Background
Nothing is known about his background.
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P’eng Shao-hui
Edit Profilepolitician military leader deputy chief-of-staff
Education
He was educated locally.
Career
In March 1929 P'eng was wounded during a skirmish in the Liu-yang area (not far south of P'ing-chiang) and had to retire from active military life for a time. By the early spring of 1933, while commanding the First Division of P'ing Te-huai's Third Army Corps, he was wounded again during an attack on Kuang-ch'ang in east Kiangsi. (A photograph of P'eng in the JMJP, August 26, 1966, shows him to be missing his left arm, a loss that may date back to his days in Kiangsi or Hunan.) In September 1934, he fought together with Hsiao Hua in operations in southeast Kiangsi led by P'eng Te-huai. In the following month the Communist armies left Kiangsi on the Long March, and it is probable that P'eng Shao-hui, like the others mentioned above, joined in the year-long retreat to north Shensi.
When war with Japan broke out in mid-1937, P'eng was assigned to Ho Lung's 120th Division, one of the three major divisions of the Communists' Eighth Route Army activated at that time. Throughout the war the division maintained a base in the Shansi-Suiyuan border area, within this large region the division’s 358th Brigade was headquartered in northwest Shansi under the command of Hsiao K'o. However, when Hsiao moved eastward during the winter of 1938-39, P'eng remained behind to assume command of the 358th Brigade. Throughout this early war period, the Communist armies in Shansi had been working in cooperation against the Japanese with guerrilla units of the “Shansi New Army.” The “New Army,” though commanded by KNT member Hsu Fan-t'ing and ostensibly under the direct control of Shansi warlord Yen Hsi-shan, was heavily infiltrated with Communist officers. Yen tolerated this situation for a time, but by 1939 he began to fear the growing strength of the Communists in Shansi, and as a consequence he took a number of provocative political and military steps to diminish Communist control. As a consequence of these maneuvers, Hsu Fanning defected in December 1939 to the Communist side, taking some 3,000 of his men with him. P'eng, as well as his political commissar, Lo Kuei-pi, played an important role in inducing Fan to defect, and this defection, in turn, led to the establishment of the Communists’ Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Region (see under Lin Feng). P'ing appears to have continued his guerrilla operations in Shansi for a few more years, but by 1943 he was identified as head of the seventh branch of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political Academy (K’ang-ta) located near Yenan in north Shensi.
P'eng remained in the border area after hostilities ceased in August 1945 and participated in the Communist takeover in Shansi, which was largely carried out by Ho Lung’s army. In 1946 P’eng’s immediate superior was Wang Chen，chief-of-staff of Ho’s joint command over the territories of the Shansi-Suiyuan and the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Military Regions. In late 1946 Wang and P'eng led attacks upon Yen Hsi- shan forces, which brought new territory under Communist control. Within a year or so, when Ho Lung began to move farther to the northwest, P'eng apparently came under the command of Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien, who from 1947 to 1948 was in charge of the Shansi-Hopeh-Shantung-Honan Military Region, which included the southern part of Shansi. Hsu, like P'eng, had to Ho's staff throughout the Sino-Japanese. In 1947, when Ho went west, the northern military commands were reorganized and Shansi was placed under Nieh Jung-chen's North China PLA. The reorganization brought Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien (and presumably P’eng) over to Nieh Jung-chen’s staff. In the fall of 1948 when the Communists captured Taiyuan the Shansi capital, P'eng was identified as the commander of the Seventh Column of forces under Hsu.
By 1954-55 the regional governments and military regions were disbanded, a move coinciding with the formation of the constitutional government at the First NPC in September 1954. Although PTcng remained in the northwest until early 1955, he received his first assignment at the national level when he was named to membership on the National Defense Council, the military advisory organ created at the close of the First NPC. He was renamed to this position in April 1959 and January 1965. A far more important assignment was given to P’eng following his transfer to the capital in 1955, by June of that year he was identified as a deputy chief-of-staf of the PLA. In this capacity he has served under three chiefs-of-staff, Su Yli, Huang K’o-ch’eng， and Lo Jui-ch'ing. Not long after receiving the staff appointment, the PRC awarded (September 1955) military orders and personal military ranks to the officers of the PLA. P’eng received all three of the top national military honors (the Orders of August First, Independence and Freedom, and Liberation), awarded for service from the founding of the Red Army in 1927 to the eve of the Korean War in 1950. At the same time he was made a colonel-general.
By late 1956 P’eng was holding three other positions within the PLA Headquarters, the most important of which was a deputy directorship of the General Training Department, where he served under Liu Po-ch’eng until November 1957 and under Hsiao K'o thereafter. Subordinate to the Training Department he also became (by November 1956) director of the Sub-department of Military Science and Regulations as well as deputy inspector-general of military training. He was identified in the latter two posts when he gave a talk on scientific advancements in military units on the eve of the National Conference of Activists in the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge. P’eng’s association with the General Training Department was apparently short-lived he was last identified with this important department in early 1958.
In 1959 P’eng was elected as a PLA deputy to the Second NPC, and at the close of the first session (April 1959) was named to membership on the NPC Standing Committee, the committee responsible for the work of the NPC when not in full session. In 1964 he was again elected as a PLA deputy to the Third NPC and, at the close of the first session of the Third NPC in January 1965, was once more named to membership on the Standing Committee. P’eng first went abroad in September 1963 when he led a military delegation to Sweden for a two-week visit. While in Stockholm he conferred with the Swedish defense minister.
Politics
Although P'eng was a field commander of considerable stature when the PRC came into existence in 1949, he does not appear to have received any position of prominence at that time. Apparently, however, he remained in the north-northwest where he had campaigned for many years, and within half a decade had risen quite high within the PLA hierarchy. By 1952 P'eng was serving as chief-of-staff of both the Northwest Military Region (NWMR) and the First Field Army, headquartered in Lanchow, Kansu. He continued in these posts until 1954 when he was promoted to deputy commander of the NWMR, holding this post until the Region was abolished in 1955. In the interim, in January 1953, P’eng received his first civil position when he was named to membership on the Northwest Administrative Committee (NWAC). The NWAC, under the nominal leadership of P’eng Te-huai (then in Korea), was the governing organization for the five provinces of Shensi, Ninghsia, Kansu, Tsinghai and Sinkiang.
Since his transfer to Peking in 1955, P'eng has made frequent public appearances typical of top PLA generals. He is very often on hand for rallies marking important military holidays (such as the founding date of the PLA on August 1) or for receptions given by military attaches stationed in Peking. More important, he has taken part on occasion in talks with important visiting delegations, an instance of which occurred in November 1964 when he was an official participant in the talks with Malian President Modibo Keita. He has also participated in many military conferences, such as a militia political work conference in Peking (November 1964) at which P'eng spoke.
Connections
In private life P'eng is married to Chang Wei, but nothing is known of her antecedents.
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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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1939
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1950
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1955
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1959