In 1990, a special letter from an 89-year-old man attracted the attention of the central leadership. In the letter, Gong Chu, a former "Red Army rebel general", wrote that he longed to "return to his roots" in his lifetime and return to his hometown Lechang to see the scenery of his homeland. This request seems ordinary, but what Gong Chu did during the revolutionary years made his identity controversial.
As an important member of the top leadership, he later defected to the enemy, seriously undermining the revolutionary cause. Now, such a "traitor" has put forward a request for his roots, how will the central government deal with it?
A traitor from the Red Army
In that treacherous era, an ordinary child of a Guangdong peasant family was destined to embark on an extraordinary road. He is Gong Chu, a talented and precocious young man. In just one and a half years, he completed three years of primary school and showed an amazing talent for learning.
In 1917, 16-year-old Gong Chu joined the Guangdong Army under the command of Mr. Sun Yat-sen, and was admitted to the Shaoguan Branch of the Yunnan Army Lecture and Wutang, and began systematic military education. Since then, he has embarked on a long and winding path of revolution.
In 1924, Gong Chu joined the Communist Party of China and became one of the earliest party members. Based on the principle of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, the Communists vigorously carried out the peasant movement in Guangdong.
As a pioneer, Gong Chu mainly carried out activities in his hometown of Lechang County, not only promoting the basic agricultural movement, but also creating a well-trained Lechang peasant army with years of military experience.
It was this peasant army that became the basis for Gong Chu's later armed uprising in Nanchang. After the defeat of the Revolution in 1927, he led this force to join He Long's 20th Army. Although he was later arranged to participate in the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by Mao Zedong, Gong Chu eventually returned to his hometown for safety reasons, temporarily avoiding the center of the storm.
However, the clarion call of revolution sounded again, and the Nanchang rebel army under Commander-in-Chief Zhu De was briefly reorganized in Gong Chu's hometown of Lechang. In view of Gong Chu's seniority and performance on the revolutionary road, he was appointed as the party representative of the 3rd Division and re-involved in the whirlpool of the revolution. This ordinary peasant kid with a slight retreat factor in his personality has embarked on an extraordinary and tortuous path.
The mystery of the mutiny
This is the third time that Gong Chu has chosen to retreat at a critical moment, which makes people question his revolutionary will. And whenever he encounters danger, Gong Chu will instinctively return to the embrace of his hometown, as if only here does he feel safe and secure. However, this did not affect the importance that the organization attached to Gong Chu.
During the Red Army's time in Jiangxi, Gong Chu was still regarded as one of the party's important military leaders. In 1930, he was appointed to attend the Zunyi Conference and was co-opted as an alternate member of the Fifth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
After this, Gong Chu marched with the Red Army into Sichuan and Shaanxi, and was soon promoted to political commissar of the Red Front Army, taking charge of the political work of the Front Army. However, during this period, Gong Chu's psychology began to waver, and he gradually lost confidence in the future of the revolution.
He has lived in Hong Kong for 40 years
In October 1935, shortly after the Zunyi Conference, the Red Army was about to move into the Pingjin Campaign, preparing to cross the Yellow River to the north. At this time, Gong Chu suddenly asked the organization to retire from active service and go home to visit relatives. The revolutionary situation was grim and the people's hearts were gradually becoming weaker, and although the organization was deeply puzzled by Gong Chu's departure, it was helpless to approve it.
Gong Chu returned to his hometown of Lechang on the pretext of returning to his hometown, and as a result, he stayed there for five years. Soon after leaving the Red Army, Gong Chu completely defected to the Kuomintang and openly confronted the Communists. He led his own armed peasant army to launch the so-called "anti-red" campaign in the Lechang area, and launched a frenzied "encirclement and suppression" against the Red Army guerrillas, causing a large number of Red Army casualties.
Under the leadership of Gong Chu, the local armed forces in the Lechang area participated in three "sweeps" against the Red Army, of which the "sweep" in 1936 was the most tragic. At that time, Gong Chu's troops, together with the regular Kuomintang army, launched a siege on the base area for more than three months, causing great damage and casualties to the revolutionary base area.
In addition to the Lechang base area, Gong Chu also expanded the scope of operations to Zhanjiang, Yangchun, Shaoguan and other regions, leaving his crime of "sweeping red" everywhere. In the five years after Gong Chu defected to the enemy, the revolutionary base areas in the southwest of Guangxi Province suffered unprecedented destruction.
The reasons for the mutiny are several. First, Gong Chu had been immersed in the peasant movement for a long time and developed a kind of local armed thinking, which made his understanding of the revolution on a national scale biased; Second, the Red Army's long-term and arduous fighting wore out his will and became disillusioned with the future; Third, he is dissatisfied with and misgivings about certain practices within the party.
However, the rebellion was not Gong Chu's willful behavior. At that time, there was an influential counter-current in Guangdong, known as the "AB Regiment", which advocated giving up armed struggle and returning to a peaceful life. Gong Chu's rebellion was influenced by this erroneous trend of thought.
