"I would like to return to live in my home country and ask for ** permission. On September 15, 1990, a letter signed by Gong Chu was delivered to Comrade Xiaoping's desk.
Gong Chu was once a traitor to the Communist Party and was known as the "No. 1 traitor general of the Red Army". After reading the letter, Comrade Xiaoping replied after a short period of thought: "More than 50 years have passed, so let Gong Chu come back." ”
So, who is Gong Chu, the former "No. 1 rebel general of the Red Army"? What was his defection experience like? Why did Comrade Xiaoping agree to his return to China?
Many people may not be familiar with the name Gong Chu, but in the early days of the Red Army, he was one of the leaders on a par with Chairman and Marshal. Even when contacting the Red Fourth Army, ** regarded him as the leadership core of the Red Fourth Army, referring to him as "Mao Zhuchu".
Gong Chu was born in November 1901 in Changlai Village, Changlai Town, Lechang County, Guangdong, to a wealthy family that had received private school and Western-style education. Guangdong was the pioneer of the revolution, and most of the League cadres who followed Dr. Sun Yat-sen in the early days were Cantonese.
The Second Revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen kicked off in Guangdong, and the wind of revolution in Guangdong had a far-reaching impact. 16-year-old Gong Chu was infected by this atmosphere, left pen and ink, and joined the Guangdong army.
In 1918, he seized the opportunity to be admitted to the Shaoguan branch of the Yunnan Army Lecture Hall and graduated with honors. After graduation, he stayed in the Guangdong Army and served as a squad leader, platoon leader, company commander, etc., and joined the Kuomintang.
In 1924, the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party began, and Gong Chu came into contact with communism in the army and was deeply attracted to it.
Gong Chu deeply felt that the Kuomintang could not complete the Chinese revolution because of its heavy accumulation, and that only by joining the Communist Party could the whole of China be liberated. Therefore, he accepted the call of communist ideas, joined the Communist Youth League of China in his personal capacity, and officially became a member of the Communist Party of China in 1925.
After joining the Communist Party, Gong Chu returned to his hometown of Lechang County and devoted himself to agricultural work. There, he mobilized the local people, organized the Lechang Peasant Self-Defense Force, and served as the commander of the Self-Defense Force.
In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek launched the "April 12 Counter-Revolutionary Coup", and Shanghai rampantly ** Communists, the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party broke down. Gong Chu was shocked by the suddenness of the coup, but he was also glad that he had chosen the Communist Party earlier.
The situation in China was chaotic at that time, and Gong Chu organized thousands of peasant rebel armies to prepare to go north to participate in the "war against Chiang". In July of that year, in accordance with the instructions of ***, Gong Chu led his troops to Nanchang, Jiangxi, and participated in the Nanchang Uprising led by *** on August 1, firing the first shot of armed resistance against the Kuomintang reactionaries.
After the Wuchang Uprising, Gong Chu, as the battalion commander of the rebel army, was incorporated into the third battalion of the sixth regiment of the third division of the twentieth army. After that, he received an order from the CCP ** to secretly go to Changsha, Hunan, intending to launch the Autumn Harvest Uprising there.
However, on the way to Changsha, he was attacked by the Kuomintang army and was forced to leave the army and go to Hong Kong, where he established contact with the local underground party.
In January 1928, Gong Chu left Hong Kong and secretly went to the north, and finally arrived in Shaoguan, where he met ** and **.
In that year, ** and ** led part of the Nanchang rebel army to be stationed here, and fell into the encirclement and suppression of the Kuomintang, and did not know the direction of progress. At this time, Gong Chu, a native of northern Guangdong, pointed out a clear way for them: "Guangfu in the south is an important stronghold of the Kuomintang, and it is heavily guarded, so it is better to go north and go to southern Hunan, where the enemy army is the weakest." ”
Recalling this past, ** said: "At that time, ** and I led the troops to leave eastern Guangdong, hoping to find a base area, but we were not familiar with the local environment and did not know where to go.
Fortunately, Gong Chu joined our team and led us to the Yangjia village in Yizhang County. ”
On the first day of the Lunar New Year in 1928, ** and ** launched an uprising with the assistance of the South Hunan Special Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Yizhang County Party Committee, successfully occupied Yizhang County, and reorganized the uprising army into the Third Division of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, with Gong Chu as the party representative.
Subsequently, the 3rd Division broke through the enemy's blockade and successfully joined forces with *** at Jinggangshan. On May 4 of the same year, the Jinggangshan Workers' and Peasants' Red Army held a celebration meeting in Longshi, merging the two departments of Mao and ** into the Fourth Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, with ** as the commander and ** as the party representative, and Gong Chu as the standing committee member of the former committee.
