TENG HSIAO-P' ING - PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

• Document Type: FOIA
• Keywords: CHINA
• Keywords: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE
• Keywords: US
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0001494693
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: June 22, 2015
• Document Release Date: June 9, 2009
• Case Number: F-2007-01577
• Publication Date: April 8, 1974

(~~7z~- 4
. ~
~
za 1627)-
~
~
~
rdember,
Politburo,
Chinese
Communist Party
Central
Committee; Vice
Premier,
State Council
The
second highest
ranking
victim of the
Gultural
Revolution
(1966-69), Teng (pro-
nounced dung) Hsiao-
p'ing returned to public
life as a Vice Premier
of the State Council in
April. 1973. Elected to
the 10th Central Commit-
tee of the Chinese Com-
munist Party (CCP-CC) in August 1973, Teng was
promoted to the Politburo in January 1974. Tn
addition, he apparently became the only civilian
member of the Military Commission of the CCP-CC.
Thy most active and prominent of the rehabil-
itated .victims of the Cultural Revolution, Terig
has maintained a heavy schedule of meetings with
foreigners and has served as the primary escort.
of visiting Chiefs of State during their tours
of China. Relieving Premier Chou En-lai~of many
routine da~:ly~responsibilities, Teng .'has probably
bQcome a supporter of the moderate Premier in the
delicate balance between radicals and moderates
within the Politburo.
Ter~g's prestigious assignment to head China's
delegation to the UN Genera]. Assembly Special Ses-
sion on World Resources in April 3.974 has made him
the highest level Chinese official to visit the
United States since the founding of the People's
R^.public of China (PRC) in 1949.
This report was prepared b;; the Ce.ntraZ Reference
$ert~ZG2 and teas coordinated z~ithi-rc CIA as appro,
prate. Comments and questions mark be directed
APPROVED FOR
RELEASE ^ DATE:
29-May-2009
 Fall From Power
' By January 1965 Teng ranked thixd in power
after CCP Chairman i~iao Tse-tong and the newly
elected President of the PRC, Liu Shao-ch'i; the
latter two controlled the party and state appara~
tus, respectively. Teng had been a Vice Premier
since 1952 and secretary general of the party
and a member of the Politburo since 1954.
Late in 1965 Mao, alarmed by the ideological
weakening'of the leadership and the masses, 1aun.ched
the Cultural Revolution. One year later Teng and
Liu, charged with responsibility for the ideolog-
ical backsliding, were disgraced and removed Pram
ctihile Liu Shao-ch'i's remained a common epithet.
P~iao's principal complaint against Teng was
that he failed to keep him informed and relied
for advice on such critics of Mao as the mayor of
Peking, P'eng Chen. In retrospect, Teng may have
been guilty of little more. In his .confession.. _
of October 1966 he admitted being guilty only of
bureaucratism and subjectivism--making decisions.
without a scientific analysis of Marxist--Leninist-
Mao Tse-tong Thought. Teng was never criticized
in official public 'media, and responsible critics
never questioned his patriotism. Teng's last public
appearance before his rehabilitation was .in December
1966. His name was seldom mentioned after 1969,.:.
their posts.
that Teng wQu1d return. to official circles ,.. and by
1972 several reports placed him in a low-level party
office in~Peking. It was probably in 1972 that Mao,
over the opposition of his wife, Chiang Ch'ing, who
leads the radical faction in the Politburo, but with
the concurrence of Premier Chou En-tai, leader of
the moderate faction, endorsed the reversal of the
pa:cty's judgment of Teng. Teng's cbrifessian -to
serious errors, his proven organizational expertise,:,
and his past record of loyalty to the party and to
~.tgo combined to win him his reinstatement.
By 1969 rumors had already begun to circulate
?ehabilitation
 Debate?~over th?e rehabilitation of Teng and other
victims of--the Cultural Revolution has deepened
the split between the moderate and radical factions
within the Politburo. There is still signif icant
opposition to Teng's return from leaders who came
to power as a result of the Cultural Revolution. -
Chiang Ch'ing, who was conspicuously absent from
the state banquet at which Teng--former target of
her verbal assaults--made his first public appear-
ance in 1973, waited nearly 2 months before making
a joint appearance with him. She is probably re-
sponsible for the periodic attacks in China's media
on moves, including the rehabilitation of purged
officials, that have tended to subvert Cultural
Revolution accomplishments.
