Gong Peng

龚澎
Gong Peng as a youth
Born	October 1914 Yokohama, Japan
Died	September 28, 1970 Beijing, China
Names
Other names	龚维航 Gong Weihang Gong Cishang

Gong Peng (October 1914 - September 20, 1970) was a Chinese wartime spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party. 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 徐文 Xu Wen. Her father, Gong Zhenzhou ( 龚镇洲 1882-1942), whose ancestral home was Hefei, Anhui province, 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. Her older sister was Gong Pusheng 龚普生, who was also an activist in the 1930s and joined the Communist Party in 1939. After 1949, she was Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Treaty and Law Secretary, and first Ambassador to Ireland. The youngest sister was 徐畹球 Xu Wanqiu.

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 刘文华, who was killed in 1942. 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 Saint Maria Girls' School (海圣玛利亚) in Shanghai, Gong Peng and Gong Pusheng both studied at Yenching University, a leading Christian university.

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'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.