A symposium to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Comrade Yang Jingren's birth was held in Beijing on 17 July. Wang Yang, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, attended the forum and met with the relatives of Comrade Yang Jingren before the meeting.
Comrade Yang Jingren is an outstanding leader of the party and the state in united front and ethnic work, serving as vice premier of the State Council and vice chairman of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth National Committees of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
At the forum, Sun Chunlan, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and vice premier of the State Council, remembered Comrade Yang Jingren's brilliant life and stressed the need to learn from his political character of firm conviction and loyalty to the party, to bear in mind the overall situation and to bear heavy responsibilities, to uphold the fine work style of truth and seeking truth from facts, and to continue to struggle for the decisive victory in the Chinese dream of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Xia Baolong, vice chairman and secretary general of the CPPCC National Committee, presided over the forum. Battle, vice chairman of the CppcC National Committee and secretary and director of the party leading group of the State Nationalities Commission, attended the forum.
Yang Jingren, a Hui nationality, an outstanding member of the Communist Party of China, a tried and tested loyal communist fighter, a proletarian revolutionary, an outstanding leader of the party and state united front and ethnic work, a former vice premier of the State Council, and vice chairman of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth National Committees of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference, died in Beijing at 7:38 on October 19, 2001 at the age of 84 due to ineffective medical treatment.
In 1918, Comrade Yang Jingren was born in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, to a poor Family of Islamic Clerics, and successively studied at the Fourth Primary School of Xiaoyou Street in Lanzhou City and the First Middle School of Gansu Province. He pursued progress in his youth and accepted Marxism under the influence of progressives, especially the Eighth Route Army's office in Lanzhou and the Gansu Working Committee of the COMMUNIST Party of China. In the autumn of 1937, Comrade Yang Jingren joined the Communist Party of China and served as a member of the Propaganda Committee of the Lanzhou Huimin Special Branch of the COMMUNIST Party of China. Under the leadership of the Gansu Working Committee of the Communist Party of China, he used the Islamic Society and the Muslim Education Promotion Association to carry out anti-Japanese and democratic propaganda and education activities among the Hui people. After the Nationalists launched an anti-communist upsurge in 1939, he was closely monitored by Kuomintang agents. Under these circumstances, the Gansu Working Committee of the CPC decided that he would evacuate Gansu and go to Yan'an as soon as possible. In March 1941, he arrived in Yan'an, was introduced by the Organization Department of the Central Committee to the Ethnic Affairs Department of The Northern Shaanxi Public School, and served as the secretary of the first class of party branch secretaries. During his time at the school, he eagerly studied the basic theories of Marxism and the works of Comrade Mao Zedong. In July 1941, more than 230 Hui peasants in the Xihaigu area of Ningxia defected to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region in order to resist the brutal rule of the Kuomintang, and were reorganized into the Anti-Japanese Hui Militia Cavalry Regiment of the Joint Defense Headquarters of the Border Region. In August of the same year, the Central Committee sent Comrade Yang Jingren to the Huimin Cavalry Regiment as a party representative and regimental political commissar. Together with several other Hui Communists sent by the Central Committee, he worked hard and meticulously to temper this unit into a people's army under the leadership of the Party. From 1945 to 1949, he successively served as deputy head of the Longdong Foreign Affairs Group, chief of the Ethnic Section of the United Front Work Department of the Northwest Bureau of the Communist Party of China, head of the organ guerrilla team, member of the Nationalities Committee of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Government, and member of the Northwest Military and Political Committee. In March 1949, he was transferred to Beiping and served as a member of the Preparatory Committee of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference. The party group officers of the Preparatory Committee are specifically responsible for the selection and recommendation of ethnic representatives. As one of the ten deputies of the minority units of the CPPCC National Committee, he attended the first session of the CppcC National Committee. Subsequently, as one of the main responsible persons, he participated in the preparation of the organizational structure of the Central Nationalities Commission.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Comrade Yang Jingren successively served as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, vice chairman of the All-China Youth Federation, director of the Four Divisions of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, vice president of the Islamic Association of China, member of the Central Ethnic Affairs Commission and director of the General Office. In 1954, he was appointed deputy director of the Central Ethnic Affairs Commission and deputy director of the Central Ethnic Policy Research Office. During this period, he actively organized and participated in the investigation and research of ethnic policies and the drafting of important documents, contributing to the successful solution of China's ethnic problems. The "Outline for the Implementation of Regional Ethnic Autonomy" and the "Summary of the Main Experiences of the Party in The Work of the Minority Nationalities in the Past Few Years," which he participated in drafting, correctly expounded the tasks and policies of the Party's ethnic work in the transitional period, and were highly praised by the Party Central Committee and Comrade Mao Zedong. In 1954, he went to the Xikang Tibetan area and the Liangshan Yi area to conduct in-depth investigations, and wrote a "Report on the Basic Situation of the Tibetan Autonomous Region in Xikang Province," which correctly analyzed the social nature of tibetan areas and summed up the experience of ethnic work in Tibetan areas over the past few years of liberation, and reported it to the central authorities with the approval of Comrade Li Weihan. In 1958, he went to Ningxia and other places to investigate religious issues and put forward important suggestions for reforming the religious system. As one of the main initiators of the Islamic Association of China, he was specifically responsible for the preparatory work of the Islamic Association of China, and urged the Islamic Association of China to actively assist the people's government in implementing the party's policy of freedom of religious belief after its establishment, carry forward the fine traditions of Islam, and unite the Muslim masses of all ethnic groups to love the country and religion. He enjoyed great prestige among the muslim masses.
