deputy CCP member chief-of-staff
Yang was born in Liu-yang hsien, Hunan, a hsien which has produced an exceptionally large number of important Communists, including Central Committee members Lo Chang-lung, among those who retreated southward with Mao to the Chingkang Mountain base on the Hunan-Kiangsi border.
Yang joined the CCP sometime between the late 1920's and 1933 when he was enrolled at the Red Army Academy in Juichin, the headquarters of the Red Army in southeast Kiangsi. By the summer of 1934 he was political commissar of the 10th Regiment under the Fourth Division of P’eng Te-huai’s Third Army Corps. He took part in a battle at that time in the vicinity of Kuang-ch’ang (east Kiangsi) in which Fourth Division Commander Hung Ch'ao was killed. A short time after this Yang made the Long March to north Shensi (1934-35), after which he continued his studies in the Red Army Academy, which had been re-established in Shensi.
Soon after the Si no-Japanese War began in mid-1937, Yang was assigned to Lin Piao’s 115th Division, one of the three divisions in the Eighth Route Army. He became political commissar and deputy commander (under Li Tien-yu) of the 686th Regiment, which was under the 115th Division’s 343rd Brigade. In this capacity he was one of the battle-field commanders in the much-heralded victory over the Japanese at P’ing-hsing-kuan in northeast Shansi in the fall of 1937. During the course of this battle Yang was wounded. In the spring of 1938 major elements of Lin’s division moved eastward into Hopeh and Shantung, where they were under the operational control of Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien. Hsu was a top commander in Liu Po-ch，eng’s 129th Division, the second of the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army. With his own forces now designated the First Brigade, Yang was fighting in south Hopeh by May 1938. That same month at least a part of Yang’s former 686th Regiment was fighting in southeast Hopeh and across the border into Shantung, but it is not clear whether Yang was also with these troops. However, by 1939 he was definitely in Shantung, and his First Brigade was by then redesignated the Third Brigade. Yang also became deputy commander under Hsiao Hua of the West Shantung Military District. Later in 1939 Yang's forces were merged with those led by Yang Te-chih (who had also been an original brigade-level officer under Lin Piao). These two men, in addition to Su Chen-hua, proceeded to establish the Hopeh-Shantung-Honan (Chi-Lu-Yii) Military Region. Yang Te-chih was the region commander, with Yang Yung as deputy commander and Su Chen-hua as political commissar. The Chi-Lu-Yu area was later incorporated into the larger Shansi-Hopeh-Shantung-Honan (Chin- Chi-Lu-Yii) Border Region, which was established in mid-1941 (see under Yang Hsiu-feng). Also in 1941, Yang Yung assumed command of the West Shantung Military District, a part of the Chi-Lu-Yu Military Region.
The triumvirate of Yang Yung, Yang Te-chih, and Su Chen-hua continued to work together for the remaining years of the Sino-Japanese War and the civil war against the Nationalists, and Yang Yung and Su were together until the early 1950's. Among the many campaigns in which they fought, perhaps the most famous was the Hundred Regiments’ Offensive launched in August 1940 in five provinces of north China. It continued for four months, provoking savage retaliation by the Japanese and equally savage counterattacks from the Communists. In the later years of the war, when the Communists turned more to economic warfare to deny food and other necessities to the Japanese and to interrupt their lines of communications, there is no reporting of Yang’s activities, but inferential evidence suggests that he remained in the Chi-Lu-Yii area. After the war his forces were enlarged and redesignated the First Column of the Central Plains Liberation Army, which was commanded by Liu Po-ch’eng. American correspondent Jack Belden has written that two assassination attempts were made on Yang’s life by KMT agents when he was stationed in Tsining (Chi-ning) in west Shantung about 1947.
