Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
Su made the Long March in 1934-35, and after arriving in north Shensi he enrolled at the Red Army Academy, the school first set up in Kiangsi, which was re-established in north Shensi soon after the Red Army reached the northwest. When the Si no-Japanese War began in mid-1937, Su became a brigade political commissar in Lin Piao’s 115th Division, part of the Eighth Route Army. He remained in Lin's forces during the early war years, but later his unit was attached to Liu Po-ch'ing's 129th Division, also part of the Eighth Route Army, which was headquartered in southern Shansi.
There is little reporting on SuJs wartime record, but it is clear that it closely paralleled those of Yang Te-chih and Yang Yung, both of whom were top officers in Lin Piao’s 115th Division. At the start of the war the Division’s 340th Brigade, of which Su was the political commissar, took part in the famous victory over the Japanese at P’ing-hsing-kuai in northeast Shansi. In the spring of 1938, Yang Te-chih and Su moved eastward into the Hopeh-Shantung-Honan border area as head of a unit known as the Second Column. In 1939, in collaboration with units led by Yang Yung, they established the Hopeh-Shantung-Honan (Chi-Lu-Yli) Military Region, Yang Te-chih was the commander, Yang Yung the deputy commander, and Su the political commissar. (By 1945 he was also director of the Region’s Political Department.) The Chi-Lu-Yii area was later incorporated into the larger Shansi-Hopeh- Shantung-Honan (Chin-Chi-Lu-Yii) Border Region, which was established in mid-1941 (see under Yang Hsiu-feng). The border region served as a vital communications link between the Eighth Route Army forces in north and northwest China and the New Fourth Army troops stationed in east-central China.
Toward the end of the war Yang Te-chih and Su moved north from the Chi-Lu-Yii Border Region into Jehol and Chahar, a rather unsuccessful expedition that is described in Yang's biography. Later, by 1948, Su had returned to the Chi-Lu-Yii area where he was political commissar of a military sub-district. For the next few years his career was closely linked with Yang Yung. By the winter of 1948-49, Yang was commander and Su the political commissar of the Fifth Army Group, which was subordinate to Liu Po-cii’eng’s Second Field Army. In the spring, summer, and fall of 1949, Liu’s men swept through parts of central China and into the southwest. Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichow, fell on November 15, 1949. A few days later, Su was appointed chairman of the Kweiyang Military Control Commission, a post he held for about a year. When the Kweichow provincial government was established in the last days of 1949 and the first days of 1950, the principal posts went to Yang Yung and Su. Yang became governor of the province and commander of the Kweichow Military District, and Su became Military District political commissar and the ranking secretary of the provincial CCP Committee. Concurrently, he was a member of the regional administration controlling Kweichow, the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee (known after early 1953 as the Southwest Administrative Committee) and in 1951 was deputy political commissar of the Second Field Army.
By the spring of 1954 Yang Yung was a deputy commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers in Korea. By February of that year Su had already assumed Yang’s post as Military District commander, which he held in addition to his other Kweichow posts. Then by mid-1954 Su was also transferred from Kweichow. He appeared in Peking in August 1954 and has been working there since. When the national government was reorganized in September 1954, Su was named to the newly created military advisory body, the National Defense Council, a post to which he was reappointed in April 1959 and January 1965. Also in mid-1954 Su was made a deputy political commissar of the Chinese Navy. He presumably relinquished his Party post in Kweichow at about this time, though the changeover there was not confirmed until February 1955 when Chou Lin was identified as Kweichow's ranking Party secretary.
When the PRC first awarded military decorations in September 1955, Su was given the Orders of Independence and Freedom and of Liberation, covering military service during the period from 1937 to 1950. At about the same time he was identified as an admiral (personal military ranks also having been first created in 1955), the equivalent of a three-star admiral in the U.S. Navy. In September 1956, at the CCP's Eighth National Congress, Su was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee, and by February 1957 he had been promoted to political commissar of the Navy.
As in the case of many military leaders, Su’s activities are seldom reported in the press. But a few items indicate that he attends important military conferences and meetings, especially those concerned with political work in the armed services. For example, in February-March 1957 he addressed a conference of Navy CCP “activists” on the need to “oppose doctrinairism” in their work, and in July 1960 he was among a group of senior generals and admirals who were active in the Party’s campaign to have all officers spend some time working directly among low echelon soldiers and sailors.