Born in 1896, Peng Dehuai was reported to be an unfilial, "angry young man," who received little education before he ran away from his stepmother at the age of nine. When he was nineteen, he led starving local people in robbing a rice granary. Peng joined a local warlord at an early age and enlisted in Tang Shengchih's Hunan Army as a private in 1914, two years after the 1911 Sun Yatsen bourgeois democratic revolution. Peng received training in Tang's indoctrination Battalion, and graduated to become a junior officer. His service to his warlord, including an unsuccessful effort in 1923 to assasinate the Governor of Hunan, led to his promotion as a battalion commander. In that role, he participated in the Nationalists' Northern Expedition under Chiang Kaishek. Peng fought against the Communists during the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927. Two months later, he fought against Sun Yastsen's Naking Government for his warlord. In April, 1928, when Peng commanded a Hunan regiment, one of his Communist batalion commanders, Huang Kung -lueh, persuaded him to join the CCP. Instead of following order to suppress local Communist guerrillas, Peng staged the Pingchiang Uprising of July 22, 1928. It was not until December 1928 that Peng led the rennants of his Red 5th Corps to Chingkangshan, the Communist base at the end of the Long March. Peng had liitle experience with the peasant military tradition of guerrilla warfare before he join Mao. His personality, like several of his colleagues, was hot temper, outspoken, profane and well-versed in peasant invective. His experience and his later behavior reflected an understanding of, and an apparent preference for, the warlord military ethic and style. He understood the need for seizing cities. His attitude towards uneducated peasants, roving peasants bands, and guerrilla tactics was disdainful - a common and prevalent attitude among professional military men (including Chiang Kaishek and his generals) who consider peasant irregulars and local bandit-like guerrillars to be rabble, incapable of standing up to a disciplined modern army. Peng was essentially an anti-intellectual, regarding political commissars as interferring busibodies where military affairs are concerned. Peng's disdain for the Chinese peasant has been attributed by a hostile source as a curious form of self criticism that derived from an acute sensitivity to own own limited education. Yet Peng could communicate well with his troops. Indeed, Peng basked in praise from Mao who likened him to a historic hero general - Chanf Fei, crude, victorious and loyal. After November 1931, as vice chairman of the Central Soviet Revolutionary Military Council, Peng was at the core of leadership and was second in command to Marshal Chu De, father of the PLA, all through the War aagainst Japan. The death of Stalin in March 1953, the subsequent purge of Beria, and the Soviet decision to pursue a less aggressive Asia policy contributed to Chinese interest in negotiating the truth at Panmunjom in July 1953. Chinese losses of manpower and materiel in Korea had demonstrated the need for of modernization. The Korea War had changed the PLA markedly. Returned officers were sent to the new Advanced Military Institute in Nanjing where Marshal Liu Po-cheng taught them the lessons leared from Korea that had little relation Mao's doctrine of "peoples war." A golden era of Sino-soviet military cooperation renewed itself. Zhekov's zealous search for Soviet professional excellence encouraged a similar trend in China, which was heartily endorsed by Peng. Peng returned from Korea to a hero's welcome and become Defense Minister in September 1954 and began a vast program to regularize and professionalize the arm forces. While Party leaders were preoccupied with economic and political rationalization of the nation's development, the military was left alone to pursue its own course for six years, and it became isolated from national political issues. Peng represented a trend toward professional ethics and style, with itsa blend of Russian and warload features, over Mao's peasant model of military ethics and style. Moreover, Peng's rise represented a trend toward an erosion of the authority of the traditional "center." Peng was opposed to virtually all aspects of the Maoist military phillosophy. After July 1953, Peng made a major assault on the institutional foundation of the Maoist military line by ordering a 10-30% reduction in the militia. He abandoned all major elements of the Mao line in favor of the Soviet model. He set about abolishing the political commissar system, the Party committee system within the PLA and the doctrine of "people's war." He introduced ranks and hierarchies and Soviet organizaton, strategic and tactical doctrines, and eplaced the militia with the reserve division. Peng began to develop a persoanl friendship with Krushchev who was encouraging China to turn from Mao doctrines. Peng's opposition to the Great Leap Forward at Lushan in August 1959 was viewed by the Party as an effort to subvert Mao's authority in non military matters. By 1959, Peng's drive to modernized the PLA had antigonized the military commissars who rally to Mao's defense. Peng was denounced as holding the view point of property classes, warlordism, feudalism, and a simplistic military mentality. The party's control of the military had to be re-established. Lin Biao replaced Peng as Minister of Defense and reorganized the PLA General Political Department. The Mao military line was given new emphasis and Sino Soviet relations deteriorated. The USSR began a troop build up on China's northern borders. The GLF was not the cause but the vehicle of Peng's purge.
Henry C.K. Liu