At the beginning of the mutiny, Gong Chu also tried to win over his comrade-in-arms and friend Zhang Yunyi. However, Zhang Yunyi rejected Gong Chu and still adhered to his revolutionary ideals and beliefs. The fates of the two men have since diverged, the former degenerating into a traitor and the latter becoming the founding general of the republic.
Root request
After the outbreak of the all-out war of resistance, the KMT and the CCP resumed their second cooperation in 1937. During this period, Gong Chu also took the opportunity to return to the ranks of the Communist Party. During the Anti-Japanese War, the troops led by Gong Chu joined the New Fourth Army and served as the seventh column of the New Fourth Army.
Because Gong Chu had been active in the Lechang area for a long time and was very familiar with the local terrain and environment, he repeatedly made meritorious achievements in guerrilla warfare in the local area, causing certain losses and troubles to the Japanese army. However, with the deepening of the Anti-Japanese War, Gong Chu gradually began to be impetuous and anxious again, exposing his short-sightedness and lack of determination.
In the large-scale "sweeping" operation of the Japanese army in eastern Guangdong, in the face of the enemy's heavy siege, Gong Chu lost his mind and ordered his troops to flee in disarray, resulting in a large number of weapons and ammunition being captured by the Japanese army. After the incident, the superiors severely criticized and punished Gong Chu for this behavior. As a punishment, Gong Chu was removed from his military post and could only be responsible for propaganda work in the rear of the New Fourth Army.
This blow made Gong Chu's psychological gap extremely huge, from arrogance and arrogance, to a state of hesitation and helplessness. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Gong Chu went north with the New Fourth Army and entered the liberated area. At the same time, the Kuomintang army also began a large-scale offensive into central and northern China.
In order to contain the offensive of the Kuomintang army, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided that Gong Chu, who had retired from the army, would be responsible for persuading Xue Yue, commander-in-chief of the 19th Route Army of the Kuomintang, to surrender. This important task rekindled Gong Chu's hope of serving the revolution. At that time, Xue Yue's troops had been surrounded by the People's Liberation Army in Chaozhou, and the situation was extremely critical. Gong Chu originally wanted to take the opportunity to persuade his old friend Xue Yue to join the ranks of the People's Army and the government.
However, at the beginning of the operation, Gong Chu once again showed hesitation and retreat. He was stationed in Guangzhou, but he was reluctant to go to Chaozhou to persuade him to surrender, and only talked about many useless reasons and excuses. In the end, this particular task ended without a hitch.
It is worth mentioning that when Chaozhou was surrounded by the People's Liberation Army, Xue Yue also sent a distress signal to Gong Chu, hoping that his old friend could come to the rescue. But Gong Chu turned a blind eye to this, which made Xue Yue completely disappointed in him, and the friendship between the two ended.
Deng Gong is sure of everything
On the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the rule of the Kuomintang on the mainland was on the verge of collapse. Faced with the general trend, Gong Chu led his troops to formally surrender to the people's government in May 1949. After surrendering, Gong Chu was first arranged to "study" in the courtyard of Guangzhou. Subsequently, with the approval of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, he was transferred to Hong Kong to serve as the deputy secretary general of the China Democratic League.
In Hong Kong, Gong Chu's main job is to liaise with and develop patriotic democrats in Hong Kong and Macao. However, just half a year later, Gong Chu repeated his behavior again, leaving Hong Kong without authorization and going into exile in British Malaya. There, he was associated with the remnants of the Chiang Kai-shek regime and was wanted as a "counter-revolutionary."
In 1950, the Kuomintang authorities met with Gong Chu in Taiwan and discussed with him some activities that were unfavorable to the mainland. Chiang Kai-shek had wanted to use Gong Chu to plan destructive things in Hong Kong. But Gong Chu had already seen the future of the Kuomintang in his heart, and he did not buy these conspiracies of Chiang Kai-shek.
During his time in Taiwan, Gong Chu has been living a rather poor life. In order to make ends meet, he had to work as an ordinary worker in a factory. In this way, the former "Red Army generals" were reduced to ordinary laborers in the world. In the years that followed, Gong Chu spent his time wandering between Hong Kong and Macau, and over time, he grew weary of political struggles.
Finally, in 1956, Gong Chu decided to settle down in Hong Kong for a long time. During his 40 years in Hong Kong, Gong Chu completely distanced himself from the political arena and devoted all his energy to his business career. As a result of his diligence and eagerness to learn, he soon made some achievements in this field, and his life gradually began to become richer.
In the past 40 years, he has never set foot in the land of the motherland, but he often misses the customs of his hometown Lechang. As he gets older, the nostalgia in his heart becomes stronger and stronger.
Finally, in September 1990, the 89-year-old Gong Chu was allowed to return to his hometown. When he set foot on this hot land in Lechang, the villagers in the surrounding ten miles and eight townships spontaneously organized a grand welcome ceremony, and Gong Chu's homecoming journey was warm and touching for a while.
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Resources:
From Chen Yuhuan. Yunnan Jiangwutang General Record[M]. 2011