Background
He was born into a fairly well-to-do family in Hsiang-t’an hsien, the birthplace of Mao Tsc-tung and Huang’s colleague, P’eng Te-huai.
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Huang Kung-lueh
Edit ProfileEducation
Huang attended a middle school and then graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy, which opened in the late spring of 1924 under the presidency of Chiang Kai-shek. During the course of the Northern Expedition, begun in mid-1926 to unify China under the KMT, Huang became close friends with P’eng Te-huai.
Career
Huang and P’eng were then serving in the Fifth Independent Division under T’ang Sheng-chih’s Eighth Army, one of the major components of the National Revolutionary Army. Through Pengs assistance, Huang was placed in charge of a battalion-level cadet corps, but he was soon transferred to command the Second Battalion of the Second Regiment. P’eng Te-huai was then in command of the First Regiment.
P’eng and Huang participated in the many campaigns conducted in central China by T’ang Sheng-chih during the Northern Expedition in the latter part of 1926 and the year 1927. At some time in 1927, probably after the KMT-CCP split in mid-year, Huang joined the CCP. By the first part of 1928, P’eng (not yet a Party member) and Huang were serving in the First Division of Ho Chien’s 35th Army, which was stationed just west of Tung-t’ing Lake in northern Hunan. In the second quarter of the year, their division was transferred to the area around Ping-chiang and Liu-yang hsien in northeast Hunan, the region which had witnessed some of the Autumn Harvest Uprisings only a few months earlier. In late July 1928, allegedly in defiance of orders to suppress the local peasantry, the Communists within the division mutinied and staged the P’ing-chiang Uprising. Orthodox Communist accounts attribute the leadership of the uprising to P’eng and Huang, as well as Feng Tai-yuan, who had been sent to the P’ing-chiang area by the CCP to organize the peasantry. The rebels immediately established the Fifth Red Army, P’eng became the commander and T eng Tai-yuan the Party representative (later redesignated political commissar). Huang was made the Party representative for the Second Regiment of the 14th Division. After some heavy fighting in the P’ing-chiang area, P’eng and T’eng withdrew and took most of the Fifth Army southward to Chingkangshan where in November 1928 they joined forces with Mao Tse-tung and Chu Te.
Huang was left behind in charge of some 1,000 men. During the course of the next year he established the Hunan-Hupeh-Kiangsi base and conducted guerrilla operations. This base, situated a triangle formed by Wuhan, Changsha, and Nanchang (all KMT strongholds), proved to be a far less viable area for Communist operations than other bases in central-south China. Nonetheless, it appears that Huang was able to strengthen his forces somewhat by recruiting local peasants and miners. After operating in relative isolation for a year, Huang’s units were reinforced in the fall of 1929 by the arrival of two units from P’eng Te-huai’s Fifth Army, these were grouped together in a single command, and Huang was made deputy commander of the division (presumably still the 14th Division). By early 1930 Huang had moved southward to an area in Kiangsi not far east of Chingkangshan. After holding a meeting with Fifth Army commanders P’eng Te-huai and T’eng Tai-yuan, the scattered Communist units from southwest, central, and west Kiangsi were merged to form the Third Red Army under Huang’s command. The units drawn from central Kiangsi were led by Lo Ping-hui, who had recently defected from the Nationalists. Several years later, in response to a question by authoress Nym Wales about the quality of Red Army commanders, Lo rated Huang and P’eng Te-huai as the two ablest he had known.
Politics
In the first half of 1930 the various Communist forces in central-south China began to prepare for military advances upon the main industrial cities of the central Yangtze Valley, a policy then espoused by Li Li-san. As a part of a general reorganization, Huang’s Third Army was placed under the First Army Corps, commanded by Chu Те and Mao, P’eng Te-huai’s Fifth Army became the Third Army Corps. The Chu-Мао army marched north and advanced on Nanchang on August 1, 1930. But the Nationalist forces proved too strong, and after serious losses to the Red Army, the attack was called off within 24 hours (see under Chu Те). After participating in this action, as well as an equally abortive attempt to capture Changsha in September, Huang led his Third Army troops on a retreat to central Kiangsi. In coordination with troops led by Mao, Chu, P’eng Te-huai, and Lo Ping-hui, Huang took part in the capture of the important city of Chi-an (Kian) in early October.
Chi-an was quickly retaken by the Nationalists, by which time Li Li-san’s ambitious plans to capture major cities had collapsed. However, remnants of the Li leadership still controlled many of the Party organs within the Kiangsi Provincial Committee, as well as the Southwest Kiangsi Special Action Committee, and these men became involved in a power struggle with Mao Tse-tung. There is little reported about Huang’s activities at this critical juncture, but it is reasonably clear that he supported the Mao group in December 1930 at the time of the Fu-t’ien Incident. This was touched off by a revolt of certain officers, among them Liu Ti in the 20th Army (under P’eng Te-huai’s Third Army Corps) at Tung-ku, some 60 miles south-east of Chi-an. The rebels then attacked a Communist stronghold in the neighboring town of Fu-t’ien, where Mao had previously imprisoned Tuan Liang-pi and Li Wen-lin on grounds of belonging to the so-called A-В (Anti-Bolshevik) group in Kiangsi. This provoked retaliation from Mao who had some 70 members of the Kiangsi Provincial Soviet arrested on December 7, 1930. Mao’s action in turn brought forth more trouble within the Communist military ranks, until Mao’s supporters, among them Chu Те, P’eng Te-huai, and Huang, finally gained the ascendancy.
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Born
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Died
1931 (aged 33) -
Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Education
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1924
Career
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1927
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1928