Chang Wen-Tien

Chang Wen-T’ien 

(pseudonym, Lo Fu). Born 1900 in Nanhui District, Kiangsu Province; died July 1976 (?). Chinese political figure.

A member of a well-to-do family, Chang graduated from an engineering school in Nanking. He studied in the USA from 1921 to 1923, and in 1925 he joined the Communist Party of China (CPC). He studied in Moscow from 1926 to 1930. Chang became a member of the Central Committee of the CPC in 1931 and served on the Politburo of the Central Committee from 1931 to 1956. In 1934 he was elected chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Chinese Soviet Republic (seeSOVIETS IN CHINA). In 1935 he became general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC, but in 1943, during the Rectification Campaign, he was removed from his post.

Between 1946 and 1950, Chang was successively head of the organizational department of the Central Committee of the CPC, secretary of the Liaotung provincial committee of the party, and a member of the Northeast Bureau of the Central Committee. He was ambassador of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the USSR from 1951 to 1955 and deputy foreign minister of the PRC from 1954 to 1959. In 1956 he became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPC.

In 1959, with P’eng Te-huai and others, Chang opposed the adventurist policy of the “three red banners”: the new “general line,” the “great leap forward,” and the “people’s communes.” Because of his opposition he was accused at the Eighth Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPC in 1959 of antiparty activity and was removed from his posts. Chang then disappeared from political life.