Tung Pi-wu (1886-), Chinese Communist liaison officer with the Kuomintang (1936-45) and the only Communist member of the Chinese delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in 1945. After 1949 he held such high posts at Peking as vice premier, president of the Supreme People's Court, vice chairman of the People's Republic of China, and head of the party's Central Control Commission.

Huangan hsien, Hupeh, was the birthplace of Tung Pi-wu. His father and an uncle were scholars and teachers, and the Tung family has been described as "landless gentry." Tung Piwu received his early education in the Chinese classics at home and passed the sheng-yuan examinations in 1901. He then went to Wuchang to attend a junior middle school which had a modern curriculum. It was during his years in Wuchang that he first was exposed to reformist and revolutionary political views. In 1911, after attending senior middle school for a few months, he accepted a position as a schoolmaster in Huangchou.

When the Wuchang revolt began in October 1911, Tung immediately left his teaching post and hastened to join the republican forces. He arrived in Wuchang on 13 October, and, according to his own account as told to Nym Wales, "from that day on" was "constantly engaged in revolution as a profession." Then 25, Tung went to work in the financial department of the republican regime established at Wuhan. Near the end of 1911 he joined the T'ungmeng-hui, becoming a member of its Hupeh branch council in 1912. Tung later served as head of the salt tax bureau at Ich'ang. At the time of the so-called second revolution in 1913 {see Li Lieh-chün), he was among those Kuomintang leaders who were forced to flee to Japan. He studied jurisprudence at Tokyo Law College and reportedly supported the 1914 reorganization of the Kuomintang (for details, see Sun Yat-sen) . On orders from Sun Yat-sen, he returned to Hupeh in 1915 to organize resistance to Yuan Shih-k'ai's rule. Tung's activities were discovered, and he was arrested and imprisoned late in 1915. He was released soon after Yuan Shih-k'ai's death in June 1916, whereupon he went back to Tokyo to complete his law studies.

Upon graduation from Tokyo Law College in 1917, Tung returned to China to take part in the so-called constitution protection movement, attempting to influence troops on the Hupeh- Szechwan border to support Sun Yat-sen and his associates at Canton. Sun Yat-sen withdrew from the Kwangsi-dominated Canton regime the following year and went to Shanghai. Tung arrived at Shanghai in the spring of 1919 to report to Sun and found the intellectuals there already affected by the "new culture" spirit emanating from Peking. The heady intellectual atmosphere of the May Fourth period and personal association with the intellectual Communist Li Han-chun caused Tung to decide that Sun Yat-sen's attempts to influence military leaders were essentially impractical and that political action, to be effective in a technologically primitive and largely illiterate country like China, required popular support. Thus, in 1920, with seven other teachers and little money, Tung returned to the Wuhan area to open a middle school for the teaching of paihua [the vernacular]. In the winter of 1920-21, he with Ch'en T'an-ch'iu (q.v.) and the secretary of Comintern representative Gregory Voitinsky formed a Communist group at Wuhan. The various local groups, including that of Mao Tse-tung at Changsha and that of Li Ta-chao at Peking, were brought together at the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China, held at Shanghai in July 1921. Shanghai was, of course, the home of the first Communist nucleus organized by Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.). Tung Pi-wu and Ch'en T'an-ch'iu represented Wuhan at the congress. Of those present at that historic meeting, only Mao Tse-tung and Tung Pi-wu survived to hold high office at Peking after 1949.

Tung Pi-wu and Ch'en T'an-ch'iu returned to Hupeh after the party congress and began the work of creating an organizational framework for the Hupeh branch of the Chinese Communist party (for details, see Ch'en T'an-ch'iu). Following a short trip to Szechwan, a venture described as an attempt to "revive some of my old tactics of winning over the military forces to revolution," Tung returned to Wuchang to raise money for the Wuhan Middle School, still an important center of Communist influence. In 1922 he accompanied his ailing father from Wuchang to the family home in Huangan, where the old man soon died. Tung returned to Wuchang before the outbreak of the workers' strike on the Peking-Hankow line in February 1923, organized by Chang Kuo-t'ao (q.v.) and suppressed by Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.).

