Ch’en, whose original name was Ch’en K’ai-ch’u, comes from eastern Hupeh, probably from Nan-'hsiang in Huang-an hsien, which is also the native district of Politburo member Li Hsien- nien. Other reports state that he came from Ma- ch’eng hsien farther to the east, where there was Communist activity from the 1920’s. He was born about 1913 to a peasant family that was apparently able to give him little formal schooling. In his youth he is reported to have worked as a cowherd.
Little is known about Ch’en in this early period, but later references connect him with Li Hsien-nien, Hsu Hai-tung, and Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien by the late 1920’s and early 1930’s when the latter were all active Communists. The three are high-ranking Party members today and were associated with the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei (Oyii-wan) Soviet in the early thirties (see under Chang Kuo-t’ao). As Ch’en was associated with them at various times his experiences probably ran somewhat parallel to theirs.
After serving with Li Hsien-nien and Hsu Hai-tung between 1927 and 1930, Ch’en reportedly went about 1930 to Oyiiwan where he joined Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien’s forces, which were designated the Fourth Front Army in 1931. By Ch’en’s own account he was fighting with Hsu’s army in eastern Szechwan in 1932 in an area near the Ta-pa Mountains in northeast Szechwan, where he was serving as a “political instructor of the signal corps of the 263rd Regiment of the 88th Division,” commanded by Wang Lieh-shan. According to this account he was wounded in battle in February 1933 and his commander was killdd. The fighting occurred near Hsuan-han just east of the Ch’u River. During the Long March Ch’en served first with the Fourth Front Army, moving successively from platoon, to company, and finally to battalion commander. In mid-1935, when the Fourth Front Army from western Szechwan met Mao’s army from southeast Kiang- si (see under Chang Kuo-t’ao), Ch’en must have switched to the forces of Mao. At that time he was promoted to divisional commander. He reached north Shensi with Mao’s forces in the fall of 1935. Once in Shensi he attended the Red Army Academy, perhaps remaining until 1937 when it was renamed the Anti-Japanese Military and Political Academy (K’ang-ta).
When the Sino-Japanese War began in mid- 1937 Ch’en was assigned to command the 769th Regiment in Liu Po-ch’eng’s 129th Division, one of the three divisions subordinate to the Communists’ Eighth Route Army. Ch’en moved with the 129th Division into Shansi in the early fall of 1937 and took part in the fighting against the Japanese. In the late thirties’or early forties he was promoted to the command of a brigade (possibly the 385th) in the 129th Division, and by war’s end he was in command of a column of the division operating in the Shansi-Hopeh-Shan-tung-Honan Military Region. In the postwar period Ch’en remained with Liu Po-ch’eng’s forces, serving as commander of both the Third Column of the Central Plains People’s Liberation Army and the West Anhwei Military District. In the latter part of 1948 he took an active part in the important Huai-Hai Campaign in north-central Anhwei. During the following year, as Liu Po- ch’eng’s forces, now known as the Second Field Army, moved into central-south China and then into the southwest, Ch’en led the Third Army Corps’ 11th Army and then the Third Army Corps itself.
Since 1949 Ch’cn’s career has continued to center around military activities, though he has also held positions on some important government councils. In December 1949 Liu Po-ch’eng’s Second Field Army occupied Szechwan; Ch’en was named a vice-chairman of the Chungking Military Control Commission and was identified in this post as late as December 1951. At the same time he served as mayor of Chungking until he was succeeded by Ts’ao Ti-ch’iu (later a secretary of the Shanghai Party Committee) in April 1951. There are also reports that Ch’en was a secretary of the Chungking CCP Committee in 1949, but these have not been confirmed. At the regional level, he was a member of the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee from 1950 to 1952.
Ch’en nominally retained posts in the southwest until 1952, but by February 1951 he had been transferred to Peking to assume the important position of commander of the PLA Artillery Force. Reports placing him in Korea in 1950 and on the Vietnam border in 1952 were never confirmed by Chinese Communist sources, and in any case, beginning in late 1952 he began to make frequent appearances in Peking at events normally attended by military leaders (e.g., receptions given by foreign military attachés). Ch’en served from 1954 to 1959 as a deputy from the Southwest Military Region to the First NPC, and at the first session of the Congress in September 1954 he was made a member of the newly created National Defense Council, a position he still retains. A year later, when the Communists first awarded military decorations and gave their officers personal ranks, Ch’en was made a colonel-general (a three-star rank) and was given high but unspecified military decorations.
Ch’en received Party recognition in September 1956 when he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee by the Eighth National Party Congress. The following year he was among 12 military leaders under P’eng Te-huai who formed the “goodwill” delegation of the mission that Mao Tse-tung took to Moscow to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the U.S.S.R. P'eng’s group remained in the Soviet Union from November 6 to December 3.
Ch’en was last identified as PLA Artillery commander in March 1959 when he addressed a national conference of “outstanding artillery men” in Peking. He remained in the capital until the fall when he was transferred to the position that has subsequently been his principal post, that of commander of the Shenyang (Mukden) Military Region, the command responsible for all of Manchuria. Ch’en replaced Teng Hua, who was apparently removed for political reasons. Paralleling the Shenyang Military Region is the Northeast Party Bureau which was recreated in January 1961 in accordance with a decision taken at the Ninth Party Plenum. By June 1963 Ch’en was identified as one of the secretaries of this Bureau, which position placed him under the veteran Hunanese Communist, First Secretary Sung Jen-ch’iung.
Ch’en visited Korea briefly in November and December 1960 as a member of the military “goodwill” mission led by Ho Lung, and on at least two occasions he has been reported back in Peking (1961 and 1962). Otherwise, since his appointment to Mukden, Ch’en’s activities have been confined to that city where he has been quite regularly identified in attendance at the various social functions that require his presence by virtue of his position as commander of the military region. In private life he is married to Wang Hsuan-mei, whose antecedents are unknown.
