Fang Chih
Fang Chih, courtesy name Xikong, was a politician, provincial governor, diplomat, author and a high-ranking Kuomintang official of the Republic of China.
Family history and early life
Fang Chih was born into the prominent Tongcheng Fang clan in Tongcheng, Anhui, Qing empire in November 1895. His father was Fang Rong, the middle son of Fang Lanfen, a Qing dynasty author. He is a direct descendant of Fang Zhipu and Fang Zhenru, an early Qing scholar, author, magistrate and Governor of Guangxi Province. He was also a descendant of Fang Bao, a distinguished Qing author who founded the Tongcheng school of literary prose.His paternal uncles were Fang Quan, a late Qing dynasty era prefect and Fang Zao. Fang's father died when he was 1 or 2 years old in 1896 and his mother sent him to be raised by his paternal uncle Fang Quan and paternal grandfather.
Education
Fang Chih graduated from Anhui Province Tongcheng Secondary School, known as a producer of many revolutionary Anhui leaders, which he attended alongside Zhang Bojun, Wu Zipei, and Yu Guanglang among other notable classmates. Due to the hostility between the Beiyang government regime and the KMT, many of the KMT families moved into exile in Japan and Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition defeated Beiyang by 1928. In 1919, with financial support from his uncle, Fang Peiqing, Fang Chi went to Tokyo, Japan where he learned Japanese and pursued his studies at the Tokyo Higher Normal School and the Tokyo Imperial University. On 14 July 1925, Fang married Masue Ueki, a Japanese woman, fellow Kuomintang member and classmate at the Tokyo Imperial University studying dentistry. He would graduate with a master's degree from the College of Arts and Science at Tokyo Imperial University in 1927.Whilst at school, Fang was involved in the leadership structure of the KMT student groups active in Japan in the Chinese student community. These groups were founded by the Tongmenghui clique cemented in Japan by Wang Jingwei. The KMT student organization was set up in the Kanda district where a Chinese communist group was already active at the Tokyo YMCA. Specifically, Fang was involved in countering Communist propaganda and student groups run by Japanese educated Chinese Communists such as Shi Qian, Wang Buwen,, Yu Dahua and Fang Bin at the Hubei Railway School of Tokyo or the Tokyo Railway Specialized School, a school set up by Zhang Zhidong for Chinese international students whose graduates went on to serve in the railway industry at Hubei for 6 years.
Return from Japan
Fang Chih returned from Japan in 1927. After his return, he joined the Northern Expedition of Chiang Kai-shek working in Hubei, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei Provinces where he gained the attention of General Chiang. He was made the Chairman of the Fujian Provincial Party Headquarters of the KMT at the suggestion of a fellow Japanese educated classmate Dai Chuanxian with Chiang's approval. This role was expanded to oversee the KMT Chairmanship of Anhui Provincial Party Headquarters and that of Qingdao. Whilst in Anhui, Fang Chi led a political purge of the local party together with Shao Hua on the orders of Chen Lifu, founder of the CC Clique or the Central Club Clique and head of the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics of the Central Committee. The purge mechanism in Anhui later swept up his former rival and classmate from Japan, Wang Buwen who was arrested in April 1931 and executed the following month. His work during this period was focused primarily in Hubei, Jiangxi, Qingdao, Nanjing, Hunan, Anhui and Fujian provinces in various military, political, party affairs and education related jobs.His organizational skills and writing ability soon gained the attention of Chen Lifu, with whom he regularly corresponded. The connection with Chen Lifu aligned Fang with the CC Clique faction of the KMT and led to his increased involvement in the operations of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics. By March 1929, he was promoted to Chief Secretary of the Department of Propaganda of the Central Committee by Shao Yuanchong who was one of four people responsible for the lyrics of the National Anthem of the Republic of China. He was posted to Nanjing and Shanghai. In 1930, he was acting Minister of Information and by September 1931, he was promoted to the Chief Secretary of the Publicity Committee.
Information Ministry activities
In the early 1930s, rumors in Shanghai began spreading of an assassination list compiled by a secretive KMT group that became collectively known as the Blue Shirts Society. By 1933, these rumors began to come into the mainstream Shanghai press, particularly due to articles printed in the left leaning China Forum published by American radical Harold Isaacs. On 20 July 1933, due to the perceived negative public perception, Fang published an article in the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury denouncing the rumors and the existence of the Blue Shirts saying "No Blue Shirts; No list, its all wrong."In fact, the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, the CC Clique's counterintelligence organ was heavily involved in myriad kill or capture missions in Shanghai during this period. In 1929, Zhou Enlai returned to Shanghai, after a brief period of exile following the 1927 Shanghai Massacre, to set up the Communist response to the KMT called the "Special Service Section of the Central Committee" or "Teke". This led to a bloodbath culminating in the summer of 1931 with a full blown purge and the second flight of Zhou Enlai from the city.
