Qiu Huizuo

From the Red Army's Supply Service (1914–1949)

Qiu Huizuo was born in Xingguo, Jiangxi, in 1914. According to the People's Daily directory of the PLA's founding marshals and generals, he joined the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in December 1929, the Communist Youth League in November 1930 and the Communist Party in April 1932; he served as a propagandist in the 25th Regiment, 8th Division, Red Third Army, head of the propaganda team of the Red Fifth Army Group, and statistician, political instructor and general Party branch secretary in the General Supply Department of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission. On the Long March he was a section chief in the commission's Fourth Bureau, and after reaching northern Shaanxi he headed the grain and fodder office of the Red Army's General Supply Department.

After the outbreak of war with Japan he became deputy head of the Central Military Commission's supply department; from 1940 he was chairman of the finance committee of the Henan–Anhui–Jiangsu border region and political commissar of the 4th Division's supply department and head of the organisation department of the division's political department. In the Civil War he was successively director of the political department of the Re-Liao Military District, secretary of the CCP 22nd Sub-district committee and political commissar of the Chifeng Military Sub-district, deputy political commissar and political department director of the 8th Column of the Northeast Democratic United Army, and political commissar of the Fourth Field Army's 45th Army, taking part in the 1947 summer, autumn and winter offensives in the Northeast and the Liaoshen, Pingjin and Hengbao campaigns.

The General Logistics Department (1951–1969)

From 1951 Qiu served successively as deputy political commissar and political department director of the 15th Army Group, deputy director and then director of the political department of the South China Military Region, and second deputy director of the political department of the Central-South Military Region, before becoming director of the PLA General Logistics Department; in 1955 he was made a lieutenant general (zhongjiang).

According to the official Chronicle of the Communist Party of China, on 17 August 1967 the Central Committee and Central Military Commission set up the CMC Administrative Group, made up of Wu Faxian, Ye Qun, Qiu Huizuo and Zhang Xiuchuan. The 1981 judgment of the Special Court found that in 1967 Qiu had people steal files of the General Political Department and falsely accused its cadres, playing an important part in Lin Biao's campaign to "smash the General Political Department"; and that from 1967 to 1971 he set up a private prison in the General Logistics Department, extracted confessions by torture, and directly persecuted 462 cadres and others, eight of whom — Tang Ping, Zhou Changgeng, Gu Zizhuang, Zhang Shusen, Shen Maoxing, Wang Shuchen, Zhang Lingdou and Hua Diping — were persecuted to death.

The Ninth Congress, Lushan and 13 September (1969–1971)

At the First Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee in April 1969 Qiu was elected to the Politburo and became a member of the CMC Administrative Group; according to the researcher Huang Limin, after the Ninth Congress he served as deputy chief of the General Staff while remaining director of the General Logistics Department. The Chronicle records that in June 1969 the Administrative Group held a forum that drew up an enormous defence construction programme, at which Qiu and others called for "an independent and complete defence industrial system" that would be "more foreign than the foreigners", declaring "what proportions? War is the proportion"; defence and war-preparation spending in 1969 rose 34 per cent over the previous year, and by more than 15 and 16 per cent in 1970 and 1971 respectively.

According to the Central Committee's 1972 document "The Struggle to Smash the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique's Counter-Revolutionary Coup (Material No. 3)", on 24 August 1970, during the Second Plenum at Lushan, Qiu told the Northwest group that "someone must be opposed to this view" (Lin Biao's calling Mao a "genius") and that "the Chairman's modesty must not be used to oppose this"; on 13 May that year he, Wu Faxian and Li Zuopeng had jointly written to Ye Qun pledging to "forever remember" her "profound kindness in educating us". The document also lists switchboard records of the Central Military Commission for 6–12 September 1971, according to which Ye Qun at Beidaihe spoke with Qiu ten times. The judgment states that after the assassination plan failed, Lin Biao prepared to take Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, Qiu Huizuo and others south to Guangzhou.

Trial, Medical Parole and Death (1971–2002)

In 1973 Qiu was expelled from the Party and removed from all posts. According to an article in Dangshi zongheng (no. 10, 2010; reprinted in People's Digest), he was taken to Qincheng Prison in Beijing in December 1976; at a review of his case in 1979 he said: "Whether they lock me up or sentence me is for the Centre to decide; my attitude is to obey." From November 1980 he was tried by the Second Tribunal of the Special Court of the Supreme People's Court, engaging no lawyer and declining a court-appointed defender. The judgment states that he "confessed to his criminal acts" and "exposed the criminal acts of Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and other co-defendants". In 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 sixteen years' imprisonment and five years' deprivation of political rights.

The same article says that in September 1981 Qiu was settled in Xi'an on medical parole, living with his wife Hu Min on 100 yuan a month, raised to 200 yuan from 1983; in 1992 he was moved into a cadres' sanatorium in Xi'an. He fell seriously ill at the end of 2001 and was transferred to Beijing for treatment. Sources differ on the date of his death: the article gives 18 July 2002 at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, aged 89, while the People's Daily directory of founding generals gives 3 August 2002 in Beijing.

Verdict, Memoirs and Controversy

The People's Daily directory of founding generals states that during the Cultural Revolution he "took part in Lin Biao's conspiracy to usurp the supreme power of the Party and the state". In The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996), by contrast, 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".

After his death, The Memoirs of Qiu Huizuo were published in 2011 by New Century Press in Hong Kong; the same year his son Cheng Guang published Dialogues of the Heart: Qiu Huizuo Talks with His Son about the Cultural Revolution and A Look Back at History: Qiu Huizuo Talks with His Son about His Revolutionary Career and Certain Historical Questions (Hong Kong: Beixing, April 2011). According to the editor's note to a special issue on Qiu's writings in Remembrance (Jiyi), an unofficial journal of Cultural Revolution studies (no. 81, February 2012), the books set off "a fierce and prolonged debate" over their reliability: one side, represented by Yu Ruxin, the editor of the Memoirs, held that Dialogues of the Heart "is not a work of history but documentary literature", while Cheng Guang's side argued that the Memoirs too "contain many points that do not accord with historical fact".