Background
Chang was born about 1908 in Szechwan, China.
Chang was born about 1908 in Szechwan, China.
He attended a middle school in Shanghai in the mid-twenties. He left the city for a time, but after Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-Communist coup there in April 1927 he returned and engaged in under-ground work.
During the course of this work he was arrested on “several occasions.” By 1927 he was working among the peasants in Hunan, where dissatisfaction with the local authorities was described by Mao Tse-tung in his famous “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” in 1927. In that year Chang was a Red guerrilla fighter in the vicinity of Tung-t’ing Lake, and after the KMT-CCP split in mid-1927 he joined the forces of P’eng Te-huai. In July 1928 Chang took part in P’eng’s successful coup at P’ing-chiang, northeast Hunan, by which time he had become acting commander of a regiment in P’eng’s Army. Chang left P’eng’s forces about 1929 and went to eastern Kiangsu (in the vicinity of the city of Ju-kao), where he was in the short-lived 14th Red Army’s First Division. The 14th Army, consisting of 2,000 troops, was established in the latter part of 1929 but was decimated in September 1930 as it attempted to carry out Li Li-san’s policies of capturing major urban centers. After this defeat Chang fled to south Kiangsi to join the Communists at Juichin where Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung had their headquarters.
Chang had arrived in Kiangsi area by the end of 1930 at the time of the Fu-t’ien Incident (see under P’eng Te-huai and Li Li-san). The Incident resulted from a power struggle between Mao’s forces and a group generally regarded as followers of the Li Li-san. Chang was charged with assisting the latter group, known in Maoist histories as the A-B (Anti-Bolshevik) Corps. Jen Pi-shih, a key political figure close to Mao, was assigned in 1931 the task of conducting a thorough investigation of Chang’s past career and of his alleged involvement with the A-B Corps. Chang was eventually exonerated and, to judge from his later career, did not suffer from the apparently erroneous charges.
In the early thirties before the Long March, Chang was engaged in youth work that included connections with the Youth Vanguards (teenagers who performed quasi-military tasks for the Red Army). He was also one of the founders in 1932 of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Dramatic Society.4 Among the other founders was Miss Li Po-chao, the wife of Yang Shang-k’un, a top Party official in Kiangsi. According to some reports Chang also attended the Red Army Academy that opened near Juichin in 1933. During the Long March (1934—1935) he commanded the 11th Regiment of P’eng Te-huai’s Third Army Corps. After his arrival in north Shensi Chang was an instructor at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political Academy (K’ang-ta).
By 1939 Chang had returned to east-central China, where he worked with guerrilla units in Communist-held areas of eastern Anhwei, then under the control of the New Fourth Army. In early 1940 he was commanding a column of guerrillas in the Huai-pei area along the Huai River. In the summer his units were attacked by Nationalist troops commanded by Wang Kuang- hsia, but they escaped without serious losses. After portions of the New Fourth Army were wiped out in southern Anhwei in January 1941 (the New Fourth Army Incident see under Yeh T’ing), they reorganized the army, transferring certain leaders from northwest China. Huang K’o-ch’eng came from Yenan to assume command of the Third Division and was concurrently put in charge of military affairs in north Kiangsu, where the Communists had previously infiltrated and were now rapidly expanding. Under him Chang became commander of the Eighth Brigade of the Third Division (early 1941) and deputy commander of the North Kiangsu (Su-pei) Military District. He held this position until sometime in 1944 when he became commander of the Fourth Division and moved southward into Chekiang. Chang took over command of the Fourth Division from P’eng Hsueh- feng, who was killed in battle in September 1944.
In 1947 Chang's Fourth Division became part of the East China People’s Liberation Army, the force with which the Communists conquered the coastal provinces and which two years later was renamed the Third Field Army. From 1948 to 1954 Chang was chief-of-staff of both this army and the East China Military Region (ECMR). He was made commander of the Third Field Army Naval Headquarters in Shanghai in 1949, and from 1949 to sometime in 1951 was political commissar of the ECMR Naval Headquarters (which included Shanghai). Transferred to the Chekiang Military District in 1951, he was in charge there for about two years. In September 1952 Chang was placed on the Communists’ over-all administrative committee for the government of East China, the East China Military and Administrative Committee, which was reorganized into the East China Administrative Committee in 1953, with Chang continuing to serve as a member. He returned from Chekiang to Shanghai in late 1952 or early 1953 and remained there until 1954. On occasion he was also reported in Nanking, where the PLA has several military academies.
When the constitutional government was established in September 1954 and the regional gov-ernments abolished, Chang’s previous posts were eliminated but he soon received other important military positions. In September 1954 he was appointed a member of the newly created military advisory body, the National Defense Council, he was reappointed in April 1959 and January 1965. In June 1955 Chang was identified as a deputy chief-of-staflf of the PLA, a position he still retains. Three months later he was among the many military leaders awarded the newly created decorations for service in the Red armies from 1927 to 1950, the Orders of August First, Independence and Freedom, and Liberation. At this same time he was made a colonel-general (the equivalent of a three-star general in the U.S. Army).
Chang has made at least two trips abroad. In January 1958 he was a member of the military delegation that Marshal Yeh Chien-ying led to India. In December 1960 he headed the military group of a “goodwill” delegation Chou En-lai took to Rangoon to celebrate the 13th anniversary of Burma’s independence. Chang’s long career was rewarded in May 1958, when he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee at the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress.
Since the late fifties Chang has been present at many of the official functions in Peking, often as a representative of the General Staff when foreign dignitaries visit China. His appearances were especially frequent in 1960 and 1961 in connection with visiting Burmese leaders.
Chang’s publications include articles for the JMJP (June 10, 11, 1959, and August 6, 1964), as well as a collection of articles and essays entitled Ts’ung Tsun-i tao Ta-tu Ho (From the Tsun-i to the Ta-tu River). The latter, published in Hong Kong in 1960, contains five pieces about his military career in the thirties and forties, including one of the few articles ever written on the 14th Red Army.
