Red Army intelligence chief turned Great Leap leader of Anhui, who hid the famine and then turned to “responsibility fields”
From Xingning, Hunan, he entered the fourth class of the Whampoa Military Academy and joined the Kuomintang, then studied in the Soviet Union and joined the Communist Party in 1927. From 1933, as head of the Second Bureau of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, he made his name supplying the Central Red Army with accurate intelligence. After 1949 he became first secretary of Anhui. In the Great Leap he drove huge irrigation works, did not pass down Mao’s “inner-party letter” of April 1959 and branded the vice-governor Zhang Kaifan, who objected, an “anti-party clique”. The official population gazetteer admits 4.07 million deaths in Anhui. In 1961 he spread “responsibility fields” across the province, but he was criticised at the 1962 Seven Thousand Cadres Conference and removed. He died in 1968.
Also known as: Tseng Hsi-sheng · Zeng Mian
Activities and affiliations
-
1924–1927
Military command
-
1927–1968
Political and party leadership
- First Secretary of Anhui1949–1962
-
1933–1949
Chinese Communist revolutionary forces (before 1949)Director, Second Bureau of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission
Security, intelligence and policing -
1949–
People’s Republic of China state institutionsChairman of the Anhui People’s Government
Government and administration
Career Timeline
- 1924Entered the fourth class of Whampoa; joined the Kuomintang
- 1927Joined the Communist Party after study in the Soviet Union
- 1933Director, Second Bureau of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission
- 1941Political commissar, New Fourth Army 7th Division; Wanjiang party secretary
- 1949First secretary and chairman of Anhui
- 1958Drove large-scale irrigation works
- 1960Second secretary of the East China Bureau; concurrently first secretary of Shandong
- 1961Introduced “responsibility fields” across Anhui
- 1962Criticised at the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference and removed from Anhui