Lai Ch’uan-chu

1910 (age 54)

China

He probably began his military career by becoming a political officer, the first reference to his work in the Red Army identifies him as a Party representative returning from Kwangtung with a unit of the Fourth Red Army, which was moving into west Fukien (November 1929). He was present there at the noted Ninth Conference of the Party organization in the Fourth Army, which met in Ku-t’ien in December 1929. The Fourth Red Army (then commanded by Chu Te, with Mao Tse-tung as the principal political officer) adopted Mao’s report “On the Rectification of Incorrect Ideas in the Party,” which was used as the signal to remove certain dissident Party leaders from the Fourth Army. Lai must have been an insignificant figure at this time, but not long afterwards he began to receive recognition. In mid-1930 the Fourth Red Army became a part of the newly organized First Army Corps, and the Fourth Red Army column in which Lai was serving became the 11th Division. By the end of the year he was the political commissar of one of the 11th Division’s regiments. Before the Long March Lai rose in rank, serving with the First Army Corps as chief-of-staff and then as political commissar at the divisional level. During the Long March he was an officer with the First Army Corps headed by Commander Lin Piao and Political Commissar Nieh Jungchen, the Corps belonged to the Chu-Mao First Front Army. During the march Lai served as political commissar both with the First Division and with the Fifth Regiment of the Second Division of the First Army Corps. After the Communists arrived in north Shensi he was assigned to the headquarters there, and when the government for the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region was established in March 1937, he became acting director of its Military Affairs Department. Nothing further was heard about Lai until 1939 when he met the American author Agnes Smedley, who visited his detachment in Anhwei in the fall of that year. When Miss Smedley met Lai he was the chief-of-staff of the Fourth Detachment, a unit of the New Fourth Army, the Communist army in east-central China. The history of the Fourth Detachment, which had been sent from Hankow with some 1,000 men in March of 1938 not long after the New Fourth Army was activated, is described in the biography of Chang Yun-i. Chang, the detachment commander, had made the Long March, as did Lai, and had been sent from Shensi to join the New Fourth Army in the latter part of 1938. In November 1939, not long after Smedley visited his headquarters, Chang was made the head of the North Yangtze Command and put in charge of all the New Fourth Army units fighting north of the Yangtze River. At this time Lai became the chief-of-staff of Chang’s North Yangtze Command, as well as the head of the “Staff Office” under the New Fourth Army’s chiel-of-staff, Chang Yun-i. In November 1940 the Communists created a Fifth Branch of their military academy K’ang-ta. Headed by Ch’en I, with Lai as his deputy, the new institution was located at Ch’en’s headquarters, Yen-ch’eng, in east Kiangsu. It combined three training schools, two of them former training units attached to the New Fourth Army (Ch’en’s own unit, and one from the former North Yangtze command under Chang Yun-i, which had been located at Hsu-i on the south shore of Lake Hung-tse), pjus a special training squad that had been dispatched from the Eighth Route Army (see under Huang K’o-ch’eng). With the end of the Sino-Japanese War, Lin Piao began to maneuver Red military forces into Manchuria. He transferred to the northeast most of his former 115th Division from the Eighth Route Army and also added officers and men from the Communist forces that had fought in east-central China during the war. Thus Lai took part in the Manchurian campaign, which lasted from 1946 to late in 1948, serving as a political commissar with Lin’s army and as the deputy commander of the East Manchuria Military Region. By early 1949, when Lin’s army (now named the Fourth Field Army) had moved south into China proper and was ready to take over Peking, Lai was identified as the political commissar of the Fourth Field Army’s 15th Army Corps (commanded by military veteran Teng Hua). After assisting in the takeover of Peking, Lin’s army turned south to move through central China and capture Canton in October 1949, and Kweilin and Nanning in Kwangsi by the end of November and early December. The army’s conquests were completed in