During the early 1920's Tung Pi-wu, relying on his T'ung-meng-hui background, was known publicly as a member of the Kuomintang, which, like the Chinese Communist party, was still a clandestine organization in the Wuhan area. After the formation of the Kuomintang- Communist alliance, he worked in the Hupeh provincial headquarters of the Kuomintang, and he attended the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang, held in Canton in January 1926. Early in 1926, when final plans were being made for the Northern Expedition, the Kuomintang sent Pai Ch'ung-hsi, Ch'en Mingshu (qq.v.), and Tung Pi-wu to Changsha to win the support of T'ang Sheng-chih (q.v.). Their success enabled the Northern Expedition forces to launch a much stronger campaign than would have been possible without T'ang's support. After the occupation of the Wuhan cities in September-October 1926, Tung continued to be important in the Hupeh provincial headquarters of the Kuomintang. During the period when the National Government was at Wuhan, he also served as director of the Hupeh provincial department of agriculture and industry. When the left wing of the Kuomintang at Wuhan {see Wang Ching-wei) began purging Communists in areas under its control in mid1927, Tung Pi-wu escaped to the Japanese concession at Hankow. In December, he disguised himself as a sailor, made his way down-river to Shanghai, and sailed to Japan, where he went into hiding in Kyoto. Several months later, repressive measures by the Japanese security police forced him to flee again, this time to the Soviet Union. Traveling by way of Siberia, he reached Moscow in September 1928. He returned to China in 1932, after four years of study at Lenin University, and went to the central Soviet area in Kiangsi, where he became the first director of the Communist party school. In January 1934 he was elected an alternate member of the party Central Committee. With the reorganization of the Juichin government that month, he became a member of its central executive committee and head of the provisional supreme court. During the Long March to Shensi he served as principal health officer. Upon arrival at Wa-yao-pao in northern Shensi late in 1935, he again became head of the Communist party school. He continued to hold that post in 1936-37 as the Communists moved their base to Paoan and finally to Yenan. In December 1936 he was a member of the Communist delegation, headed by Chou En-lai (q.v.), which went to Sian for the negotiations with Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v.) that led to the release of Chiang Kai-shek. After the Sino-Japanese war began in July 1937, Tung Pi-wu accompanied Chou En-lai to the final negotiations which led to the formation of the united front with the Nationalists, announced that September. In 1938 Tung was appointed to the People's Political Council, the consultative body established to mobilize popular support for the war effort. With the National Government's withdrawal to Chungking in October 1938, Tung went to the wartime capital to serve with Chou En-lai and Lin Po-ch'ü (q.v.) in a small Communist liaison mission. In the aftermath of the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941 (see Yeh T'ing; Ku Chu-t'ung), the Chinese Communists withdrew all their members from the People's Political Council except Tung Pi-wu, who continued to make token appearances. On 26 March 1945 the National Government announced that T. V. Soong (q.v.) would head the Chinese delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, California. Tung Pi-wu, who had known T. V. Soong at Hankow in 192 7, was the only Communist named to the ten-man delegation. At San Francisco, however, he took no active part in the conference discussions and made little impression on the gathering. His public and press relations were handled by his two English-speaking Chinese secretaries, Chang Han-fu and Ch'en Chia-k'ang. With their assistance, Tung produced a Memorandum on China's Liberated Areas, published in San Francisco on 18 May, which described government, economics, education, the army, and the workers' movement in the Communist-controlled areas of China. After the conference closed, Tung and his aides toured the United States. In press interviews, Tung called on the United States to help avert civil war in China by calling for a unified, democratic government in China, by investigating Chiang Kai-shek's "misuse of lend-lease supplies against the Chinese Communists," and by planning effective measures to halt civil war if it should break out. In November, he also called for the withdrawal of American troops from China, asserting that they were helping to train and equip Nationalist units to fight the Communists. Tung returned to Yenan in December 1945 having become the only Chinese Communist of rank to have traveled extensively in the United States after the Second World War. His senior position in the Chinese Communist party had been confirmed in his absence at the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party with his election as the seventh-ranking member of the Central Committee and as a member of the Political Bureau. On his return, he immediately became involved in the American mediation effort, the major external force then affecting Chinese politics, and with the preparations for the Political Consultative Conference in Chungking. Late in December, he and Yeh Chienying (q.v.) accompanied Chou