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Su Yu | |
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| 粟裕 | |
 Su Yu in hisSenior General uniform (1955) | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 10, 1907 |
| Died | February 5, 1984(1984-02-05) (aged 76) Beijing,China |
| Political party | .svg) Chinese Communist Party |
| Awards |  Order of Bayi (First Class Medal) Order of Independence and Freedom (First Class Medal) Order of Liberation (First Class Medal) |
| Nickname(s) | "TheZhukov of China" (中国的朱可夫) 502 (military call sign) |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  People's Republic of China |
| Branch/service |  People's Liberation Army Ground Force |
| Years of service | 1927–1984 |
| Rank | .jpg){kind=icon} Senior General of the People's Liberation Army |
| Commands |
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| Battles/wars | |
Su Yu (Chinese:粟裕;pinyin:Sù Yù; August 10, 1907 – February 5, 1984),Courtesy nameYu (裕) was aChinese general in thePeople's Liberation Army.[1] He was considered byMao Zedong to be among the best commanders of the PLA, only next toPeng Dehuai,Lin Biao andLiu Bocheng.[2] Su Yu fought in theSecond Sino-Japanese War and in theChinese Civil War. He commanded the East China Field Army (renamedThird Field Army in 1949) during the Chinese Civil War. His most notable accomplishments were theBattle of Menglianggu, theBattle of Huaihai, theYangtze River crossing, and thecapture of Shanghai.
After theChinese Communist Party victory in the civil war, he held important posts in the newPeople's Republic of China, including that ofPLA Chief of General Staff (1954–1958).[citation needed]
Su Yu was born inHuitong County,Hunan province on August 10, 1907, to an ethnicDong family.[3][better source needed] He was the third child among six siblings. Su's father was Su Zhouheng (粟周亨), his mother was Liang Manmei (梁满妹), and the family depended on their 30mu of inherited farmland for survival.
In 1918, due to bandit attacks in the rural areas of Huitong County, Su Yu’s family relocated to the county seat. He transferred from the village private school to the Model Primary School in the county seat and later moved to an advanced primary school and consistently performed well academically. However, after two or three years in the advanced primary school, his father insisted that he manage the family’s accounts, which prevented him from focusing on his studies and led to repeated grade retentions.[4] By the age of 18, Su Yu entered theHunan Provincial 2nd Normal School atChangde for his post-secondary education.
In 1926, he joined theCommunist Youth League of China, and in 1927 joined theChinese Communist Party. He took part in theNorthern Expedition and later theNanchang Uprising.[3] He emerged as one of the ablest guerrilla commanders in theJiangxi Soviet during the 1930s. He did not join theLong March because he was tasked to fight against the Nationalist troops for a delaying action, and stayed in the south ofZhejiang until 1937.[citation needed]
After the breakout of theSecond Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Su Yu was appointed Deputy Commander of the 2nd Detachment, and then in April 1938 commander of the Advanced Detachment of theNew Fourth Army.
During the war, Su won theCheqiao Campaign against the Japanese Army, where his troops won a victory in the first battle against the Japanese troops at Weigang. After this, he had some other campaigns in Central Jiangsu against the Japanese aggressors in Nanjing, Wuhu and Lishui.[citation needed]
During the war, Su Yu was the commander of theNew Fourth Army's first division.[5] He established himself as one of the Communist armed forces' most capable commanders, winning a series of skirmish campaigns against overwhelming enemies - the Kuomintang army, puppet regime forces and the Japanese army. By the end of the war, he was made Commander in Chief for the Communists' Central China's Military Region, covering a vast region in East Central China.[citation needed]
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During the Civil War, Su Yu started as the second in command of the Communists' East China Field Army, eventually becoming second in command of the Third Field Army by the end of the war.
The successes of the battle persuadedMao Zedong to change his military strategy of theChinese Civil War, from traditionalguerrilla style warfare to a more mobile and conventional approach. In July 1946, he led 30,000 Communist troops which triumphed over 120,000 American-armed Nationalist troops in seven different engagements, captured and killed 53,000Kuomintang soldiers and stunned the country. TheCentral Jiangsu Campaign was the first of many of the brilliant campaigns that defined his legacy. He was also the commander of the PLA in the famous and much propagandizedMenglianggu Campaign. In this campaign, the elite Nationalist Seventy-FourthDivision was completely destroyed after Su Yu succeeded in encircling the unit.
He was the major commander during theHuaihai Campaign (November 1948 to January 1949). It was at his suggestion on January 22, 1948, that the two armies ofLiu Bocheng and Su followed a sudden-concentrate, sudden-disperse strategy that led to this decisive victory in late 1948, with the destruction of five Nationalist armies and the killing or capture of 550,000 Nationalist soldiers. Su's army alone destroyed four Nationalist armies, and was the decisive force in destroying the fifth.
When theKorean War broke out in 1950, it was rumored that Su Yu was the commander that Mao wanted to lead theChinese People's Volunteer Army into Korea, because of his experience of commanding a large number of troops. However, because of his illness (caused by shell fragments in the 1930s), neither Su norLin Biao (also rumored to be sick) was able to command the CPVA. In the end,Peng Dehuai was selected.[citation needed]
He was made ada jiang (Grand General) in 1955, one of ten men to receive this second-highest rank. He served in numerous positions, including Chief of thePeople's Liberation Army General Staff Department in the 1950s.
In 1980, China adopted a new Military Strategic Guideline that envisioned using acombined arms approach and positional warfare to defend against a potential invasion by the Soviet Union.[6]: 77 In Su's analysis, positional defenses would be beneficial because the Soviet Union would be disinclined to use tactical nuclear weapons for fear of destroying spoils of war and making itself unable to use captured cities as forward bases.[6]: 77 Su also contended that the Soviet Union would view the use of nuclear weapons as extremely costly, because "we also have nuclear weapons, if you attack we attack, there is danger that all will suffer great losses, so it cannot but have some hesitation."[6]: 77 Su also expected that once nuclear weapons were used, escalation would be impossible to avoid, because "it is very hard for any limits to exist, so tactical scale could develop into strategic scale" use.[6]: 77
In his later years, he publishedThe Memoirs of Su Yu (粟裕回忆录). He died in Beijing on February 5, 1984, at the age of 77. According to his last wish, his body was cremated and scattered to places he had fought in.[citation needed]
Su Yu marriedChu Qing (楚青) in February 1941. They had three children, all of whom joined the PLA. The eldest sonSu Rongsheng (粟戎生) was born in 1942, followed by the second son Su Hansheng (粟寒生), and the youngest, a daughter Su Huining (粟惠宁), who married Chen Xiaolu (陈小鲁) in August 1975. Chen Xiaolu was the youngest son ofChen Yi who was Su Yu's direct superior during wartime. According to Su Rongsheng, Su Yu was an extremely strict father. When Su Rongsheng was only three years old, Su Yu forced him to learn how to swim by giving him only a piece of bamboo as a float, and pushed him into the water in front of his mother, and prohibited anyone from attempting to save Su Rongsheng. Su Yu's wife, Chu Qing was outraged and asked Su Yu angrily whether he was not worried about Su Rongsheng being drowned. But Su Yu answered that Su Rongsheng would have never learned how to swim any other way and besides, he was not being drowned. Aged 20, Su Rongsheng joined the PLA and remained in service for 45 years, rising from an ordinary soldier to alieutenant general when he retired as the deputy commander-in-chief ofBeijing Military District at age 65.[7][8]
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| Preceded by MarshalNie Rongzhen | PLA Chief of the General Staff 1954–1958 | Succeeded by Senior GeneralHuang Kecheng |
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