Mao Qihua

Mao Qihua (; born Mao Pinxian ; December 1903 – March 1, 1997) was a Chinese politician who served as Chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1979 to 1983. A veteran member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he participated in the early Chinese labor movement, underground Party activities, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Chinese Civil War, before holding senior positions in the Ministry of Labour of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Biography

Mao was born in December 1903 in Jiading, Shanghai. He apprenticed in the printing industry in Shanghai in 1920. In February 1925, he joined the Communist Youth League of China, and in April of the same year he became a member of the Chinese Communist Party. During the labor movement of the 1920s, he helped organize the Shanghai Printing Workers' Federation and served in several leadership positions within the printing workers' union. He also participated in organizing the printing workers' strike during the May Thirtieth Movement. Mao subsequently worked in the CCP's underground printing operations, serving successively as deputy director, director, and Party branch secretary of the Party's clandestine printing plants in Shanghai and Wuhan.

In October 1927, Mao was sent by the CCP to study at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University in the Soviet Union, where he also attended an international radio communications training program. After returning to China in 1930, he worked for the CCP's underground radio network in Shanghai.

Following the destruction of the CCP underground organization in Shanghai in 1935, Mao made his way to Wayaobu, where he became secretary of the CCP Central Committee's White Areas Work Department. In 1937, he served as chairman of the Northwestern Executive Bureau of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and as a member of the Standing Committee of the CCP Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, he successively served as secretary of the workers' committee in southeastern Shanxi, secretary-general of the CCP Taihang Regional Committee and the Eighth Route Army Taihang Military Region, and head of the enemy work department of the Taihang Regional Committee.

During the Chinese Civil War, Mao returned to Shanghai to organize underground labor activities as a leading member of the Shanghai Workers' Movement Committee. After the Communist takeover of Shanghai in 1949, he became secretary-general of the preparatory committee for the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions and later secretary-general of the federation itself.

In November 1949, Mao was appointed Vice Minister of the Ministry of Labour of the People's Republic of China, while also serving as deputy Party secretary of the ministry and editor-in-chief of the journal Labour. In 1965, he was appointed Vice Chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Like many veteran officials, he was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, but returned to public office in 1977 as Vice Chairman of the provincial CPPCC.

From December 1979 to April 1983, Mao served as Chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He was also a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference during its fifth and sixth terms. He died in Hangzhou on March 1, 1997, at the age of 93.