Xu Xiangqian

Xu Xiangqian the Chinese communist marshal and field commander (1901-1990) who led the Red Army's Fourth Front Army, one of the largest communist forces of the early revolutionary period, and later commanded major formations in the war with Japan and the civil war. He was the last surviving marshal of the People's Liberation Army.

Origins and Entry into the Red Army

Xu Xiangqian was born on 8 November 1901 in Wutai county, Shanxi province, into a family of teachers and small landowners. He trained as a teacher and then entered the Whampoa Military Academy, where he joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1927. He served as a junior officer in the Nationalist armies of the period and worked secretly for the communist cause within their ranks.

In 1927 he took part in the Guangzhou uprising, and after its failure he helped to build the communist armed movement in the countryside. In 1929 he was sent to the Eyuwan region, the borderland of Hubei, Henan and Anhui, where he helped to organise the local uprising and to found a soviet base. He became the military commander of the force that grew out of this region.

The Fourth Front Army that Xu Xiangqian commanded was for a time the largest and best equipped of the Red Army formations, and under his leadership and that of Zhang Guotao, its political chief, it won a series of victories against Nationalist encirclement campaigns and expanded its base across a wide area of central China.

The Fourth Front Army and the Long March

In 1932 and 1933 Xu Xiangqian led the Fourth Front Army in the defence of the Eyuwan base and then in a great westward march into Sichuan, where it established the Sichuan-Shaanxi soviet. He directed the campaigns that defeated the local warlord armies and expanded the base along the upper reaches of the Yangtze and its tributaries.

During the Long March the Fourth Front Army followed a route separate from that of the main central Red Army, and at their meeting in 1935 a dispute arose between Zhang Guotao and Mao Zedong over the direction of the march and the leadership of the party. Xu Xiangqian, as the military commander, was caught between the two positions, and the split of the army into two columns was one of the most painful episodes of the entire retreat.

The Fourth Front Army suffered heavily in the campaigns that followed, including the disastrous attempt in 1936-1937 to establish a base in the far west and the costly battles against the forces of the northwest. Xu Xiangqian himself was criticised for the setbacks of this period, and he spent years in a somewhat reduced position while the main army was led by others.

War with Japan and Civil War Commands

With the outbreak of war against Japan in 1937 Xu Xiangqian was given command of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, which built its base in the Taihang mountains of Shanxi. He directed the early campaigns of the division against the Japanese and against the local collaborationist forces, establishing the pattern of mobile guerrilla warfare that the communists would use throughout the war.

In the civil war of 1945-1949 he commanded the North China Field Army and then, after its reorganisation, the 18th Army Group, which operated in Shanxi and Shaanxi. In 1948 he directed the long siege and assault of Taiyuan, the heavily fortified capital of Shanxi, a campaign of great difficulty that ended in the capture of the city in 1949 and in the destruction of one of the last great Nationalist strongholds in the north.

His campaigns in north China, though less celebrated than the great battles of the northeast and the Yangtze, made an essential contribution to the communist victory by securing the northern province and its industrial resources. He was created a marshal of the People's Liberation Army in 1955, one of the ten commanders so honoured.

Career in the People's Republic

After the founding of the People's Republic Xu Xiangqian held a series of senior posts in the military establishment, including service on the Central Military Commission and as chief of the general staff in the 1960s. He worked on the modernisation of the armed forces, on the development of defence science, and on the coordination of the military industries of the new state.

He was caught up in the political conflicts of the Cultural Revolution, when many of the veteran commanders were attacked. He endured a period of criticism and reduced influence, though he was not destroyed as some of his colleagues were, and he gradually returned to public life in the later years of the Maoist period.

After the reforms began he supported the rehabilitation of the purged leaders and the efforts to place the army on a more professional and less political footing. He served as a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission in the 1970s and 1980s and remained an elder statesman of the armed forces until his final years.

Death and Legacy

Xu Xiangqian died in Beijing on 21 September 1990 at the age of eighty-eight, the last of the ten marshals of the People's Liberation Army to pass away. His death closed a chapter in the history of the revolutionary generation, and he was honoured with a state funeral that acknowledged his long service to the state.

He is remembered as a commander of boldness and endurance, a veteran of the Eyuwan base and the Sichuan campaigns whose Fourth Front Army was one of the pillars of the early Red Army. His part in the divided Long March and in the difficult western campaigns has made his career a subject of continuing historical study, and his decades of service in the military establishment gave him a secure place among the founders of the modern army.

His home district of Wutai in Shanxi preserves his memory, and his writings and reports on the campaigns of the Fourth Front Army remain a source for the study of the communist military movement. He stands with the other marshals as one of the makers of the People's Liberation Army and of the revolutionary state.

See also

• Long March
• Fourth Front Army
• Taiyuan campaign
• People's Liberation Army