K'o Ch'ing-shih (1902-9 April 1965), Chinese Communist administrator who became the most important official at Shanghai in 1955, serving as head of the party's Shanghai bureau and chairman of the Shanghai municipal government.
A native of Wuhu, Anhwei, K'o Ch'ing-shih was born into a landowning family at Huangshan. After being graduated from the South Anhwei Normal School, he taught school in Anhwei for a time. He reportedly joined the Socialist Youth League in Shanghai in August 1920 and the Chinese Communist party in 1922. From about 1920 to 1937 K'o engaged in underground party work in the Shanghai, Nanking, and Wuhan areas. He also held such offices in the Chinese Communist party as secretary of the Anhwei provincial committee, director of the political department of the Eighth Army of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army, secretary of the front committee of the Hopei provincial committee, and director of the organization department of the front committee.
After the Sino-Japanese war began in 1937, K'o was called to Yenan, where he became a deputy director of the united front work department, serving under Ch'en Shao-yü (q.v.). In 1944 Ch'en was replaced by Li Wei-han (q.v.). Because Li's duties as secretary general of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region government occupied most of his time, K'o became acting director of the department.
In 1947 K'o Ch'ing-shih was appointed deputy director of the financial committee of the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei Border Region. Near the end of that year he was named mayor of Shih-chia-chuang, Hopei, which the Chinese Communists had occupied in November and which was the largest city under Communist control at that time. K'o held that post for about a year. After the Communists took Nanking in May 1949, K'o was moved there to serve as deputy mayor under Liu Po-ch'eng (q.v.). Liu soon moved his Second Field Army to the south, and in 1951 K'o became mayor of Nanking. He also served as secretary of the Nanking municipal committee of the Chinese Communist party.
In 1952, as the Central People's Government began to consolidate its control of the mainland, party and civil administrative posts were reorganized. In November, K'o was appointed secretary of the party committee for Kiangsu province, political commissioner of the Kiangsu Military District, and vice chairman of the Kiangsu People's Government. His immediate superior was T'an Chen-lin (q.v.), whose chief responsibility was the party's east China bureau. T'an delegated most of the duties involved in directing party affairs in Kiangsu to K'o Ch'ing-shih. In 1954 K'o attended the National People's Congress as a deputy from Kiangsu. In November, he was appointed to the committee of the party's east China bureau. However, the regional governments and their civil bureaus were abolished soon afterward.
K'o Ch'ing-shih was named to head the newly established Shanghai bureau of the Chinese Communist party in January 1955. He also became first secretary of the party's Shanghai committee. These positions were important because Shanghai had become one of three special municipalities in the People's Republic of China. Its civil affairs were administered directly by bureaus of the State Council rather than by the provincial authorities. Similarly, the Chinese Communist party's Shanghai bureau was responsible to the Political Bureau rather than to the provincial committee. K'o's Shanghai bureau also controlled party affairs in Kiangsu and Chekiang.
K'o became a member of the Shanghai municipal council in February 1955. About three months later, he was elected chairman of the party's Shanghai municipal committee and president of the Shanghai branch of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association. At this time, he relinquished his posts in the Kiangsu provincial administration. In June, he served as a deputy to the National People's Congress.
K'o was elected to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party at the Eighth National Congress, held in 1956. He received the highest number of votes cast for a new committee member, and ranked thirty-fifth (of 97) in total number of votes received. In May 1958 he was made a full member of the Political Bureau even though several higher-ranking members of the party had not yet achieved that distinction.
In March 1958 K'o had accepted an invitation to lecture at the former Catholic Futan University in Shanghai. His acceptance reflected the party's interest in having prominent officials join the faculties of leading Chinese universities. That autumn, he succeeded Ch'en Yi as chairman of the Shanghai municipal government, or mayor. He now held the most important post in the civil administration of Shanghai. K'o became vice premier of the State Council and first political commissar of the Nanking Military District early in 1965. He soon became ill, however, and died at Ch'engtu, Szechwan, on 9 April 1965.
The career of K'o Ch'ing-shih is interesting in that, although he served the Chinese Communist movement almost from its beginnings, he did not begin to emerge as an important leader until the end of the Sino-Japantse war. Then, as the party began to move from its rural headquarters in north China into the important industrial and agricultural centers of the mainland, the need for capable administrators increased greatly. This shift in party needs was reflected in the changing composition of its Central Committee. In 1945 most of the new members of the Central Committee were military men; in 1956, when K'o was elected to the Central Committee, most of the new committee members were administrators.