Since then, Gong Chu and *** have been known as the "three-member group of the former committee of the Red Fourth Army" and have become one of the main leaders of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.
During his tenure in the Red Fourth Army, Gong Chu, a famous general of the Red Army, participated in the "anti-encirclement and suppression" battle led by the Red Army, and successfully repelled several attacks by Chiang Kai-shek on the Jinggangshan revolutionary base area.
In November 1928, Gong Chu was ordered to leave Jinggangshan and go to Changsha to rebuild the Changsha Municipal Party Committee. However, he was attacked again by the Kuomintang halfway through the road and was forced to turn south to Guangdong.
After that, under the arrangement of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, he arrived in Hong Kong again and devoted himself to the underground party work. With the change of the revolutionary situation, in 1929, ** and ** led the Fourth Army to advance into southern Jiangxi and successfully formed the "** Soviet District" across the three provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi.
In order to cooperate with the actions of *** and **, ** decided to launch a revolution in the left and right rivers of Guangxi. In May of the same year, Gong Chu secretly left Hong Kong under the arrangement of ***, served as a member of the former Guangxi Committee, and served as a confidential secretary in the office of Yu Zuobai, chairman of Guangxi Province, responsible for instigating the Kuomintang generals Yu Zuobai and Li Mingrui to carry out an uprising.
However, Yu Zuobai did not fully cooperate with the actions of the Communist Party, and in September of that year, he publicly declared "anti-Chiang", and was subsequently attacked by Chiang Kai-shek.
Despite this, Gong Chu still contributed to the revolutionary cause.
** The setback of the plan in Guangxi put the Communist Party in a difficult position in Guangxi. In order to reverse the situation, the Communists staged an uprising in Baise, created the Right Jiangsu District, and formed the Red Seventh Army.
In this uprising, Gong Chu cooperated with *** for the first time and fought side by side for many years. Gong Chu's rich experience and talents played an important role in the creation of the Red Seventh Army.
Gong Chu was an important figure in the Red Seventh Army, serving as the division commander and chief of staff of the 19th Division. After the establishment of the Right Jiangsu District, the Kuomintang army carried out a frenzied encirclement and suppression of the Soviet area and the Red Seventh Army, but the Red Seventh Army, under the leadership of Gong Chu, held out in the Baise area for more than two years and won dozens of battles.
However, in 1931, the Red Seventh Army left the base area and prepared to enter Jiangxi to join the ** Soviet area, but unfortunately fell into the enemy's encirclement.
The Red Seventh Army fought fiercely with the Kuomintang army in Ruyuan County, Guangdong, and in order to avoid greater losses, it was decided to break through, and the 19th Division led by Gong Chu was in charge of the rear of the palace. In the chaotic battle, Gong Chu was injured in the buttocks, and the guards desperately protected him and escaped.
In April, Gong Chu was sent to Shanghai for treatment, but he remained a loyal fighter of the party and repeatedly asked Ying to return to the front line. In August 1931, after recovering from his wounds, Gong Chu returned to the ** Soviet region and was appointed commander of the 34th Division of the Red Twelfth Army, and was promoted to chief of staff of the Red Twelfth Army at the end of the year.
At the end of the same year, a major incident occurred in the Soviet area, and Li Mingrui, commander-in-chief of the Red Seventh Army, was killed in the "rebellion".
Li Mingrui, who was once a member of the Kuomintang, later assisted the Communist Party in launching the Baise Uprising and joined the ranks of the Communist Party. He worked with Gong Chu for two years, and the relationship between the two was very close.
Li Mingrui's death may have had an impact on Gong Chu and laid the groundwork for his later rebellion. After Li Mingrui's death, the morale of the Red Seventh Army was turbulent, and Gong Chu was sent to stabilize the morale of the army, took over the post of commander of the Red Seventh Army, and participated in a series of campaigns to expand the **Soviet area.
However, when Gong Chu's work gradually got on the right track, he was removed from his position as army commander because he had made a mistake in his thinking. Gong Chu came from a wealthy peasant family, and his family was a small landowner.
At the beginning of 1933, according to the instructions of the Comintern, the **Soviet district launched a campaign to "completely eliminate the landlords", and even implicated the families of the Red Army. For example, the parents and uncles of Yang Yuchun, the commander of the Fujian Independent Division, were arrested and liquidated, all family property was confiscated, and his position was demoted again and again.
