Yang Ch’eng-wu

1912

Ch'ang-fing, China

During the Long March Yang continued as political commissar of the Fourth Regiment, a unit that took part in the capture of Tsun-i in Kweichow from the Nationalists in January Tsun-i was the site of an important conference held by the Communists during the March, a conference from which Maoist historians now claim that Mao Tse-tung emerged as the CCP's dominant leader. By May 1935 the marchers had made their way into eastern Sikang where they had another savage encounter with the Nationalists as they tried to cross the Ta-tu River at An-shun-ch'ang. The crossing of the river after capturing the famous Lu-ting chain bridge is described by Edgar Snow as “the most critical incident of the Long March. Spanning a narrow gorge between high mountains and a swift and deep river, the bridge was the “last possible crossing of the Tatu east of Tibet.’’ The successful crossing enabled Mao's forces to proceed north into Szechwan for their rendezvous with Chang Kuo-t'ao's Fourth Front Army, which was coming from north Szechwan (see under Chang Kuo-fao). Yang has written a firsthand account of the crossing, because it was his Fourth Regiment that was ordered by Lin Piao to take the bridge and capture the town of Luting to the north. Pushing north from Szechwan with Mao’s forces, Yang’s regiment captured a strategic pass in southwestern Kansu in September 1935. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, Liu Ya-lou remained at the military academy, but Yang followed his commander Lin Piao to the battlefields of north Shansi. As commander of an independent regiment in Lin’s 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, Yang and his forces crossed the Yellow River in September 1937 and advanced to the vicinity of Wu-t’ai Mountain in northeast Shansi. Here Lin's 115th Division made its headquarters and then moved north to engage the Japanese at P'ing-hsing-kuan, where they encircled and destroyed a major portion of the Japanese Fifth Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Itagaki Seishiro, a battle the Communists claim as one of their major victories of the war. After this encounter Lin Piao did not himself engage much in front-line warfare, but left the fighting to his deputy, Nieh Jung-chen, a man with whom Yang Ch'eng-wu has long been associated. Yang participated with Nieh in guerrilla activities along the borders of Shansi, Hopeh, and Chahar provinces. In the area controlled by Nieh's Wu-fai Mountain base, the Communists soon established the Shansi-Chahar-Hopeh (Chin-Ch’a-Chi) Border Region Government. The government was set up in January 1938 and, in the prevailing atmosphere of cooperation to resist the Japanese, it was immediately accorded official recognition by the Nationalist government. The political and strategic importance of the Chin-Ch’a-Chi area is described in the biographies of Nieh Jung-chen and Sung Shao-wen. In particular, the area was situated between four important Japanese-controlled rail lines, which were the object of many harassing guerrilla attacks in which Nieh and Yang's forces took part, and by the end of the war the Communists were cutting the lines at will. Yang's first move eastward took place in October 1937 when he led his independent regiment from Shansi into western Hopeh where he began recruiting among the peasantry to build up his forces. At this time and later in the war, he was in charge of one of the four administrative sub-divisions of the Wu-t'ai base area, the I-hsin and Man-ch’eng hsien base in western Hopeh where, according to a Japanese study of 1940, his forces now enlarged to the division level numbered some 7,000 men. In 1941 he was identified by other titles that refer in general to the same area in west and central Hopeh, the first was as commander of the Shansi-Hopeh Military Sub-district and the second as commander of the Fifth Sub-district of the West Hopeh Military District. By the end of the war, at which time Yang’s forces were designated the Second Column of Nieh Jung-chen's Chin- Ch’a-Chi Command, the column had a reported strength of 30,000 men. At this same time he was in command of the Central Hopeh Military District. Yang has written a rather detailed account of his operations against the Japanese in the period after December 1941. Soon after V-J Day in 1945, Yang participated in the capture of Kalgan (Chang-chia-k'ou), the capital of Chahar. The city was held until October 1946 when Nationalist forces under Fu Tso-i occupied it. A year later, identified