Background
Yeh was bom in Fu-an hsien, located in northeast Fukien near the coast and a little to the south of the Chekiang border.
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Yeh Fei
Edit Profilealternate member CCP member political commisar
Education
Yeh Fei was educated locally. He began his career as a revolutionist in his late teens when he joined a band of guerrillas operating in the eastern sector of Fukien. In 1926 he helped organize a guerrilla base in eastern Fukien and he joined the CCP in the following year. In the early 1930’s Yeh was connected with the Communists’ Chinese Soviet Republic in Kiangsi where he graduated from a Red Army training center.
Career
There are no further records of Yeh’s career until 1937 when he was back in east Fukien as a guerrilla fighter. The scattered bands of Communist guerrillas that were active in east and central China prior to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War were all brought together in the fall of 1937 and organized into the Communists' New Fourth Army (see under Yeh Ting, the commander). Officially created in September 1937, the army actually came into being in January 1938 when Yeh T'ing established his headquarters at Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi. Previous to the organization of the army and as of about mid-1937 Yeh Fei was in command of a small unit of the “East Fukien Independent Division’’ a guerrilla force operating along the Fukien coast. When the so-called division was incorporated into the New Fourth Army it became the core of the Sixth Regiment. By 1939 the regiment belonged to the First Detachment of the New Fourth Army, a unit then fighting in southwest Kiangsu not far south of Nanking in an area extending from Tan-yang on the Grand Canal to Li-shui above Shih-chiu Lake. The detachment was under the command of Ch’en I with Liu Yen as the political commissar. Rapidly growing in strength, the New Fourth Army, which had initially been composed of four detachments, was enlarged to six by November 1939 when its troops were divided into two major commands, the North and South Yangtze Commands based north and south of the river.
When it was first organized Ch’en I headed the South Yangtze Command, which was composed of three detachments. These were based just south of the Yangtze in an area extending for some 100 miles between Tan-yang, Kiangsu, to Fan- ch'ang in Anhwei, southwest of the river city of Wuhu. In the next year most of these troops and Ch’en I himself moved north of the river, leaving Yeh Ting and Hsiang Ying, his deputy, with the force attached to the headquarters staff based in south Anhwei at Ching-hsien. When late in 1940 these troops received orders from the Nationalists to move across the Yangtze and confine the operations of the New Fourth Army to those portions of the Third War Zone north of the river, the Communists and Nationalists came into conflict. The defeat suffered by the headquarters staff in early January 1941, known as the New Fourth Army Incident, saw the death of Hsiang Ying and the capture of Yeh Ting.
This defeat brought about an extensive reorganization of the New Fourth Army, with Ch'in I becoming acting commander and Liu Shao-ch’i the political commissar. At this time (February 1941) the First Detachment, to which Yeh Fei belonged, became the First Division; the division was commanded by Su Yu, with Yeh Fei serving as one of his deputy commanders. Concurrently, Yeh was commander and political commissar of the First Brigade of the First Division. From 1941 to 1946 Yeh served as Suys deputy, even taking over briefly as the division’s acting commander in 1941. Ultimately, by early 1946, he succeeded Su Yii as the division commander. During the war years the division was active in central Kiangsu (Su-chung) in an area bounded by the Yangtze on the south, the Grand Canal on the west, by a line between Huai-an and the coast on the north, and by the Pacific on the east.