Yang’s First Column was reorganized into the Fifth Army Group by the time the Communists fought and won the critical Huai-Hai Campaign in Kiangsu and Anhwei in late 1948 and early 1949. Yang's army was then still subordinate to Liu Po-ch'eng, whose army was known by this time as the Second Field Army. Liu’s troops crossed the Yangtze in the spring of 1949 and then moved into the southwest, taking Szechwan, Sikang, Kweichow, and Yunnan. On November 15, 1949, Liu's army entered Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichow. Liu and his staff established the Kweiyang Military Control Commission (KMCC) immediately after the city's capture, leaving Yang Yung and Su Chen-hua in charge of affairs in Kweichow while the army pushed farther west. Yang was named a member of the KMCC, and at the same time given command of the Kweichow Military District. In December 1949 he became governor of Kweichow, and in June 1950 chairman of the provincial Finance and Economics Committee. In July 1950 the Communists established the multi-provincial Southwest Military and Administrative Committee (SWMAC) under the chairmanship of Liu Po-ch'ing to govern Szechwan, Sikang, Yunnan, and Kweichow. Yang was a member of the SWMAC from its formation until it was reorganized in early 1953. He nominally retained the governorship of Kweichow until he was succeeded by Chou Lin in early 1955, but by that time Yang was already in North Korea (see below).
Yang Yung remained in Korea until the CPV was officially withdrawn in 1958. He was present to welcome Premier Chou En-lai when the latter came to Korea to complete the negotiations for the withdrawal of the Chinese military forces; Yang probably had a hand in the negotiations (February 14-21), which led to the signing of a joint agreement for the withdrawal. On February 25 Yang signed a joint order with the chief of the Korean General Staff arranging for Korea’s assumption of the defense work that had previously been assumed by the CPV, and at the same time he became chief of the CPV committee formed to hand over the defense work to the Koreans. The Chinese press had remained relatively quiet about the activities of the CPV in Korea until the agreement for the withdrawal had been signed. Yang’s activities, therefore, received little attention from 1954 to 1958, but once the agreement was signed he was given considerable press coverage. On October 24, the eve of his departure, he was awarded the Order of the National Flag by the Koreans.
Soon after his return to China, Yang reported on the CPV to the Standing Committees of the NPC and the CPPCC at one of their joint meetings. By June 1959 he was identified as commander of the Peking Military Region (with jurisdiction over Hopeh and Shansi), apparently assuming the post from Yang Ch'ing-wu. In October of that year he was also identified as commander of the Peking-Tientsin Garrison. He held the latter post only until the spring of 1960 when the two cities were given separate garrison commands. He received an even more important post by mid-1961 when he was identified as a deputy chief-of-staff of the PLA, another position that he still retains. As a top PLA staff officer and commander of the Peking Military Region, Yang is frequently on hand for official functions, especially those of a protocol nature having to do with Korea. He has also lent his name to various ad hoc bodies, as in September 1959 when he was a member of a preparatory committee for celebrating the 10th anniversary of the PRC. Yang has been a regular contributor to the press since 1959, but most of his writings are routine articles, usually commemorating some aspect of Chinese assistance to Korea during the Korean War.
Various non-Communist sources identified Yang as commander of the Air Force of the Southwest Military Region in 1952, but there is no confirmation of this appointment, nor are his whereabouts known at that time. He turned up in Korea in the spring of 1954 as a deputy commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV), but because his whereabouts during the last year of the Korean War are not known, it is possible that he spent at least some of that time in Korea. By the time Yang was publicly identified in 1954, his wartime colleague Yang Te- chih was also a CPV deputy commander, both men serving under Commander Teng Hua. Yang Te-chih became the commander in October 1954, and then in March 1955 Yang Yung succeeded to this post.
While Yang was in Korea the Chinese Communists reorganized the national government in September 1954 at the inaugural session of the First NPC. He was named to membership on the newly established National Defense Council, the military advisory organ of the central government, and was reappointed to this post in April 1959 and January 1965. When personal military ranks were first given to PLA officers in 1955, Yang became a colonel-general, equivalent to a three-star general in the U.S. Army. In September 1956, at the CCP's Eighth Congress, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee, as were his longtime associates Yang Te-chih and Su Chen-hua.
