Background
Su Yii is a native of Fukien but he spent, at the least, his middle school years in Hunan, where most reports state that he attended the Second Normal School in Chang-te.
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Su Yii
Edit Profilepolitician military leader politburo member
Education
He joined the Communist Youth League in 1926 when he was 18 and still a normal school student. When his involvement in radical student activities caused him to be dismissed from the school, he went to Wuchang where he became a member of the cadet detachment of Yeh TMng's Independent Regiment of the Fourth Nationalist Army, later changed to the 24th Division of the 11th Army, a part of Chang Fa-k’uei’s Second Front Army by mid-1927, when Yeh's division mutinied and joined the Communists. The history of the division, which numbered many young Communists among its officers, is contained in the biography of Yeh, who led the division at the time of the Nanchang Uprising of August 1927. This event sealed the break in relations between the CCP and the KMT, and by the time it occurred Su had become a platoon commander in Yeh’s 24th Division and a member of the CCP. He presumably escaped with Yeh after the Communists failed to hold Nanchang, the Kiangsi capital, which they seized for a few days beginning on August 1. When Su’s activities were next reported he had joined the army of Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung at Chingkangshan on the Kiangsi-Hunan border (1928).
Career
From Chingkangshan Su apparently followed Chu and Mao into eastern Kiangsi and Fukien, remaining for a time with their Red Army. From about 1930 to 1932 he was commander of the Red 64th Division, a division which at first belonged to the 22nd Army of Ch’en 1 and was then transferred to the army of Lin Piao. Sometime in the year 1932 to 1933 Su Yu was transferred to the forces that were stationed along the border of Kiangsi and Fukien and were commanded by Fang Chih-min, who had been operating in the area since the late 1920’s. At an uncertain date following an im portant Communist military conference in April the Communists created two new military units; one of these units, the Seventh Army Corps under Hsun Huai-chou, was to take charge of the Fukien side of Fang’s border area base. Su then became Hsun's second in command.
In the latter part of 1933 and early 1934 Hsun Huai-chou’s Seventh Corps campaigned in Fukien, but later it moved back into southeast Kiangsi. At approximately this time Su was transferred to Fang Chih-min’s 10th Army in northeast Kiangsi. In mid-1934 Fang’s troops began to move north into southern Anhwei, and at the same time Hsun’s Seventh Corps left southeast Kiangsi to rendezvous with Fang. These movements are described in orthodox Communist accounts as an attempt to engage the “Japanese aggressors” in nortli China (see under Fang Chih-min), but it is more likely that the Communists were attempting a breakthrough of Nationalist lines, which were beginning to be more closely drawn around the main Red Army troops in southeast Kiangsi. The merger of Hsun's and Fang's forces in the border area between Kiangsi and Anhwei took place in July and the new unit, known as the 10th Army Corps, was under the over-all command of Fang. Su was chief-of-staff of the new corps, which consisted of three divisions.
The newly merged force fought its first battle at T'an-chia-ch’iao in southern Anhwei and in the ensuing fighting Hsun Huai-chou, who had become the commander of the 19th Division, lost his life. Su Yii, however, was soon separated from Fang, which accounts for the fact that he was not with the latter when he was captured by the Nationalists early in 1935. Su had been ordered by Fang to return south just before the latter was captured, but only after the Communists had suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Nationalists. Su, together with Liu Ying, who was director of the Political Department for Su's small force, turned back into Kiangsi. The force the two men commanded was only a remnant of the army that had gone into south Anhwei, it numbered only about 800 men. With this small band Su returned to the vicinity of Fang's original base on the Kiangsi-Fukien-Chckiang border and remained there when the Communists under Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung were forced to leave Kiangsi and make the Long March.
