Yang Hsiu-feng

Background

Yang Hsiu-feng (also known as Yang Hsiu- lin) was born in 1898 in Ch'ien-an on the Luan River in eastern Hopeh.

Education

He was a graduate of the Department of History and Geography at the National Peking Normal University. In 1929 he enrolled at the University of Paris, and on returning to Peking he lectured on history at Hopeh Teachers' College for Women. He then became commissioner of education in the provincial government of Hopeh and at about the same time was a professor at the Hopeh Provincial College of Law and Commerce in Tientsin. From 1933 to 1937 Yang was a professor at his alma mater and was teaching there in the winter of 1935-36 when the December Ninth student movement erupted in protest against Japanese penetration into north China. The National Liberation Vanguard, a militant student organization founded in 1936, which soon came under Communist domination (see under Li Ch'ang), grew out of the movement. The National Salvation Association, a liberal organization founded in May 1936, had a wider popular base and cooperated with the students. Yang belonged to the association and was also associated with the Liberation Vanguard, which a number of his students joined. He talked to students at the summer camps held by the Liberation Vanguard just prior to the outbreak of war, trying to alert them to the dangers of Japanese aggression. Communist sources describe him as a progressive professor at that time.

Career

In 1939 Yang finally joined the CCP, and in the following year a liaison office was established to coordinate his South Hopeh Administrative Office with areas to the west known as the T'ai- hang and the Tai-yueh bases. At a meeting held in July 1941 these three areas were linked with other Communist bases on the Hopeh- Shantung-Honan border to form the Shansi-Hopeh-Shantung-Honan (Chih-Chi-Lu-Yii) Border Region Government. Yang was named as the chairman, a position he held until 1948, while the vice-chairman were Po I-po and Jung Tzu-ho.

In the postwar period the Communist-held areas throughout China were gradually expanded and merged with territories in adjoining liberated areas. In north China, the Chin-Chi-Lu-Yil Border Region was extended north until in November 1947 it was linked to the Shansi-Chahar- Hopeh Border Region. The areas were merged officially in May 1948 and the merger was formalized in August at the North China Provisional People’s Congress. Yang was the principal speaker for his border region and Sung Shao- wen was the spokesman for the Shansi- Chahar-Hopeh Border Region. Yang also served as a member of the Congress’ Presidium and Credentials Committee. At the close of the meetings the short-lived North China People's Government (NCPG) was established. It was headquartered in the Shih-chia-chuang area of western Hopeh until it moved to Peking in February 1949 shortly after that city fell to the Communists. The NCPG functioned as a rough approximation of the central government until it was abolished immediately after the inauguration of the PRC in October 1949. Tung Pi-wu was the NCPG chairman and Po I-po was the first vice-chairman. Lan Kung-wu, a prominent non-Communist cultural and educational leader, was the second vice-chairman and Yang Hsiu- feng the third. In addition Yang served in the government as chairman of the Peopled Supervision Committee and as a member of the Finance and Economics and Higher Education Committees.

During the three years that Yang was the Hopeh governor, the provincial capital was located at Paoting. However, it appears that he spent at least part of his time in Tientsin where he served after March 1950 as vice-chairman of the municipal government's Finance and Economics Committee. In the 1951-52 period he held a similar post in the Hopeh Provincial Government. In December 1951 the Communists established a north China regional government (to replace the Ministry of North China Affairs), which was known as the North China Administrative Committee. Yang was a member of this new governmental apparatus until it was reorganized in February 1953, by which time he had already assumed a new post in Peking.