At the beginning of 1960, the Central Committee appointed Comrade Yang Jingren to lead the task force to Tibet to assist the Tibet Working Committee in its work. Through meticulous work, he helped to check and correct existing problems. After in-depth investigation and study, he pointed out in his report to the Central Committee: Tibet does not yet have the conditions for co-operation and cannot immediately enter the period of socialist transformation, and it is necessary to let the individual ownership of serfs and individual economic development, which have just been transformed from the ownership of the three major lords, make appropriate use of their enthusiasm to develop the economy, and the central authorities have decided not to set up cooperatives on a trial basis in recent years. Comrade Deng Xiaoping spoke highly of this report and called it a Marxist document.
In September 1960, Comrade Yang Jingren went to work in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and successively served as the chairman of the autonomous regional government, the first secretary of the party committee, the political commissar of the military region, and the secretary of the secretariat of the Northwest Bureau. He united a group of people from the regional party committee, conscientiously implemented the central authorities' policy of readjustment, consolidation, enrichment, and improvement, conducted in-depth investigations and studies, readjusted policies in all aspects, shared weal and woe with the masses, struggled hard, and worked hard to restore and develop production, so that Ningxia's economy could be restored and developed relatively quickly. At the same time, he also screened and rehabilitated cadres and the masses who had been wrongly handled, implemented policies, and promoted the unity and stability of Ningxia.
During the Cultural Revolution, Comrade Yang Jingren was severely persecuted. In 1975, after being questioned by Comrade Deng Xiaoping, who was presiding over the work of the Central Committee at that time, Comrade Yang Jingren served as the leader of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Party Committee and the Revolutionary Committee, and served as the chairman of the Third CPPCC National Committee of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
After the smashing of the "Gang of Four", at the Eleventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Comrade Yang Jingren was elected as a member of the Central Committee, and later as a member of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Central Committees of the Party. In March 1978, the first session of the Fifth National People's Congress decided to restore the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, and he was appointed director, secretary of the party leading group, and later vice minister of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee. At the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, he was elected vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He has done a great deal of arduous and meticulous work in the work of nationalities and united fronts to straighten out the chaos and rectify unjust, false and wrongly decided cases. In September 1980, he was appointed Vice Premier of the State Council, in charge of ethnic and political and legal work. He has carried out a great deal of arduous and pioneering work to push china's national work and ethnic relations to a new stage of development. He prepared for the convening of the Central Border Defense Work Conference to comprehensively restore and adhere to the party's ethnic policy. At the first meeting of the State Nationalities Commission, he put forward the main task of the party and state's ethnic work in the new period, that is, to unite all nationalities to jointly carry out socialist modernization, and to help ethnic minorities develop economic and cultural undertakings in the course of socialist modernization, and gradually narrow the development gap between ethnic groups left over from history. Under his presidency, the State Nationalities Commission adopted a series of effective measures in the political, economic, cultural, educational, scientific, technological, public health, sports, language and writing fields, and carried out fruitful work, thus making this period one of the historical periods with the fastest development and the best ethnic relations in China's ethnic minority areas.
In the summer of 1981, when the Hanzhong region of Shaanxi Province was hit by floods, Comrade Yang Jingren, on behalf of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, went to the disaster area to comfort the affected people.
In 1982, Comrade Yang Jingren served as director of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee and director of the State Nationalities Commission, a member of the CPC Central Committee's Leading Group for Taiwan Work; in 1983, he was elected vice chairman of the Sixth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, responsible for presiding over the united front, ethnicity, and religious work of the party and the state. He conscientiously implemented the basic principle of "long-term coexistence, mutual supervision, treating each other with all sincerity, and sharing weal and woe" put forward by the Twelfth National Congress of the CPC, opened up new fields, new forms, and new ways for various democratic parties and the Federation of Industry and Commerce to serve the socialist modernization drive, and enriched and developed the contents of political consultation, democratic supervision, and participation in and discussion of state affairs. At the same time, he proposed to combine the united front with reform and opening up and vigorously carry out overseas united front work, thus bringing about a new situation in China's united front, ethnic, and religious work.
On July 24, 1987, Comrade Yang Jingren inspected the Jilin Mosque.
In January 1986, Comrade Yang Jingren voluntarily retired from the post of director of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee and director of the State Nationalities Commission, and was subsequently elected vice chairman of the Seventh and Eighth Cppcc National Committees.
(Source: Comprehensive Xinhua News Agency)