En-lai when Chou first called upon General George C. Marshall, special representative of the President of the United States. In January 1946 Tung was a member of the Chinese Communist delegation to the Political Consultative Conference (for details, see Chou En-lai). During 1946 and early 1947 Tung continued to act as Chou En-lai's deputy in the stormy Kuomintang-Communist negotiations. Despite the American mediation effort, the bitter mutual suspicions which divided the two parties led inexorably to civil war rather than civil compromise. The negotiations moved to Nanking in 1946 after the National Government returned there, and they remained in Nationalist territory even after civil war broke out that summer. Chou En-lai left Nanking for Yenan on 19 November, stating that the early resumption of negotiations seemed an impossibility. To preserve a channel of communications, however, a small Communist mission headed by Tung Pi-wu remained in the Nanking area. With Chou En-lai gone and military campaigns developing in north China, Tung Pi-wu initiated no new political approaches. As chairman of the China Liberated Areas Relief Association, he was the ranking Communist spokesman in efforts to channel United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) supplies into Communist areas, which desperately needed medical facilities, supplies, and services. However, difficulties created by both the Nationalists and the Communists frustrated UNRRA efforts to a very great extent. Finally, as military factors came to outweigh relief and rehabilitation considerations, Tung Pi-wu's protests about interference with supply deliveries became increasingly pointless. Early in 1947 he and the other Communists at Nanking withdrew from the Nationalist capital and went to Yenan. On 18 August 1948 Tung Pi-wu became chairman of the North China People's Government, established at Shih-chia-chuang in southern Hopei and designed to unify all areas in north China then under Communist control. The veteran Shansi Communist Po I-po (q.v.) was the first vice chairman of this regime. Following the Communist capture of Tientsin and Peiping at the beginning of 1949, the North China People's Government moved to Peiping on 20 February. Tung continued to serve as its chairman until its dissolution at the end of October. He also played an active role in the preparatory meetings for the establishment of a new national government. In September, he was named to the Chinese Communist party delegation to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. On 22 September, he reported on the drafting of the Organic Law of the Central People's Government, which in effect provided the legal basis of national government in China until 1954. With the establishment of the Central People's Government, Tung became a member of the Government Council, one of four vice premiers—the others being Ch'en Yun, Kuo Mo-jo, and Huang Yenp'ei (qq.v.) —and chairman of the Government Administration Council's committee on political and legal affairs. He also continued to hold prominent welfare posts, becoming director of~the central flood control headquarters and vice chairman, under Madame Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ch'ing-ling, q.v.), of the People's Relief Administration. In 1 953 he was elected chairman of the China Society ofPolitical Science and Law. As senior vice premier at Peking, Tung often presented official reports when Chou En-lai, the premier and foreign minister, was absent from Peking. He also wrote significant theoretical statements on the evolving structure and operation of government in the People's Republic of China. At the time of the governmental reorganization in 1954, he was elected president of the Supreme People's Court. He continued to hold this senior judicial post until the spring of 1959. In 1956 he presented a major report on the Chinese Communist legal system. As an elder statesman of the Chinese Communist party, he also continued to hold important party posts. In addition to his continuing membership in the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, he served as head of the Central Control Commission, which was established as a result of the breach represented by the case of Kao Kang and Jao Shushih (qq.v.). It was the top organ in a nationwide hierarchy of control commissions which were established in 1955 to replace the discipline inspection committees and which were designed to identify, investigate, and punish infractions of political standards. Despite his advanced years, Tung did not avoid travel on public business. In 1954 he headed the Chinese delegation to the tenth anniversary celebrations in Sofia of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. He visited Urumchi in September 1955 as Peking's representative at the establishment of the Sinkiang-Uighur Autonomous Region. And in 1958 he headed the Chinese Communist delegation which attended party conferences in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. In April 1959 Tung Pi-wu and Soong Ch'ingling were elected to the newly created vice chairmanships ofthe People's Republic of China. In this capacity, Tung greeted visiting government delegations, received the credentials of foreign diplomats, and performed other ceremonial duties. In the early and middle 1960's he also continued to head the party Central Control Commission. Tung Tso-pin Orig. Tso-jen T. Yen-t'ang H. P'ing-lu