Ch'en Keng 陳賡 Ch'en Keng (1903 - 16 March 1961) , Communist military commander, reportedly saved the life of Chiang Kai-shek at Waichow in 1925. He participated in the 1927 Nanchang uprising and in the Fourth Front Army campaigns against the Nationalists. During the Sino-Japanese war he commanded a brigade in the Eighth Route Army. From 1949 to 1955, in addition to holding high military posts, he was governor of Yunnan. In 1954 he became a vice minister of national defense and a deputy chief of staff. A native of Hsianghsiang hsien, Hunan province, Ch'en Keng was born into a landlord family. Hsianghsiang was the native district of the renowned Tseng Kuo-fan (ECCP, II, 751-56), and because of his example the locality produced an unusually large number of military men. Ch'en Keng was reported to have begun classical studies at an early age. Nevertheless, at the age of 12 he left home to join the army, and for five years he served as a private in the army commanded by Lu Ti-p'ing (q.v.) in Hunan. Ch'en left the army in 1921, and it appears that he came into contact with the leftist elements of the day. In 1922 he joined the Chinese Communist party. In 1924 he went to Canton and, after studying briefly in the Kwangtung Military School, enrolled in the Whampoa Military Academy, and he was graduated with the first class. Both Chou En-lai and Nieh Jung-chen (qq.v.), at the time, respectively, political training chief and instructor at the academy, took a fancy to the youth, but this was probably because he was a member of the Communist party. He remained at Whampoa as a company commander, or junior instructor, of the fourth class of cadets. Early in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek personally led the cadet army in the eastern expedition against Ch'en Chiung-ming (q.v.). At one point during the attack on Ch'en Chiung-ming's stronghold of Waichow, Chiang was surrounded by enemy troops, and it was then that Ch'en Keng's alleged rescue of the academy president took place.
In 1926 Ch'en Keng was sent by the Canton government to the Soviet Union for a short period of study. He returned to China toward the end of the year. By that time the Northern Expedition was marching toward Wuhan, and the Hunan army of T'ang Sheng-chih (q.v.) had thrown in its lot with the revolutionaries to become the Eighth Army. Ch'en Keng joined this army as commander of a special service battalion. Ch'en then went to Nanchang because Communist elements were assembling there in the summer of 1927. On 1 August 1927 he participated in the Nanchang uprising. The rebels, unable to hold Nanchang, marched southward with the aim of taking Canton. Ch'en Keng was seriously wounded in the leg while marching with his troops in the Chaochow-Swatow area in Kwangtung. In October, he succeeded after much difficulty in reaching Shanghai by way of Swatow and Hong Kong. He then established contact with the Communist party organization in Shanghai, which sent him for treatment to the orthopedic hospital headed by Dr. Niu Hui-lin, a brother of Niu Hui-sheng (q.v.). The wound in his left leg took several months to heal. Ch'en Keng then remained in Shanghai for over three years, working as an underground agent under the assumed name of Wang. There he waged relentless war against the secret service men of the Kuomintang and against defectors from the Communist party.
In 1931 the Communist party sent Ch'en Keng to the newly created Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei soviet area, which was under the political control of Chang Kuo-t'ao (q.v.) and the military control of Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien (q.v.). Ch'en became commander of the 12th Division of Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien's Fourth Front Army. As the Communist forces in the region grew in strength, the National Government intensified its attacks against the soviet areas, and Ch'en and his comrades fought many battles against the government forces. Finally, in the fall of 1932, the National Government unleashed an offensive against the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei area, and by October of that year the Communists had been forced to withdraw. The Fourth Front Army marched westward, eventually reaching Szechwan.
Ch'en took part in the early stage of this march and accompanied the retreating force as far as Nanyang in Honan. He had been wounded again, and his injury grew increasingly serious. It was decided that he should leave the troops and proceed to Shanghai for medical attention. He had to make full use of his ingenuity and resourcefulness in getting through the check posts established by the government, but he finally arrived in Shanghai and once more entered the hospital of Dr. Niu. His wound soon healed. By this time the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party had moved from Shanghai to the central soviet area in Kiangsi, and a Shanghai bureau was organized to direct party affairs in the Shanghai area. The bureau decided that Ch'en should hide for a time and assigned him quarters at the home of K'ang Sheng (q.v.). In March 1933 it was decided that Ch'en Keng should proceed to the central soviet area in Kiangsi. On the eve of his planned departure from Shanghai, 24 March 1933, Ch'en Keng was arrested by the police of the Shanghai International Settlement. On 31 March, Ch'en Keng and four others arrested at about the same time, one of them being Liao Ch'eng-chih (q.v.), were handed over to the Chinese government authorities.