In the immediate postwar period Yeh’s First Division was incorporated into the East China PLA, which changed its name to the East China Field Army in 1948 and to the Third Field Army (under Ch'en I) about January 1949. As it advanced southward along the coast, the Third Field Army took possession of all the coastal provinces except Kwangtung, the titles of Yeh’s positions mark a part of the army’s progress as it moved south. Thus, in April 1949 he became a member of the Soochow (Kiangsu) Military Control Commission. In August he held the same post on the Control Commission for Foochow, Fukien, and finally in October 1949, after the Third Field Army had occupied Amoy, he became chairman of the Amoy Military Control Commission. During these operations Yeh commanded the Third Field Army's 10th Army Group, some of his units fought their way into Kwangtung, but Yeh apparently remained in his native Fukien where he has since remained as a top military-political figure. By this time he had also assumed command of the Fukien Military District, a post he held until about 1954, and in August 1949 he was given his first major civil post, becoming a vice-governor of Fukien under Governor Chang Ting-ch’eng. Chang, already a Party Central Committee member and Yeh’s senior by some 10 years, was the top leader in Fukien in the early years of the PRC, but it soon became evident that Yeh was being groomed to succeed him. In 1949 he was identified as a member of the Fukien Party Committee, and by the spring of 1953 he was serving in place of Chang Ting-ch’eng as the acting secretary. Then, when Chang was transferred to Peking in the autumn of 1954 to become chief procurator in the national government, Yeh replaced him as the ranking secretary. He also succeeded Chang as the provincial governor in February 1955, retaining this post until he in turn was replaced by Chiang I-chen in February 1959. When Yeh relinquished the Fukien governorship he was elected as a member of the Fukien Provincial People's Government Council, another post he still holds.
Yeh has worked principally in Fukien since 1949, but he has also held posts at the regional and national levels. Early in 1950 the East China Military and Administrative Committee (ECMAC) was established to govern the provinces of Shantung, Kiangsu, Anhwei, Chekiang, and Fukien. Yeh was an ECMAC member from 1950 to 1953, continuing as a member in 1953-54 when the ECMAC was reorganized into the East China Administrative Committee. In the national government he was a member of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission under the Government Administration Council (the cabinet) from the establishment of the central government in 1949 until 1954. Then in September 1954, when the constitutional government came into being, Yeh was named to membership on the newly established National Defense Council, a position to which he was reappointed in April 1959 and January 1965. The new government had been brought into existence by the First NPC. Yeh was not then a deputy to the NPC, but following the death of a Fukien representative, he was named to replace him and assumed his seat in the legislative body for its third session in mid-1956. He served out the term of the First NPC but was not elected to the Second Congress, which opened in April 1959. In February 1960 he was named to the State Councirs ad hoc Committee for Receiving and Resettling Returned Overseas Chinese Committee, established in response to the needs of Chinese returning from Indonesia in the winter of 1959-60, many of whom were resettled in Ych's province.
Politics
Like most major provincial leaders, Yeh has engaged in extracurricular activities in addition to his more important assignments in Fukien. In 1951, for example, he was head of the Fukien branch of the East China Military and Political College. In the same year he was identified as a member of the Fukien chapter of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, and by 1958 he had become the chairman. He is also frequently reported making inspection tours in the province, as in early 1959 when he visited a number of the “people’s communes” in Fukien. Moreover, he was chairman of the Fukien Committee of the CPPCC from February 1959 until late 1965. He has been a colonel-general (equivalent to a three- star U.S. Army general) since ranks were first given to PL A officers in 1955, and in the same year he was given one or more of the military decorations awarded for service m the Red armies from 1927 to 1950. He gained his highest post in the CCP in September 1956 when he was elected an alternate member of the Party Central Committee at the Eighth Party Congress in Peking. Yeh presented a written report before the Congress on the development of industry and agriculture in Fukien.
The area, often referred to by the Communists as the “Fukien Front” came into international prominence in mid-1958 during the so-called offshore islands crisis, when the Communists began to shell the Matsu Island group. In spite of his continuing responsibilities with the military forces in Fukien, Yeh's primary responsibilities seem to rest with the Fukien Provincial Party Committee where he continues as the first secretary. He received an additional Party assignment by October 1963 when he was identified as a secretary of the CCP’s East China Bureau. His responsibilities to the bureau presumably require his presence on occasion in Shanghai where its headquarters are located. Yeh has been an occasional contributor to the national and provincial press. Two of his articles, both dealing with the Great Leap Forward, which was inaugurated in 1958, have appeared in the JMJP (May 22, 1958, and February 8, 1960).
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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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1941
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1941 - 1946
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1949
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1953
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1955