In the 27 years of Mao Zedong’s rule, there were six total chiefs of the Central Military Commission – Xu Xiangqian, Su Yu, Huang Kecheng, Luo Ruiqing, Huang Yongsheng, and Deng Xiaoping; and two acting chiefs of staff – Nie Rongzhen and Yang Chengwu. Xu Xiangqian did not assume office due to illness, and Nie Rongzhen acted as his proxy.
Except for Nie Rongzhen, Su Yu, Huang Kecheng, Luo Ruiqing, Yang Chengwu, Huang Yongsheng, and Deng Xiaoping, all six were toppled by Mao Zedong during their tenure. Here, let’s focus on why Mao Zedong targeted Huang Kecheng.
Huang Kecheng was ousted at the Lushan Conference in 1959.
From July 2 to August 1, and from August 2 to 16, the CCP Politburo enlargement meeting and the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee were held at Lushan.
The Eighth Plenary Session passed the “Resolution on the Mistakes of the Anti-Party Clique led by Peng Dehuai”. Huang Kecheng was identified as one of the members of the Peng Dehuai anti-party clique and was overthrown. The plenary session decided to remove Peng Dehuai from his position as Minister of National Defense and Huang Kecheng from his position as Chief of the General Staff.
The reasons given by the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee are threefold:
First, Huang Kecheng, as a member of the right-leaning opportunistic anti-party clique led by Peng Dehuai, opposed the CCP’s general line, the Great Leap Forward, and the People’s Communes.
Second, as a member of the anti-party clique led by Peng Dehuai, Huang Kecheng carried out purposeful, prepared, planned, and organized activities during and before the Lushan Conference.
Third, Huang Kecheng and Peng Dehuai, along with the previously toppled “Gao Gang and Rao Shushi Anti-Party Alliance,” were accomplices, and they were all important members of the “Gao Rao Anti-Party Alliance.”
For their own personal ambitions, they had been maliciously attacking and defaming the CCP leader Mao Zedong and other leaders of the Central and Military Commissions within the party and the military, using methods like promising promotions, stirring conflicts, attacking first and then retreating, sowing discord, spreading rumors and lies, and spreading gossip, to engage in factionalism and dividing the party.
However, after the end of the Cultural Revolution in ten years, all members of the Peng Dehuai anti-party clique were rehabilitated.
On June 27, 1981, the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP passed the “Resolution on Several Historical Issues Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China”, stating, “The resolution of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee on the so-called ‘Peng Dehuai, Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian, Zhou Xiaozhou Anti-Party Clique’ was completely wrong.”
That is to say, the three reasons given for toppling Huang Kecheng were all false accusations by the CCP under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
From the disclosed facts since the Lushan Conference, there were mainly two reasons:
First, when Mao Zedong decided to bring down Peng Dehuai, Huang Kecheng did not immediately stand by Mao’s side but sided with Peng.
On July 14, 1959, Peng Dehuai, who attended the Lushan Conference, wrote a letter to Mao about some problems that arose during Mao’s Great Leap Forward campaign in 1958, telling Mao the truth.
Upon seeing Peng’s letter, Mao was furious, feeling that Peng Dehuai had offended his absolute authority and decided to bring him down.
At that time, Huang Kecheng did not attend the Lushan Conference but stayed in Beijing to deal with the daily work of the Military Commission. To bolster the force standing by his side, Mao temporarily summoned Huang Kecheng to Lushan. As Tan Zhenlin, a supporter of Mao at the time and Vice Premier, put it, he was called a “reinforcement.”
Huang Kecheng arrived at Lushan on July 17. After arriving at Lushan, Huang Kecheng did not play the role of Mao’s “reinforcement” but instead became a supporter of Peng Dehuai.
On July 19, Huang Kecheng spoke for two hours at a small group meeting, supporting Peng Dehuai’s views. Why did Huang Kecheng support Peng Dehuai’s views? Before going to Lushan, he also learned about the chaotic economic situation in the country since the Great Leap Forward movement. There were famines in Hebei, Shandong, and Qinghai, with many people starving to death, and many people fled to Myanmar from Yunnan due to famine.
In his “self-narrative,” Huang Kecheng wrote: In the small group at the time, apart from Public Security Minister Luo Ruiqing and Vice Premier Tan Zhenlin, it seemed that everyone else agreed with his views. Zhou Xiaozhou, the First Secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, Deputy Minister of Water Resources, part-time secretary of Mao Zedong Li Rui, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhang Wentian, etc., all supported Peng Dehuai.
Mao Zedong, seeing that Huang Kecheng and others did not follow his lead, decided to personally launch a fierce attack on Peng Dehuai.
On July 23, Mao delivered a long speech at the meeting, harshly criticizing Peng Dehuai’s letter as “rightist opportunism” and as “attacking the Party,” emotionally saying, “If people don’t offend me, I won’t offend them. But if they do, I will. If the country collapses, then I will go and lead the peasants to overthrow the government. If the People’s Liberation Army does not follow me, I will find the Red Army. I think the PLA will follow me!”
Afterward, Mao began to work on differentiation, trying to bring Huang Kecheng, Zhou Xiaozhou, Li Rui, and others to his side.
On July 30, Mao informed Huang Kecheng, Zhou Xiaozhou, Li Rui, and others for talks. Mao labeled Huang with three hats – one as Peng Dehuai’s “political staff officer,” second as the principal figure of the “Hunan group,” and third as a key member of the “Military Club.” Mao also said that Huang and Peng had similar views with a “father-son relationship.”