With no way out, Yang Yuchun chose to kill his political commissar Gao Chuanxuan, and then defected to the Kuomintang. Gong Chu was also born in a landlord family, and he objected to this, believing that it was very wrong to kill innocents indiscriminately, and it was not conducive to uniting all forces that could be united.
Yang Yuchun and Gong Chu were dismissed from their posts for serious mistakes and expelled from the party for one year, after which they were sent to the Red Army University to be reprimanded. This series of blows made him lose faith in the revolution, and he began to question whether he had made the right decision to leave the Kuomintang and join the Communist Party.
This eventually became one of his main motives for betraying the revolution. In April 1934, Gong Chu, who had been trained for one year, was activated to replace the chief of staff of the Red Army Command and participated in the "Fifth Anti-Encirclement and Suppression" operation in the Soviet District.
However, due to the dominance of Wang Ming's erroneous ideas, the Red Army fell into passivity.
In the year-long arduous fighting, the "anti-encirclement and suppression" in the ** Soviet area unfortunately failed, and had to be hastily evacuated in October 1934 to start the historic Long March.
After the main force of the Red Army left the country, the ** Soviet region was changed to the "** military region", with Xiang Ying as commander and political commissar, and Gong Chu as chief of the general staff, responsible for guiding the Red 24th Division and the Red 10th Army left behind in the Soviet area to continue the struggle.
However, at the beginning of 1935, the Kuomintang intensified its siege of the ** Military Region in an attempt to completely wipe out the remaining Red Army. As the enemy pressed forward step by step, the living space of the ** military region became narrower and narrower, and it was finally blocked in a small area in southern Jiangnan, facing the danger that the entire army could be annihilated at any time.
At the moment of crisis, the ** and Xiang Ying led the ** Military Region made the decision to break through the siege in nine ways. Gong Chu led one of the nine companies out of Gannan and moved to Xiangnan.
Along the way, he sheltered Red Army soldiers who had been separated in the Battle of the Xiangjiang River and planned to establish a new revolutionary base area. In April 1935, Gong Chu successfully led a force of more than 1,000 people to Shonan and began his revolutionary movement.
However, the Kuomintang pursuers followed closely behind, giving him no respite or time. After a hard battle, Gong Chu's troops suffered serious losses, and he also lost contact with ** and became"No mom"children.
The rewritten copy maintains the core idea of the original meaning, but is more concise and clear in expression.
In confusion and hesitation, the Kuomintang spies came to the door and promised him to be generous, as long as he betrayed the revolution. Gong Chu's wavering belief in the revolution had long existed, and the loss of confidence made him choose to betray and defect to the Kuomintang on May 2, 1935.
Gong Chu had held important positions in the Red Army, including the chief of staff of the ** Military Region, and was the highest-ranking revolutionary cadre who defected that year. His defection earned him the title of "the first rebel general of the Red Army".
After the betrayal, Gong Chu immediately colluded with the Kuomintang and frantically "assisted" the Kuomintang in "purging" local guerrillas and underground CCP members.
Gong Chu had held important positions in the Red Army and had extensive experience in underground work, so his defection caused great harm to the Red Army. In September 1935, he led three divisions of the Kuomintang army to carry out a large-scale "encirclement and suppression" of our party's southern Hunan base area.
His actions led to the destruction of many revolutionary base areas, and many revolutionary fighters were killed at his hands, including Fang Weixia, director of the Propaganda Department of the Hunan-Guangdong-Jiangxi Special Committee, Cai Huiwen, commander of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Red Army guerrilla detachment, and Chen Shan, secretary of the Hunan-Guangdong-Jiangxi Special Committee of the Communist Party of China.
With the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the establishment of the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, Gong Chu gave up his hostility to the Communist Party and threw himself into the War of Resistance against Japan, serving as the chief of staff of the major general and the chief of the officer training regiment.
After the Liberation War, Gong Chu chose to flee to Hong Kong out of concern about the situation on the mainland. Although he often looked at his hometown in the north, he was unable to return for various reasons.
With the advent of the 80s of the 20th century, the national policy led by Comrade Xiaoping made Gong Chu see the hope of returning home. With the help of the Lechang County Party Committee, he sent a letter to Comrade Xiaoping, hoping to obtain forgiveness and acceptance.
Gong Chu, the former comrade, had committed crimes, but Comrade Xiaoping gave him forgiveness. Although his crime can never be washed away, he finally returned to his hometown after a 41-year absence, and closed his eyes forever at his home in Changlai Town, Lechang County.
His story will still be told, and his past may be remembered, but he has found peace.