Ho Chung-han (5 January 1900-), directed poUtical training in the Nationalist armies (1931-38) and headed the labor bureau of the ministry of social affairs (1942-47). In Taiwan, he served as minister of communications (195054) and chairman of the Kuomintang's Central Planning Committee (1962-).

Yochow (Yoyang), Hunan, was the birthplace of Ho Chung-han. After receiving his early education in his native place, he went to Wuchang in 1916 to enter a special middle school for Hunan provincials. From 1917 to 1919 he also worked as a student reporter for a news agency at Wuchang, and he participated in student activities at the time of the May Fourth Alovement of 1919. In the winter of 1920, when Tung Pi-wu and Ch'en T'an-ch'iu (qq.v.) organized a small Marxist study group at W^uchang, Ho joined it.

Ho Chung-han went to Shanghai in the spring of 1921 to study Russian. In September 1921 he was elected a delegate to the Congress of the Toilers of the East, and he went to Moscow late in that year with Chang Kuo-t'ao (q.v.), one of the founders of the Chinese Communist party. Ho remained in the Soviet Union for about seven months, but he did not join the Chinese Communist party.

Ho Chung-han returned to China in the spring of 1922 and became a reporter for the People's News Agency at Wuchang. After the agency was forced to close in 1923, he went to Changsha to establish a news agency. At that time, T'an Yen-k'ai (q.v.) was preparing to oust Chao Heng-t'i (q.v.), the governor of Hunan. The initial success of T'an's campaign and Chao's withdrawal from Changsha enabled Ho Chung-han to spread nationalistic propaganda. But the venture proved to be short-lived. Wu P'ei-fu soon intervened in the area and restored Chao Heng-t'i to power. Although Chao closed the news agency, Ho continued to be active in youth affairs at Changsha and became a special correspondent for a Shanghai paper.

In the spring of 1924 Ho Chung-han applied for admission to the Whampoa Military Academy. He entered the academy in May 1924 as a member of its first class. After being graduated in November, he was assigned to work in the political department of a recently established branch of the academy at Canton. His classmate Li Chih-lung was assigned to similar duties.

In 1925-26 the Kuomintang and the Communists competed for political control of the Whampoa cadets. In January 1925, Soviet adviser Borodin and the Chinese Communists established the Young Soldiers Association to bring the cadets under Communist direction. Ho Chung-han, then the chief editor of the Kuo-min ko-ming chou-k'an [national revolutionary weekly], objected to the criticism of Sun Yatsen which appeared in publications of the Young Soldiers Association after Sun's death in March 1925; he proposed that the young officers of China pay more attention to the ideas of Sun Yat-sen than to alien ideas propounded by Marx, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, and others. Together with Miao Pin (q.v.) and others, he suggested that the Sun Yat-sen Study Society be formed. Chiang Kai-shek and Liao Chung-k'ai, the senior Kuomintang representative in charge of political affairs at Whampoa, approved the idea. The formation of the new society was postponed for a time, however, because Ho Chunghan and Miao Pin were assigned to participate in the Kuomintang's campaign against the forces of Ch'en Chiung-ming (q.v.) in eastern Kwangtung. Despite personal and political disagreements during the period of preparation, plans for the formation of the society moved forward steadily. The organization was established on 29 December 1925, with its headquarters at Canton. Ho Chung-han was its chairman.

Ho Chung-han was serving as party representative in the 1st Regiment of the 1st Division of the National Revolutionary Army. However, he had passed the examinations given at Wliampoa for study in the Soviet Union. Despite the continuing friction between the Sun Yat-sen Study Society and the Communistinfluenced Young Soldiers Association at Canton, Ho went to Moscow in early 1926 and enrolled at the Frunze Military Academy. On 20 March, Chang Kai-shek took action against both the Chinese Communists and the Soviet advisers in China as a result of the Chung-shan incident, in which Li Chih-lung was impHcated. On 21 May 1926, on orders from Chiang Kai-shek, both the Sun Yat-sen Study Society and the Young Soldiers Association were dissolved. After graduation from the Frunze Academy, Ho returned to China in January 1928. Chiang Kai-shek assigned him to command the cadets unit at the military training center at Hangchow, which had been established to accommodate cadets from the later classes at Whampoa who had fled from Canton during the disorders of late 1927.

