Background
Yang was born into a peasant family. Known originally as Yang Shao-ch'i, he comes from Li-ling hsien, located some 50 miles southeast of Changsha, the Hunan capital.
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Yang Te-chih
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A number of early Communist leaders are native to Li-ling, among them Li Li-san. In the 1920's Mao Tse-tung and others began to organize the peasants of Li-ling, one of the five hsien visited by Mao in early 1927 before he wrote his famous report on conditions among the Hunan peasantry. Yang joined the Red Army in 1927, and in the following year he was a soldier in a special service battalion of the Fourth Red Army, the name given to the combined units of Mao and Chu Te after they joined forces at Chingkang- shan in the spring of 1928. In June of that year Yang was transferred to the Ninth Company of the Third Battalion, a unit under the 28th Regiment of the Chu-Mao forces.
By 1931 Yang had been transferred again, this time to Fukien where he served with Tso Ch'uan, also a native of Li-ling hsien. Yang was in Tso’s 15th Red Army, a unit initially under the Fifth Army Corps and later Lin Piao’s First Army Corps. In 1931 they were stationed in Nan-ching hsien, Fukien, about 50 Campaign of 1934. During the Long March, which began later that year, Yang’s First Regiment formed part of the marchers’ vanguard. In May 1935 his unit took part in the difficult and critical crossing of the Ta-tu River in western Szechwan, a much- heralded event (described in the biography of Yang Ch’eng-wu). On the way north to Shensi, as the troops crossed Kansu, Yang's First Regiment engaged in battles with troops led by the Ma family, independent northwestern militarists who controlled the area.
In the early part of 1936, soon after the Long Marchers arrived in north Shensi, Yang took part in a Communist thrust into Shansi, an important but short-lived campaign (described in the biography of Liu Chih-tan). The attacks on Shansi Governor Yen Hsi-shan’s forces were initially successful, but the tide was turned when the Nationalist government reinforced Yen’s troops, causing the Communists to retreat to their base in Shensi. By approximately this time Yang was commanding the Second Division, with Hsiao Hua serving as division political commissar. The Second Division was subordinate to Lin Piao’s First Army Corps, although in this period Yang’s old colleague Tso Ch’iian frequently served as acting commander. In the middle or latter part of 1936 Yang re-enrolled and spent seven months studying at the Red Army Academy, which had been transferred to north Shensi from Kiangsi. In 1937 its name was changed to the Anti-Japanese Military and Political Academy, often known by its abbreviated name, K'ang-ta. Among his fellow students were Yang Yung and Su Chen-hua, both of whom were associates of Yang Te-chih in future years
Career
Following his graduation in 1937 Yang returned to Lin Piao's forces. Soon after the war with Japan began in mid-1937, Yang’s Second Division was reorganized into the 685th Regiment and placed under Lin Piao's 115th Division, one of the three divisions comprised by the Communists’ Eighth Route Army. The 685th Regiment belonged to the 343rd Brigade commanded by Ch'en Kuang. At the beginning of the war there were three brigades in Lin Piao’s 115th Division the 340th (see under Su Chen-hua), the 343rd, and the 344th. In September 1937 these units participated in the battle for P’ing-hsing Pass in northeast Shansi, a widely heralded engagement that gave the Communists their first major victory over the Japanese. Following this success Lin Piao led the 343rd and 344th Brigades south to the mountains on the Shansi-Hopeh-Honan border, where he left them to fight independently for a time. Some of these forces later joined the 129th Division, commanded by iliu Po-ch’eng Liu’s troops were expanded into the Shansi-Hopeh-Honan-Shantung border area in the year 1938-39. At the same time certain units remained with the 115th Division and .ultimately fought in Shantung, still others transferred to the New Fourth Army (see under Hsu Hai-tung). Some of the troops of the 343rd Brigade crossed through Hopeh into Shantung as early as May 1938 (see under Yang Yung), but Yang Te-chih's moves arc uncertain until the spring of 1939, when he led special forces into the Hopeh-Shantung-Ho- nan border region. In 1939 Yang (who was earlier identified as the 685th Regiment commander) was now identified as deputy commander of the 344th Brigade and commander of the Second Column of the Eighth Route Army. Apparently the column was still for a time a part of the 115th Division, although it later became a unit of the 129th Division, which controlled the Shansi-Hopeh-Shantung-Honan (Chin-Chi-Lu-Yli) Border Region. Leading the Second Column with Su Chcn-hua and Ts’ui T’ien-min (political commissar of the PLA Railway Corps since 1957), Yang advanced eastward into Shantung in March 1939 and by the middle of that year had established a Communist military base in the three-province border known as the Ho-peh-Shantung-Honan (Chi-Lu-Yii) Military Region. The formation of the base area was accomplished through the combined efforts of Yang Te-chih, Yang Yung, Su Chen-hua, all initially commanders on the staff of Lin Piao’s 115th Division.
