Du Yuming

Republic of China state institutions Nationalism 1904–1981 ○ Natural causes

First-class Whampoa graduate who beat Lin Biao at Siping and was captured in the Huaihai campaign

A Whampoa first-class graduate and trusted protégé of Chiang Kai-shek, he created the 200th Division, China’s first mechanised division, during the war against Japan, and led the 5th Army into Burma, losing 50,000 men in the retreat of 1942. In 1945 he removed Long Yun from Yunnan, and from 1945 to 1947 he commanded the Nationalist forces in the northeast, twice defeating Lin Biao at Siping. Leading the Xuzhou group in the Huaihai campaign of 1948–1949 he was encircled and captured, held as a war criminal at Gongdelin prison in Beijing, pardoned in 1959 and given a position in the Communist government. He died in Beijing in 1981.

Also known as: Tu Yü-ming