Background
Chou was born on Hainan Island (probably in Lo-hui in eastern Hainan).
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Chou Shih-ti
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Chou Shih-ti was a Party member since the mid-twenties, has served in the Communist armies since the Nanchang Uprising in 1927. After making the Long March he was a staff officer in Ho Lung’s 120th Division during the Sino-Japanese War. He continued as a staff officer in the war against the Nationalists in the late forties.
Education
He graduated from primary school in Kwangtung and then entered a military school run by KMT military leader Ch’eng Ch’ien, who had come from his native Hunan to Kwangtung about 1920 to join the Kwangtung Army. This army, then under the over-all command of Ch’en Chiung-ming, was one of the training grounds for young revolutionaries, many of whom soon joined either or both the KMT and the CCP.
Career
Chou was a member of Whampoa’s first graduating class (February 1925). This was a group of special usefulness to Whampoa’s commandant, Chiang Kai-shek, who recruited many of its cadets into his army prior to their graduation. Chou was apparently among those chosen for military service. First he was sent from Canton in late December 1924 with the special Armored Division, which went to Kuang-ning in west Kwangtung to support the Peasant Association’s work there. A month later he participated in Chiang’s First Eastern Expedition (February 1925) to suppress Ch’en Chiung-ming, who was then threatening KMT supremacy and rivaling Sun Yat-sen for control of Kwangtung. In the first months of 1925 Chiang Kai-shek’s army succeeded in driving Ch’en from Swatow, Chao- an, and the East River District of Kwangtung, areas that had been his special stronghold. Chou had joined the CCP at some time prior to 1925, perhaps under the influence of a friend from the Kwangtung Army or from Whampoa (see under Chou En-lai).
When the First Eastern Expedition was completed, Chou Shih-ti entered another military unit under Nationalist government auspices, a regiment then being prepared for the Northern Expedition by Yeh T’ing. Yeh had first joined the Kwangtung Army and then studied in Moscow where he joined the CCP in 1925. When he returned to China later that year, Nationalist military leaders Li Chi-shen and Chang Fa-k’uei recruited him into their newly organized (No-vember 1925) Fourth Nationalist Army. Yeh was made commander of the 34th Regiment (soon to be known as the Independent Regiment) and Chou Shih-ti was his chief-of-staff. For the next two years Chou was closely associated with Yeh. Although the Northern Expedition was not formally launched until July 1926, the Independent Regiment, led by Yeh and Chou, moved north in May to assist forces in Hunan, which were under attacks from the northern warlords. Not long after Wuhan fell to the Northern Expeditionary forces in October 1926, Yeh’s Independent Regiment was expanded into the 24th Division.
At approximately this time, Yeh and Chou separated, Yeh assumed command of the new 24th Division, but Chou was made commander of the 73rd Regiment under the 25th Division. Chou was stationed just south of Kiukiang (Chiu-chiang) on the rail line connecting Kiukiang with Nanchang. He was not immediately informed of the Nanchang Upris-ing, staged on August 1, 1927, by his colleague Yeh T’ing, but within a matter of hours Nieh Jung-chen was dispatched to see Chou, and together the two men staged their own uprising. One Communist account claims that they wiped out five to six hundred men from Chang Fa-k’uei’s 25th Division before taking the men of Chou’s 73rd Regiment south to join the revolt at Nanchang, and a Western writer has observed that of the various units in Chang Fa-k’uei’s 25th Division, only Chou Shih-ti’s 73rd Regiment “appears to have taken part to a man” in the uprising. The revolt at Nanchang marked a complete break in CCP-KMT relations and, because the rebels were driven out of Nanchang within a few days, it represented a defeat for the Communists. When the Communists re-grouped their forces after the defeat (still, ostensibly, under the Nationalist banner), their troops were reorganized into different units, among them the 20th Army led by Ho Lung and the 11th Army under Yeh T’ing. The 11th Army was composed of the 24th and 25th Divisions. Yeh seems to have retained command of the 24th, and Chou took command of the 25th Division. For the next two months the two units moved southward together to Swatow; these events are described in Yeh T’ing’s biography. But when the Communists neared Swatow, Chou and Yeh were separated, Chou’s 25th Division remaining at San-ho-pa, 75 miles to the north of the coastal city, and Yeh took the remainder of his force into Swatow (September 24, 1927).
When Chou’s 25th Division was left at San- ho-pa it numbered somewhat above 2,000 men, who were left to fight rear guard actions for the advancing Communist troops that took Swatow. Chu Te, whose units at Nanchang had also taken part in the uprising there, was also near San-ho- pa. As the Communists fought to hold Swatow they were under attack not only from local forces but also from a portion of Chang Fa-k’uei’s army, which had come south after the events at Nan- chang to defend Swatow. After a week of fighting the Red forces were routed. The battered troops of Yeh T’ing and Ho Lung fled to the East River District of Kwangtung where they joined forces with P’eng P’ai, who had been working with the peasants in the area for some time (see under Yeh T’ing). During the retreat Yeh and Ho’s men lost contact with Chu Te and Chou Shih-ti at San-ho-pa, and for a time Chu and Chou also became separated. Chu Te escaped from San-ho-pa to Jao-ping on the coast, while Chou Shih-ti took a more northern route via Chao-an to Chang-chou over the Fukien border.
