Luo Ronghuan

Early Career and the Long March

Luo Ronghuan, originally named Shenzhen and styled Yahuai, was born on 26 November 1902 in Hengshan (now part of Hengdong), Hunan. In 1919 he entered Changsha's Xiejun Middle School, taking part in campaigns to drive out the warlord Zhang Jingyao and to boycott Japanese goods; in July 1924 he was admitted to the preparatory program of Qingdao University in Shandong, later transferring to Wuchang Zhongshan University. In 1927 he joined the Communist Youth League and then the Chinese Communist Party, taking part that same year in the Autumn Harvest Uprising on the Hunan-Jiangxi border; he met Mao Zedong for the first time at Wenjiashi and followed him to Jinggangshan, setting the course of his career in military political work. During the Agrarian Revolutionary War he served successively as political commissar of the Fourth Red Army and director of the political department of the First Red Army Corps, among other posts, and took part in the Long March.

The War of Resistance and the Shandong Base Area

After the outbreak of full-scale war with Japan, Luo Ronghuan became political commissar of the Eighth Route Army's 115th Division. In March 1939 he led the division headquarters and part of its forces into Shandong, where he went on to direct the province's overall party, government, and military affairs for years, serving as secretary of the CCP Shandong Sub-Bureau among other posts, and built the Shandong base area into one of the most important anti-Japanese bases in North China. From 1942 he suffered from kidney disease and frequently continued to direct operations from a stretcher; in 1946 one of his kidneys was removed, and he worked with chronic illness for the rest of his life.

Northeast Field Army and the Civil War

After Japan's surrender in 1945, Luo Ronghuan was sent to Manchuria as political commissar of the Northeast Field Army, with Lin Biao as commander. While Lin Biao handled operational command, Luo was responsible for troop morale, political education, logistics coordination, and liaison with local civilian structures. Their partnership proved decisive in both the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns. His work in establishing CPC governance across Manchuria laid the groundwork for the subsequent administration of northern China.

After 1949

After the founding of the PRC, Luo Ronghuan was appointed Procurator-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate of the Central People's Government in October 1949, becoming the new state's first chief procurator; around the same time, as his kidney disease worsened, he travelled to Moscow for treatment, suffering severe post-operative bleeding that required a second surgery, after which Soviet doctors told him in halting Chinese, "You are truly a hero." In April 1950 he became director of the General Political Department of the People's Revolutionary Military Commission, and from June 1954 concurrently served as a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. He was appointed one of the ten Marshals of the PRC in 1955 — the only one primarily known as a political rather than operational commander. At the 8th Party Congress in September 1956 he was elected to the Politburo. He died in Beijing on 16 December 1963 after long-standing kidney disease, one of the few senior military figures to die before the Cultural Revolution with his reputation intact; Mao Zedong personally wrote a poem, "Mourning Comrade Luo Ronghuan," in his memory — one of the very few such poems Mao wrote for a colleague.