In the reorganization of the New Fourth Army Ch’en I became the acting commander to replace Yeh Ting, who had been captured by the Nationalists, and Liu Shao-ch'i became the Army's political commissar. Seven new divisions replaced the former six detachments in the breakdown of army forces, Su was given command of the First Division as well as the Central Kiangsu Military District, which his division largely controlled. The district was in the strategic region (because of its proximity to Nanking) of east-central Kiangsu, bounded on the west by the Grand Canal, on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Yangtze, and on the north by a segment of the line running from Huai-an to the coast. The Central Kiangsu Military District (Su-chung Chiin-ch'ii) was the site of the New Fourth Army headquarters and the central China branch of K'ang-ta (the Red military training school), as well as the location of Su's First Division. This base, the most important one for the New Fourth Army, was the equivalent of the Wu-t'ai Mountain base in Shansi, where Lin Piao maintained the headquarters of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army. And, as in Lin's base, there was a high degree of coordination between operations of the army, government, and mass organizations that influenced the local population. The activities carried on in this area, many of them under the partial direction of Su's division, are extensively treated by Chalmers A. Johnson in his Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power, from which most of the information on Su's activities with the First Division is taken. As the war continued, units of Su's division moved into areas near the major cities of Shanghai, Nanking and Hangehow and by 1944 they had returned to the area of the division’s original base on the Kiangsu-Chckiang border. Hence in 1944, Su became commander of the Kiangsu- Chekiang Military District, holding this post along with that in the Central Kiangsu Military District until 1946. From 1943 to 1946 he also served as the political commissar of the First Division, in addition to being the division commander.
In the meantime, Su had received important appointments in national organizations and in the central government. Just as Shanghai was falling to the Communists in May 1949, the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth was being formed at a youth congress in Peking. Su was named to the federation’s National Committee, a post he held until the next congress in 1953. In September 1949 he attended the First CPPCC, the legislative body that brought the PRC into existence, as a deputy from the Third Field Army. During the course of the meetings Su served as a member of both the Presidium (steering committee) and the Credentials Committee and spoke briefly about the fighting in which the Third Field Army was still engaged in east China. At the close of the session he was named to membership on the First National Committee, a position he held until the Second Committee was formed in December 1954. The principal military organ of the new government, known as the People's Revolutionary Military Council (PRMC), was formed under the chairmanship of Mao Tse-tung in October 1949, Su was named as a member, retaining this position until the constitutional government was established in the fall of 1954. It was also in October 1949 that the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association was established; Su became a member of the First Executive Board but dropped his affiliation with the association when it was reorganized in December 1954.
Politics
In the years before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Su Yii had no permanent base, but he continued to engage in guerrilla operations in areas which the Communists partially controlled along the borders of Fukien, Kiangsi, and Chekiang provinces. At some time he made contact with and may have joined the forces of the larger Communist guerrilla group headed by Chang Ting-ch’eng and Teng Tzu-hui, who maintained Red bases farther to the south in Fukien along the province’s western border. The description of the Southwest Fukien Military and Administrative Committee, the Communist government for the Fukien base, is contained in the biography of Chang Ting-ch’eng, who headed the organization. At some time in the 1930’s, but more probably in the period before the Long March, Su was wounded and lost an arm.
When war broke out in the summer of 1937 the Chinese Communists began to unite their forces then fighting in separate small bases in central China. In the spring of 1938 they activated their New Fourth Army (with the sanction of the Nationalists) to operate in the Third War Zone, which was commanded by KMT General Ku Chu-t’ung. The Communist army was headed by Yeh T’ing and Hsiang Ying, and as part of its Second Detachment (under Chang Ting-ch’eng) the army incorporated Su’s forces from the Chekiang-Fukien border area. However, at the outbreak of the war Su himself was probably in Yenan on a brief visit, for there are a number of reports that he had gone there in 1937. If true he may have taken part in the initial plans for the organization of the New Fourth Army. After the New Fourth Army came into being, Yeh Ting and Hsiang Ying operated from a headquarters in the area south of the Yangtze. However, certain units of the army were operating north of the river and after 1940 these became the larger of the two commands into which the New Fourth Army was divided.
