Yeh, also known as Yeh Hsi-P'ing, is often referred to in Party documents by his tzu, Hsi-i. His family, native to Hui-yang (Hui-chou), a small town about 60 miles north of Hong Kong, were said to be of peasant origin. Nothing is known of Yeh's early upbringing, but his education suggests a family of some means.
In his 16th year (c.1913) he entered a military primary school at Whampoa on the outskirts of Canton, and he then studied at the famous Paoting Military Academy. Yeh graduated with the sixth class of cadets in 1919. A number of his schoolmates, including Chang Yun-i, Teng Yen-ta, and Hsueh Yueh, were destined to play key roles in public affairs and Yeh was to be in rather close association with them at one time or another.
Soon after graduation, Yeh went to Chang-chou in south Fukien where he served in the forces commanded by Ch'cn Chiung-ming, best known as the reformer governor of Kwangtung and commander of the powerful Kwangtung Army, who first assisted and then opposed Sun Yat-sen in the early 1920's. Yeh took part in Ch'en's military campaign which enabled the latter to return to Canton in 1920 and which in turn enabled Sun to return there to establish his “national government.” It was also Ch’en Chiung-ming who invited the Marxist Ch'en Tu-hsiu to Kwangtung to direct provincial education the year before he came the first head of the CCP when it was established in mid-1921. Thus Ych entered into China revolutionary heartland when he returned to Kwangtung with Ch’en Chiung-ming then the provincial governor.
In 1923, at the urging of Sun Yat-sen’s Russian advisers, plans were set in motion to establish a modern military school, Whampoa, in which Chiang Kai-shek was to become the commandant and Liao Chung-k’ai the KMT representative. In connection with the general military training program, Yeh was sent to Moscow in 1924 to join the young Communist Chang T’ai-lei who had gone there the previous year with Chiang Kai-shek to investigate Russian military schools in preparation for the opening of the Whampoa Academy. Yeh joined Chang at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in 1924, and then spent 10 months at the Red Army Military Academy. One of Yeh's academy classmates, and later a military colleague, was Nieh Jung-chen, who had gone to Moscow after joining the CCP while a student in France and Belgium. In 1925 Yeh became a member of the Moscow branch of the CCP. He left for home that year, traveling by way of Berlin where he became acquainted with Chu Te, then a student in Germany and also a CCP member.
Yeh’s return home in the latter part of 1925 coincided approximately with the final elimination by Chiang Kai-shek and Li Chi-shen of Ch’en Chiung-ming’s power in Kwangtung, and this in turn made it possible for the KMT to prepare for expanded military operations against the northern warlords. Yeh served briefly as chief of the Staff Office in Li Chi-shen's Fourth Army, and then in November 1925 he was appointed to command and train a regiment under Chang Fa-k'uei's 12th Division (which in turn was subordinate to the Fourth Army). Yeh’s unit, initially known as the 34th Regiment, was soon redesignated the Independent Regiment.
Yeh’s regiment, of which Communist Chou Shih-ti was chief-of-staff, became a focus of Communist interests, and in late March 1926 the CCP made plans to transfer a number of its members to his command from other units in the Fourth Army. Communist sources claim that about half of all cadres at the company level and above were CCP or Youth League members. As the regiment was readied to move north, the important Party official Chang Kuo-fao called a secret meeting of the Communists in the regiment and instructed them to seek further recruits as the regiment made its way into unconquered territory. In May 1926，before the Northern Expedition was formally launched, Yeh’s Independent Regiment advanced into Hunan to assist Hunanese military leader Tang Sheng-chih, whose forces were under attack by northern warlord Wu P'ei-fu. The strategy was to wrest from Wu P’ei-fu the key central China province of Hupeh, which contained the vital tricity complex of Wuhan where the Nationalist government was to center its authority. Yeh’s highly successful campaigns during the earliest phase of the Northern Expedition gained for him a reputation as a skilled military strategist. Assisted by KMT and CCP activists already working in the Changsha area (see under Hsia Hsi), Yeh's men entered the Hunan capital in July 1926.
