Luo Ruiqing
罗瑞卿
First minister of public security and chief of the general staff, purged on the eve of the Cultural Revolution as Lin Biao’s target
Mao trusted him as his closest security chief, saying "if the sky falls, Luo the Tall will prop it up." First minister of public security from 1949, he built the police apparatus for a decade, then led the general staff until his purge in late 1965.
From Sichuan and Whampoa’s sixth class, he served in Red Army political and security work and ran the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University. As first minister of public security from 1949 he built the police system and the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries, and after Peng Dehuai’s fall in 1959 he managed the army as chief of the general staff. Putting training before politics, he was denounced by Lin Biao at the end of 1965 for plotting to seize military power, fell, and injured his legs in a suicide attempt in 1966. Rehabilitated in 1977 as secretary-general of the Military Commission, he died after surgery in West Germany the next year.
Career timeline
- 1949–1959Minister of Public Security
- 1959–1965Chief of the General Staff