April 1950 when Teng Hua lead a force from the Fourth Field Army to take over Hainan, an operation in which Lai participated. As Lin Piao’s Fourth Field Army pushed southward in 1949, some of the operations (especially in central China) were conducted in close coordination with Liu Po-ch’eng’s Second Field Army and Ch’en I’s Third Field Army. It appears that Lai was briefly working with Liu Po-ch’eng’s forces, because following the conquest by the Second Field Army of the Kiangsi capital of Nanchang in May 1949, Lai was named to membership on the municipal military control commission. However, by the latter part of 1949 he was back in Lin’s command and was given new military and civil assignments. With the fall of Canton to the Communists in October 1949, Lin was named as vice-chairman of the Canton Military Control Commission under Chairman Yeh Chien-ying. At about this same time he also became deputy commander and political commissar of the Canton Garrison Command, as well as first deputy political commissar of the Kwangtung Military District. In the civil administration, he was named in December 1949 to the Kwangtung Provincial People’s Government Council and as a member of the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee (CSMAC). With its headquarters in Wuhan, the CSMAC had jurisdiction over four central China provinces as well as the southern provinces of Kwangtung (including Hainan) and Kwangsi. As already noted, Li took part in the capture of Hainan Island in April 1950, the last major Communist military operation in the conquest of the mainland (excluding Tibet in 1951). He nominally retained his posts in the CSMAC and the Kwangtung government until 1951 and 1954, respectively. However, by sometime in 1950 (according to his obituary) he was assigned to Peking where he became a deputy director of the General Cadres’ (Personnel) Department under the People’s Revolutionary Military Council (PRMC) and political commissar of troops stationed in Peking. It is not clear how long he retained the latter position, but he continued to serve in the Cadres’ Department until his transfer to Shenyang in 1959 (see below). Lai’s position in the Cadres’ Department placed him directly under Lo Jung-huan until 1956 and thereafter under Hsiao Hua, two of the most important political officers in the PLA. It was also in 1955 that the Communists created personal military ranks, Lai was made a colonel-general, the equivalent of a three-star general in the U.S. Army. In October 1958 he made his only known trip abroad when he was a member of a military delegation to Poland led by Marshal Yeh Chien-ying, Lai’s former superior in Kwangtung. At the first session of the Second NPC in April 1959,' Lai was named to membership on the National Defense Council, an organization with very limited power and authority, but one with considerable prestige. (He was reappointed to the Council in January 1965.) Later in 1959 he was transferred to the headquarters of the Shenyang Military Region (SMR), the headquarters responsible for military affairs in all of Manchuria. There he became the SMR political commissar, replacing Chou Huan. However, Central Committee member Sung Jen-ch’iung, a more senior political leader than Lai, was sent to Manchuria in 1961 to become the first secretary of the Party’s Northeast Bureau. By at least 1964 Sung had become the first political commissar of the SMR; as a consequence, Lai was lowered to the subordinate position of second political commissar, his major post at the time of his death. Owing to the paucity of source materials from Manchuria in the 1960’s, little is known about the last years of Lai’s life. He was occasionally mentioned in the national press when, for example, he was on hand to welcome foreign visitors in Shenyang. And, as already noted, he returned to Peking for the sessions of the NPC held in 1960, 1962, 1963, and 1964. One of the last times Lai was mentioned in the press occurred in 1964 when he wrote an article for the JMJP (May 23) entitled “Revolution Calls for a Careful Study of the Works of Chairman Mao.” Lai Ch’uan-chu died at the age of 55 in Shen-yang on December 24, 1965, of an illness. Defense Minister Lin Piao was named to head the funeral committee for Lai, and the funeral service held on the following day was prominently featured in the JMJP. His 38-year record of service to the Communist movement was described in his obituary, which noted that he had been a “good student of Comrade Mao Tse-tung.”

