Gong Peng (October 10, 1914 – September 20, 1970), born Gong Cisheng and also known as Gong Weihang, was a Chinese wartime spokeswoman for the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
Gong Peng's mother was Xu Wen (徐文). Her father, Gong Zhenzhou (龔鎭洲; 1882–1942), whose ancestral home was in Changfeng, Hefei,
Anhui
Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...
, was a revolutionary colleague of Sun Yat-sen, was politically active in Anhui following the 1911 Revolution, Chiang Kai-shek's classmate in the
Baoding Military Academy
Baoding Military Academy or Paoting Military Academy () was a military academy based in Baoding, during the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China, in the first two decades of the 20th century. For a time, it was the most important milita ...
, and a military leader in the Canton Military Government in 1917. Gong Peng and her sisters were born in
Yokohama
is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...
, Japan, where her father had gone to be safe from political enemies in China. Her birthname, "Cisheng", meant "Compassion for All Living Things". She was the second of three daughters. Her older sister was Gong Pusheng (龔普生), who was also an activist in the 1930s and joined the Communist Party in 1939. After 1949, she was Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Treaty and Law Secretary, and first Ambassador to Ireland. The youngest sister was Xu Wanqiu (徐畹球).
When Gong Zhenzhou died in 1942, Communist Party leaders
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai (; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman and military officer who served as the first premier of the People's Republic of China from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Ma ...
and
Dong Biwu
Dong Biwu (; 5 March 1886 – 2 April 1975) was a Chinese communist revolutionary and politician, who served as acting Chairman of the People's Republic of China between 1972 and 1975.
Early life
Dong Biwu was born in Huanggang, Hubei to ...
sent messages of condolence, and Chiang Kai-shek sent an elegiac couplet.
Gong Peng's first husband was Liu Wenhua (劉文華), who was killed in 1942. Her second husband,
Qiao Guanhua
Qiao Guanhua (; March 28, 1913 – September 22, 1983 ." ''
St. Mary's Hall, Shanghai, Gong Peng and Gong Pusheng both studied at
Yenching University
Yenching University (), was a university in Beijing, China, that was formed out of the merger of four Christian colleges between the years 1915 and 1920. The term "Yenching" comes from an alternative name for old Beijing, derived from its status ...
, a leading Christian university.
The two sisters were active in the anti-Japanese
December 9th Movement
The December 9th Movement () was a mass protest led by students in Beiping (present-day Beijing) on December 9, 1935 to demand that the Chinese government actively resist Japanese aggression.
Background
After the Japanese Imperial Force occupied ...
of 1935, which centered at Yenching. At that time neither of them were Communists, and came from Christian households and worked in the
YWCA
The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries.
The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...
. To break the news blockade on student agitation imposed by the Nationalist Government, Gong Pusheng, in her capacity as vice-president of the Yenching University Students Union, and Gong Peng, also a student leader, held a press conference on campus informing foreign journalists about the movement. Among those present was American journalist
Edgar Snow
Edgar Parks Snow (19 July 1905 – 15 February 1972) was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution. He was the first Western journalist to give an account of the history of t ...
. Snow and his wife,
Nym Wales
Helen Foster Snow (September 21, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American journalist who reported from China in the 1930s under the name Nym Wales on the developing Chinese Civil War, the Korean independence movement and the Second Sino-Japan ...
, encouraged and supported the students, who often met at their house, and became especially close to the Gong sisters. When Snow returned from his secret visit to
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
's headquarters in Shaanxi, a friend shared the manuscript of his ''
Red Star Over China
''Red Star Over China'' is a 1937 book by Edgar Snow. It is an account of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that was written when it was a guerrilla army and still obscure to Westerners.
Along with Pearl S. Buck's '' The Good Earth'' (1931), ...
'' with Gong, and she saw Mao for the first time in the short films Snow shot.
In 1936 Gong joined the Chinese Communist Party, then in 1937 graduated with a degree in history. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, as war broke out, Gong moved to Shanghai, where she taught at St. Maria's school from November 1937 to March 1938.
