Chang Po-chun Chang Po-chun ( 1 895—), political leader, was a founder of the Third party and of its successor, the Chinese Workers and Peasants Democratic party. He became secretary general of the China Democratic League. From 1949 until 1957 he was minister of communications at Peking. In 1957 he came under Communist censure as a rightist.

A native of T'ungch'eng, Anhwei, Chang Po-chun was born into a scholar's family. After a traditional education in the Chinese classics, he studied at the Wuchang Higher Normal School in its foreign languages department. After his graduation, he returned to his native district of T'ungch'eng and served as principal of the local normal school. In 1922 he obtained a government scholarship for study in Germany, enrolling in the department of philosophy of the University of Berlin. He remained there from 1922 to 1925. It was in Germany that he met both Chu Teh and Teng Yen-ta (qq.v.). Through Teng's introduction, he was admitted to the Kuomintang.

In 1926, at the invitation of Teng Yen-ta, Chang Po-chün returned to China and joined the National Government at Wuhan. Teng was -then director of the general political department in the headquarters of the commander in chief of the Northern Expedition, and Chang served as chief of the propaganda section in that department. Like Teng, he opposed the conservative Kuomintang group at Nanking, and, accordingly, he participated in the Chinese Communist insurrection at Nanchang on 1 August 1927, which was directed by the Communist military leaders Ho Lung and Yeh T'ing (qq.v.). Chang followed the rebels as they marched southward toward Canton. When this force was routed by the Kuomintang in the Swatow area, Chang Po-chün, like most of its other leaders, fled to Shanghai by way of Hong Kong. Teng Yen-ta fled to Europe.

In 1928 in Shanghai, together with T'an P'ing-shan (q.v.) and others who had left the Chinese Communist party, and with the longdistance support of Teng Yen-ta, Chang Pochün organized a so-called provisional central action committee of the Kuomintang. This group advocated restoration of the so-called three great policies of Sun Yat-sen: alliance with the Soviet Union, cooperation with the Communists, and support of the workers and peasants. After Teng Yen-ta returned from Europe, a meeting was held at Shanghai in September 1930 to launch a new organization called the Provisional Acpon Committee of the Kuomintang, with Teng Yen-ta as its head. When Teng was executed a year later, in November 1931, Chang Po-chün succeeded him as titular head of the political group, which was generally referred to in China as the Third party. Assured of the implacable hostility of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang authorities at Nanking, Chang Po-chün had to flee from Shanghai. In November 1933, he and Huang Ch'i-hsiang led members of the party in joining the Fukien revolt. In the so-called people's government which was formed at Foochow, Chang Po-chün was elected a member of the government council and head of the communications department. The Fukien revolt collapsed within a few weeks, however, and in January 1934 Chang Po-chün fled to Hong Kong with the other Foochow leaders. From Hong Kong he went to Japan, where he remained in exile for over a year. Chang returned to Hong Kong in 1935. There he reestablished his party, now named the Chinese National Liberation Action Committee, a title which avoided any reference to the Kuomintang. When war between China and Japan broke out in 1 937, political differences in China were for a time resolved; all factions rallied to confront the national crisis and to resist the Japanese agression. Chang Po-chün went to Nanking, and thence he accompanied the National Government to Wuhan and eventually to the wartime capital of Chungking. There he served as a member of the First and Second People's Political councils from 1938 to 1941, when he was expelled for his criticism of the government's handling of the New Fourth Army affair. He also played a leading role in the organization of the League of Chinese Democratic Political Groups, the predecessor of the China Democratic League, in 1944. He was reinstated as a member of the Fourth People's Political Council in 1945, and he was a member of the delegation of the council which visited Yenan in an effort to seek a peaceful settlement of the differences separating the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party. At this time he also served as chairman of the Chungking branch of the China Democratic League. In 1946 Chang Po-chün was a delegate to the Political Consultative Conference, held under the auspices of the National Government (first at Chungking and later at Nanking) with a view to settling differences and drafting a constitution that would be acceptable to all parties. Chang served on the committee for drafting the constitution, but the conference soon broke down. During the postwar interlude, Chang Po-chün lived the harassed existence common to all anti-Kuomintang minor party leaders in China. His own group was reorganized as the China Peasants and Workers Democratic party. In 1947, when the National Government outlawed the China Democratic League, Chang moved to Hong Kong. He remained there until late 1948 when, together with a substantial group of minor party and non-partisan figures, he moved to Harbin in Communist-controlled Manchuria. After the Communists carried their successes south of the Great Wall and occupied north China, Chang went to Peiping in February 1949. In the summer of that year he was named by the Communists to the preparatory committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. When that conference opened in September 1949, Chang attended as a representative of the China Democratic League, of which he was then secretary general. His own party, the Workers and Peasants Democratic party, was also represented at the meeting. Meanwhile, when the newspaper Kuang-ming jih-pao [bright daily news] was established at Peiping in June 1949 as the organ of the minor political parties and groups, Chang Po-chün was named its managing director.