Lai Ch’uan-chu

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politician

Background

Nothing is known about his background.

Education

Lai joined the CCP in 1927 and entered the Red Army in the following year.

Career

He probably began his military career by becoming a political officer, the first reference to his work in the Red Army identifies him as a Party representative returning from Kwangtung with a unit of the Fourth Red Army, which was moving into west Fukien (November 1929). He was present there at the noted Ninth Conference of the Party organization in the Fourth Army, which met in Ku-t’ien in December 1929. The Fourth Red Army (then commanded by Chu Te, with Mao Tse-tung as the principal political officer) adopted Mao’s report “On the Rectification of Incorrect Ideas in the Party,” which was used as the signal to remove certain dissident Party leaders from the Fourth Army. Lai must have been an insignificant figure at this time, but not long afterwards he began to receive recognition. In mid-1930 the Fourth Red Army became a part of the newly organized First Army Corps, and the Fourth Red Army column in which Lai was serving became the 11th Division. By the end of the year he was the political commissar of one of the 11th Division’s regiments. Before the Long March Lai rose in rank, serving with the First Army Corps as chief-of-staff and then as political commissar at the divisional level. During the Long March he was an officer with the First Army Corps headed by Commander Lin Piao and Political Commissar Nieh Jungchen, the Corps belonged to the Chu-Mao First Front Army. During the march Lai served as political commissar both with the First Division and with the Fifth Regiment of the Second Division of the First Army Corps. After the Communists arrived in north Shensi he was assigned to the headquarters there, and when the government for the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region was established in March 1937, he became acting director of its Military Affairs Department.

Nothing further was heard about Lai until 1939 when he met the American author Agnes Smedley, who visited his detachment in Anhwei in the fall of that year. When Miss Smedley met Lai he was the chief-of-staff of the Fourth Detachment, a unit of the New Fourth Army, the Communist army in east-central China. The history of the Fourth Detachment, which had been sent from Hankow with some 1,000 men in March of 1938 not long after the New Fourth Army was activated, is described in the biography of Chang Yun-i. Chang, the detachment commander, had made the Long March, as did Lai, and had been sent from Shensi to join the New Fourth Army in the latter part of 1938. In November 1939, not long after Smedley visited his headquarters, Chang was made the head of the North Yangtze Command and put in charge of all the New Fourth Army units fighting north of the Yangtze River. At this time Lai became the chief-of-staff of Chang’s North Yangtze Command, as well as the head of the “Staff Office” under the New Fourth Army’s chiel-of-staff, Chang Yun-i. In November 1940 the Communists created a Fifth Branch of their military academy K’ang-ta. Headed by Ch’en I, with Lai as his deputy, the new institution was located at Ch’en’s headquarters, Yen-ch’eng, in east Kiangsu. It combined three training schools, two of them former training units attached to the New Fourth Army (Ch’en’s own unit, and one from the former North Yangtze command under Chang Yun-i, which had been located at Hsu-i on the south shore of Lake Hung-tse), pjus a special training squad that had been dispatched from the Eighth Route Army (see under Huang K’o-ch’eng).

With the end of the Sino-Japanese War, Lin Piao began to maneuver Red military forces into Manchuria. He transferred to the northeast most of his former 115th Division from the Eighth Route Army and also added officers and men from the Communist forces that had fought in east-central China during the war. Thus Lai took part in the Manchurian campaign, which lasted from 1946 to late in 1948, serving as a political commissar with Lin’s army and as the deputy commander of the East Manchuria Military Region. By early 1949, when Lin’s army (now named the Fourth Field Army) had moved south into China proper and was ready to take over Peking, Lai was identified as the political commissar of the Fourth Field Army’s 15th Army Corps (commanded by military veteran Teng Hua). After assisting in the takeover of Peking, Lin’s army turned south to move through central China and capture Canton in October 1949, and Kweilin and Nanning in Kwangsi by the end of November and early December. The army’s conquests were completed in April 1950 when Teng Hua lead a force from the Fourth Field Army to take over Hainan, an operation in which Lai participated.

As Lin Piao’s Fourth Field Army pushed southward in 1949, some of the operations (especially in central China) were conducted in close coordination with Liu Po-ch’eng’s Second Field Army and Ch’en I’s Third Field Army. It appears that Lai was briefly working with Liu Po-ch’eng’s forces, because following the conquest by the Second Field Army of the Kiangsi capital of Nanchang in May 1949, Lai was named to membership on the municipal military control commission. However, by the latter part of 1949 he was back in Lin’s command and was given new military and civil assignments. With the fall of Canton to the Communists in October 1949, Lin was named as vice-chairman of the Canton Military Control Commission under Chairman Yeh Chien-ying. At about this same time he also became deputy commander and political commissar of the Canton Garrison Command, as well as first deputy political commissar of the Kwangtung Military District. In the civil administration, he was named in December 1949 to the Kwangtung Provincial People’s Government Council and as a member of the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee (CSMAC). With its headquarters in Wuhan, the CSMAC had jurisdiction over four central China provinces as well as the southern provinces of Kwangtung (including Hainan) and Kwangsi.