as commander of the First Independent Division, Yang and his forces combined with the troops led by Yang Te-chih to capture Shih-chia- chuang, the important rail junction in western Hopeh. The city fell on November 12, 1947, and has been described in official Communist sources as the “first important city in north China to be liberated.” Yang continued to fight for the cities of north China and has been cited in Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works for his contributions to the Liaohsi-Shenyang campaign, described by the Communists as the first of the “three greatest campaigns of decisive significance” in the civil war against the Nationalists. In a directive of September 1948, Mao ordered his top field commanders in Manchuria, Lin Piao and Lo Jung-huan, to coordinate their attacks with the armies commanded by Lo Jui-ch’ing and Yang to wipe out 35 Nationalist brigades and to capture all the cities along the four major rail lines leading into Peking excepting only Peking itself, Tientsin, and Mukden (Shenyang). When the successful completion of these operations led to the fall of these cities by January 1949, Yang moved westward and, in coordination with units led by Lo Jui- ch’ing and Yang Te-chih, captured Taiyuan, the Shansi capital, in April 1949. By the early fall of 1952 Yang was permanently transferred to Peking, although he nominally retained his posts in nearby Tientsin until the following year. He now assumed the new post of chief-of-staff of the North China Military Region, and by the spring of 1954 he was concurrently a deputy commander. This region was abolished about 1954-55, but Yang continued to receive new military assignments in Peking during the mid-fifties. By early 1955 he had assumed from Nieh Jung-chen the command of the Peking-Tientsin garrison, continuing in the post until 1956, and from the latter year untilhe was commander of the PL A Air Defense (anti-aircraft) Force. In 1957-58 he was also identified as commander of PLA units in Peking, a generic identification used by the Communists that could refer to either the Peking Garrison Command or the larger Peking Military Region. The latter, in effect, was in large measure a successor to the North China Military Region, although it only covers the provinces of Hopeh and Shansi in contrast to the larger area embraced by the North China Region. In the meantime, Yang had received other new assignments in the government and the CCP. He attended the First NPC (1954-1959) as a deputy from Tientsin, and at the close of its initial session in September 1954 he was named to membership on the newly created National Defense Council. He has since been reappointed to this military advisory body in April 1959 and January 1965. In 1955, when military ranks and honors were first awarded, he was made a colonel-general (equal to a three- star general in the U.S. Army) and was given the Orders of Independence and Freedom and of Liberation, awards covering his service during the Sino-Japanese War and the civil war with the Nationalists in the late forties. Despite his notable contributions on the Long March, Yang was not initially given the August First Order, which covered military service in the decade from 1927 to 1937. However, two years later he was given this order in a ceremony in Peking. More important, at the Party's Eighth National Congress in September 1956, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee. Yang reached a new level of importance by March 1959 when he was identified as a deputy chief-of-staff of the PLA, a post that placed him under Huang K’o-ch’eng until September 1959 and thereafter under Lo Jui-ch’ing, a former colleague. Then, during the “great proletarian cultural revolution” of mid-1966，Lo fell from power along with such top Communists as PJeng Chen, Lu Ting-i (both on the Politburo), and Chou Yang, an alternate member of the Central Committee. Lo's disappearance from the public scene had first been noted when he failed to appear at an important PLA political conference (a conference at which Yang spoke) in December 1965-January 1966. Lo’s political demise was confirmed on August 1,1966, when Yang was identified as the acting chief-of-staff. In the history of the PRC, he is the first alternate member of the Party Central Committee to hold this critical position, all of his predecessors having been full members. And aside from PLA Political Department Director Hsiao Hua, he is the first man born after the first decade of the century to have assumed a top PLA post.

