Zhou Baozhong
Commander of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army against Imperial Japan.
Zhou Baozhong (7 February 1902 – 22 April 1964) was a commander of the 88th Separate Rifle Brigade and the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, which resisted the pacification of Manchukuo by the Empire of Japan. After the Chinese Civil War, he was made Vice Chairman of the Yunnan Provincial People's Government in 1949.
Quick Facts
- Office
- Chairman of the Jilin Provincial Government, Communist China
- Took office
- 30 December 1945
- Left office
- September 1949
- Predecessor
- Post established; Xu Jiahuan (as Governor of Jilin Province, Manchukuo)
- Successor
- Post abolished
- Zhou Chiheng
- (as Chairman of the Jilin Provincial People's Government)
- Birth name
- Xi Liyuan (奚李元)
- Rank
- General-grade officer (PLA); Lieutenant Colonel (Soviet Red Army), Major General (NRA)
- Born
- 7 February 1902
Facts from the source article.
Military career
Zhou Baozhong first entered military life at age 15, joining the army in February 1917 and fighting in the Constitutional Protection Movement. He studied engineering at the Yunnan Military Academy from 1923, completing his studies the next year. After taking part in the Northern Expedition in 1926, he was appointed deputy commander of the 56th Regiment of Cheng Qian's Sixth Army in March 1927. Later that year, he joined the Chinese Communist Party in Wuhan. When the Chinese Civil War broke out, he remained in the Sixth Army on secret orders from the CCP Central Committee's Yangtze River Bureau. In December 1927, he became deputy commander of the 18th Division of the Sixth Army and was promoted to Major General. His duties included moving troops and coordinating liaison work across Hunan, Zhejiang, Henan, and other provinces. At the end of 1928, he went to the Soviet Union to study military affairs in a special class at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, where future Marshal Ye Jianying was a classmate. He later moved to the International Lenin School for political studies. After Japan's invasion of Manchuria in September 1931, he returned to China and traveled to the Northeast, then part of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, to join the leadership of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. He served on the Manchuria Provincial Committee and as Secretary of the CCP Military Commission, adopting the name Zhou Baozhong during this period. As chief of the general staff, he directed two campaigns to capture Antu County and three assaults on Ning'an. In February 1934, he organized the Suining Anti-Japanese Allied Forces, chaired its military committee, and led guerrilla operations in the Ning'an area. He successively served as commander of the 5th Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army, fighting mostly within Heilongjiang Province. In March 1937, he commanded troops to fight Yilan City, causing more than 300 Japanese casualties. In October 1937, the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth armies were reorganized into the 2nd Route Army, with Zhou as commander-in-chief and secretary of the CCP Jidong Provincial Committee. After the 1937 reorganization, he became commander of the Third Route Army, active in the mountainous areas of eastern Jilin Province. In 1940, the unit withdrew into the Soviet Union for training after massive losses from Japanese retaliatory attacks, following discussions between Zhou, Li Zhaolin, and Feng Zhongyun with the Soviet Communist Party Committee of the Far Eastern Territory and the Soviet Far Eastern Army. During this time, he met and became acquainted with future North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, who also served in Zhou's unit. In early August 1941, the teaching brigade of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces was established in the Soviet Union, with Zhou as brigade commander. In February 1942, Zhou and Zhao Shangzhi returned to the Northeast Second Route Army headquarters from the Soviet Union. On August 1, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Army was reorganized into the 88th Separate Rifle Brigade of the Soviet Red Army's Far Eastern Front, and Zhou was appointed its commander, made a Lieutenant Colonel in the Red Army. In August 1945, following the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Zhou led his troops in cooperating with the Red Army's march into Northeast China, and the troops were transferred to the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army. On August 11, Zhou summoned troops to board ship according to a predetermined plan and arrived in Heilongjiang to return home. Zhou returned to Changchun in September 1945 under the alias Huang Shaoyuan, serving as deputy commander of the Soviet garrison headquarters in Changchun. In September, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Army was renamed the Northeast People's Self-Defense Force, with Zhou as general commander. On October 31, the former Northeast Anti-Japanese Army and indigenous armed groups formed the Northeastern People's Autonomous Army, with Zhou as deputy chief of staff under Lin Biao. He also served as secretary of the Jihe District Party Committee, commander and political commissar of the Jihe National Army, and chairman of the Jihe Administrative Committee in Hubei. In November, the Jilin Provincial Working Committee and Jilin Military Region were established, with Zhou as a member of the Provincial Working Committee and commander of the Jilin Military Region. In January 1946, the Northeast People's Autonomous Army was renamed the Northeast Democratic Alliance Army, with Zhou as deputy commander-in-chief and commander of the Jilin Military Region. On April 14, 1946, part of the main force of the Northeast Democratic Alliance Army, together with the Jilin Military Region, was divided into three columns under Zhou's command to attack Kuomintang units in Changchun, leading to the destruction of Kuomintang's Northeast Security Corps fourth and fifth units and a major Chinese Communist military victory in the Northeast in October 1948. After the Democratic Alliance Army was renamed the Northeastern People's Liberation Army in January 1948, it was reorganized into the Fourth Field Army in November 1948, and Zhou was dismissed as a deputy commander that same month. In September 1949, Zhou served as commander-in-chief and political commissar of the Northeast People's Self-Defense Army, deputy commander-in-chief of the Northeast Democratic Alliance Army and commander of the Dongman Military Region, chairman of the Jilin Provincial Government, deputy commander of the Northeast Military Region of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and commander of the Jilin Military Region, and Northeast Member of the Standing Committee of the Administrative Committee. During the Chinese Civil War, Zhou led his troops in more than 800 battles against the Kuomintang, causing more than 40,000 casualties among enemy troops. In October 1948, his unit played an important role in the second occupation of Changchun. On September 8, 1949, Zhou went to Beijing. On September 21, he attended the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and participated in the founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China. When he was about to go to Yunnan to take up his political post, he was admitted to a hospital in Beijing due to a heart attack, visited by Liu Shaoqi and Premier Zhou Enlai, who urged him to recover well. In November 1949, Zhou went to Yunnan.
Political career
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhou was made Vice Chairman of the Yunnan Provincial People's Government in 1949. In February 1950, he and Chairman Chen Geng met with Kuomintang 'uprising general' Wan Baobang, then in hiding in Kunming, and appointed him as a member of the Yunnan Provincial Military Control Commission of the People's Liberation Army. Zhou also served as deputy director of the Yunnan Provincial Military and Political Committee and the Kunming Military Control Commission, Director of the Southwestern Political and Legal Committee, and Minister of Civil Affairs for Southwest China. During this time, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung met Zhou at the Summer Palace. In September he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee at the Eighth National Congress. Mao Zedong concurrently appointed Zhou as a member of the National Defense Commission.
Personal life
Their daughter, Zhou Wei, was born in the Soviet Union in 1942. Zhou's first wife and son had died in a sea accident, so holding his newborn daughter moved him deeply. She practiced anesthesiology and hyperbaric oxygen medicine until retiring. Because her father was close to Kim Il-sung, she makes frequent trips to North Korea to strengthen ties between China and North Korea. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that businesses tied to the Zhou family helped supply North Korea with national income used for weapons development. Records, official reports, and interviews link the family to North Korean mining, trade, and consumer goods. One family member denied any business dealings in North Korea.
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