Yang Te-chih was separated from his wartime base and, in association with Su Chen-hua, led some 20,000 troops which were dispatched northward, first to the outskirts of Tientsin, then east to the Hsi-feng Pass, and later into Jehol where they went in November 1945. In Jehol Yang was given command of a division belonging to the Jehol-Liaoning Military Region. Soon after V-J Day the Communists had moved their forces from Jehol into Chahar where they captured Kalgan (Chang-chia-k’ou), the Chahar provincial capital. In the fall of 1945 Yang’s forces were ordered to the aid of the Communist troops in Kalgan, but en route they were intercepted by Nationalist forces, which inflicted heavy losses on Yang’s units. In 1947 he was commander of the First Column of the Shansi-Chahar-Hopeh Military Region and participated in the successful battles for Ch'eng-feng-tien and Shih-chia- chuang in the fall. By 1948 he was in command of the Second Army Group of the North China PLA, led by Nieh Jung-chen. In December of that year he was coordinating the actions of his forces with those led by Commanders Lo Jui-ch'ing and Keng Piao as the Communist units of the North China PLA began their encirclement of Peking and other major north China cities.
After the successful completion of these operations, Yang moved his units to the northwest where P'eng Te-huai's army, known as the First Field Army after January 1949, was battling with the Nationalists. Yang took part in the capture of Yin-ch'an, the Ninghsia capital, in September 1949. He was then in command of the 19th Corps of the conquering army and had Li Chih-min as his political commissar. Yang and Li were later to be associated together in Korea during the war there in the early fifties (see below). Yang’s units took up garrison duties in Yin-ch'uan, and Yang himself became chairman of the municipal Military Control Commission, which was immediately established. Six weeks later, in early November, he was named as commander of the newly established Ninghsia Military District (which included Yin-ch'uan), with P’an Tzu-li as his political commissar.
While Yang Te-chih was in Korea, the constitutional government in Peking was established at the first session of the First NPC in September 1954. Under the new government a military advisory body known as the National Defense Council was established. Yang was named to council membership in 1954 and was reappointed in April 1959 and January 1965, but as it seldom meets, it obviously has not occupied much of his time. Upon his return to China in 1955 Yang had been sent to the Nanking Military Academy to study military tactics, graduating from the staff college in early 1958. In the year of his entry into the school, national military honors and personal military ranks were created. Yang was made a colonel-general (equivalent to a three- star U.S. Army general), and he was also given one or more of the three orders covering military service from the birth of the Red Army in 1927 until 1950. His long career as a military officer was given more important recognition in September 1956 when he was elected an alternate member of the Party’s Central Committee at the Eighth National Congress. Yang was placed third on the list of alternates, and since the first two alternates were promoted to full membership in 1958 (replacing two deceased members), Yang has been the top-ranking alternate.
Upon graduation in early 1958 from the Nanking Military Academy, Yang replaced Wang Hsin-t’ing as commander of the Tsinan Military Region, a command that includes the whole of Shantung province. Here he has worked in cooperation with Shu Tung, Tseng Hsi-sheng, and Tan ChM-lung, the three men who have been the first secretaries of the CCP Shantung Committee since Yang’s arrival in the province. Soon after assuming his command, he was identified in the concurrent position of second secretary of the Military RegionJs CCP Committee. In November 1958 he was elected a member of the Shantung Provincial People’s Government Council, and at the same time he was also elected a Shantung deputy to the Second NPC, which first met in April 1959. He was subsequently elected again from Shantung to the Third NPC, which held its first session in December 1964-January 1965. Yang retains all of these posts in Shantung, although it is evident that his governmental posts are peripheral to his military duties.
Politics
Over the winter of 1949-50 the Communists established provincial and regional governmental units to administer their newly conquered territories. At this time Yang was transferred from Ninghsia to neighboring Shensi, and when the Shensi Provincial People’s Government was formed in January 1950 he became a member of the Government Council. In the same month the Northwest Military and Administrative Committee (NWMAC) was formed under the chairmanship of P’eng Te-huai to govern Shensi, Ninghsia, Tsinghai, Kansu, and Sinkiang. Yang was named to NWMAC membership and nominally held this and the Shensi government posts until early 1953. However, before the year 1950 ended Yang was transferred to North Korea, leading the 63rd, 64th, and 65th armies of the “Chinese People’s Volunteers” (CPV) into the war, following the decision of the Chinese to enter the war in October 1950. From 1951 to mid-1953, when replaced by Li Ta, he was CPV chief-of-staff. Concurrently, in late 1952 he became a deputy commander of the CPV under P'eng Te-huai, his former superior in the northwest. He had assumed still another post in 1954 when he became deputy director of the Political Department, serving under his colleague Li Chih- min. For his services in the war, Yang was given the highest Korean decoration in February 1953, the Order of the National Flag. Then, in October 1954, when the fighting had already been over for 15 months, he succeeded Teng Hua as the CPV commander. Finally, after more than four years in Korea, Yang was replaced by his former colleague Yang Yung in March 1955.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Education
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1937