Yang Ch’eng-wu

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politician CCP member chief-of-staff

Background

Yang is native to Ch'ang-fing, a town in western Fukien in which Communist sympathizers in the late twenties were in frequent communication with the well-known Red base at Juichin, not far across the Kiangsi border.

Education

Ultimately, by the early thirties, Ch’ang-t’ing became a part of this base and was the medical center for the Red armies (see under Fu Lien-chang). Yang is said to have come from a family of rich peasants who gave him a middle school education before he became a Communist. According to his own account, Yang took part in a peasant revolt in west Fukien in 1929 with Liu Ya-lou, also a Fukienese. In 1930 both young men were “drafted” into the Fourth Red Army commanded by Chu Te. By 1932 Yang had risen to be political commissar of the Fourth Regiment of the Second Division. This division was a part of the First Army Corps, the designation given to Chu Te's forces in mid-1930. When it had merged with P’eng Te-huai’s Third Army Corps later in 1930，Chu’s force became known as the First Front Army, a unit that fought in western Fukien and eastern Kiangsi until it began the Long March in the fall of 1934.

Career

During the Long March Yang continued as political commissar of the Fourth Regiment, a unit that took part in the capture of Tsun-i in Kweichow from the Nationalists in January Tsun-i was the site of an important conference held by the Communists during the March, a conference from which Maoist historians now claim that Mao Tse-tung emerged as the CCP's dominant leader. By May 1935 the marchers had made their way into eastern Sikang where they had another savage encounter with the Nationalists as they tried to cross the Ta-tu River at An-shun-ch'ang. The crossing of the river after capturing the famous Lu-ting chain bridge is described by Edgar Snow as “the most critical incident of the Long March. Spanning a narrow gorge between high mountains and a swift and deep river, the bridge was the “last possible crossing of the Tatu east of Tibet.’’ The successful crossing enabled Mao's forces to proceed north into Szechwan for their rendezvous with Chang Kuo-t'ao's Fourth Front Army, which was coming from north Szechwan (see under Chang Kuo-fao). Yang has written a firsthand account of the crossing, because it was his Fourth Regiment that was ordered by Lin Piao to take the bridge and capture the town of Luting to the north. Pushing north from Szechwan with Mao’s forces, Yang’s regiment captured a strategic pass in southwestern Kansu in September 1935.

When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, Liu Ya-lou remained at the military academy, but Yang followed his commander Lin Piao to the battlefields of north Shansi. As commander of an independent regiment in Lin’s 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, Yang and his forces crossed the Yellow River in September 1937 and advanced to the vicinity of Wu-t’ai Mountain in northeast Shansi. Here Lin's 115th Division made its headquarters and then moved north to engage the Japanese at P'ing-hsing-kuan, where they encircled and destroyed a major portion of the Japanese Fifth Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Itagaki Seishiro, a battle the Communists claim as one of their major victories of the war. After this encounter Lin Piao did not himself engage much in front-line warfare, but left the fighting to his deputy, Nieh Jung-chen, a man with whom Yang Ch'eng-wu has long been associated. Yang participated with Nieh in guerrilla activities along the borders of Shansi, Hopeh, and Chahar provinces. In the area controlled by Nieh's Wu-fai Mountain base, the Communists soon established the Shansi-Chahar-Hopeh (Chin-Ch’a-Chi) Border Region Government. The government was set up in January 1938 and, in the prevailing atmosphere of cooperation to resist the Japanese, it was immediately accorded official recognition by the Nationalist government. The political and strategic importance of the Chin-Ch’a-Chi area is described in the biographies of Nieh Jung-chen and Sung Shao-wen. In particular, the area was situated between four important Japanese-controlled rail lines, which were the object of many harassing guerrilla attacks in which Nieh and Yang's forces took part, and by the end of the war the Communists were cutting the lines at will.

Yang's first move eastward took place in October 1937 when he led his independent regiment from Shansi into western Hopeh where he began recruiting among the peasantry to build up his forces. At this time and later in the war, he was in charge of one of the four administrative sub-divisions of the Wu-t'ai base area, the I-hsin and Man-ch’eng hsien base in western Hopeh where, according to a Japanese study of 1940, his forces now enlarged to the division level numbered some 7,000 men. In 1941 he was identified by other titles that refer in general to the same area in west and central Hopeh, the first was as commander of the Shansi-Hopeh Military Sub-district and the second as commander of the Fifth Sub-district of the West Hopeh Military District. By the end of the war, at which time Yang’s forces were designated the Second Column of Nieh Jung-chen's Chin- Ch’a-Chi Command, the column had a reported strength of 30,000 men. At this same time he was in command of the Central Hopeh Military District. Yang has written a rather detailed account of his operations against the Japanese in the period after December 1941.