The South Yangtze Command, to which Su Yii belonged, was spread from the northern tip of Kiangsi and Chekiang into south Kiangsu and Anhwei. In addition to the headquarters staff, three of the six detachments of the New Fourth Army were stationed initially in the area south of the Yangtze. Ch’en I headed the South Yangtze Command and the Army's First Detachment, and the Second Detachment was led by Chang Ting-ch'eng with Su Yii as the political commissar. A brief history of the Second Detachment is contained in the biography of Chang Ting-ch’eng, who maintained Second Detachment headquarters at Chin-fan, a small town about 50 miles southeast of Nanking. The detachment operated in the area immediately south of the Yangtze which is roughly bounded by the triangular points made by the cities of Wu-hu, Nanking, and Wu-hsi and which extended from Tang-fu hsien in Anhwei south of the Yangtze into south Kiangsu toward Wu-hsi. In 1938 Su Yii’s Second Detachment fought the Japanese in the Tan-yang area of Kiangsu not far east of Nanking, but by 1939 troops from his detachment had begun to move north of the Yangtze. The move was begun early in the year when Lo Ping-hui, the detachmenfs deputy commander, led about 1,000 men into Li-chiang, where in May 1939 they joined forces with some of the troops from the Fourth Detachment. The united forces became the Fifth Detachment of the New Fourth Army (based north of the Yangtze). By June 1940 Lo had been followed by Ch’en I, who brought his own First Detachment and the remainder of the forces from the Second Detachment across the river. Then, following the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941 when Yeh Ting tried unsuccessfully to move across the Yangtze with the headquarters staff (see under Yeh Ting).
In view of Su's rising prominence as a military leader it is not surprising that he was elected an alternate member of the Party Central Committee at the Seventh National Party Congress held in Yenan from April to June 1945. He was raised to full committee membership at the Eighth Congress in 1956. Recognized by the end of hostilities in 1945 as one of the more capable younger generals, Su was considered and was said to have had a “reputation for producing troops out of his cap.” He was thought to have “more than the ordinary” Red general’s skill in handling artillery. In fact, the military reputation of Ch’en I, Su’s superior officer, was said to have stemmed in part from Su’s efforts as a staff officer and commander. Thus by 1945 Su held a recognized place among the CCP military elite. In the civil war period that followed he continued to work with his New Fourth Army troops, moving them from the Kiangsu-Chekiang base into central Kiangsu where he fought seven battles with the Nationalists in mid-1946 as negotiations were breaking down between the KMT and the CCP. By 1946, and continuing to the reorganization of the New Fourth Army in 1947 (see below), Su was elevated to the position of deputy commander of the entire New Fourth Army. After the battles in Kiangsu in 1946, although he was technically deputy commander of Central China Military Region (see under Chang Ting-ch'eng), he withdrew his forces into Shantung at the end of the year, and there he assisted Ch’en I in reorganizing the bulk of the New Fourth Army into the East China Field Army of the PLA, he became deputy commander early in 1948, as well as deputy commander of the East China Military Region. Ch’en and Su led the Communist troops that won important victories over the Nationalists in Shantung in August 1947.5 Su controlled all the East China PLA forces in Shantung in the fall of 1947 when Ch'en I left for operations in the Kaifeng area of Honan.
In October 1953 the Chinese press noted that Su was unable to attend a meeting of the ECAC owing to illness. However, he was active once again in the fall of 1954 when the constitutional government was inaugurated. Su was elected as a deputy from the East China Military Region (ECMR) to the First NPC. At the close of the NPC session in September 1954, the old PRMC was abolished; to some degree it was replaced by the newly created National Defense Council (NDC), although the latter organization is far less significant than the defunct PRMC. Su was named to membership on the NDC, a position he still retains. More important, in November 1954, he was named as chief-of-staff of the PLA, in effect replacing Nieh Jung-chen.
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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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1930 - 1932
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1943 - 1946
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1954