Wang Zhen

Railway Worker and Red Army Commander (1908–1937)

Wang Zhen, born Wang Zhenglin, was born into a tenant-farming family in Liuyang, Hunan, on 11 April 1908. According to a 2018 article by the CCP Institute of Party History and Literature marking the 110th anniversary of his birth, he went to Changsha in 1922, later became a railway worker and joined the labour movement during the Great Revolution, entering the Communist Youth League in January 1927 and the Communist Party that May. According to an article on People's Daily Online's Party history channel, he adopted the name Wang Zhen while with a guerrilla unit north of Liuyang, and met Mao Zedong again under that name in September 1930. From 1929 he took part in building the Hunan–Jiangxi base, serving as regimental and divisional political commissar of the Red Army's Independent First Division of eastern Hunan, acting commander of the Eighth Red Army and acting commander of the Hunan–Jiangxi Military Region, and received the third-class Red Star Medal.

From July 1934 he was political commissar of the Sixth Red Army Group, leading its westward march with its commander Xiao Ke; in October it joined the Third Red Army (soon renamed the Second Army Group) under He Long and Guan Xiangying, and he helped build the Hunan–Hubei–Sichuan–Guizhou base. In November 1935 the Second and Sixth Army Groups set out on the Long March, joining the Fourth Front Army at Ganzi in Sichuan in July 1936 and forming the Second Front Army; the Institute's article says that Wang, with Ren Bishi, He Long and Guan Xiangying, resisted Zhang Guotao's efforts "to split the Red Army and the Party". He reached Gansu with the Second Front Army that October.

The 359th Brigade, Nanniwan and the Southern Detachment (1937–1949)

After the outbreak of full-scale war Wang commanded the 359th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army's 120th Division, fighting in Shanxi and the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei region. The brigade returned to the Shaan–Gan–Ning border region in August 1939; in early 1941 he led it to reclaim land at Nanniwan, and in 1942 he also became Party secretary and military commander of the Yan'an sub-region. According to the Institute's article, the brigade brought more than 300,000 mu under cultivation and turned Nanniwan into "the good Jiangnan of northern Shaanxi"; Wang was named a labour hero of the border region, and Mao Zedong wrote him an inscription praising his "creative spirit".

In November 1944 Wang became commander of the Eighth Route Army's Southern Detachment, which set out from Yan'an to open bases in South China; after Japan's surrender it was blocked by Nationalist forces on the Hunan–Guangdong border and ordered back north, broke out with the Central Plains Military Region forces in 1946 and returned to Yan'an that September — a march Mao called "a second Long March". He was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee at the Seventh Party Congress in 1945. He then fought on the northwestern front in the battles of Qinghuabian, Yangmahe and Panlong, and in 1949, as commander and political commissar of the First Field Army's First Army Group, led his forces into Qinghai and Xinjiang.

Xinjiang, the Railway Corps and Land Reclamation (1949–1966)

After 1949 Wang was First Secretary of the CCP Xinjiang Sub-bureau and acting commander and political commissar of the Xinjiang Military Region. According to the Institute's article, he organised the troops in Xinjiang to farm and reclaim land, and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps was created on his proposal. From 1954 he commanded the Railway Corps, overseeing construction of the Litang–Zhanjiang and Yingtan–Xiamen railways, and that year became a deputy chief of the General Staff; in 1955 he was made a full general. From 1956 he served for many years as Minister of State Farms and Land Reclamation, sending demobilised soldiers to open farms in Heilongjiang, Xinjiang, Hainan and elsewhere; that year he was elected to the Central Committee at the Eighth Party Congress.

The Cultural Revolution and the Fall of the Gang of Four (1966–1978)

Wang came under attack in the Cultural Revolution and was branded a "three-anti element"; the poet Ai Qing, whom he had earlier protected in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, thereby lost that protection. The Institute's article says Wang was nonetheless re-elected to the Central Committee at the Ninth and Tenth Congresses, took part in running the State Council's work from 1972 and was appointed Vice Premier in January 1975. In October 1976, during the overthrow of the Gang of Four, he "resolutely supported the Party Centre in taking decisive measures"; afterwards he helped push for the redress of unjust cases, joined Ye Jianying, Chen Yun and others in calling for Deng Xiaoping's restoration, and opposed the "Two Whatevers".

The Reform Era (1978–1993)

From 1978 Wang sat on the standing committee of the Central Military Commission and was a member of the Politburo of the 11th and 12th Central Committees; in September 1980 he resigned as Vice Premier together with Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, Chen Yun and others. From 1982 he was president of the Central Party School, and in 1985 he became a vice-chairman of the Central Advisory Commission. In the spring of 1984 he submitted to the Centre a report on accompanying Deng Xiaoping on his inspection of Guangdong, Fujian and Shanghai, which the Institute says "provided an important reference" for the decision to open fourteen coastal port cities; after the Third Plenum of 1978 he visited Xinjiang eight times and proposed the restoration of the Production and Construction Corps. In April 1988 the First Session of the Seventh National People's Congress elected him Vice President of the People's Republic. According to a 2020 recollection by Li Shenming, who had worked on his staff for many years, in April 1989 Wang told members of his staff that the Party's third and fourth generations "could be peacefully evolved" away from socialism, and said he opposed the television series River Elegy (Heshang).

Wang Zhen died in Guangzhou on 12 March 1993, aged 85; his corneas were donated after his death, and on 5 April that year his ashes were scattered over the Tianshan mountains in Xinjiang.

Assessment

The CCP Institute of Party History and Literature calls him "a great proletarian revolutionary, statesman and military strategist" and says that at every critical juncture of the reform era he "resolutely fought against all erroneous words and deeds that sought to escape or weaken the Party's leadership". Some Western media reports counted him among the Party's conservative elders; for example, reporting on politics after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992, The Christian Science Monitor listed Vice President Wang Zhen with Bo Yibo, Peng Zhen and Li Xiannian as "hard-liners".