Li Wei-han $ It ^ Alt. Lo Mai H ig Li Wei-han (1897-), Chinese Communist administrator who became head of the party's united front work department in 1944 and thus was responsible for the political mobilization of non-Communist groups. From 1949 to 1954 he also headed the Commission on Nationalities Affairs, which was responsible for the supervision of non-Chinese minorities. Born at Liling, southwest of Changsha, Li Wei-han received his early education in his native Hunan. At the age of about 20, he joined the Hsin-min hsueh-hui [new people's study society] organized by Ts'ai Ho-sen (q.v.) and Mao Tse-tung at Changsha. In 1919 he joined the work-study movement {see Li Shihtseng) and went to France, where he studied, worked in factories, and participated in the formation of the French branch of the Chinese Communist party.

After returning to China in the early 1920's, Li Wei-han worked under Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese Communist organization in Hunan. In the spring of 1927, when he succeeded Mao as secretary of the Hunan provincial committee of the Chinese Communist party, he reportedly clashed with Mao on such issues as the effectiveness of Communist-led rural uprisings. On 21 May, Hsü K'o-hsiang, the commander of the 33rd Regiment of Ho Chien's Thirty-fifth Army, stationed at Changsha, turned on the Communists and their supporters there, fired on peasant militiamen, and arrested leading Communists. Peasant forces mobilized for an attack on the city, but Li Wei-han ordered them to disperse. He was censured for his "unrevolutionary" actions at the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, held at Moscow in June 1928, but he also was elected {in absentia) to alternate membership on the Central Committee.

Beginning in 1928, Li Wei-han worked for the central apparatus of the Chinese Communist party in Shanghai. He did propaganda work, conducted party training classes, and reportedly did intelligence work with K'ang Sheng (q.v.). About 1932 he went to the central soviet area in Kiangsi, w here he became head of the Central Party School. He supported the policies of the so-called 28 Bolsheviks {see Ch'en Shao-yü), and in August 1933 he wrote an article for the Communist journal Tou-cheng [struggle] in which he criticized the policies of Lo Ming, who headed a small soviet area in western Fukien. Mao Tse-tung supported Lo Ming's policies, and he later criticized the "leftists" in the party for "erroneously advocating" opposition to Lo. Li Wei-han and his Cantonese wife participated in the Long March in 1934-35. Although his influence on policy formation in the Chinese Communist party waned as Mao Tse-tung consolidated control of the party, he continued to play an active administrative role at Yenan. He headed the Central Party School from about 1937 to about 1940, and he served as secretary general of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region government. Beginning in 1944 he headed the party's united front work department, which was responsible for political mobilization of non-Communist elements for Communist objectives. After the W'ar in the Pacific ended, he participated in the meetings of the Political Consultative Conference at Chungking in January 1946. After the negotiations with the Nationalists collapsed, he guided organizational and propaganda programs which were designed to effect the political isolation of the Kuomintang in China.

When the Central People's Government was established in October 1949, Li Wei-han became secretary general of the Government Administration Council, secretary general and member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of several government committees in Peking. From 1949 to 1954 he also headed the Commission on Nationalities Affairs, which was responsible for the supervision of non-Chinese minorities. He served as Peking's chief delegate to the negotiations which resulted in the signing of an agreement on 23 May 1951 that brought Tibet under Chinese Communist control." With the reorganization of the government in 1954, he became secretary general of the National People's Congress and a vice chairman of its Standing Committee, as well as vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Despite his early rise in the Chinese Communist party and his years of service to the Communist cause, Li Wei-han was the only prominent leader who failed to be elected to the Central Committee at the Seventh National Congress in 1945. He was, however, elected to the Central Committee in 1956. In 1959 he served on the presidium of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and in 1960 he held the equivalent position at the National People's Congress. Although he participated in the 1964 meetings of the congress and the conference as a delegate from Sinkiang, he was dropped from their presidium.

Li Wei-han was an able administrator who was particularly important in Communist programs concerned with non-Communist groups. He summarized his work in this area in a June 1956 report to the National People's Congress, "The Democratic Front in China," and in a September 1956 report to the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, "The United Front Work of the Party."