Communist Party voice in wartime
In fall of 1938, Gong joined the exodus of young progressives to Mao Zedong's newly established wartime capital, Yan'an. She became one of the first students at the Yan'an Institute of Marxism–Leninism. On a chance encounter with Mao, she told him that at Yenching she had changed her name from "Gong Cisheng" to "Gong Weihang", meaning "Gong 'Sustain the Voyage, then when she arrived in Yan'an, changed it once again, this time to "Gong Peng", after the early Chinese Communist peasant organizer and martyr Peng Pai. Mao approved. (Peng Pai had also been a Christian for a time.) She attended Mao's lectures and became his translator when he greeted English speaking guests. She was assigned to the ''Xinhua Daily'' North China edition, and got to know deputy commander of the Eighteenth Army Peng Dehuai. From October 1938 to October 1940, Gong served as the National Revolutionary Army Tenth Eighth Army headquarters secretary. In 1938, she fell in love with and married Liu Wenhua.
In 1939, in response to Mao's directive to place even greater weight on foreign propaganda, the Party formed a Foreign Affairs Small Group, whose members included
Wang Bingnan
Wang Bingnan (1908–1988) was a diplomat and foreign affairs official of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China.
Before 1949, Wang was one of Zhou Enlai's trusted aides and after the founding of the People's Republic in ...
, Chen Jiakang, and Gong Peng, a group that stayed together and formed the nucleus of the Foreign Ministry a decade later. The Party leadership expected them to brief them on world developments and to cultivate good relations with foreign journalists, diplomats, and soldiers. Gong was transferred to the Eighth Route Army in Chongqing, an assignment that lasted from December 1940 to October 1946. She served as a journalist for ''Xinhua Daily'' and Secretary of CPC Delegation to Chongqing, which was headed by Zhou Enlai. Meanwhile, in June 1942, Liu Wenhua was killed making his way back from the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army in Jinzhong. In late autumn 1943, at Zhou's suggestion, Gong and Qiao Guanhua were married. Mao Zedong praised the newlyweds for "leading the marriage revolution for thousands of miles". In July 1944, she gave birth to their first son, who later served as People's Republic of China Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister. During the negotiations with the
Nationalists
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
, which included American diplomats who did not speak Chinese, Gong was at Mao's side. Gong also met with Chongqing intellectuals, some of whom she introduced to the CPC, such as architect
Liang Sicheng
Liang Sicheng (; 20 April 1901 – 9 January 1972) was a Chinese architect and architectural historian, known as the father of modern Chinese architecture. His father, Liang Qichao, was one of the most prominent Chinese scholars of the early ...
. Gong Pusheng introduced K. H. Ting, whom she had known in the student department of the YMCA, to one of her Yenching classmates, who became his wife.
Zhou Enlai and Gong paid special attention to American diplomats and reporters. One observer recalled later that the Communists in Chongqing were "still an isolated group of underdogs and no sense of menace attached to them". ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine correspondent,
Theodore White
Theodore Harold White (, May 6, 1915 – May 15, 1986) was an American political journalist and historian, known for his reporting from China during World War II and the ''Making of the President'' series.
White started his career reporting for ...
called Gong "the most beautiful Chinese woman I ever encountered", and the historian John K. Fairbank, then an officer in the wartime O.S.S., wrote to his wife that Gong was the "official appointee for contact with barbarians", with a "taming effect on everybody I know", mentioning in particular
Brooks Atkinson
Justin Brooks Atkinson (November 28, 1894 – January 14, 1984) was an American theatre critic. He worked for '' The New York Times'' from 1922 to 1960. In his obituary, the ''Times'' called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of hi ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', and
Joseph Alsop
Joseph Wright Alsop V (October 10, 1910 – August 28, 1989) was an American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s. He was an influential journalist and top insider in Washington from 1945 to the late 196 ...
, an aide to
Claire Chennault
Claire Lee Chennault (September 6, 1893 – July 27, 1958) was an American military aviator best known for his leadership of the "Flying Tigers" and the Chinese Air Force in World War II.
Chennault was a fierce advocate of "pursuit" or fighte ...
. The journalist
Eric Sevareid
Arnold Eric Sevareid (November 26, 1912 – July 9, 1992) was an American author and CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of elite war correspondents who were hired by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and nicknamed " Murrow's ...
felt that Gong was less an object of sexual desire than a kind of unattainable beauty, inspiring a courtly devotion. He wrote that "more than a few foreign correspondents and diplomats fancied themselves in love with her -- but it was a little too much like falling in love with Joan of Arc." The foreign press corps and diplomats arranged for Gong Peng to see an American navy doctor when she came down with dysentery and planned to protest if the Nationalist secret police arrested her. When a thief reached through the window of their apartment and stole Qiao and Gong Peng's entire wardrobe, John Fairbank lent Qiao one of his tailored suits. After 1949, however, when she came across foreign acquaintances, she avoided contact or reprimanded them.