With the establishment of the Central People's Government in October 1949, Chang Po-chün was elected a member of the Central People's Government Council and was named minister of communications in the Government Administration Council. He also served as a member of the standing committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Like some other non-Communist figures at Peking, Chang was assigned to play a role in the so-called people's diplomacy programs of the Peking government. As a member of the Chinese delegation to the Second World Peace Congress, held at Warsaw in November 1950, Chang was elected a member of the World Peace Council. In 1951 and 1952 he attended the meetings of that council held, respectively, at Vienna and at Berlin. In 1952 he also took part in the Third World Peace Congress at Vienna, and in 1953 and 1954 he attended the meetings of the World Peace Council held at Vienna and at Berlin, respectively. In 1953 he served as a member of the Chinese delegation which attended Stalin's funeral at Moscow, and later in that year he accompanied the Chinese mission sent to provide "comfort" to the people of North Korea. Within China, in addition to his responsibilities as minister of communications, Chang Pochün took an active part in the preparations for the government reorganization of 1954. He served as a member of both the committee to draft the new constitution and the central election committee. In the general elections held in 1954 he was elected as a delegate from his native Anhwei province to the First National People's Congress. In that year he was appointed a vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

During the first few years of the new regime at Peking, Chang Po-chün's career appeared to be spectacularly successful. He held his government post as minister of communications uninterruptedly after 1949. He was one of the relatively small number of approved non- Communists honored by assignments to travel abroad. Indeed, he served as one of the deputy leaders of the delegation of the National People's Congress which visited the Soviet Union and several other Communist countries of Eastern Europe during the tumultuous period after the Hungarian uprising in the autumn of 1956. And, within the context of minor party politics in the People's Republic of China, Chang's prospects seemed to be good. After the death in 1955 of Chang Lan (q.v.), chairman of the China Democratic League, Chang Po-chun and Lo Lung-chi (q.v.) had become the senior leaders of the league, in fact if not in name. Chang Po-chun continued to serve as titular head of the Peasants and Workers Democratic party.

However, in 1957 when Mao Tse-tung announced his program of "letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend," inviting free expression of views and free criticism of both the government and even the Communist party, Chang Po-chun, prompted either by political naivete or by a sense of security bred by the period of smooth sailing since 1949, took Chairman Mao at his word and, as did many others, expressed both his views and his criticisms of the regime.

The reaction was swift and sharp. In a nation-wide movement against the "rightists," the Communists severely attacked their critics and reprimanded their "reactionary thoughts" and alleged plots against the regime. Chang Po-chun and Lo Lung-chi were singled out for an extensive campaign of denunciation. The two men were charged with the formation of an alliance (widely referred to in China as the Chang-Lo alliance) which was anti-Communist, anti-socialist, and contrary to the interests of the people. Some of the specific charges made against Chang Po-chun and Lo Lung-chi, as the ranking leaders of the China Democratic League, were: that they had exploited the organization by an extensive recruitment campaign to add to its ranks people who were against the Communist party; that they had attempted thereby to set up an effective "opposition" to the Communist party; that they advocated bourgeois democracy; that they opposed Communist leadership in the cultural and educational fields; and that they used the newspapers Kuang-ming jih pao and Wen Hui Pao to further these ends.

The major attack on Chang Po-chun and Lo Lung-chi came from within the ranks of the league itself. The attack was led by Shih Liang, the woman leader of the league and, for a time, minister of justice of the Peking regime. Early in 1958, Chang Po-chun was dismissed from his post as minister of communications. He was also removed from his high offices in the league, of which he was a vice chairman; the Peasants and Workers Democratic party, of which he was chairman; and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, of which he was vice chairman of the National Committee. After his admission of guilt and public expression of repentance, however, Chang Po-chün was reappointed a member of the standing committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in April 1959. The Communist authorities at Peking appeared to have been satisfied that Chang had learned his lesson and that the political moral which they had wished to impress upon the general populace through his example had been understood.

Chang Po-chün was married to Li Chiensheng, a graduate of the Peking Union Medical College who was a vice chairman of the Peking branch of the China Red Cross Society. Two daughters were born to them.