In the latter part of 1927 and early 1928, the CCP underwent a self-examination of the policies and tactics which had led to the string of disasters from the Nanchang Uprising to the collapse of the Canton Commune. Like virtually all the participants in these events, Yeh was the object of some criticism from the Party Center, then led by Ch'u Ch'iu-pai. In terms of the Nanchang Uprising, and the subsequent march south to Kwangtung, it was suggested that he had been too conciliatory toward Chang Fa-k'uei, that his troops had not carried out enough political work among the peasantry as they moved through Kiangsi and Fukien, and that he had chosen the less strategic route for the latter part of the southward march. Yeh, in turn, was critical of the Party leadership, especially in regard to the Canton uprising. In his report on the coup, he charged that it had been badly organized, poorly supported, and that the Communists, military forces had been outnumbered and under-equipped. The masses “took no part in the uprising,” nor did the peasants “help us by destroying the rail tracks.” Finally, according to Yeh, the workers in Hong Kong “did not display the least sympathy for the insurrection.’’
Not long after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in mid-1937, negotiations began between the KMT and the CCP to activate a Communist army ultimately designated the New Fourth Army in the lower Yangtze Valley (see under Ch’in Pang-hsien and Hsiang Ying). In this region there had been no unified Communist military force to compare with the units Mao Tse-tung had assembled in north Shensi after the Long March. Rather, in the Yangtze area and to the south there were a number of Communist- controlled guerrilla bands which had been left behind when the Long March forces left Kiangsi in October 1934. These semi-independent units were widely scattered in small pockets in Chekiang, Fukien, Kwangtung, Kiangsi, Hunan, Hupeh, Anhwei, and Honan. Leadership of these bands was under Hsiang Ying, Ch'en I, Teng Tzu- hui, Su Yu, Tan Chen-lin, Chang Ting-ch'eng, and others. These men had been fighting for survival (see under Ch'en I), and had been largely out of touch with Mao's headquarters for three years. It is not clear how Yeh came into the picture as the nominee to head an army that would bring together these scattered forces. All the above-mentioned leaders were long-time CCP members and all had extensive guerrilla warfare experience, which Yeh lacked almost entirely. However, Yeh had been a Party member in the twenties when he was well known to the CCP leadership. He also enjoyed a good reputation as a military commander, made during the Kwangtung campaigns of the twenties and on the Northern Expedition when he was associated with a number of KMT officers. For example, his Pao- ting classmate Hsueh Yueh was an important commander in the Third War Zone where the New Fourth Army was to operate. Edgar Snow, in discussing Yeh's appointment, suggests that it may have been uin the nature of a face-saving arrangement” for Chiang Kai-shek who, by accepting Yeh, “avoided completely sanctioning” Hsiang Ying, the veteran Communist who became deputy commander and political commissar of the New Fourth Army and who also headed the CCP apparatus in the areas where the army operated. In brief, Yeh seems to have been a candidate acceptable to both sides.
Yeh was appointed New Fourth Army commander in October 1937, but the army did not come into being until January 1938 when he established his headquarters in Nanchang. In early March he arrived in Yenan for conferences with the CCP hierarchy, but he was soon back to his troops, which went into operation in April. The army initially had four detachments, the Fourth operating north of the Yangtze, first in north Hupeh and then in central Anhwei (see under Chang Yun-i). The other three detachments operated in Anhwei and Kiangsu south of the Yangtze along important communications lines close to Wuhu and Nanking. Brief descriptions of these detachments are found in the biographies of Ch’en I Chang Ting-ch'eng, and T'an Chcn-lin, the respective commanders of the First, Second, and Third Detachments. When the army was first activated it consisted of about 12,000 men, the largest contingent of which had previously been in the old Communist Oyliwan base (see under Chang Kuo-fao). Early in its history Yeh moved his headquarters to Ching-hsien, some 50 miles south of Wuhu.