Early Life and Career -. ..
Teng Hsiao-p'ing was born in Szechwan Province
on 22 August 1904. He graduated from a middle school
in h-?is native province. In .about 1919 he went to
Shanghai, where he joined a worker-student group
thu4 included such prominent Chinese Communists as
Cciou En-lai, Li Li-son, Nieh Jung?-chan, Chen I, Lx
`Jei-han, Ts' az Ch' ang and 'Li Fu-ch'un. In? 1920 this
group went to France to receive higher education and
to assist in postwar French reconstruction. Whsle
in Paris Teng and his. colleagues founded the Chinese
Communist Youth Party in 1921:
After spending.a few months in .the Soviet Union,
Teng returned to China in about 1926 and joined the
-CCP. He subsequently?worked on~party organization
matters in Shanghai until the CCP-Kuomintang (KMT}~
split in 1927. Durinq the next 3 years he helped
organize arny units to fight against the KMT during.,
the Chinese civil war. In the Kiangsi Soviet~in
1931, Teng was a section chief in the Propaganda
Department, an editor of the army journal Hung Hsirtg
(Red Star) and a teacher at th.e Red Army Academy at
Jui-chin. In 1934-35 he took part in the Long march
to Shensi Province. During the Sino-Japanese War
(1937--45) Teng was the political commissar of the
fa:^,ous 129th Division of the 8th Route Army.- By
tine end of ti~?orld friar II he had become one, of the-
raost important political figures in-the Red Army.
 When he was elected to the GCP-CC in 1945, Teng
was a member of the North China Bureau of .the CCP-CC
and political commissar of the military districts in
that area. Shortly after the establishment of the
People's Republic of China in October 1949, Teng
became a member of the new Central People's Govern-
ment, the People's Revolutionary Military Council
and the National Committee of the Chines e. People's
Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC); he re-
tained those posts until the government reorganiza-
tion of September 1954. With the establishment of
the Southwest Bureau in 1950, he emerged as a ranking
party official. Headquartered in Chungking, he served.
until 1952 as secretary of the bureau, as political
commissar of the Southwest Military District and as
vice chairman of the Southwest Military and Adminis-
trative Committee..
Transferred to Peking in August 1952, Tenq was
appointed a Vice Premier and given a seat on the State
Planning Commission (5PC). In September 1953 he suc=-
ceeded Po I-po as Minister of Finance and also became
a vice chairman of the Finance and Economics Cvmmi:ttee.
He abruptly lost both of these posts in June 1954
when he became secretary general of the CCPWith
the reorganization of the. government later that year,
Teng remained a Vice Premier and assumed. the addi-
tional position of Vice Chairman of the Y3atianal
Defense Council. In addition, he was a Standing
Committee member of the Second CPFGC (.19.54-59).,
The Rao Kan.g Conspiracy
Circumstantial evidence linked Teng's sudden
shift to the post of secretary general. of the. CGP in
1954 to the purge of Politburo Member and Chairman
of the SPC Kao Kang, CCP-CC Organ?zation Department.
Director Jao Shu-shih and others who were involved
in what was described as an antiparty.alliance. As
a member of the SPC. Teng had been in a good position
to learn of Kao's plot to overthrow the leadership
and might even have been asked to ;oin the conspir-
acy. zn 1955 Teng delivered the CCP-CC report on the.
uncovered conspiracy, suggesting that he had been .
in~~trumental in foiling the antiparty plot. Shortly
af~er delivering the report Teng was elected to the
Politburo.