The American Foreign Service Officer John S. Service was later accused of having a sexual relation with Gong, with no proof or evidence.
After the war, an American woman journalist transported Gong's baby son to her family in Shanghai. Gong went to Hong Kong, where she stayed from October 1946 to August 1949. She began to express public criticism of the United States, charging that the country was moving towards fascism. She edited the English language ''China Digest'' (中国文摘 ''Zhongguo wen zhai''), a weekly outlet for the Party, under the pseudonym Djoong Wai-Lo (鍾威洛), and was a member of the Hong Kong branch of several bureaus. She was responsible for the founding of the Hong Kong ''Xinhua Weekly'' the semi-official news organ.
Career after 1949
When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, Gong Peng joined the Foreign Service, with Zhou Enlai as Foreign Minister. She was head of the Information Department, the first woman to be a department head, and continued in that post until she became assistant minister in 1964. Since Mao Zedong demanded control of all decisions concerning foreign affairs, even the smallest details, Zhou kept the most experienced senior diplomats in Beijing and did not appoint veterans from the days in Yan'an or Chongqing to be ambassadors. Zhou trusted these senior aides with critical missions and running the Foreign Affairs Ministry with only a small central staff.
Gong also served as private secretary to Zhou and sometimes acted as liaison to her one-time Christian colleagues in building the
Three-Self Patriotic Movement
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM; ) is the official government supervisory organ for Protestantism in the People's Republic of China. It is colloquially known as the Three-Self Church ().
The National Committee of the Three-Self Patriot ...
that organized Christians in a government sanctioned group. At Zhou's suggestion, for instance, she arranged a dinner at Zhou's home in Zhongnanhai with Bishop K. H. Ting, with whom she had worked in the 1930s. online /ref> Among her longtime friends was
Han Suyin
Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou (; 12 September 1917 or 1916 – 2 November 2012) was a Chinese-born Eurasian physician and author better known by her pen name Han Suyin (). She wrote in English and French on modern China, set her novels in East a ...
, a classmate from Yenching who became a best-selling author who was sympathetic to the Chinese revolution.
At the 1954 Geneva Conference Gong and
Huang Hua
Huang Hua (; ; January 25, 1913 – November 24, 2010) was a senior Communist Chinese revolutionary, politician, and diplomat. He served as Foreign Minister of China from 1976 to 1982, and concurrently as Vice Premier from 1980 to 1982. He was i ...
, another graduate of Yenching University, held a number of press conferences., but objected when a photographer took her picture lighting a cigarette. She stayed in seclusion at her hotel, described by a journalist as a "brooding, grave-faced woman in a filmy blue dress". She organized a tour for foreign correspondents in 1955 to investigate and conduct interviews in Tibet. She helped produce a film, "中印边界问题真相" (Sino-Indian boundary question: the truth) that won The
Hundred Flowers Award
The Hundred Flowers Awards () are, together with the Golden Rooster Awards, the most prestigious film awards honouring the best in Chinese cinema, as well as Hong Kong cinema and the Cinema of Taiwan, they are classified as the Chinese equivalen ...
for Best Long Documentary. According to Gong's daughter Qiao Songdu, Gong lived a simple life during her diplomatic career, and would only wear
cheongsam
''Cheongsam'' (, ), also known as the ''qipao'' () and sometimes referred to as the mandarin gown, is a Chinese dress worn by women which takes inspiration from the , the ethnic clothing of the Manchu people. The cheongsam is most often s ...
on formal occasions.
The Foreign Ministry was targeted by ultra-leftists during the Cultural Revolution.
Red Guard
Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard le ...
student groups pillaged Gong's home, and many of her colleagues at the Foreign Ministry were pressured or sent to labor camps. Gong was exhausted by overwork, leading to hypertension. On September 20, 1970, she died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Beijing at the age of 55. 49 years later,
Hua Chunying
Hua Chunying (; born 24 April 1970) is a Chinese official and former diplomat serving as spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China since 2012 and as the Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2021. H ...
became the second female director-general of the Information Department after Gong Peng.