T'ang Liang has spent most of his life as a political officer in the Chinese Communist armies. In 1927 he was working as an apprentice in a firecracker factory in Liu-yang hsien, Hunan. He is apparently a man of humble origins, for at that time he was totally illiterate. Liang was an area of considerable unrest in the 1927 period, and after the split in that year between the Communists and the Nationalists.
Education
Sometime between the early 1930’s and 1939, Tang apparently received some schooling (probably in a Communist military institute), because by 1939 he was described as being literate. In 1939 he was fighting in Liu Po-ch’eng’s 129th Division (of the Eighth Route Army) in Shansi where the division headquarters were located, indirect evidence suggests that he was connected with the division's 386th Brigade commanded by Ch’en Keng. Apparently he was closely associated with Ch'en Keng until about 1948.
Career
He was secretary of the Party Committee in the Second Division of the Communist Eighth Army and a political commissar with a guerrilla division engaged in operations in the vicinity of Ning-tu in the winter of 1930. The Ning-tu area, not far from the border of Fukien, was the seat of Communist guerrilla actions in 1929, when troops commanded by Chu Te captured and recaptured the city several times. It continued to he a center of skirmishes between Communist and Nationalist forces throughout 1930 and 1931. In December 1931, after the conclusion of the Nationalists' third unsuccessful campaign to eradicate Communism from the Kiangsi-Hunan area, some 20,0 troops from former Nationalist armies switched allegiance to the Communists in what the latter have termed the “Ning-tu Uprising.”
T’ang received little attention in the press in the early 1950’s, the most notable report being in November 1951 in connection with the “First Model Hero Representatives Congress of the Third Field Army.” He served on the congress presidium (steering committee), formally opened the congress, and gave a report before the congress a few days later.
In the 1953-54 period, T'ang assumed greater responsibilities in the East China Military Region, serving from early 1953 as director of the Political Department and as a deputy political commissar. In 1954 he was elected as a Shantung deputy to the First NPC (although he was not re-elected to the Second NPC, which opened in April 1959). When the constitutional government was formed at the first session of the First NPC (September 1954), he was named to the newly established National Defense Council, a post to which he was reappointed in April 1959 and January 1965. Tang's position as a senior political officer in east China was reaffirmed in 1954-55 when the multi-provincial military regions underwent a nationwide reorganization. Like most regions, the East China Military Region was contracted in size; prior to 1954 it had embraced the provinces of Kiangsu, Chekiang, Anhwei, Fukien, and Shantung. Following the reorganization, T'ang was assigned as the political commissar of the Nanking Military Region, an area encompassing Kiangsu, Chekiang, and Anhwei. When Politburo member K'o Ch'ing-shih died in April 1965 he was identified as the ufirsf, political commissar of the Nanking Military Region. K5o had evidently replaced Tang as the senior political officer in the late 1950’s or early 1960's. Nonetheless, the heavy demands on K’o’s time suggest that this was largely a nominal appointment and that in fact T’ang has served as the most important political officer in the Nanking Region since the mid-1950's.
Politics
In September 1955, the Communists created personal military honors for distinguished service covering the period between the civil war years of 1927 and the Korean War. At this time Tang was made a colonel-general and given military awards, though it is not known which honors he received. He became an alternate member of the Central Committee when the CCP met for the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress in May 1958. Since the announcement of his reappointment to the National Defense Council in 1959, T’ang’s name has been mentioned infrequently in the press. One of the most significant times was in December 1963 when he attended a memorial service for Marshal Lo Jung-huan in Nanking, at which time he was identified as a senior commander in Nanking.