 One year later Teng emerged as one of the
enormously powerful merzbers of the small inner
circle of party leaders when, during the Eighth
Party Congress, he gave one of the three major
addresses--the report on the revised party con=-
stitution. Formerly the lowest ranking meriber of
a 10-man Politburo, he then rose to become sixth-
ranked in a 26-man Politburo and was named to its
Standing Committee. He was also named general
secretary, of the party, a post that. had been
vacant since the. 1920's, and head of the party's
Secretariat, a.collective group charged with
running the daily affairs of the party.
Teng dial not associate himself with the Hundred
Flowers movement of early 1957 that exploded into
criticism of the GCP . When the rectification cazn~
paign began later that year, however, Teng was placed
in charge. Delivering the key address to the Third .
Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress, he defended the?
party and suggested policies to rectify the short-~
comings that had surfaced during .the Hundred Flowers
movement.
During 1956-59 Teng also managed to avoid close
association with the disastrous Great Leap Forward,
Mao's effort to rapidly industrialize China's ecanamy.
Apparently critical of the excesses. of. that campaign,
Teng nevertheless wrote a defense of the program that
appeared i.n Jen-mineJih-pao (People's Daily) and in a.
special collection of PRC 10th anniversary materials.
6~71nen Defense Minister P'eng Te-huai and other alleged...
covert critics of Mao and the Great Leap were. purged,
Teng was not adversely affected.
Teng was a delegate to each of the. National
People's Congresses, held in 1954, 1959 and 1964.
Soviet Baiter
Teng's extensive liaison activity with foreign
Communist parties, particularly the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (CPSU), played an important role
in cnhanc:~ng his prestige during the 195Q's.. In
Oczob?r 1954 he was a member of the CCP group that
discussed 5i.no-Soviet relations and the international.
 situation with the Soviet delegation to the PRC
headed by Premier Nikita Khrushchev. He attended
the 20th Congress of the CPSU in Moscow in 1956
and subsequently played a prominent part in the
Sino-Soviet talks held in Peking with the Soviet
delegation led by Anastas Mikoyan.
In 1957 Teng accompanied Mao to Moscow, where
the Communist parties of the world negotiated the
first of the Moscow Declarations on party unity.
At the Second Session of the Eighth?CCP Party
Congress in May. 1958, Teng delivered the party
report on the Moscow meeting and earned the acco-
lade, "Mao Tse-tung's close comrade in arms," an
honor reserved far only five others in the party's
history.. ~ ?
As the Sino-Soviet rift began to emerge in-the
late 1950 's and early 1960's, Teng continued to play
a pivotal role in Sino-Soviet relations. He was a
key figure in the activities surrounding Khrushchev's
1959 visit to Peking. In 1960 Teng returned:ta the
Soviet Union for the 43rd anniversary of the October
RevoJ.ution and a November summit meeting of Sino-
Soviet leaders. The Chinese and the Russians.crit-
icized each other severely at the summit sessions.
Teng, even though he was deputy head of the delega-~
tion led by GCP Vice Chairman Liu Shao-ch'i, made
his country's major speeches. Tn an unpublicized
meeting with Premier Khrushchev, Teng forcefully ,
accused .the CPSU of developing a new personality .
cult around the?Soviet Premier and.af weakening the
international Communist movement. In addition, he .
reputedly defended l~iao against Khrushchev's criti-
cism and charged the CPSU with attempting to subvert
the Chinese leadership. ?
After the capitulation of the USSR to the United
States in the Cuban missile crisis and its failure
to support the PRC in the Sino-Indian bander war in
1962, Sino-Soviet relations worsened. Teng, who by .
then had earned the reputation of being a man able
to Stand up to and infuriate the Krenlin, again event
to Moscow to meet IGhrushchev in July 1963. Upon
his departure from Peking he received an unprece-
dented sendoff, attended by nearly every major
 Ch~.nese leader. After 2 fruitless weeks of nego-
tiations, Teng returned to. Peking and a welcome that
gaue an equally impressive demonstration of Chinese
unity. .
Before the Cultural Revolution Teng.was addicted
to the game of bridge, flying in bridge partners fram
around the countzy in army aircraft. His only known
foreign language is French.
Teng has been married twice. His second wife,
Cho Lin, is not politically active. According to
Red Guard sources the couple has three daughters..
S April 3.974,