Military commander

Military commander 1886–1976 ○ Natural causes

Founder of the Chinese Red Army and the PLA, first among the Ten Marshals

Cornered by assassins, he told them "Don't shoot me — I'm only the cook," and survived; his men called him "Chief of the Cooks" ever after.

Commander-in-chief whose military leadership secured the Chinese Communist revolution. He joined Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan in 1928 to form the legendary Zhu-Mao Army, then elevated guerrilla warfare to a strategic art across the Long March, the war against Japan, and the Civil War. After the founding of the PRC he served as vice-chairman and chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and was named first among the Ten Marshals in 1955. His journey from warlord general to communist, breaking an opium addiction and starting again, traces the arc of the Chinese Revolution more completely than almost any other life.

Military commander 1892–1986 ○ Natural causes

The “one-eyed dragon”, Red Army chief of staff and Deng Xiaoping’s partner who commanded at Huaihai

He lost his right eye at Fengdu in 1916 and became the “One-Eyed Dragon”: a founder of the People’s Liberation Army and one of the strategists who commanded the Huaihai campaign in November 1948.

A Sichuan soldier who lost his right eye in battle in 1916, he joined the party in 1926 and took part in the Nanchang Uprising. Trained at the Frunze Military Academy, he was Red Army chief of staff on the Long March and, as commander of the 129th Division with Deng Xiaoping as political commissar, formed the “Liu–Deng” army in the war with Japan. In the civil war he led the 1947 thrust into the Dabie Mountains and the Huaihai campaign of 1948–1949, the decisive phase of the Communist victory. A marshal after 1949, he founded the Nanjing Military Academy and withdrew after being criticised for “dogmatism” in 1958.

Military commander 1896–1969 ○ Died in custody

The Hunanese who rose “with two kitchen knives”, commander of the Nanchang Uprising and the Second Front Army

Born to a poor peasant family in Sangzhi, Hunan, he left the legend of rising “with two kitchen knives”, commanded the Nanchang Uprising in 1927, and led the Second Front Army on the Long March.

From a poor family in western Hunan, he led local armed bands, rose to command a Nationalist army corps, and joined the party days after commanding the Nanchang Uprising of 1 August 1927. He built a base on the Hunan–Hubei border, led the Second Front Army on the Long March and the 120th Division in the war with Japan. After 1949 he was one of the ten marshals, chairman of the state sports commission and a vice-chairman of the Military Commission. Attacked by Lin Biao and Kang Sheng in the Cultural Revolution, he was confined and died in 1969 after being denied treatment; he was rehabilitated in 1974.

Military commander 1897–1986 ○ Natural causes

From Whampoa instructor to marshal, the soldier who organised the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 and ended the Cultural Revolution

On 6 October 1976 he led the Party elders and generals who ordered the arrest of the Gang of Four, ending the Cultural Revolution.

A Hakka from Guangdong, he taught at the Whampoa Military Academy, joined the party in 1927 and took part in the Guangzhou Uprising. As chief of staff on the Long March he warned Mao of Zhang Guotao’s split, and he was chief of staff through the war with Japan and the civil war and took over Beiping in 1949. Made a marshal in 1955, he was criticised in the “February Countercurrent” of 1967 but survived to run the army after Lin Biao’s death. In October 1976, after Mao died, he decided and executed the arrest of the Gang of Four with Hua Guofeng and Wang Dongxing, and in 1978 backed Deng Xiaoping’s return. As chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (1978–1983) he acted as head of state.

Military commander 1898–1974 ○ Died in prison

PLA marshal who commanded Chinese forces in Korea, then was purged for criticizing the Great Leap Forward

'I want to be a Hai Rui!' — In his 1962 'Letter of 80,000 Words' to Mao, invoking the Ming-dynasty official famed for his courage in admonishing the emperor

One of the ten marshals of the People's Liberation Army, he commanded the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War and, as Minister of National Defense, pursued a Soviet-model professionalization of the military. His 1959 letter to Mao criticizing the famine and failures of the Great Leap Forward led to his purge as head of an 'anti-Party clique'; imprisoned and tortured during the Cultural Revolution, he died in custody in 1974 and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1978.

Military commander 1899–1992 ○ Natural causes

Marshal who commanded the Jin-Cha-Ji base and then ran the “two bombs, one satellite” nuclear and missile programme

From Sichuan, he studied in France, Belgium and the Soviet Union and was a political instructor at Whampoa. Political commissar of Lin Biao’s First Army Corps on the Long March, he founded and commanded the Jin-Cha-Ji base in north China during the war with Japan and was mayor of Beijing after the civil war. Made a marshal in 1955, from 1956 he was the vice-premier for science and technology and, after the Soviet advisers left, ran the defence-science programme that produced the atomic bomb in 1964, the hydrogen bomb in 1967 and a satellite in 1970. He was the last of the ten marshals to die, in 1992.

Military commander 1901–1990 ○ Natural causes

Marshal who commanded the Fourth Front Army through Zhang Guotao’s split and as defence minister directed the 1979 war with Vietnam

A Shanxi native in Whampoa’s first class, he became commander of the Fourth Front Army in the Eyuwan Soviet after the Guangzhou Uprising, followed Zhang Guotao’s southward decision on the Long March and in 1936 saw the Western Route Army destroyed in the Hexi Corridor. Deputy commander of the 129th Division in the war with Japan and of the North China Military Region in the civil war, he took Taiyuan in 1949. A marshal in 1955, he was sidelined after the “February Countercurrent” of 1967, returned in 1978 and as minister of defence directed the 1979 war with Vietnam.

Military commander 1907–1971 ✕ Killed in crash

Mao's designated successor and the military genius who won the Chinese Civil War, third among the Ten Marshals

Told that the public saw him as 'Mao's best student,' Lin Biao was pleased and said: 'I don't have any talent. What I know, I learned from Chairman Mao.'

Lin Biao was one of the Chinese Communist Party's most brilliant military commanders, who led the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns in Manchuria to annihilate the Kuomintang's main forces and marched the People's Liberation Army into Beijing. Ranked third among the Ten Marshals in 1955, he became Minister of National Defense and spearheaded Mao Zedong's personality cult while vigorously advancing the Cultural Revolution. In 1966 he was made the Party's sole Vice Chairman and Mao's designated successor, reaching the apex of power before falling out with Mao in the early 1970s. After a failed coup attempt, he died in a plane crash over Mongolia on 13 September 1971 while fleeing toward the Soviet Union.

Military commander 1910–1980 ○ Natural causes

A field commander who read the course of war

He left for the north after telling his wife, “A general may well die on the battlefield.”

Deng Hua was a People’s Liberation Army general who commanded large formations through the Communist revolution and the Chinese Civil War. In 1950 he organized and trained the Northeast Border Defense Army, preparing the force that would cross the Yalu, then supported the Korean War as Peng Dehuai’s first deputy commander. From 1952 he led the Chinese People’s Volunteers through major operations and the armistice phase. Implicated in Peng Dehuai’s downfall, he was dismissed, persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and rehabilitated in 1980.