Huang Kecheng not only did not comply with Mao’s wishes but also refuted Mao’s accusations point by point. He said, “Peng Dehuai and I had basically the same views, at least regarding the opinions of this Lushan Conference. In the past, Peng Dehuai and I argued a lot, but our disagreements did not damage our relationship. I think our relationship was normal.”
“When I became Peng’s staff officer, it was because Chairman Mao, you wanted me to be. At that time, when I was working in Hunan, I did not want to come, but you insisted I come. Since I became a staff officer, how can politics and military affairs be separated? Peng Dehuai wrote the letter on the mountain; I hadn’t even gone up there at that time. How could I be his staff officer in writing the ‘memorandum’?”
“I have worked in Hunan for many years, met the responsible people of Hunan several times, talked several times, and paid more attention to Hunan’s work. How can this make me part of the ‘Hunan group’? As for the ‘Military Club,’ where did that even come from?
On July 31 and August 1, Mao again spoke with Huang Kecheng and others, hoping they would stand by his side. However, Huang Kecheng’s thoughts still did not align.
Since Huang Kecheng’s thoughts did not align, some central leaders standing by Mao went to persuade him to understand Mao’s line of thinking. Former secretary of Mao Zedong, Li Rui, wrote in the “Lushan Conference Record”: “At that time, there was great pressure from the member of the Politburo Wanjun to expose Huang Kecheng’s expectation when he came forward to expose Peng Dehuai. There were speeches, there were letters earnestly mobilizing, persuading people who understood the principle: to do this is to uphold the party’s interests and the leader’s prestige. This couldn’t help but make Huang Kecheng feel extremely painful… If it is the party’s interest that requires this saying, then say it.”
After repeated ideological struggles, Huang Kecheng had to reluctantly admit that he had made errors against the party.
After the Lushan Conference, Huang Kecheng’s problems were not resolved.
On August 18, 1959, the Central Military Commission held an enlarged meeting in Beijing, where the scope and intensity of the revelations against Huang Kecheng were far beyond those of the Lushan Conference. The most shocking was when the then Air Force Political Commissar Wu Fajian exposed the “embezzlement of gold by Huang Kecheng case.”
Wu Fajian said that in 1946, when Huang Kecheng, the commander of the New Fourth Army Third Division, led the Third Division into Northeast China from northern Jiangsu, he brought over 440 taels of gold, 21,222 silver dollars, 42 pounds of opium, and several billion in various banknotes. These funds were brought to the Logistics Department of the Fourth Field Army, and when Huang Kecheng was later transferred to Hunan as the First Secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, the whereabouts of the money became unknown.
The issue of gold mentioned by Wu Fajian indeed existed. At that time, Huang Kecheng handed over the gold to the Supply Department of the Third Division of the New Fourth Army, under the management of Minister Weng Xuwen. Apart from some of the gold being used in Northeast China, the rest was cast into gold bars, and it was transported by Huang Kecheng from Northeast China to Tianjin, then from Tianjin to Hunan. Except for a small portion distributed to save some soldiers’ families, the rest was all handed over to the finance department of Hunan Province, with Weng Xuwen handling.
In November 1959, a work group sent by the central government went to Changsha, Hunan, specifically to review Weng Xuwen and relevant financial personnel, demanding that they confess the ins and outs of their embezzlement of gold with Huang Kecheng.
Surprisingly, Weng Xuwen was an extremely meticulous person; he had properly preserved the relevant account books, receipts, telegrams between him and the Commissioner of Finance of the Northeast Bureau, Li Fuchun, and so on.
The central work group searched and investigated, but found no problems, and it ended inconclusively.
Secondly, Mao Zedong was concerned that generals such as Peng Dehuai and Huang Kecheng would seize his power.
In October 1957, when Soviet Marshal Zhukov was dismissed by Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Khrushchev on the grounds of “planning to seize power,” this news reached China and raised Mao Zedong’s high alert. Mao was worried that there might be figures within the CCP’s armed forces like Zhukov trying to seize power.
In 1958, Mao used CCP Marshal Peng Dehuai, General Huang Kecheng, under the pretext of anti-dogmatism, to deeply criticize and remove from office CCP Marshal Liu Bocheng and a group of generals such as Su Yu, Xiao Ke, Lie Da, banishing them and sending them to the cold palace.
In 1959, Mao performed the same act again, using CCP Marshal Lin Biao, General Luo Ruiqing, under the pretext of anti-right-leaning opportunism, to deeply criticize and remove from office CCP Marshal Peng Dehuai and General Huang Kecheng, banishing Peng and Huang to the cold palace.
The historical facts revealed to date indicate that the criticism of Peng Dehuai and Huang Kecheng by the CCP under the leadership of Mao Zedong during the Lushan Conference in 1959 was actually a drama, full of falsehoods, malicious intent, cruel struggles, absurdity.
Yet, why did this drama of deceit, farce, and absurdity unfold?
The series of editorials “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” published by Epoch Times in 2004 revealed the answer: the CCP is an evil party characterized by its essence of “falsehood, evil, and struggle.”
In 1959, Mao used Lin Biao, Luo Ruiqing, to bring down Peng Dehuai and Huang Kecheng. Later, Lin Biao, Luo Ruiqing were also brought down by Mao using others.
To this day, Mao’s method of internal strife to bring down Peng and Huang is still being repeated in the senior leadership of the CCP.