As already noted, Li took part in the capture of Hainan Island in April 1950, the last major Communist military operation in the conquest of the mainland (excluding Tibet in 1951). He nominally retained his posts in the CSMAC and the Kwangtung government until 1951 and 1954, respectively. However, by sometime in 1950 (according to his obituary) he was assigned to Peking where he became a deputy director of the General Cadres’ (Personnel) Department under the People’s Revolutionary Military Council (PRMC) and political commissar of troops stationed in Peking. It is not clear how long he retained the latter position, but he continued to serve in the Cadres’ Department until his transfer to Shenyang in 1959 (see below). Lai’s position in the Cadres’ Department placed him directly under Lo Jung-huan until 1956 and thereafter under Hsiao Hua, two of the most important political officers in the PLA.

It was also in 1955 that the Communists created personal military ranks, Lai was made a colonel-general, the equivalent of a three-star general in the U.S. Army. In October 1958 he made his only known trip abroad when he was a member of a military delegation to Poland led by Marshal Yeh Chien-ying, Lai’s former superior in Kwangtung. At the first session of the Second NPC in April 1959,' Lai was named to membership on the National Defense Council, an organization with very limited power and authority, but one with considerable prestige. (He was reappointed to the Council in January 1965.) Later in 1959 he was transferred to the headquarters of the Shenyang Military Region (SMR), the headquarters responsible for military affairs in all of Manchuria. There he became the SMR political commissar, replacing Chou Huan. However, Central Committee member Sung Jen-ch’iung, a more senior political leader than Lai, was sent to Manchuria in 1961 to become the first secretary of the Party’s Northeast Bureau. By at least 1964 Sung had become the first political commissar of the SMR; as a consequence, Lai was lowered to the subordinate position of second political commissar, his major post at the time of his death. Owing to the paucity of source materials from Manchuria in the 1960’s, little is known about the last years of Lai’s life. He was occasionally mentioned in the national press when, for example, he was on hand to welcome foreign visitors in Shenyang. And, as already noted, he returned to Peking for the sessions of the NPC held in 1960, 1962, 1963, and 1964. One of the last times Lai was mentioned in the press occurred in 1964 when he wrote an article for the JMJP (May 23) entitled “Revolution Calls for a Careful Study of the Works of Chairman Mao.”

Lai Ch’uan-chu died at the age of 55 in Shen-yang on December 24, 1965, of an illness. Defense Minister Lin Piao was named to head the funeral committee for Lai, and the funeral service held on the following day was prominently featured in the JMJP. His 38-year record of service to the Communist movement was described in his obituary, which noted that he had been a “good student of Comrade Mao Tse-tung.”

Politics

Lai’s activities in Peking during the early fifties were seldom mentioned by the Communist press. It is known, however, that he attended the third session of the First National Committee of the CPPCC in October-November 1951, at which time decisions were taken to intensify the “anti-U.S.” campaign and to promote a nationwide austerity campaign. In August of the following year he was a member of the presidium (steering committee) for the All-PLA Sports Meet in Peking and in January 1953 he presented a report before the Government Administration Council (the cabinet) regarding decorations to be awarded soldiers in the PLA. In 1954 Lai was elected as a deputy from the Central-South Military Region to the First NPC, the legislative body that brought the constitutional government into ¿xistence at its first session in September 1954. He was re-elected to the Second NPC (1959-1964), only on this occasion as a deputy from the Shenyang Military Region. He was once again elected from the Shenyang Region to the Third NPC, which opened in late 1964. Although Lai was apparently not very active in the First NPC, he was more deeply involved in the Second and Third NPC’s, serving as a member of the presidium (steering committee) for the last three sessions (I960, 1962, and 1963), as well as for the initial session of the Third NPC, held in December 1964-January 1965. Lai’s long service in the Red armies was given official recognition in September 1955 when he was given all three of the top military awards, the August First, the Independence and Freedom, and the Liberation Orders, awards granted for service from the founding of the Red Army in 1927 to 1950.

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Lai Ch’uan-chu

Background

Education

Career

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Born

Died

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Career

1930

March, 1937

1948

1955