Shaolin-trained Red Army general who led the Guangzhou military region on the eastern front of the 1979 war with Vietnam
From Xinxian in Henan, he studied martial arts at the Shaolin Temple for eight years and took a name meaning “friend of Buddhism”. Joining the Red Army, he fought the war against Japan and the civil war and long commanded the Nanjing military region. Moved to the Guangzhou region in 1974, he and political commissar Wei Guoqing protected Deng Xiaoping when the Gang of Four purged him after Zhou Enlai’s death in 1976. In the 1979 war with Vietnam he led the Chinese forces and commanded the eastern front towards Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn. A Politburo member from 1969 to 1982, he died in Nanjing in 1985.