Background
Hsu, whose original name was Hsu Te-huai, has sometimes used the revolutionary pseudonym of Hsu Hao. He was born about 1902 in Changsha, the Hunan capital, of a well-to-do family.
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Hsu Kuang-ta
Edit ProfileEducation
Hsu enrolled in the second class of Whampoa, the well-known Nationalist military academy, graduating with 449 other cadets in June 1925. When he left Whampao Hsu may have gone to the USSR for a brief period of study, but this cannot be confirmed. At some time shortly after graduation he entered the Nationalist army of Kwangtung general Chang Fa-k’uei, which was headquartered at Chiu-chiang (Kiukiang) north of Nanchang when the uprising broke out there on August 1, 1927, which severed all relations between the KMT and the CCP. Hsu, one of the insurgents from Chang s army, then joined the uprising led by Chu Te’s garrison force within the city. Five days later, when the Communists were routed and forced to flee south, Hsu was a cadre in a battalion of the 75th Regiment of the 25th Division belonging to Yeh T’ing's 11th Army. Presumably he had joined the CCP by this time.
Career
A description of the 11th Army in the immediate post-Nanchang period is contained in the biography of Yeh T’ing. The army was composed of two divisions, the 24th and the 25th, the latter with two regiments, one of which was the 75th, to which Hsu belonged. The Red forces fled south from Nanchang through eastern Kiangsi, passing by Kuan-ch’ang, Ning-tu, and Juichin, all towns that the Communists were to capture and fight in during the next few years. From Juichin they moved eastward into Fukien after passing Ting-chou (Ch’ang-t’ing), turning south, and passing into Kwangtung above Ja-p’u, whence they made their way to Swatow. The Red armies were able to take and hold Swatow briefly toward the end of September 1927, but as they approached the city they left certain troops and the 25th Division at San-ho-pa, a point strategically important because it commanded the river and road communications to Swatow. Chu Te was in over-all command of the troops left there, and Chou Shih-ti commanded the 25th Division. These forces were left at San-ho-pa to form a rear guard for the troops that entered Swatow. The siege of Swatow proved unsuccessful and the troops left at San- ho-pa were engaged in fighting, but after one week of battle Chu Te reported that he had lost half his regular units and was forced to retreat into Fukien. In the fighting at San-ho-pa, Hsu was wounded but managed to escape.
Hsu may have escaped to Hong Kong along with Ho Lung after the Swatow defeat. At any rate, when his activity is next reported (in the early 1930’s), he was working in the west Hunan-Hupeh area controlled by the Second Army of Ho Lung. Communist activity in this area, located to the west and north of Tung-t’ing Lake, is described in Ho’s biography. By the early thirties Flo had built a sizable army and was beginning to threaten Nationalist strongholds in the Wuhan area. He thus became the target of attack from Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, which were attempting to drive the Communists from central China. In the fourth of a series of Annihilation Campaigns against the Communists (this one beginning in June of 1932), Ho's forces were driven out of the Tung-t’ing Lake area after suffering serious losses. The details of Hsu’s connections with Ho Lung’s army at this time are unknown, but his presence at Ho’s base is known from a 1962 article in the authoritative JMJP, which Hsu wrote with two other PLA officers who were also there at the time (Wang Shou-tao and Wang Chen). Describing the events there and mentioning the names of the principal Communists in the area at the time, the article is also quite critical of some of the military strategies that Ho was being advised to follow. It is the basis for much of the recent criticism that has been directed against one of Ho’s political advisers, Hsia Hsi.
By at least the latter years of the war Hsu was attached to the forces of Ho Lung, which fought along the Shansi-Suiyuan border. In 1942 he was identified as the commander of the Second Independent Brigade of Ho’s 120th Division, and concurrently he was commander of a military district within the territory of the Shansi- Suiyuan Military Region. He continued to serve with the 120th Division throughout the war; in 1943 the military area over which he was in command was known as the Yen-pei Military District, Yen-pei being the region in northern Shansi to the north of the Yen-men-kuan (Yenmen Pass) in the Great Wall. Although Ho Lung commanded the 120th Division throughout the war, he moved his headquarters to Yenan in about 1943, and bis post as commander of the Shansi-Suiyuan Military Region (which the 120th Division controlled) was taken by Lii Cheng- ts’ao.
