Background
Wang was born in Hsiao-kan hsien, northwest of Wuhan in Hupeh province.
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Wang Shu-sheng
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Wang Shu-sheng is a career military officer who has been a Communist Party member since the mid-twenties. A veteran of the Oyiiwan Soviet and the Long March, Wang commanded troops for the New Fourth Army in the Honan- Hupeh area during the Sino-Japanese War and the civil war with the Nationalists in the late forties.
Education
The son of a landlord and a graduate of a higher primary school.
Career
In early 1935 the Fourth Front Army began to move westward to the western border of Szechwan to meet Mao Tse-tung's Long Marchers, who had evacuated Kiangsi in late 1934. Wang was with Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien’s forces when they left the T'ing-Nan-Pa Soviet and in May 1935 he took part in an engagement fought against Nationalist units. In the next month the Fourth Front Army met the First Front Army led by Chu Te and Mao at Mao-kung in western Szechwan. From the few references to Wang Shu-sheng in the next two years it is evident that he remained with the part of Chang Kuo-t’ao’s army that did not follow Mao to Shensi but instead turned westward to spend the winter of 1935-36 in Kan-tzu, Sikang (see under Chang Kuo-fao). In the late spring of 1936 the Second Front Army, led by Ho Lung, arrived in Kan-tzu. The combined forces began to march northward, but upon reaching eastern Kansu in the fall of 1936, three major units of the Fourth Front Army (the Fifth, Ninth, and 30th Armies) were ordered to march westward toward Sinkiang. Orthodox Maoist histories claim that this was ordered by Chang Kuo-fao. As these units began their advance up the Kansu Corridor they suffered serious losses in the winter of 1936-37 at the hands of Generals Hu Tsung-nan and Ma Pu-fang, the Moslem warlord. The survivors managed to flee westward into the Ch'i-lien Mountains in Tsing-hai where in March 1937 they were divided into two units, one known as the Left Detachment and the other as the Right Detachment. Wang was placed in charge of the latter, which consisted of some 300 foot soldiers from the former Ninth Army, plus about 100 cavalrymen.
In early 1935 the Fourth Front Army began to move westward to the western border of Szechwan to meet Mao Tse-tung's Long Marchers, who had evacuated Kiangsi in late 1934. Wang was with Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien’s forces when they left the T'ing-Nan-Pa Soviet and in May 1935 he took part in an engagement fought against Nationalist units. In the next month the Fourth Front Army met the First Front Army led by Chu Te and Mao at Mao-kung in western Szechwan. From the few references to Wang Shu-sheng in the next two years it is evident that he remained with the part of Chang Kuo-t’ao’s army that did not follow Mao to Shensi but instead turned westward to spend the winter of 1935-36 in Kan-tzu, Sikang (see under Chang Kuo-fao). In the late spring of 1936 the Second Front Army, led by Ho Lung, arrived in Kan-tzu. The combined forces began to march northward, but upon reaching eastern Kansu in the fall of 1936, three major units of the Fourth Front Army (the Fifth, Ninth, and 30th Armies) were ordered to march westward toward Sinkiang. Orthodox Maoist histories claim that this was ordered by Chang Kuo-fao. As these units began their advance up the Kansu Corridor they suffered serious losses in the winter of 1936-37 at the hands of Generals Hu Tsung-nan and Ma Pu-fang, the Moslem warlord. The survivors managed to flee westward into the Ch'i-lien Mountains in Tsing-hai where in March 1937 they were divided into two units, one known as the Left Detachment and the other as the Right Detachment. Wang was placed in charge of the latter, which consisted of some 300 foot soldiers from the former Ninth Army, plus about 100 cavalrymen.
Wang remained in the Honan-Hupeh area in the immediate postwar period. In the latter part of 1945 the units in Hunan and Hupeh, led by Li Hsien-nien and Wang, were badly beaten by Nationalist forces. This defeat was cited by Mao Tse-tung in a November 1945 essay designed to show that the Nationalists had every intention of crushing the Communists by force. In June of the next year Li Hsien-nien and Wang, who was then commanding the First Column of the Central Plains Military Region, were ordered to break through the Nationalist encirclement and proceed to the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region.0 Two years later, in 1948, he accompanied Li to the Ta-pieb Mountains and became commander of the Honan-Hupeh Military Region. In mid-1949, when the Communists captured all of Hupeh, Wang became deputy commander of the provincial military district, and in 1950 he succeeded Li Hsien-nien as the commander. He remained as the Hupeh commander until 1954, and in addition he held the following posts: member, Central-South Military and Administrative Committee, 1950-1953, member, Hupeh Provincial People's Government Council, 1950-1955, deputy director, Ching-chiang (Chingkiang) Flood Harnessing Committee, 1952, third deputy commander, Central-South Military Region, 1954. In the latter part of 1954 Wang was transferred to Peking where he has become one of the most important military leaders in China.
He served as a Hupeh deputy to the First NPC (1954-1959), and at the inaugural meeting of the NPC in September 1954 he was elected to the National Defense Council, the military advisory arm of the PRC. In the following month he was appointed a vice-minister of the newly created Ministry of National Defense. He continues to hold both positions, serving in the ministry under P’eng Te-huai until September 1959 and thereafter under Lin Piao. In September 1955 the Communists established officer ranks in the PLA and national military honors. Wang was made one of the very few senior (four-star) generals and given the three top military awards the Orders of August First, Independence and Freedom, and Liberation. Exactly a year later he was elected a member of the Central Committee at the Party's Eighth National Congress. He was one of 33 men elected to full membership who had been neither a full nor an alternate member of the Seventh Central Committee elected at the Seventh Congress in 1945.
In 1956 Wang also became director of the PLA General Ordnance Department and in this capacity gave the opening address to the First Conference of PLA Advanced Ordnance Workers in May 1957. (The Ordnance Department was later absorbed by the Rear Services Department at an unknown date, and it appears that Wang relinquished this assignment in the late fifties.) He made his first trip abroad in 1959 as a member of P’eng Te-huai’s 12-man military delegation to East Europe and Mongolia. Leaving China in late April, the group spent about a week in each of the following countries: Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Mongolia. It returned to China in mid-June.
Politics
Wang was a CCP member by 1927 when he and Cheng Wei-san were among the leading Party activists working in the vicinity of Huang-an and Ma-ch’eng hsien in the Ta-pieh mountain area some 100 miles northeast of Wuhan. Wang may also have been associated with Hsu Hai-tung, who was then in this area. Wang and Cheng Wei-sen engaged in guerrilla warfare during the ensuing years, and then in the early 1930's their units were incorporated into the Communists' Oyu'an Soviet under the leadership of Chang Kuo-t’ao and Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien. In late 1932, unable to withstand attacks by the Nationalists, Chang and Hsu led their forces westward to an inaccessible rural area along the upper reaches of the Ch'u River in northwest Szechwan. In May 1933 the Communists organized the T’ung-Nan-Pa Soviet (named for the three principal hsien in the area). The Communists' military forces, by now known as the Fourth Front Army, were commanded by Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien, with Wang as the deputy commander.
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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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1948
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1954 - 1959
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1956
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1959