When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in mid-1937, Chou became chief-of-staff of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army, one of the three divisions of the Communists’ army in north China. The division was commanded by Ho Lung. Chou held his position until sometime in 1946. Ho was in command of the Shansi-Suiyuan Military Region and in the early war years his headquarters was in north Shansi, but by about 1942 he was brought to the Com-munist capital at Yenan to take charge of the new Joint Defense Command composed of the military regions in the Shansi-Suiyuan and the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia border areas. For the remaining war years, while Ho was in charge of the 120th Division in addition to his joint command post, his place in the Shansi-Suiyuan Military Region was taken over by Lii Cheng-ts’ao. After Lii assumed command, Chou worked under him, and by 1944 he was serving as chief-of-staff and deputy political commissar of the Shansi-Suiyuan Military Region. In 1945 he became Lii’s deputy commander as well. He presumably held all three positions until 1946, when the military commands began to be en-larged, concurrently remaining as chief-of-staff of the 120th Division.
Chou continued to work mainly with Ho Lung’s army from 1946 until the early fifties, and although his activity is not recorded in detail, it can be traced in outline from a brief account of Ho’s army during those years. Ho was in charge of protecting Yenan, which the Nationalists planned to capture in early 1947 after negotiations broke down completely between the KMT and CCP. The Communists were prepared for the attack and made a rather well-planned retreat from their headquarters, moving north into Shansi. From there he continued to operate in the Shansi-Suiyuan area during 1947-48. With the gradual expansion and assistance of Communist troops from armies in Suiyuan and Inner Mongolia, the PLA began to take over Shansi. By May 1947 the entire province was in their hands, excepting only some territory along the Peking-Suiyuan Railway and the capital city of Taiyuan. The latter continued to be held by Shansi warlord Yen Hsi-shan.
Politics
After 1933 Chou's career is clearly connected with the Communists in southeast Kiangsi. Before the Long March he was an instructor at the Red Army Military Academy that opened in 1933. He then made the Long March, arriving in north Shensi in the fall of 1935 with the main force commanded by Mao Tse-tung. He soon became affiliated with the 15th Army Corps (see under Hsu Hai-tung), a Communist unit that was already in north Shensi before Mao’s arrival.
On the first day of 1950 the Communists established the Chengtu Military Control Commission with Chou as the vice-chairman under Li Ching-ch’iian. They also established the civil government, the Chengtu Municipal People’s Government, making Chou the mayor. By the following month he was identified as commander of the West Szechwan Military District, and at approximately this time he was serving concurrently under Ho Lung as a deputy commander for the entire Southwest Military Region, a command structure that had control over Szechwan, Kweichow, Yunnan, and Sikang. The Communists established a civil government paralleling this military command in July 1950, which was known as the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee (SWMAC). The SWMAC, chaired by Liu Po-ch’eng, had Chou as one of its members, a post he nominally held until it was reorganized in early 1953. However, by the time he received this appointment other plans had been made for his future work. In June 1950 he was removed as the Chengtu mayor and in the same month Chou En-lai cabled the occupation authorities in Japan that Chou Shih-ti was to be Peking’s representative on the Allied Council for Japan, the political advisory body to General Douglas A. MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo. It is doubtful that the Communists expected the Allied Powers to accept Chou Shih-ti as a representative; rather, they were apparently attempting to assert their rights as the legal successor to the Chinese Nationalist Government (that was represented on the Allied Council). This gesture was in vain, as was a similar one in August 1950 when Chou was named as a delegate to the Fifth Session of the United Nations’ General Assembly, a position in which he would have served under chief delegate Chang Wen-t’ien.
Membership
From 1947 to 1949 Ho Lung’s army, some¬times termed the Shansi-Suiyuan-Shcnsi-Kansu- Ninghsia PLA, was subordinate to P’eng Te-huai’s Northwest PLA that operated to the west of Ho in Kansu. At the same time Ho also fought some engagements in conjunction with Nieh Jung-chen’s North China PLA that operated in north Hopeh. For at least a brief time in 1948-49 Chou Shih-ti was assigned to the North China PLA in which he served under Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien as deputy commander and deputy political commissar of the First Army Group." Chou remained with Hsu and took part in the capture of Taiyuan in the early spring of 1949. Hsu was appointed to head the Taiyuan Military Control Commission and Chou was made a Commission member.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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November, 1925
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1937