Huang Yongsheng

From the Autumn Harvest Uprising to the Long March (1910–1937)

Huang Yongsheng, born Huang Xuquan on 17 November 1910 in Xianning, Hubei, joined the guard regiment of the Nationalist Revolutionary Army's Second Front Army headquarters in June 1927, according to the People's Daily directory of the PLA's founding marshals and generals. That September he took part in the Autumn Harvest Uprising on the Hunan–Jiangxi border and followed the troops to Jinggangshan, joining the Chinese Communist Party in December. He rose from platoon leader in the Red Fourth Army and company commander in the Red Twelfth Army to commander of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission's special-duty battalion, of the 3rd Regiment of the 1st Red Division and of the 2nd Red Division, fighting in all the campaigns against the Nationalist "encirclements" of the Central Soviet and on the Long March. In 1933 he received the third-class Red Star Medal of the Chinese Soviet Republic.

War against Japan and Civil War (1937–1949)

During the war against Japan, Huang was deputy commander and then commander of the 3rd Sub-district of the Eighth Route Army's Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Military Region, and later commander of the 2nd Training Brigade of the Shaanxi–Gansu–Ningxia–Shanxi–Suiyuan Joint Defence Army. In the Civil War he commanded the Rehe and Re-Liao military districts, the 8th Column of the Northeast Democratic United Army and the 45th Army of the Northeast Field Army, then served as deputy commander of the 14th and 13th Army Groups, taking part in the Liaoshen, Pingjin and Hengbao campaigns.

South China and the Guangzhou Military Region (1949–1968)

From 1950 Huang commanded the 13th Army Group, then the 15th Army Group while serving as deputy commander of the Guangdong Military District, and became deputy commander of the South China and Central-South military regions; in 1953 he went to Korea as commander of the 19th Army Group of the Chinese People's Volunteers, and later became commander of the Guangzhou Military Region (when the region was set up in April 1955, Li Tianyou served as acting commander). In 1955 he was made a full general (shangjiang) and awarded the first-class August First, Independence and Freedom, and Liberation medals; in 1956 he was elected an alternate member of the Eighth Central Committee, becoming a full member in 1968.

He was still in charge of the Guangzhou Military Region in the early Cultural Revolution. According to the 1981 judgment of the Special Court of the Supreme People's Court, in June 1967 Huang approved a "Request for instructions on investigating renegades" and its attached "Investigation Plan No. 1", submitted by the head of the military control commission of the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau, "plotting to frame Ye Jianying as a 'renegade'"; between October 1967 and March 1968 he proposed an investigation of the CCP's "Guangdong underground party" and ordered the "examination" of Wen Niansheng, deputy commander of the Guangzhou forces, and others, fabricating the "Guangdong underground party" and Guangzhou forces "counter-revolutionary clique" cases, in which Vice-Governor Lin Qiangyun and Wen Niansheng were persecuted to death.

Chief of the General Staff and the CMC Administrative Group (1968–1971)

On 22 March 1968 the Central Committee, State Council, Central Military Commission and Central Cultural Revolution Group ordered the removal of Yang Chengwu as acting Chief of the General Staff and on the same day appointed Huang Yongsheng to the post, also reorganising the CMC Administrative Group to include Huang, Li Zuopeng and others. According to the official Chronicle of the Communist Party of China, Mao then decided that the standing committee of the CMC would no longer meet, so that "the CMC Administrative Group in effect replaced the CMC standing committee". Huang also served as president of the Military and Political University.

On 28 April 1969 the First Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee elected Huang to the Politburo. According to the researcher Huang Limin, the new CMC formed after the Ninth Congress had no standing committee; its ten members made up the Administrative Group, with Huang Yongsheng as head, Wu Faxian as deputy head, and Ye Qun, Li Zuopeng, Qiu Huizuo, Xie Fuzhi, Li Tianyou, Li Desheng, Liu Xianquan and Wen Yucheng as members. On 17 October that year Lin Biao issued an "emergency directive on strengthening combat readiness and guarding against a surprise enemy attack", which Huang and others formally transmitted the next day as "Vice-Chairman Lin's Order No. 1".

The judgment found that in 1968 Huang, together with Wu Faxian, fabricated facts to accuse Luo Ruiqing of being a "counter-revolutionary of the most heinous kind", and that in December of that year he slandered the General Political Department for "recruiting deserters and traitors"; on 3 November 1970 he endorsed the Peng Dehuai case group's proposal to "remove Peng Dehuai from all posts inside and outside the Party, expel him from the Party for ever, and sentence him to life imprisonment with lifelong deprivation of civil rights". It further found that on 6 September 1971 Huang "secretly reported to Lin Biao Chairman Mao's remarks showing that he had become aware of Lin Biao's plotting to seize power", and that after the assassination plan failed, Lin on 12 September "prepared to take Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, Qiu Huizuo and others south to Guangzhou, which he then intended as the base for his coup".

Dismissal, Trial and Death (1971–1983)

After the 13 September incident Huang was dismissed in September 1971; on 3 October the Central Committee abolished the CMC Administrative Group and set up a CMC office meeting chaired by Ye Jianying to run the commission's daily work. In August 1973 he was expelled from the Party.

On 5 November 1980 the Special Procuratorate of the Supreme People's Procuratorate indicted ten defendants including Jiang Qing and Huang Yongsheng; Huang and four other former military commanders were tried by the Special Court's Second Tribunal. He engaged no lawyer and declined a court-appointed defender. On 25 January 1981 the Special Court convicted him of organising and leading a counter-revolutionary clique, conspiring to overthrow the government, and false accusation, sentencing him to eighteen years' imprisonment and five years' deprivation of political rights. The judgment stated that Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, Qiu Huizuo and others had "each confessed to their criminal acts", whereas "Huang Yongsheng confessed to part of his criminal acts". Huang died of illness in Qingdao on 26 April 1983.

Official Verdict and Scholarship

The People's Daily directory of founding generals characterises him as having "taken part in Lin Biao's conspiracy to usurp the supreme leadership of the Party and the state, and fabricated a series of unjust cases".

In The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996), the Australian scholar Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun argue that the extreme sensitivity of the case produced a distorted official account and that the testimony of leading figures at the 1980–81 trial is "of questionable validity"; they cite a well-informed Party historian as saying that Wu Faxian was deeply remorseful over his testimony, parts of which he claimed to have invented to please his interrogators. They also write that the view that there had "never been such disregard" of the principle of seeking truth from facts as in this case was originally voiced by Huang Yongsheng (according to The Super Trial by the trial participant Xiao Sike), and was endorsed by an interviewee specialising in the case.