24 Facts About Gong Peng

Gong Peng, born Gong Cisheng and known as Gong Weihang, was a Chinese wartime spokeswoman for the Chinese Communist Party.

Gong Peng's father, Gong Zhenzhou, 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, and a military leader in the Canton Military Government in 1917.

Gong Peng was born in Yokohama, Japan, where her father had gone to be safe from political enemies in China.

Gong Peng's birthname, "Cisheng", meant "Compassion for All Living Things".

Gong Peng's older sister was Gong Pusheng, who was an activist in the 1930s and joined the Communist Party in 1939.

When Gong Zhenzhou died in 1942, Communist Party leaders Zhou Enlai and Dong Biwu sent messages of condolence, and Chiang Kai-shek sent an elegiac couplet.

Gong Peng's second husband, Qiao Guanhua, whom she married in 1943, was a leading diplomat and one of Zhou Enlai's trusted deputies.

Gong Peng Zhenzhou provided his daughters a good education in spite of the family's lack of money.

In 1936 Gong Peng joined the Chinese Communist Party, then in 1937 graduated with a degree in history.

In fall of 1938, Gong Peng joined the exodus of young progressives to Mao Zedong's newly established wartime capital, Yan'an.

Gong Peng 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 Peng served as the National Revolutionary Army Tenth Eighth Army headquarters secretary.

Gong Peng was transferred to the Eighth Route Army in Chongqing, an assignment that lasted from December 1940 to October 1946.

Gong Peng served as a journalist for Xinhua Daily and Secretary of CPC Delegation to Chongqing, which was headed by Zhou Enlai.

Gong Peng met with Chongqing intellectuals, some of whom she introduced to the CPC, such as architect Liang Sicheng.

Zhou Enlai and Gong Peng paid special attention to American diplomats and reporters.

Gong Peng went to Hong Kong, where she stayed from October 1946 to August 1949.

Gong Peng began to express public criticism of the United States, charging that the country was moving towards fascism.

Gong Peng edited the English language China Digest, a weekly outlet for the Party, under the pseudonym Djoong Wai-Lo, and was a member of the Hong Kong branch of several bureaus.

Gong Peng was responsible for the founding of the Hong Kong Xinhua Weekly the semi-official news organ.

Gong Peng 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.

Gong Peng served as private secretary to Zhou and sometimes acted as liaison to her one-time Christian colleagues in building the Three-Self Patriotic Movement that organized Christians in a government sanctioned group.

Gong Peng stayed in seclusion at her hotel, described by a journalist as a "brooding, grave-faced woman in a filmy blue dress".

Gong Peng organized a tour for foreign correspondents in 1955 to investigate and conduct interviews in Tibet.