Even more serious troubles than the Kao affair arose for the New Fourth Army in 1939 as KMT-CCP cooperation in the early war period gave way to a serious deterioration in relations. This political rivalry led to an incident in June 1939 in Plng-chiang hsien in the Communists' old Hunan-Hupch-Kiangsi base, T’u Cheng-k’un, the secretary of the CCP Hunan-Hupeh- Kiangsi Special Committee and concurrently head of the New Fourth Army's P'ing-chiang Liaison Office, was killed together with several of his colleagues. Other incidents continued to strain relations for the next year. Alarmed at the growing strength of the New Fourth Army, in the fall of 1940 Nationalist authorities ordered Yeh to move his troops north of the river. The first deadline for the move was November 1940, but this was extended to mid-December. The New Fourth Army was then divided into commands north and south of the Yangtze headed by Chang Yun-i and Ch’en I, respectively, but by September most of the Army's forces had moved north of the river and were operating in various districts of Hupeh, Anhwei, Kiangsu, and Chekiang, extending beyond the bounds of Ku Chu-t’ung’s Third War Zone into the Fifth War Zone commanded by Li Tsung-jen.
In mid-1927 he was one of the key figures in the Nanchang Uprising, which marked the birth of the Red Army, and at the end of the year he was commander-inchief of Communist units during the abortive Canton Commune. Yeh left the CCP and spent the next several years abroad, but when the Sino-Japanese War began he was made commander of the New Fourth Army, the Communists' major force in east-central China. He was captured during the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941 and was imprisoned by the Nationalists for the next five years. Immediately after his release in 1946 he died in an air crash while en route to Yenan. Throughout his career his military reputation far outweighed his importance as a Communist Party member.
The redeployment of Yeh’s troops coincided with the marked deterioration in relations between the CCP and the Left-KMT in Wuhan, a process which reached a crisis point in mid-July 1927 when Communists were dismissed from the Wuhan government. In response to this situation, the Communists began to prepare quickly for a coup, which, though engineered by the CCP, was carried out under the banner of the KMT. The coup on August 1 is known in Communist history as the Nanchang Uprising, and it is the date celebrated as the birth of the Red Army. The relatively abundant source materials3 on the Uprising and its aftermath differ in minor details, but the basic outline is clear enough. Communist accounts written long after the event frequently credit it to the foursome of Chu Te, Chou En-lai, Ho Lung (not yet a Communist), and Yeh TMng. The role of the last three is well established, but Chu Te’s contributions were clearly less important, if only in contrast to Chou, Ho, and Yeh. Others on the scene included Chang Kuo-fao, Li Li-san, Nieh Jung-chen, Liu Po-ch’eng，Chou Shih-ti, Chou I-ch’iin and T'an P'ing-shan. As this partial list of Communist notables suggests, the cream of the CCP elite was then in the Nanchang-Kiukiang area, or not far away in other central China cities.
Quotes from others about the person
Chang Kuo-fao has described Yeh as a very able man with a great interest in military affairs, but one who was bored by staff work which he preferred to delegate to subordinates. He further described Yeh’s character in terms of pride, independence, and arrogance. Chang Fa-k'uei, under whom Yeh served before the Nanchang Uprising, had a high regard for Yeh, depicting him as being “alert, intelligent, and a good commander.” Chang further commented that he considered Yeh to be loyal to the Nationalists at the time of the Nanchang Uprising, even though he knew Yeh was a CCP member. The treatment accorded Yeh by Communist historians after his death stands in contrast to that given Hsiang Ying, who died in the New Fourth Army Incident. In fact, Maoist historians have placed much of the blame for the debacle upon Hsiang (see under Hsiang). On the other hand, Yeh died a hero in the eyes of the Communist press. His career is reviewed by friends, relatives, and colleagues in a volume published soon after the 1946 air accident, a source which also covers the lives of the three other leading Communists who died with him.
Yeh’s wife, Li Hsiu-wen, the daughter of a well-to-do gentry family from Nan-hai, Kwang-tung, was a graduate of a women’s normal college in Canton. She married Yeh in 1926 when he was training the Independent Regiment for the Northern Expedition. She was with her husband in Europe during the early thirties, and during the war years she lived in Macao and Kweilin. She rejoined her husband immediately after his release from prison in Chungking in 1946, but a month later, in her 40th year, she was killed in the airplane accident which took her husband’s life, the Yeh’s had nine children; one of them died as a youth and two others died in the air crash. Yeh had a brother who at the time of the New Fourth Army Incident was captured and interned. He later escaped and when met by an American Office of War Information official in the 1940's, he was badly crippled from his prison experiences.18 Nothing further is known about him.
