Su Yu

Early Career and the New Fourth Army

Su Yu was born on 10 August 1907 in Huaihua, Hunan Province, into a middle-class family. He joined the Communist Youth League as a student and participated in the Yizhang Uprising in 1928. After years of guerrilla operations in southern Jiangxi during the "three-year guerrilla war," he served under Chen Yi in the New Fourth Army from 1938, commanding units in central China. He rapidly distinguished himself as an instinctive tactical commander — one who could read terrain, exploit timing, and coordinate large formations with unusual speed.

Mao's Assessment: The Greatest Battle Winner

Mao Zedong described Su Yu as "the greatest battle winner in our army" (我军最善打仗的将领), a verdict shared by many military historians. Su Yu possessed an ability rare among senior commanders: he operated most effectively at the operational level — the space between grand strategy and individual engagements — where battles are actually won and lost. His campaigns in Jiangsu and Shandong during 1946–47 demonstrated an ability to defeat numerically superior Nationalist forces through superior manoeuvre and concentration.

The Huaihai Campaign — Planning and Execution

Su Yu was the principal architect of the Huaihai Campaign (November 1948 – January 1949), which destroyed over 550,000 Nationalist troops and broke the back of Nationalist military power east of the interior. His initial operational proposal — submitted to Mao in September 1948 — was more limited in scope; Mao and the Central Military Commission expanded it into the decisive three-front battle that it became. During the campaign itself, Su Yu handled the tactical direction while Chen Yi coordinated logistics and political work. Western historians including Westad regard Huaihai as the battle that made Communist victory in the Civil War inevitable.

Crossing the Yangtze

As Deputy Commander of the Third Field Army under Chen Yi, Su Yu was the de facto operational planner of the Yangtze crossing in April 1949. He coordinated the assault across the central sector — the 500-kilometre front facing the Nationalist's strongest defences — directing the timing and sequencing of river crossings to maximise confusion and prevent the Nationalists from concentrating their forces. The central sector's forces were first across the river, collapsing the defensive line within 24 hours and opening the road to Nanjing.

Post-1949: Chief of the General Staff

Su Yu was awarded the rank of General (大将) in 1955 — the highest rank below Marshal — and served as Chief of the General Staff (总参谋长) from 1954 to 1958. He led early planning for a potential PLA assault on Taiwan and oversaw the 1954–55 Yijiangshan Island Campaign, the first tri-service (land, sea, air) amphibious operation in PLA history. His tenure as Chief of General Staff ended abruptly following political conflicts linked to the dismissal of Peng Dehuai; he was reassigned to less prominent roles.

Later Years and Rehabilitation

Su Yu spent much of the Cultural Revolution period in political limbo, neither prominently attacked nor rehabilitated. After Mao's death in 1976 and the subsequent reform era, he was partially restored to honour. He published his military memoirs, which became an important source for historians of the Civil War. Su Yu died on 5 February 1984 in Beijing. He is widely regarded by military historians as the most gifted operational commander produced by the PLA, comparable in some analyses to figures such as Georgy Zhukov in the Soviet context.