PENG DEHUAI

Wade-Giles P'eng Te-huai born c. 1898, Hsiangt'an, Hunan province, China died Nov. 29, 1974, Peking military leader, one of the greatest in Chinese communist history, and minister of national defense of China from 1954 until 1959, when he was removed for criticizing the military and economic policies of Mao Zedong. Peng was a military commander under Chiang Kai-shek but broke with him in 1927 when Chiang attempted to rid the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) of leftist elements. In 1928 Peng became a communist and soon afterward became involved in guerrilla activity, leading a series of peasant uprisings. He became a senior military commander under Mao and participated in the Long March (193435). Peng was the second-ranking man in the communists' military hierarchy from the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to 1954. He led Chinese forces in the Korean War and signed the armistice at P'anmunjom on July 27, 1953. In 1954 he became minister of national defense and a member of the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1959, however, he criticized as impractical the policies of Mao's Great Leap Forward, which emphasized ideological purity over professional expertise in both the military forces and the economy. Peng was deprived of office and membership in the party and disappeared from view. Peng was posthumously rehabilitated in December 1978 under the post-Mao regime.