Wang Chia-hsiang (1907-), Russian-trained Communist leader who directed the general political department of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army in Kiangsi and headed the Academy for Military and Political Cadres in Yenan. In 1949-50 he was ambassador to the Soviet Union, and in 1956 he was elected to the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist party. Born into a relatively well-to-do farming family in Chinghsien, Anhwei, Wang Chiahsiang received his early education at missionary schools. In 1924, while an upperclassman at St. Jacob's Senior High School in Wuhu, Anhwei, he led a student protest against compulsory Bible reading and prayer. This activity was part of an anti-Christian movement in China in the 1920's which, spurred on by the May Thirtieth Incident in Shanghai in 1925, culminated in the formation of the Anti- Christian Federation of China and the closing of many missionary schools, including St. Jacob's.

Wang Chia-hsiang subsequently went to Shanghai and enrolled at Shanghai University, where he came under the influence of such Communist instructors as Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai and Ytin Tai-ying (qq.v.). He soon joined the Chinese Communist party, which selected him to go to the Soviet Union to study at the Communist University for Toilers of the East and the Red Institute for Teachers. Wang spent three years at Moscow, where he came to know Ch'en Shao-yü and Ch'in Pang-hsien (qq.v.). Thus, although he never studied formally with Pavel Mif at Sun Yat-sen University, he was regarded as part of the group known as the 28 Bolsheviks.

After attending the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party at Moscow in 1928, Wang Chia-hsiang returned to China by way of Europe. He then worked in Shanghai as an underground agent of the Chinese Communist party. According to a Japanese source, he did liaison work for the All-China Federation of Labor and propaganda activity among the Shanghai textile workers. By 1930 he had become a member of the Kiangsu provincial committee of the Chinese Communist party. About this time, he founded the Workers' 1 Bulletin.

In the summer of 1930 Pavel Mif was made Comintern delegate to China. He arrived in Shanghai accompanied by Ch'en Shao-yü and several of his other Chinese proteges. In the ensuing intra-party struggle, Wang Chiahsiang supported this group's bid for power and opposed the leadership of Li Li-san (q.v.). The 28 Bolsheviks won control of the central party organs in January 1931, at which time Wang was elected to the Central Committee. Later that year, he also received membership in the Political Bureau. In November 1931 he participated in the All-China Congress of Soviets. He was elected to the central executive council of the central soviet government at Juichin, and he later became that government's commissioner of foreign affairs. Because the regime had virtually no foreign dealings, he occupied himself with problems of ideological training and control of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army. As vice chairman of the military council and director of the army's general political department, he set up a system of political work in the army. His achievement was such that one Communist source praised him as "the soul of the Workers and Peasants Red Army." In 1934 Wang Chia-hsiang was wounded in a Nationalist air raid. He participated in the Long March despite considerable physical pain and difficulty. After arriving in northern Shensi in October 1935, he went to the Soviet Union for medical treatment. Wang returned to China in 1937 when the Sino-Japanese war began. He founded Anti-Japanese Military and Political University and later headed the Academy for Military and Political Cadres and the staff of the Eighth Route Army's magazine. He was responsible for the training of hundreds of cadres who were sent to various parts of China and for the syllabi used in teaching them. In 1941 he published a pamphlet entitled The Chinese Commimist Party and the Revolutionary War, which was circulated widely. He contracted tuberculosis about 1941 and had to resign his posts. By 1945 he was well enough to serve as secretary of the party Secretariat. At the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, held at Yenan in 1945, he became an alternate member of the Central Committee. He was promoted to full membership in 1946. At war's end, Wang was one of the first highlevel Communist officials to reach Manchuria, where he headed the propaganda bureau of the party's Northeast bureau. There he met and married Chu Hsi, a medical doctor who in 1948 was superintendent of the Harbin Municipal Hospital. Wang remained in Manchuria until September 1949, when he went to Peiping as a Chinese Communist party delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He was elected to the conference's National Committee.

With the establishment of the Central People's Government in October 1949, Wang Chiahsiang was appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union and deputy foreign minister. In Moscow, he participated in the negotiations, along with Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai (qq.v.), which led to the signing, on 14 February 1950, of the 30-year Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. He was recalled to Peking for reasons of health in the spring of 1951 and was replaced by Chang Wen-t'ien (q.v.). He accompanied Liu Shaoch'i (q.v.) to the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in October 1952, Chou En-lai to the Geneva Conference in April-June 1954, and Chu Teh (q.v.) to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. In 1957 he went with Chou En-lai to Moscow, Warsaw, and Budapest on a mission to seek the reestablishment of Communist bloc solidarity. That November, he accompanied Mao Tse-tung to Moscow for the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution. When Nikita Khrushchev visited Peking in July-August 1958, Wang took part in the official talks with the Soviet premier. The four other Chinese participants in these discussions were Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, P'eng Te-huai, and Ch'en Yi (1901 — ; q.v.).

In March 1959 Wang was a member of the Chinese delegation to the Third Congress of the Polish Communist party in Warsaw. After this congress, he and Wu Hsiu-ch'üan went to England for the Twenty-sixth National Congress of the British Communist party. In addition to his many trips abroad, Wang Chia-hsiang often received foreign Communist leaders at Peking. Although he lost his foreign ministry post when the State Council was reorganized in September 1959, he continued to make official appearances in connection with the. visits of foreign dignitaries. In 1956 he was elected to the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist party, and he represented the party at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conferences in 1959 and 1964. His participation in government and party affairs was gradually curtailed in the 1950's and early 1960's by failing health. Wang Ching-ch'un T. Chao-hsi West. C. C. Wang