Background
He was born in 1911 in Feng-hsiang hsien, located in west Shensi just north of the Wei River.
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Chang Ta-chih
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By 1932 he had joined Communist guerilla units in north Shensi, probably in association with Liu Chih-tan, the leading Communist military and political figure in Shensi during that period.
Career
In 1932 Chang was a member of the Party’s North Shensi Special Committee, but nothing further is known of his work until early 1936 when he became director of civil transport of the Political Department in the 15th Army Corps. This Corps had been established a year earlier by a merger of forces led by Liu Chih-tan with those under the command of Hsu Hai-tung who had come to Shensi from the Communists’ Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei (Oyiiwan) Soviet. In mid-1936 the Communists in Shensi, who now included Mao Tse-tung’s Long Marchers, re-established the Red Army Academy in north Shensi. Chang was a student in the first class.
Nothing further is known of Chang until 1942 by which time he had become a deputy political commissar of a cavalry unit in Inner Mongolia, which operated in the Tach’ing Mountains north of Huhehot (formerly Kweisui). Seven years later, when the Communists were completing the conquest of the mainland, Chang was an army commander in P’eng Te-huai’s First Field Army in northwest China, and by 1950 he was a . deputy chief-of-staff of this force. Working in the military headquarters in Lanchow, Kansu, Chang was primarily involved in military affairs in the early fifties. However, following the establishment of the Northwest Military and Administrative Committee (NWMAC), the governing organ for the northwest, Chang was made director of the NWMAC’s Public Security Department (July 1952 to March 1953), replacing Kan Szu-ch’i. About the same time he also became a member of the Northwest Labor Employment Committee, and in January 1953 he was appointed to membership on the Northwest Administrative Committee, the successor to the NWMAC. In September 1954, with the creation of the constitutional government and the dissolution of regional administrations, Chang received his first position in the central government when he became a member of the newly created National Defense Council. He was re-appointed to the Council in April 1959 and January 1965.
When the Communists bestowed personal military ranks in September 1955 Chang was made a lieutenant-general, the equivalent of a two-star U.S. Army general, and at the same time he received one or one more of the decorations that were given for military service from the birth of the Red Army in 1927 to 1950. A year later, in September 1956, he was elected an alternate member of the CCP Central Committee at the Party’s Eighth National Congress. Chang was identified as commander of the Lanchow Military Region in September 1958 (although some reports suggest that he held this post as early as 1956). The Lanchow headquarters has jurisdiction over military affairs in Shensi, Kansu, Tsinghai, and Ninghsia. Since 1956 Chang has been quite prominent in Kansu and Lanchow, where he is a frequent participant in political and military functions; for example, it fell to him to make a report on the military situation to Defense Minister Lin Piao when the latter visited Lanchow in November 1960. The outline of Chang’s activities suggests close ties with the Kansu Party machinery, although he has never been specifically identified in any post. He was, however, identified in February 1964 as a secretary of the even more important Northwest Party Bureau. The Bureau, headed by Liu Lan-t’ao, was created by the Ninth Party Plenum in January 1961 and includes in its jurisdiction the same provinces that fall under the Lanchow Military Region (Shensi, Kansu, Tsinghai, and Ninghsia) in addition to Sinkiang.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party