In 1979, the self-defense counterattack war against Vietnam broke out, and although our army won the victory, many problems were also exposed. One of them was the lack of a military rank system, which prevented the troops from quickly identifying a commander after a temporary dispersal. In 1955, our army conducted the first award ceremony and awarded the "55-style military rank", which lasted for ten years. By 1965, the "Type 55 rank" was abolished. However, in 1988, after the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, the top brass began to consider reinstating military ranks and introducing new military ranks.
In this award, there were a total of 17 generals, one of whom served as the commander of the Second Artillery, and he was Xiang Shouzhi. In 1955, Xiang Shouzhi was awarded the rank of major general and became the founding major general at the age of 38. He was the youngest of all the founding generals, and he had a great track record. Therefore, the organization intended to train him, and in 1957 sent him to study at the Basic Department of the Higher Military Academy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, which lasted three years.
In 1960, after graduating, he was appointed as the principal of the Xi'an Artillery School, an appointment signed by *** himself, in the hope that Xiang Shouzhi could lead the artillery unit to make a breakthrough. Xiang Shouzhi adhered to the characteristics of running the school, trained a large number of artillery talents, and made the school promoted to the Xi'an Artillery Technical College of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1963, and continued to serve as the president. He has made remarkable achievements in artillery construction and training, and is highly regarded. In 1965, after consultation with ***, Xiang Shouzhi was transferred to the deputy commander of the artillery command.
** This appointment is also in the hope that he will lead the construction of our army's missile forces. Subsequently, however, the ** Military Commission decided to set up the Second Artillery Corps, and Xiang Shouzhi and Li Tianhuan were jointly responsible for the preparation of this new unit. In 1967, he personally issued a letter of appointment, designating Xiang Shouzhi as the commander of the Second Artillery Corps (i.e., the "Second Artillery"), and was also the first commander of the unit. However, at that time, it was a turbulent ten-year special period, and Xiang Shouzhi offended Mr. Lin.
** 43 days after signing the letter of appointment, Mr. Lin personally ordered the revocation of Xiang Shouzhi's appointment. Xiang Shouzhi suffered an impact, was physically and mentally devastated, was imprisoned and criticized for more than six years, and was expelled from the party, suffering both physical and mental ** and destruction. Under Mr. Lin's "No. 1 Order", Xiang Shouzhi was forced to work in many places, from feeding pigs, planting vegetables to doing all kinds of dirty work, almost everything.
Xiang Shouzhi's fate took a turn after the 913 Incident, that is, in the early morning of September 13, 1971, the No. 256 special plane that Mr. Lin was riding crashed near Öndörkhan in Mongolia, killing all the people on board, which is the famous 913 Incident in history. After the 913 incident, many cases related to Mr. Lin were re-examined, including the case of Xiang Shouzhi. After a period of investigation, by the beginning of 1972, the relevant departments had reinstated Xiang Shouzhi's party membership and paid him back his salary.
Xiang Shouzhi also returned to Beijing and resumed his post as commander of the Second Artillery Corps. Soon after, he served as deputy commander of the Nanjing Military Region and commander of the Nanjing Military Region, and was awarded the rank of general after the reform of the new military rank in 1988. In 1990, Xiang Shouzhi retired and lived mainly in Nanjing in his later years until his death in 2017 at the age of 100.