Ye Ting

Ye Ting the Chinese communist commander (1896-1946) celebrated as the first commander of the New Fourth Army and remembered as one of the outstanding military figures of the united front against Japan. His forceful leadership and his death in a peacetime air crash made him a lasting symbol of the revolutionary cause.

Early Life and the Nationalist Army

Ye Ting was born on 10 September 1896 in Huiyang county, Guangdong province, into a family of modest means. He received a modern education and entered the Baoding Military Academy, one of the principal officer schools of the early republic, where he trained as a professional soldier. He served in the southern armies and distinguished himself as a courageous and capable officer.

He became a member of the Chinese Communist Party and served as a commander in the Nationalist forces during the early 1920s. In 1926 he led the 36th Regiment in the Northern Expedition, and his troops were the first of that campaign to reach the walls of Wuchang, an exploit that made his name known throughout China and earned his unit the title of the iron army.

The reputation he won in the northern campaigns, and his sympathies for the revolutionary movement, placed him among the leading soldiers of the left within the Nationalist army. When the alliance between the Nationalists and the communists broke down in 1927 he took the side of the communist cause, and he became one of its foremost military leaders.

Nanchang and Guangzhou Risings, Years Abroad

Ye Ting was one of the principal commanders of the Nanchang uprising of 1 August 1927, in which the communist forces briefly seized the city in the opening act of the Red Army's history. He commanded a division in the fighting and helped to organise the withdrawal of the forces that survived the attack.

He then took part in the Guangzhou uprising of December 1927 before its suppression by the Nationalist armies, and after that failure he went into exile abroad. He travelled in Europe and in Asia, out of favour with the party leadership for a time, and he lived for years away from the Chinese revolutionary scene, supporting himself by teaching and by occasional business.

During this period in exile he remained loyal to the communist cause, though he was reproached for his association with former leaders who had fallen out of favour. He watched from afar as the movement he had helped to found was driven from the cities and rebuilt in the countryside, and he waited for the chance to return to its service.

The New Fourth Army

When the war with Japan broke out in 1937 and the communists agreed with the Nationalists on a united front, the guerrilla forces in the south were reorganised as the New Fourth Army. Ye Ting was appointed its first commander, and he was accepted by both sides as a figure of standing, a soldier who had served the Nationalist cause as well as the communist one.

Under his leadership the New Fourth Army grew from a small body of a few thousand survivors into a substantial force operating across the lower Yangtze valley, behind the Japanese lines. He established the discipline of the army, insisted on its regular organisation, and led it in a series of operations against the Japanese and against local collaborationist troops.

The army faced constant tension with the Nationalist authorities, who regarded the growth of communist forces as a threat, and Ye Ting had to combine military operations with political negotiation and restraint. His insistence on professional standards and on the use of regular tactics, sometimes against the advice of more politically minded colleagues, became a source of friction and of admiration in equal measure.

The Southern Anhui Incident and Captivity

In January 1941 the New Fourth Army headquarters was ordered to move north, and on the march it was attacked by far larger Nationalist forces in the mountains of southern Anhui. The headquarters column was destroyed, and Ye Ting, who went to negotiate, was taken prisoner. The episode, known as the Southern Anhui Incident, was one of the gravest crises of the united front.

After his capture Ye Ting was held in confinement for more than five years, moved among various detention places and subjected to pressure to abandon the communist cause. He refused to recant and remained firm in his loyalty, and his poem of defiance, written in prison, became one of the most quoted texts of the revolutionary canon.

His captivity removed him from command during the final years of the war against Japan and through the whole of the civil war. His example of steadfastness under duress, however, strengthened the standing of the army he had led, and the New Fourth Army was rebuilt by his successor and became one of the great field armies of the civil war.

Release, Death and Legacy

Ye Ting was released in March 1946 as part of the negotiations between the Nationalists and the communists after the end of the war. He was formally reinstated in the party, whose leaders acknowledged the injustice of the reproaches once directed against him, and he prepared to return to the service of the movement.

On 8 April 1946 the aircraft carrying him and his family, together with other senior communist figures, including Wang Ruofei and Bo Gu, crashed in the mountains of Shanxi while flying toward Yan'an. All aboard were killed, and the accident removed a group of the most experienced leaders of the party at a crucial moment.

Ye Ting is remembered as one of the founding commanders of the communist military movement and as the first leader of the New Fourth Army. His career touched the Nanchang uprising, the Northern Expedition, the united front and the ordeal of imprisonment, and his death in peacetime gave him the status of a martyr. He is honoured as a soldier of high principle and personal courage.

See also

• New Fourth Army
• Nanchang uprising
• Northern Expedition
• Southern Anhui Incident