In April 1931, KMT agents arrested Gu Shunzhang in Wuhan. Gu was one of Zhou's Aides of Security Affairs and his interrogation and subsequent defection from the Communists yielded to the Nationalists the entire scope of Zhou's operations in Shanghai and beyond. On 21 June 1931, Gu's entire section of the Special Service was either captured or fled with 24 arrested including his superior and General Secretary Xiang Zhongfa in Shanghai and Cai Hesen in Hong Kong. Xiang was quickly executed after his interrogation and the resulting windfall of information led the KMT to conduct an even greater purge of the Communist intelligence networks. The scope of this purge was put at around 3,000 Communists by the French Intelligence Bureau of the Shanghai French Concession and lasted until at least 1934 as the Communists from Jiangxi attempted to reestablish networks in Guangzhou and Shanghai under Chen Geng and Deng Zhongxia. Deng and Chen were both arrested though only Deng was executed as Chen had saved Chiang Kai-shek's life during a previous battle against the Warlord Chen Jiongming.
Gu Shunzhang was executed in Suzhou in December 1934 or June 1935.
By 1935, the counterintelligence situation had quieted down with most of the Communist networks significantly weakened. Fang was an elected to become a member of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, attending the Kuomintang 5th National Congress in November where he was confirmed as Deputy Minister of Propaganda. He was also transferred again, this time to Qingdao Municipality and served as the KMT Chairman of the region.
CC Clique
As Deputy Minister of Propaganda in the period leading up to war with Japan between 1931 and 1937, Fang began to focus his activities on exploiting what he perceived to be a growing division between a majority of the Japanese population being largely desirous of peace and a minority of pro-militant actors supporting an invasion of China policy embedded in high places within the Japanese government since the tenure of Tanaka Giichi as Prime Minister and headed contemporarily by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. In around 1935, Fang organized a daily radio broadcast in Japanese operating from two pseudo official Japanese stations located in Fukuoka and Nagasaki respectively. The messages conveyed were on the mutual destruction that war would bring to both nations, the shared history and culture between Japan and the ROC.The broadcasts ceased after a serious diplomatic incident between Japan and the ROC ensued following a party at the Japanese Consulate General in Nanjing where Deputy Foreign Minister and Foreign Affairs Secretary and Wang Jingwei loyalist let slip that the radio program was being run under Fang's supervision. Once the information reached Tokyo, the Japanese government issued the ROC an ultimatum to either extradite both Fang and his wife to Japan or a Japanese battleship would be dispatched from Shanghai to Nanjing to raid the KMT Headquarters. In response, KMT Secretary General requested that Fang terminate the program. The matter was deferred to Chiang Kai-shek who decided to stop the broadcasts but moved to protect Fang. He also asserted that any incursions into the Nanjing area by Japanese naval forces would be met with force. On 1 November 1935, Wang Jingwei stepped down from his post when he was shot at by a sniper in an assassination attempt just before the 5th National Congress. Tang Youren was relieved of his duties as Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister in early December 1935 and transferred to become Vice Minister at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. He was assassinated in Shanghai on 25 December 1935 before assuming his new role.
Fang attended the Second National Motion-Picture Conference which was convened by the Central Party Publicity Committee in Shanghai. Fang used the motion picture industry in Shanghai to promote KMT party ideals to the people. These propagated the ideas of the New Life Movement which was the brainchild of General Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling and was supported by the CC Clique and the Blue Shirts Society.
In October 1935, Fang collaborated with Zhang Daofan, Lei Chen, and Yu Shangyuan to build the Nanjing National Theatre Academy where Yu was installed as president. The school was run as an organ of the KMT Propaganda Department and the Ministry of Education. In 1938, a second school was opened in Sichuan, Jiang'an County and named the National Theatre Academy. It was the first modern drama school for higher education ever built in China.
In November 1935 at a meeting of the KMT Big Five, Fang Chih was elected to the Central Committee of the Kuomintang cementing his position as a prominent fixture of the administration. In July 1936, there was a shakeup of the propaganda department after Liu Luyin was arrested on spy charges by Dai Li who was carrying out a purge of the party and Fang became the vice minister of the Board of Publicity.
On 13 August 1937, Fang was transferred to the Ministry of Education, a department run by Minister and KMT Party Chairman Wang Shijie. The following year, Chen Lifu was appointed as Minister of Education.