Gong Peng

Her father, Gong Zhenzhou (龔鎭洲; 1882–1942), whose ancestral home was in Changfeng, Hefei, Anhui, 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 and her sisters were born in Yokohama, 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.

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.

Her older sister was Gong Pusheng (龔普生), who was also an activist in the 1930s and joined the Communist Party in 1939.

The two sisters were active in the anti-Japanese December 9th Movement of 1935, which centered at Yenching.

At that time neither of them were Communists, and came from Christian households and worked in the YWCA.

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.

Snow and his wife, Nym Wales, 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's headquarters in Shaanxi, a friend shared the manuscript of his Red Star Over China 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.

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, 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.

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 first husband was Liu Wenhua (劉文華), who was killed in 1942.

Meanwhile, in June 1942, Liu Wenhua was killed making his way back from the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army in Jinzhong.

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

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

After graduating from St. Mary's Hall, Shanghai, Gong Peng and Gong Pusheng both studied at Yenching University, a leading Christian university.

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, 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.

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 magazine correspondent, Theodore White 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 of The New York Times, and Joseph Alsop, an aide to Claire Chennault.

After 1949 she was an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, and was head of the Bureau of Information, the first woman to head a department.

Gong Peng's mother was Xu Wen (徐文).

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).