PLA chief of staff branded part of Peng Dehuai’s “anti-party clique” at Lushan; later a leader of the discipline commission
Born to a poor peasant family in Yongxing, Hunan, he joined the Communist Party in 1925, took part in the South Hunan Uprising of 1928 and fought under Peng Dehuai and on the Long March. In the war against Japan he was a brigade commissar in the Eighth Route Army and, commanding the New Fourth Army’s 3rd Division, built the north Jiangsu base; in the civil war he was deputy and logistics commander of the Northeast Democratic Allied Army. After 1949 he was party secretary of Tianjin and of Hunan, then vice-minister of defence, secretary-general of the Central Military Commission and PLA chief of staff, and became a senior general in 1955. Criticising the Leap and the communes at Lushan in 1959, he was branded part of the “Peng Dehuai anti-party clique” and lost every post; Red Guards persecuted him later. Rehabilitated in 1977, he became executive secretary of the discipline commission.
Also known as: Huang K'o-ch'eng
Activities and affiliations
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1925–1986
Military command
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1928–1949
Chinese Communist revolutionary forces (before 1949)Commander, New Fourth Army 3rd Division; Northeast deputy commander
Military command -
1949–1959
People’s Republic of China state institutionsPLA Chief of the General StaffMain
Military command
Career Timeline
- 1925Joined the Communist Party
- 1928South Hunan Uprising; led the Yongxing rising
- 1934Long March
- 1937Political commissar, 344th Brigade, 115th Division
- 1941Commander and political commissar, New Fourth Army 3rd Division
- 1945Deputy and logistics commander, Northeast Democratic Allied Army
- 1949Party secretary of Tianjin, later of Hunan
- 1955Senior general
- 1958–1959PLA chief of the General Staff
- 1959Branded part of the “anti-party clique” at Lushan and dismissed
- 1977Rehabilitated; executive secretary of the discipline commission