In November 1952 Yang transferred to Peking where he assumed his first high post in the national bureaucracy as vice-minister of Higher Education. In this position he was ostensibly subordinate to Ma Hsu-lun, a prominent nonCommunist educator who is chairman of the China Association for Promoting Democracy (one of the political parties that is nominally on par with the CCP). Less than two years later, when the constitutional government was established at the first session of the First NPC in September 1954, Yang succeeded Ma in the Higher Education Ministry. In February 1958 the ministry was merged with the Ministry of Education to form a new Ministry of Education, with Yang retaining the portfolio. This arrangement continued until July 1964 when the Communists re-created the former Education and Higher Education ministries. Yang again headed the latter, but shortly thereafter, in January 1965, he relinquished the post to Chiang Nan- hsiang, Yang in turn replaced Hsieh Chueh-tsai as president of the Supreme People’s Court. At an even higher administrative level within the State Council, Yang became deputy director in January 1957 of the Second Staff Office, which is responsible for directing and coordinating the work of the State Council’s various commissions, ministries, and bureaus that deal with education and culture. The Staff Office was redesignated the Culture and Education Office in 1959. Yang was finally removed as a deputy director in mid-1965, half a year after he had assumed the presidency of the Supreme Court. During his nearly 13 years as one of the PRC’s leading educational administrators, Yang made frequent public appearances and addressed many different conferences and government bodies (e.g., the annual NPC sessions) on educational affairs. Several of his speeches and reports are conveniently collected in Stewart Fraser’s Chinese Communist Education.

In addition to his work in the educational bureaucracy Yang has also held other government posts. From 1954 to 1959 he represented his native Hopeh as a deputy to the First NPC; he was re-elected to the Second NPC (19591964) but not to the Third. In the executive arm of the government he was made a member of the State Councirs Scientific Planning Committee when it was formed in March 1956, serving as a vice-chairman from May 1957 until November 1958 when the Committee was reorganized into the Scientific and Technological Commission.

Politics

Representing the North China “liberated area,” in September 1949 Yang attended the inaugural session of the CPPCC, the organization that brought the new central government into existence on October 1. While the meetings were in session, he served on the ad hoc committee that drafted the Organic Law of the CPPCC, one of the key documents adopted at that time. Finally, from this time until 1954 he was a member of the CPPCC Standing Committee, which was responsible for the affairs of the CPPCC when the National Committee was not in session. However, in the early years of the PRC his primary responsibilities were at the regional, provincial, and municipal levels. Already in August 1949, two months before the establishment of the national government, Yang had become governor of Hopeh province, a position he retained until November 1952 when he was replaced by the province’s leading Party official, Lin T’ieh.

Yang has had considerable experience in foreign relations. In late 1955 and early 1956 he helped negotiate a Sino-Polish Cultural Agreement with a Polish delegation, and in November 1957 he signed the Sino-Polish Educational Cooperation agreement for the year 1958. In Feb- ruary-March 1958 he led a delegation of educational experts to Poland, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Yang became chairman of the newly inaugurated China-Vietnam Friendship Association in September 1958 and has twice visited North Vietnam in this connection. In September-October 1959 he led a small delegation there to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the PRC’s establishment. Three years later, in August-September 1962, he again visited Hanoi, this time to celebrate the 17th anniversary of the founding of the North Vietnamese Government. In September-October 1963 Yang led an education delegation to Albania. Perhaps his most important trip abroad took place from April to May 1964 when the educational group he led visited the United Arab Republic (UAR), Algeria, Mali, Zanzibar, and Guinea. In the UAR, Mali, and Guinea he signed cultural cooperation agreements.

Membership

In September 1956, at the CCP Eighth National Congress, Yang was a member of the presidium (steering committee), and at the conclusion of the Congress he was elected a member of the Central Committee.

Connections

Yang's wife Sun Wen-shu studied in Japan. She fled Peking with Yang when the Sino-Japa- nese War broke out in mid-1937 working with him in the resistance in south Hopeh, and presumably also in the Chin-Chi-Lu-Yu Border Region. From 1949 to 1953 Sun was an alternate member of the First Executive Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Women (ACFDW). She became a full member at the Second ACFDW Congress in 1953 and was re-elected at the Third Congress in 1957. From January 1955 to June 1959 she was assistant minister of Education, and since 1959 she has been a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC.

Spouse:

Sun Wen-shu