After the inauguration of the National Government at Nanking in October 1928, Ho, who had been relieved of his training responsibilities at Hangchow, was assigned to the Kuomintang headquarters for the Nanking municipality. In the spring of 1 929 he requested Chiang Kai-shek's permission to go to Japan to study military and political affairs. The request was approved, and Ho moved to Tokyo. In addition to observing developments in Japan, he produced two books criticizing Wang Ching-wei and his so-called Reorganization faction, a group within the Kuomintang which strongly opposed the growing personal power of Chiang Kai-shek.

Ho Chung-han was ordered to return to China in February 1931 and was assigned to direct the office in charge of political propaganda in the Nationalist military headquarters at Nanking. The 1927 break with the Chinese Communists had been followed by wars within the Nationalist camp in 1929 and 1931. The Communists, by exploiting the situation, presented new problems to the Nationalist political workers. Ho Chung-han called his organization the "bandit-suppression propaganda office," and he proceeded to standardize that name: thereafter. Nationalist anti-Communist campaigns were called "bandit-suppression" campaigns. On Chiang Kai-shek's orders, the Central Military Academy at Nanking provided a special training class of some 200 senior students for a two-week course, after which they were assigned to Ho's new oflSce.

In the winter of 1931, the bandit-suppression propaganda office became the political training office of bandit-suppression troops, under the inspectorate general of military training. In June 1932, after a conference of Nationalist officials at Lushan, it was decided that there should be separate political training offices for the bandit-suppression commands of Honan- Hupeh-Anhwei and Kiangsi-Kwangtung- Fukien. Ho was placed in charge of the first of these two offices, which was established on 28 June at Hankow. He established an official motion picture studio, and he transferred to Hankow the Nationalist army newspaper that he had launched in 1931 at Nanchang, then the field headquarters for the campaigns against the Communists in Kiangsi. This paper was the well-known and strongly anti-Communist Saotang pao [mopping-up journal], which continued to publish under that name even during the interlude of Nationalist-Communist collaboration in the early part of the Sino-Japanese war. The paper later was directed at Chungking by Huang Shao-ku (q.v.).

In the early 1930's Ho was elected to membership on the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee. The National Government's organizational structure for political work at the time was rather complex. The two political training offices designed for anti-Communist operations in the field were, in practice, independent of the political training office of the Military Affairs Commission at Nanking. In February 1933 the local offices were merged with the central political training office at Nanking, and Ho Chung-han was given responsibility for centralized direction of political training and propaganda work as the head of the political training office at Nanking. He now had control over political work in the military forces, in government offices, and in schools throughout the Nationalist-controlled areas of China.

In May 1933, at Ho Chung-han's request, a political work conference was convened at Nanchang. The conference formulated a political training order which defined the tasks, duties, and powers of political workers in the Nationalist army. It also drew up plans to guide the development of political work in the so-called bandit-suppression campaigns. Ho also headed a political training office in the Nanchang headquarters of the Military Affairs Commission.

The advance of the Japanese in north China in the spring of 1933 had increased the tasks of the political workers. In April, a special north China propaganda column was organized to carry on political work in the Chinese military forces in north China, most of which were not directly controlled by Nanking. On 1 August 1933 the column was reorganized as the political training bureau of the Peiping branch of the Military Council.

In March 1934, again under Ho's direction, a second political work conference was convened at Nanchang to readjust work plans. In October, the Communist forces broke out of the encirclement of their Kiangsi base and began the Long March. In January 1935, in conjunction with the pursuit of the Communists, the Military Affairs Commission set up a Chungking staff corps, with a political training office under it, as a device for extending Nanking's political authority over military forces in Szechwan and Sikang. Ho's deputy Yuan Shou-ch'ien went to Chungking to direct operations. In 1935 Ho Chung-han was reelected to the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and was made a member of its standing committee. He also became a member of the organization department of the Kuomintang and chief of the army party afTairs group.

In April 1935, at Ho's request, a third political work conference was held, this time at Hankow. That gathering worked to coordinate the efforts of f>olitical organs with the army reorganization plan prop>osed by the Military Affairs Commission. Nationalist political work was directed toward the extension of Nanking's control over provincial armies in west and northwest China and toward the task of resisting the Japanese advance.