Hsu was commander of the Third Army Group in north China in 1948 and that same year was reappointed commander of the Yen-pei Military District. The following year the, Communists created their important field armies from the armies that had previously been named for the geographic areas in which they were stationed. P’eng Te-huai was given command of the First Field Army (the former Northwest PLA), and Hsu remained in charge of his Third Army, but his troops were now called the Second Corps of the First Field Army. Concurrently in 1949 he was named the commander of the First Field Army’s Armored Corps.
Politics
Sometime after the civil war broke out between the KMT and the CCP in 1946, Hsu returned to familiar territory in the northwest. In March 1947 the Nationalists captured Yenan, the Communist capital, and high-ranking Party officials were forced to evacuate the city. In moving from Yenan, the Communists divided the members of their governing Party Secretariat into two groups; the first group headed by Mao Tse-tung, who was aided by Chou En-lai and Jen Pi-shih remained in the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region (of which Yenan had been the capital) for a year, while the second group, led by Liu Shao-ch’i and Chu Te, made its way via the Shansi-Suiyuan border region into the Shansi-Chahar-Hopeh region and finally established headquarters in P’ing-shan hsien, west Hopeh. Mao and his group joined them there in May of 1948. In the evacuation from Yenan, P’eng Te-huai was in charge of a part of the Red Army, and in August 1947, when Mao’s headquarters somewhere in the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia area was being threatened, he sent Hsu in charge of two brigades to offer him protection.
Hsu’s appearances in the early fifties were rather infrequent, being confined mainly to national conferences involving the PLA, as in Sep- tember-October 1950 when he attended a national conference for “fighting heroes” or in December 1953 when he spoke at the first “model representatives” conference of the Armored Forces. From 1954 to 1959 he was a PLA deputy to the First NPC, and at the end of the first session of the NPC (September 1954) he was elected to membership on the National Defense Council, a prestigious position but one with little power. He was reappointed to the Defense Council in 1959 and 1965. In 1955 the PRC gave its officers decorations as well as personal military ranks for past services. Hsu was made a senior general, the equivalent of a four-star general in the U.S. Army (and only one rank below the top rank of PLA marshal). In addition, he received the Orders of August First, Independence and Freedom, and Liberation for his service in the Red armies during three periods from 1927 to 1950. A year later, at the Party’s Eighth National Congress (September 1956), Hsu was elected a member of the Party Central Committee. He was one of only 33 members elected to full membership who had been neither a full nor an alternate member of the Seventh Central Committee elected at the 1945 Party Congress.
Since the mid-fifties Hsu has appeared in Peking with great regularity-almost always in connection with PLA-sponsored conferences, festivities marking PLA holidays (such as the founding of the Red Army on August 1), or parties given by foreign military attachés stationed in Peking. In contrast to most high-ranking PLA officers, he has traveled abroad rather frequently. The first of these trips took place in November-December 1957 when he accompanied P’eng Te-huai to Moscow for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution; the delegation returned to China via Khaborovsk and Vladivostok. In September-October 1960 he led a Sino-Soviet Friendship Association delegation to Moscow to participate in celebrations marking the 11th anniversary of the PRC, and in March of the following year he headed a military group to Mongolia for the 40lh anniversary of the founding of the Mongolian People’s Army. In October-November 1962 Hsu spent three weeks in Algeria as head of a Chinese government delegation attending Algerian National Day celebrations, and while there he conferred with several top Algerian leaders, including Ben Bella and Ferhat Abbas. Finally, in May 1965 he led a military delegation to Moscow to take part in celebrations commemorating the 20th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Membership
When civil administrations were formed in the northwest to control the areas conquered by the PLA, Hsu was given two assignments. He was named as a member of both the Kansu Provincial People’s Government Council and the multiprovincial Northwest Military and Administrative Committee (NWMAC), which had jurisdiction over Kansu, Sinkiang, Tsinghai, Ninghsia, and Shensi. Both these governmental organs were inaugurated in January 1950. However, by the fall of 1950 he was transferred to Peking and as a consequence was removed from the Kansu Government post in early 1951 (although he remained a nominal member of the NWMAC until early 1953 when it was reorganized). Hsu was brought from the northwest to Peking to assume command of the Armored Force (the tank corps), a post he still holds. When he took command these forces were relatively insignificant, but as a result of large-scale Soviet aid during the Korean War, the Armored Force grew in both size and complexity of weaponry into one of the most important of the PLA service arms.
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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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1942
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1948