Luo Ruiqing

Early Years and the Red Army

Luo Ruiqing was born on 31 May 1906 in Nanchong, Sichuan. He joined the Communist Youth League in 1926 and entered the Central Military and Political School in Wuhan; in 1928 he transferred to the CPC and did underground work in Shanghai. From 1929 he served with the Red Army in western Fujian as a detachment Party representative, column political department head and divisional and army political commissar, and was severely wounded in the face in the second campaign against the Nationalist "encirclements" in 1931. In 1933 he became director of political security of the 1st Army Corps; on the Long March he served as chief of staff of the Central Red Army's vanguard, and in northern Shaanxi he headed political security for the 1st Front Army.

War of Resistance and Civil War

From 1936 Luo was dean and vice-president of the Red Army University (later the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University), and in December that year joined the CPC delegation helping Zhou Enlai handle the Xi'an Incident. In 1938 he wrote Political Work in the Anti-Japanese Army. In 1940 he became director of the Eighth Route Army's Field Political Department and helped direct the Hundred Regiments Offensive. After 1945 he was deputy political commissar of the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Military Region, CPC chief of staff at the Beiping Executive Headquarters for military mediation, political commissar of the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Field Army, and director of the North China Military Region's political department and commissar of its 2nd (later 19th) Army Group, taking part in the Pingjin and Taiyuan campaigns.

Minister of Public Security

After the founding of the People's Republic Luo built the Ministry of Public Security and became its minister, also commanding the Public Security Forces. According to CPC News, he led the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries and the later campaign against hidden counter-revolutionaries; in May 1951 he told the Third National Public Security Conference that executions had reached one per thousand of the population and relayed Mao's order to contract the campaign. In 1955 he was deputy head of the five-member central group handling the Hu Feng case. He was made a Senior General (dajiang) in 1955.

Chief of the General Staff

In April 1959 Luo became a Vice-Premier; after the Lushan Conference that September he became a member of the Central Military Commission's Standing Committee, its Secretary-General, Chief of the General Staff and Vice-Minister of National Defence, and in 1962 a secretary of the CPC Central Secretariat. In 1964 he organised the army-wide "great military competition" training campaign.

Downfall and Return

At an enlarged Politburo Standing Committee meeting in Shanghai in December 1965, Lin Biao and others accused Luo of "opposing giving prominence to politics" and "usurping the army and opposing the Party", and he was removed from his Party, government and military posts. In March 1966, while meetings to criticise him were being held at the Jingxi Hotel in Beijing, he jumped from a third-floor terrace of his office on 18 March and badly injured both legs; he was then held in custody for years during the Cultural Revolution and left disabled. In November 1973 Mao approved lifting his supervision; in August 1975 he became an adviser to the Central Military Commission, and in August 1977 again a member of its Standing Committee and its Secretary-General. In 1978 he went to West Germany for treatment of his legs; after an operation on 2 August he died of a heart attack on 3 August, aged 72. According to China Military Online, flags in Tiananmen Square flew at half-mast after his death.