Fan Ch'ang-chiang (1908-), a leading Communist journalist who first achieved prominence as a Ta Kung Pao correspondent covering northwest China (1933-38). He then became a dominant figure in the Communist news-propaganda services. After 1949 he held such posts at Peking as deputy director of the News Administration and president of the Peking School of Journalism.

Born into a gentry family. Fan Ch'ang-chiang received his early education in his native district of Neichiang, Szechwan, and attended middle school at Chengtu, the provincial capital. He studied in Nanking at the Kuomintang party affairs school, the forerunner of the Central Political Institute, from mid- 1927 until 1929.

After leaving Nanking, Fan went north to attend National Peking University. In order to help pay his living and tuition expenses, he wrote articles for the Ta Kung Pao, which was becoming popular in north China. He later became a regular reporter on the newspaper and a protege of Chang Chi-luan (q.v.), then the chief editor of the Ta Kung Pao. Japanese aggression in north China during the 1930's turned the attention of the paper to national defense problems, and Fan was assigned to visit the then comparatively unknown provinces of the northwest. His reports from that region to the Ta Kung Pao in the years from 1933 to 1935 were published in book form as Chung-kuo te hsi-pei chiao [the northwest corner of China]. The book reached its fifth printing within a few months. It described Fan's journey from Chengtu to Lanchow and gave detailed comment on the life and customs of the Muslim and Mongol inhabitants of Kansu and the other northwestern provinces. In a preface written for the fourth printing of the book, Fan commented on the stated Japanese aim of penetrating northwest China in order to prevent the southward expansion of Communism, arguing that Tokyo's true aim was "the malicious expansion of Japanese military aggression against China." After the Sino-Japanese war began in mid1937, Fan Ch'ang-chiang became known for his vivid reporting from key battle fronts. He reported on the Chinese defeat in southern Chahar and on the worsening situation at Hankow. After Wuhan fell to the Japanese in the autumn of 1938, Fan left the Ta Kung Pao, reportedly as the result of personality clashes. He then went to Changsha, where he joined with some radical newsmen in forming the Young Journalists Society. This group established the International News Agency (Kuo-chi hsin-wen she) and later moved from Changsha to Kweilin, Kwangsi. In 1941, after the New Fourth Army Incident, Fan Ch'ang-chiang was arrested by the Nationalist authorities for pro-Communist leanings. His news agency was closed. After being released, he fled to Hong Kong and became editor of the pro-Communist Hua-shang Pao. When the Japanese occupied the colony in 1942, Fan left for the Communist-controlled areas of the lower Yangtze valley. In the remaining war years he directed the central China branch of the Communist New China News Agency and headed a school of journalism at Huaiyang, Kiangsu, in the Communist-controlled Kiangsu-Anhwei border region.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Fan became the spokesman for the Chinese Communist party news ofüce in Shanghai. During the Kuomintang-Communist negotiations of 1946, Fan headed the Nanking branch of the New China News Agency and served in the Communist liaison mission at Nanking. Although Chou En-lai, the senior Communist negotiator, left Nanking in November 1946, a small Communist liaison group headed by Tung Pi-wu (q.v.) remained there. The members of this group, including Fan Ch'ang-chiang, finally left Nationalist territory in March 1947 for northern Shensi. Fan worked in Shensi with Liao Ch'eng-chih (q.v.) and Ch'ien Chun-jui in the party propaganda apparatus.

By the time the Communists gained national power in 1949, Fan Ch'ang-chiang's reputation as an experienced Communist newsman was well established. He was associated with the Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily], the organ of the Communist party Central Committee, in Peking; and after Shanghai was taken in the spring of 1949, he helped to establish the Chieh-fang jih-pao [liberation daily news] there. After the establishment of the Central People's Government in October 1949, Fan Ch'angchiang became deputy director of the News Administration at Peking and president of the Peking School of Journalism. From 1952 to 1954 he was deputy secretary general of the culture and education committee of the Government Administration Council. He later became deputy director of the cultural and educational office of the State Council and vice chairman of the Scientific and Technological Commission. During the Sino-Japanese war, Fan Ch'angchiang married Shen P'u, the daughter of Shen Chün-ju (q.v.). Fan Wen-Ian T. Chung-yün Pen. ^Vu-po Xl