It was at this point that Chiang Kai-shek reportedly remembered that Ch'en Keng had saved his life a decade before. Ch'en was moved from Shanghai to Nanking and then sent to Nanchang, where Chiang had his headquarters for directing the campaigns against the Communists in the countryside. Ch'en Keng was brought before Chiang Kai-shek, who attempted to persuade the former Whampoa cadet to defect to the government side, promising him command of a division. Ch'en rejected the offer and was taken back to prison in Nanking. Toward the end of May 1933 he succeeded in escaping, made his way to Shanghai, and then immediately proceeded to the central soviet area in Kiangsi.
On arrival at Juichin, Ch'en Keng was named president of the Red Army Academy. He served in that post until the Communists withdrew from Kiangsi and retreated on the Long March. During the march, Ch'en Keng commanded the unit made up of cadets of the Juichin Academy. At the Chin-sha river in Szechwan, Ch'en and his cadets held an important bridge for five days until the main forces of the Red Army arrived and drove off the Nationalists. On arrival in Shensi Ch'en was given the command of the 1st Division of the Red Army, and Lin Piao (q.v.) took over the presidency of the military academy. Following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, the Red Army was reorganized into the Eighth Route Army under the National Government (later the official designation was changed to the Eighteenth Group Army, but the earlier name was better known). Ch'en Keng became the commander of the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division, which was under the command of Liu Po-ch'eng (q.v.). From 1944 to 1947 he was also commander of the Taiyueh military area, which formed a part of the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan border area, where the 129th Division operated during the war with Japan.
During the Kuomintang-Communist peace negotiations in 1946, Ch'en Keng served as the Communist representative on the Taiyuan field team under the Peiping Executive Headquarters. The peace negotiations failed, and civil war broke out on all fronts in the latter part of 1946. Liu Po-ch'eng's forces were designated as the Central Plain Field Army, and Ch'en Keng became the commander of the 4th column of this army. The field army was later renamed the Second Field Army, and Ch'en Keng's column became the Fourth Army Group.
In the sweeping victories of the Chinese Communists in 1949, the Second Field Army joined the Third Field Army commanded by Ch'en Yi (q.v.) in the conquest of the provinces of east China. The Second Field Army then joined the Fourth Field Army commanded by Lin Piao in the conquest of the southern regions. Finally, the Second Field Army took part in the conquest of the southwest. After the occupation of Yunnan, Ch'en Keng was appointed governor of that province, a post he held till 1955. He was also deputy commander of the Southwest military district.
When the Chinese Communists entered the war in Korea in 1950 with the despatch of the so-called people's volunteers, Ch'en Keng was made deputy commander of the volunteers. That appointment was generally interpreted as marking recognition of Ch'en's military abilities by the highest authorities at Peking. In 1954, on the reorganization of the Peking government after the adoption of its constitution, Ch'en Keng became a member of the National Defense Council. He was also appointed to be a vice minister of national defense and a deputy chief of staff. He held the rank of senior general in the army, the highest rank below that of marshal. In 1955, Ch'en was among those who received all military awards issued by the Peking government at that time. At the Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist party in 1956, Ch'en Keng was elected a full member of the Central Committee. From the spring of 1956 to early 1957, he served as acting chief of the general staff during the temporary incapacity of the incumbent Su Yu (q.v.). Ch'en Keng died at Shanghai on 16 March 1961 of a heart ailment. He was survived by his wife and several children. Ch'en Keng's appearance was reported by the American writer Edgar Snow, who met him in the northwest in 1936. Ch'en then reportedly had a boyish manner, red cheeks, and a ready smile; he was good-looking by Western standards, with large eyes and an un-Chinese, upturned nose. He was regarded as being an able military officer. An activist by temperament, he enjoyed military operations in the field, but had little interest in theoretical studies. Certainly he had a sustained and virtually continuous record of active service in all major military campaigns undertaken by the Chinese Communist forces. Of all the leading figures in the Chinese Communist military forces, Ch'en Keng was perhaps the man least involved in political or party affairs.