The Japanese opposed the expansion of Nationalist political activity in north China; they were working to detach north China from Nanking's direct jurisdiction. ^Vhen the political training bureau of the Peiping branch of the Military Council in June 1935 undertook to enroll students in a military training program, the Japanese brought pressure on the National Gov^ernment at Nanking to withdraw its political and party organs from Hopei and Chahar and, in particular, to remove its political workers immediately. On 24 June 1935 the National Government complied with the Japanese demand; all Kuomintang political workers in north China were ordered to withdraw to W'uchang. The north China group then was reassigned to Sian, where a northwest branch of the political training office was established in August 1935. Its mission was to prevent the Northeast Army units of Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v.) from being influenced by Communist propaganda, which then called for a national united front to oppose Japanese aggression.

In 1936 Ho was assigned several additional positions at Nanking : secretary general of the political affairs department of the Military AfTairs Commission; head of the censorship bureau of the Central News Agency; and executive secretary of the provisional standing committee of the San Min Chu I Youth Corps.

In June 1937 Chiang Kai-shek granted Ho permission to visit Europe and the United States to inspect military and political conditions. When he took leave of Chiang at Lushan on 22 June, Ho presented a plan, later implemented, for reorganization of the San Min Chu I Youth Corps. Ho was in Bombay on his way to Europe when Japanese and Chinese forces clashed in the Lukouchiao Incident of 7 July 1937. He went on to Europe and had spent four weeks in Germany when the Sino-Japanese conflict spread to Shanghai. On 14 August Chiang Kai-shek recalled him to China. In October, Ho Ching-han resumed his duties as director of the political training office at Nanking.

In February 1938 the Military AfTairs Commission established a political department to consolidate the work of the political training office and other governmental organs. Ch'en Ch'eng (q.v.) was named director, with Chou En-lai and the Kwangtung military man Huang Ch'i-hsiang as his deputies. Ho Chung-han received only a subordinate position as chief of the first bureau of the political department. His authority had been reduced and restricted, although he remained in charge of political training in the Nationalist armies and military academies and was later given the concurrent assignment of secretary general of the political department. In April 1939 Ho spent a period in the field as chief of a Nationalist comfort mission to northwest China. He visited Yenan, the Communist wartime capital, where he talked with Mao Tse-tung.

When he assumed control of the political department of the Military AfTairs Commission, Ch'en Ch'eng succeeded Ho Chung-han as secretary general of the San Min Chu I Youth Corps. Ho retained a position in the central executive apparatus of the corps. By early 1940, friction between Ho Chung-han and Ch'en Ch'eng had increased to such an extent that Ho resigned from the political department. In the spring of 1941 Ho Chung-han was named director of the manpower section of the National General Alobilization Council. In 1942 he became director of the labor bureau of the ministry of social affairs of the National Government. He held that position for five years, during which he confronted many serious problems, notably the control of wage levels and the settlement of labor disputes under the skyrocketing inflation which gripped Nationalistcontrolled areas of China. He also made efforts to plan and implement a program, based on the writings of Sun Yat-sen, of voluntary labor service. His 1947 lectures on the subject, given at Wuchang to a special training class for labor service cadres, were published in book form as Chung-kuo te ping-ken [the root of China's evils] .

Ho Chung-han continued to play an active role in the Kuomintang. He was reelected to the Central Executive Committee at the Sixth National Congress in 1945, and he was executive secretary of the central organizational apparatus of the San Min Chu I Youth Corps from 1944 to 1947.

In 1947 Ho was made political vice minister of the ministry of social affairs at Nanking. He also was elected a delegate, representing Yoyang, to the National Assembly. In January 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek retired from the presidency, Ho resigned his government position in the ministry of social affairs to devote himself to lecturing and writing on the national crisis. Ho did not return to political office until after the Nationalist withdrawal from the mainland. In March 1950, when Chiang Kaishek resumed leadership of the National Government in Taiwan, Ho was appointed minister of communications. Ch'en Ch'eng, who became president of the Executive Yuan, was again his superior. Ho Chung-han served as minister of communications for slightly more than four years. In May 1954, after Ch'en Ch'eng had been elected to the vice presidency, all members of his cabinet, including Ho, submitted their resignations. In 1962 Ho became chairman of the Central Planning Committee of the Kuomintang.