Yang Hu-ch'eng (1883-September 1949), governor (1931) and pacification commissioner (1932-36) of Shensi. He joined with Chang Hsueh-liang in precipitating the Sian Incident of December 1936. Yang was arrested in 1937, imprisoned for 11 years, and murdered in 1949. Little is known about Yang Hu-ch'eng's family background or early life except that he was born in Pucheng, Shensi, and that he became a bandit. At the time of the 1911 revolution, he led a group of some 200 men, presumably bandits, which joined the republican forces in Shensi. He took part in the so-called second revolution in 1913 [see Li Lieh-chün) and steadily rose in rank in the Shensi forces. In 1918 these forces were reorganized as the Ching-kuo-chün [national pacification army], with Yü Yu-jen (q.v.) as commander in chief, to fight the northern warlords. Yang served with this army until it was disbanded in June 1922, by which time he had become a brigade commander.

When Sun Yüeh (1878-1928; T. Yü-hsing), the commander of the Third Army of the Kuominchün {see Feng Yü-hsiang), became military governor of Shensi late in 1924, Yang Hu-ch'eng received command of the Third Army's 3rd Division. In 1926 he was sent to garrison Sian, where he was trapped in April when troops commanded by Liu Chen-hua, a supporter of Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.), encircled the city. The siege of Sian lasted for eight months, and several thousand inhabitants of the city starved to death. Yang and his remaining troops finally were rescued on 28 November by Kuominchün forces, led by Sun Liang-ch'eng, which had been stationed in Kansu. After Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) declared allegiance to the Kuomintang in September 1926, the Kuominchün became the Second Group Army, with Yang as commander of its Tenth Army. He served as field commander in chief of the Second Group Army's eastern route and fought against the Chihli-Shantung forces on the Lunghai front in 1927. His forces moved into Shantung but suffered a setback soon afterwards. At this point, Yang retired from the field and went to Japan.

Yang Hu-ch'eng returned to China in 1928 and received command of the 21st Division of the Second Group Army, stationed at Linyi, Shantung. When the situation in Shantung was thrown into confusion with the sudden withdrawal of Sun Liang-ch'eng from the province in April 1929, Yang shifted his allegiance to the Nationalists. He received command of the 14th Division and was assigned to garrison Nanyang, Honan. In 1930 he took part in the Nationalist campaign against the northern coalition of Yen Hsi-shan (q.v.) and Yang's former chief, Feng Yü-hsiang. With the collapse of the northern coalition in October, Yang was sent to Sian as commander of the 17th Division. In 1931 he became a member of the Kuomintang Central Supervisory Committee and governor of Shensi. He held the governorship until 1932, when he was appointed pacification commissioner of Shensi and commander of the Seventeenth Route Army. In 1936 Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v.) and Yang Hu-ch'eng unsuccessfully argued with Chiang Kai-shek about the cessation of the civil war against the Communists and the formation of a united front against the Japanese. Finally, after Chang, Yang, and the Northeastern commanders held a conference, they arrested Chiang Kai-shek at Sian on 12 December 1936 and confronted him with eight demands (for details, see Chang Hsueh-liang). In the negotiations that ensued, Chang stated his willingness to settle for a private oral agreement on the united front, but Yang demanded a public announcement of Chiang's support of all eight points. Chang's view prevailed, and he accompanied Chiang Kai-shek back to Nanking on 25 December. Yang and the Northeastern generals, however, refused to support National Government policies and established the "Sian Military Commission of the Anti-Japanese Allied Army," with Yang as its head. On 5 January 1937 the National Government responded by removing Yang from his official posts and sending Ku Chu-t'ung (q.v.) to north China as director of Chiang Kai-shek's Sian headquarters and commander in chief of five group armies. Yang and his associates met with Ku at Loyang, but no agreement was reached. They demanded, among other things, the immediate release of Chang Hsueh-liang. Ku then moved to T'ungkuan to prepare for battle. On 29 January, the rebels resumed negotiations and agreed to troop reorganization. Ku Chu-t'ung moved to Sian and began the work of reorganization in February. At the beginning of June 1937, Yang was sent on a year's tour of Europe and America as a "special military investigator." On his return to China in 1938, Yang Huch'eng was arrested by the Nationalist authorities and sent to a detention camp at Chungking. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest, and died. Yang, his younger son, a daughter, his secretary, and his secretary's wife remained prisoners at the camp throughout the Second World War and the Nationalist-Communist civil war. In September 1949, when the National Government was preparing for the move from its Chungking refuge to Taiwan, they all were shot. Yang Hu-ch'eng was survived by his elder son, Yang Chi-min, who commanded Communist forces in southwest China.