
Like many Chinese officials, Yang has lent his name to “people’s” organizations devoted to one or another aspect of foreign affairs. From its formation in February 1956, he served as a member of the Asian Solidarity Committee of China (known as the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee since May 1958), and when the China Peace Committee was reorganized in July 1958, Yang was added as a member of the National Committee. However, he was dropped from these organizations when they were both reorganized in June 1965. Yang has written on occasion for the Chinese press; notable examples appeared in the English-language People's China (February 16, 1954) and the June 1963 issue of Chung-kuo nung-pao (Chinese agricultural bulletin). The former dealt with problems related to growing cotton and the latter with the topic of plant protection.
Membership
Yang's work for the national government has also extended to the field of international scientific liaison. His first venture into this field was more propagandistic than scientific as an agricultural scientist, he was an obvious choice for membership in a group led by the minister of Public Health (Li Te-ch'uan) in 1952 to North Korea to “investigate the American imperialist crimes of bacteriological warfare,” a major facet of one of Peking’s most extensive propaganda campaigns conducted during the Korean War. In September of 1953 Yang was a member of China’s delegation to Budapest for the third conference of the Communist-backed World Federation of Scientific Workers (to which the Chinese were affiliated through the above-mentioned All-China Federation of Scientific Societies). He accompanied Vice-premier Li Hsien-nien to Albania in November-December 1954 to take part in celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of the “liberation” of Albania from Nazi Germany. While there he signed a protocol with Albanian officials covering technical cooperation during the year 1955. Before Li Hsien- nien took this group to Tirana, Sino-Albanian relations were virtually non-existent. After that time, however, and particularly during the 1960’s, Sino-Albanian relations grew apace. Yang Hsien-tung has been one of the more active Chinese officials who has had continuing contacts with Albanian officials. In June 1958 in Peking, he headed the Chinese side in negotiations with an Albanian delegation that led to the signing of another agreement on scientific and technical cooperation. Similarly, in March 1964 in Peking, Yang signed still another technical agreement with the Albanians, this one relating to cooperation in agricultural endeavors. Logically, therefore, Yang also serves as a council member of the China-Albania Friendship Association, a position in which he was identified as early as September 1963 when welcoming a group of Albanian visitors to China.
Connections
In private life, Yang married Viola H. C. Tang in 1940. Nothing further is known about this marriage apart from the fact that they had one child by 1943.
