Liu Bocheng

Early Career and the Long March

Liu Bocheng, originally named Liu Mingzhao, was born on 4 December 1892 in Kaixian, Sichuan (now Kaizhou District, Chongqing). In 1911 he joined an anti-Qing student army in response to the Xinhai Revolution, later studying at the Chongqing military government's officer school, and in 1914 joined Sun Yat-sen's Chinese Revolutionary Party. In 1916, while attacking Fengdu during the National Protection War, he was shot in the head and lost his right eye, earning him the sobriquet "One-Eyed Dragon." He joined the Chinese Communist Party in May 1926, and that December, together with Zhu De and Yang Anggong, led the Luzhou-Shunqing uprisings. After taking part in the Nanchang Uprising in 1927 he studied at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, receiving formal military training. During the Long March he served as the Red Army's Chief of Staff, emerging as one of the most professionally accomplished commanders among Communist forces.

The War of Resistance: the 129th Division and the Start of the "Liu-Deng" Partnership

After the outbreak of full-scale war with Japan, Liu Bocheng became commander of the Eighth Route Army's 129th Division; in January 1938 Deng Xiaoping was appointed the division's political commissar, beginning the decade-long "Liu-Deng" partnership. The 129th Division fought across the Taihang Mountains, repeatedly ambushing Japanese forces: the March 1938 ambush at Shentouling killed more than 1,500 Japanese troops and is regarded as a textbook case of "overlapping ambush" tactics, while the Qigencun engagements that October saw the division spring a second ambush at the very same site, stunning its opponents. In 1940 the division took part in the Hundred Regiments Offensive against Japanese lines of communication in North China, fighting 529 engagements in three and a half months — one of the largest Eighth Route Army contributions to that campaign.

The Liu-Deng Army and the Civil War

After the outbreak of the Civil War, the veteran Liu-Deng partnership continued as Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping took command, respectively, of the Central Plains Field Army as commander and political commissar — the force still known as the "Liu-Deng Army." In June 1947 they led the strategic offensive that crossed the Yellow River into the Dabie Mountains, marking the turning point of the civil war. In the Huaihai Campaign, his forces encircled and destroyed Huang Wei's 12th Army Corps at Shuangduiji in December 1948, the most decisive engagement of that campaign.

After 1949

After the founding of the PRC, Liu Bocheng served as Second Secretary of the CCP Southwest Bureau and chairman of the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee before turning, from 1951, to military education — founding and heading the PLA Military Academy in Nanjing as both president and political commissar, and later serving as president and political commissar of the Advanced Military Academy and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. He was appointed one of the ten Marshals of the PRC in 1955, ranked fourth among them. During the Cultural Revolution his already severely impaired eyesight and chronic ill health kept him largely on the margins of political struggle, though a course of treatment in 1973, later judged to have involved misdiagnosis and improper medication, caused his health to deteriorate sharply, leaving him bedridden for much of his remaining life. In 1982, citing his age, he resigned his remaining party, government, and military posts. He died in Beijing on 7 October 1986; his official obituary gave his age as 94 by traditional reckoning, though he had not yet reached his 94th birthday at death.