Soon after V-J Day in 1945, Yang participated in the capture of Kalgan (Chang-chia-k'ou), the capital of Chahar. The city was held until October 1946 when Nationalist forces under Fu Tso-i occupied it. A year later, identified as commander of the First Independent Division, Yang and his forces combined with the troops led by Yang Te-chih to capture Shih-chia- chuang, the important rail junction in western Hopeh. The city fell on November 12, 1947, and has been described in official Communist sources as the “first important city in north China to be liberated.” Yang continued to fight for the cities of north China and has been cited in Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works for his contributions to the Liaohsi-Shenyang campaign, described by the Communists as the first of the “three greatest campaigns of decisive significance” in the civil war against the Nationalists. In a directive of September 1948, Mao ordered his top field commanders in Manchuria, Lin Piao and Lo Jung-huan, to coordinate their attacks with the armies commanded by Lo Jui-ch’ing and Yang to wipe out 35 Nationalist brigades and to capture all the cities along the four major rail lines leading into Peking excepting only Peking itself, Tientsin, and Mukden (Shenyang). When the successful completion of these operations led to the fall of these cities by January 1949, Yang moved westward and, in coordination with units led by Lo Jui- ch’ing and Yang Te-chih, captured Taiyuan, the Shansi capital, in April 1949.

By the early fall of 1952 Yang was permanently transferred to Peking, although he nominally retained his posts in nearby Tientsin until the following year. He now assumed the new post of chief-of-staff of the North China Military Region, and by the spring of 1954 he was concurrently a deputy commander. This region was abolished about 1954-55, but Yang continued to receive new military assignments in Peking during the mid-fifties. By early 1955 he had assumed from Nieh Jung-chen the command of the Peking-Tientsin garrison, continuing in the post until 1956, and from the latter year untilhe was commander of the PL A Air Defense (anti-aircraft) Force. In 1957-58 he was also identified as commander of PLA units in Peking, a generic identification used by the Communists that could refer to either the Peking Garrison Command or the larger Peking Military Region. The latter, in effect, was in large measure a successor to the North China Military Region, although it only covers the provinces of Hopeh and Shansi in contrast to the larger area embraced by the North China Region.

In the meantime, Yang had received other new assignments in the government and the CCP. He attended the First NPC (1954-1959) as a deputy from Tientsin, and at the close of its initial session in September 1954 he was named to membership on the newly created National Defense Council. He has since been reappointed to this military advisory body in April 1959 and January 1965. In 1955, when military ranks and honors were first awarded, he was made a colonel-general (equal to a three- star general in the U.S. Army) and was given the Orders of Independence and Freedom and of Liberation, awards covering his service during the Sino-Japanese War and the civil war with the Nationalists in the late forties. Despite his notable contributions on the Long March, Yang was not initially given the August First Order, which covered military service in the decade from 1927 to 1937. However, two years later he was given this order in a ceremony in Peking. More important, at the Party's Eighth National Congress in September 1956, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee.

Yang reached a new level of importance by March 1959 when he was identified as a deputy chief-of-staff of the PLA, a post that placed him under Huang K’o-ch’eng until September 1959 and thereafter under Lo Jui-ch’ing, a former colleague. Then, during the “great proletarian cultural revolution” of mid-1966，Lo fell from power along with such top Communists as PJeng Chen, Lu Ting-i (both on the Politburo), and Chou Yang, an alternate member of the Central Committee. Lo's disappearance from the public scene had first been noted when he failed to appear at an important PLA political conference (a conference at which Yang spoke) in December 1965-January 1966. Lo’s political demise was confirmed on August 1,1966, when Yang was identified as the acting chief-of-staff. In the history of the PRC, he is the first alternate member of the Party Central Committee to hold this critical position, all of his predecessors having been full members. And aside from PLA Political Department Director Hsiao Hua, he is the first man born after the first decade of the century to have assumed a top PLA post.

Politics

After the meetings in Peking, Yang returned to Tientsin where, in January 1950, he was appointed a member of the Tientsin Municipal People's Government Council. He was identified at this time as commander of the Seventh Corps of the North China Military Region, whose commander was Nieh Jung-chen.10 He retained the Tientsin government post until at least mid- 1953, but it is not certain how long he commanded the Seventh Corps. Another post Yang held from 1950 was as a deputy commander of the joint Peking-Tientsin Garrison Command, here again serving under Nieh. There is an unconfirmed report that Yang led the 66th, 67th, and 68th Armies into the Korean War in 1951, if true, he was apparently there a relatively short time, for in December of that year he was appointed a member of the North China Administrative Committee (NCAC, see under Liu Lan- t’ao, the chairman), at which time he was once again identified as commander of the Tientsin garrison. He retained his membership on the NCAC until it was abolished in 1954.

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Yang Ch’eng-wu

Background

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1937

1941

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1952

1959