Fu Tso-yi (1895-), a military officer who, as top commander in north China after 1947, negotiated the surrender agreement under which the Chinese Communist forces entered Peiping in 1949. He began his career under Yen Hsi-shan (q.v.) and served as governor of Suiyuan from 1931-47. In 1949 he became minister of water conservancy in the Central People's Government.

A native of Shansi, Fu Tso-yi was born in Anchang village, Jungho hsien. At the time of the 1911 revolution, he was a student at the Shansi Military Primary School in Taiyuan. He received a brief introduction to military life during the late months of 1911, when he served as a platoon commander in a military unit organized by the Shansi students. After the Ch'ing dynasty had been overthrown, he returned to his studies. In 1913 he went to Peking to enter the Ch'ing-ho Officers Preparatory School. On completion of the course, he enrolled in the Paoting Military Academy; he graduated in 1918 as a member of the fifth class.

Fu then returned to Shansi and entered the military service of Yen Hsi-shan (q.v.). He served successively as a company, battalion, and regimental commander. When stationed at Tienchen in northern Shansi in 1926, Fu and his regiment were attacked by a force of Feng Yü-hsiang's Kuominchün. Although the attacking force was three times the size of his regiment, Fu held Tienchen. Then he struck his opponent in a flank attack and raised the siege. He was promoted to brigade commander for his performance. In June 1926 he was assigned to command the 4th Shansi Division. In 1927 Yen Hsi-shan declared his allegiance to the Nationalists. Yen was assigned to make a flank attack on the Fengtien forces to support Nationalist advances along the rail lines from the Yangtze valley to north China. Fu Tso-yi's 4th Division was assigned to capture and hold the walled town of Chochow, midway between Paoting and Peking on the Peking-Hankow rail line. He took Chochow on 12 October 1927. Although Fu's assignment proceeded according to schedule, the Nationalist advance from the south did not. Fu, isolated at Chochow, found himself confronting substantial Fengtien forces commanded by Wan Fu-lin and supported by reserve troops under Chang Hsuehliang (q.v.) at Paoting. Fu reported his position to Yen Hsi-shan and requested assistance. None was forthcoming. After the 4th Division had lost some of its men in battle, Fu stationed all of his remaining forces inside the town walls of Chochow.

The tactical position favored the defense, and the 4th Division successfully repulsed a series of enemy assaults. After a month, the attackers prepared to starve Fu Tso-yi and his unit into submission. As the weeks passed, the food supply for the troops and for the civilian population ran out. Telegraphic messages from both Yen Hsi-shan and the National Government lauded the 4th Division's brave defense; however, no troops were sent. The defenders were subsisting on steamed bread made from inferior grain. After other food supplies had been exhausted, they found that they could survive for a few additional days by eating fermented grain refuse from the local wine distillery. On 25 December 1927, they received a report from Yen Hsi-shan which stated that the Nationalist units were advancing, and on 28 December Fu Tso-yi was named to the Military Affairs Commission. Fu called a conference of his officers to consider attempting a breakout. They decided that the troops, half-starved and with limbs swollen from the diet of grain refuse, would not be able to make the effort.

Fu Tso-yi had asked his men to hold out for a final period of 15 days. That period expired on 5 January 1 928, and Fu then had no alternative to surrender. On 12 January 1928 the 7,000 survivors of the 4th Division left Chochow, and Wan Fu-lin's Fengtien forces occupied the town. Fu was placed under the surveillance of Chang Hsueh-liang at Paoting, and his 4th Division was reorganized. Fu Tso-yi's defense of Chochow for a full three months, isolated and without the prospect of relief, was recognized throughout China as an outstanding accomplishment in the best military tradition. Fu Tso-yi regained his freedom when Fengtien power in north China collapsed. He was released in May 1928 after promising Chang Hsueh-liang that he would not participate in the final stages of military action in northern China. Yen Hsi-shan's troops entered Peking on 8 June 1928, and Yen appointed Fu Tso-yi garrison commander at Tientsin. After the last Fengtien troops left Tientsin on 12 June, Fu entered the city at the head of the 4th Division and assumed his duties as garrison commander. He continued to hold commands under Yen Hsi-shan and in 1929 led the 43rd Shansi Division. Thus, he was associated with the 1929-30 coalition of Feng Yü-hsiang, Yen Hsi-shan, and Wang Ching-wei against the growing authority of Chiang Kai-shek at Nanking. In February 1930 he was promoted to commander of the Tenth Army of Yen's Third Group Army. The northern coalition issued orders on 10 May for a general offensive against Nanking, and Fu was assigned to advance south along the Tientsin-Pukow rail line. On 25 June, he captured Tsinan, the capital of Shantung province. The National Government, after shifting forces from other fronts, launched a strong drive northward on 1 August and deployed ten divisions against the smaller force of Fu Tso-yi at Tsinan. National Government forces recaptured Tsinan on 15 August 1930, and Fu's retreat turned into a rout because his troops could not cross the Yellow River, which was in flood. This defeat contributed substantially to the failure of the northern coalition.

Fu Tso-yi then became associated with Chang Hsueh-liang, who had become the dominant figure in north China. In March 1931 Fu's army was reorganized, and he became commander of the Seventh Army; in July, he received command of the Thirty-fifth Army, with concurrent command of the 73rd Division. With the tacit approval of Chang Hsueh-Hang, he helped Hsü Yungch'ang (q.v.) take over the provincial chairmanship of Shansi from Shang Chen (q.v.) in August and became acting governor of Suiyuan province. Later that year, he became governor of Suiyuan.

In February 1933 Japanese forces began to advance into Jehol province. On the eve of the Jehol campaign, Fu Tso-yi, after a visit to Yen Hsi-shan in Taiyuan, went to Peiping to announce that the Shansi and Suiyuan forces were prepared to participate in the defense against the Japanese invasion. However, Jehol fell so rapidly that there was no opportunity to accept the Shansi-Suiyuan offer. The immediate result of that debacle was the resignation of Chang Hsueh-liang, whose Northeastern forces then were placed under the command of Ho Ying-ch'in (q.v.). In the reorganization that followed, Fu Tso-yi was appointed defense commander of Chahar province. He continued to serve as governor of Suiyuan.

At the end of April 1933 Japanese forces took Dolonor, in eastern Chahar. The Japanese planned to extend their influence and control westwards from Manchoukuo into the provinces of Chahar, Suiyuan, Ninghsia, Kansu, and Sinkiang with the aid of Mongols. In Suiyuan, Fu Tso-yi soon found himself pitted against the Mongol Te Wang (Demchukdonggrub, q.v.), the leader of a movement for Inner Mongolian autonomy.

Under Te Wang's leadership and with Nanking's approval, the Mongolian Political Affairs Council was established at Pailingmiao, Suiyuan, in April 1934. Fu had no sympathy for Inner Mongolian aspirations for independence. He believed that Chinese rule was quite suitable for Mongol needs and that the so-called independence movements of the Mongols served the purposes of the invading Japanese.

Within months after the establishment of the council, Te Wang, for a variety of reasons, established close relations with the Japanese, and their support of the Inner Mongolian independence movement increased. Fu Tso-yi employed the Tumet Mongol Communist Ulanfu (q.v.) and mobilized Mongols of the Ikechao League to attempt to counter the activities of Te Wang and his supporters. The contest culminated in the breaking apart of Te Wang's council in February 1936, the establishment of a rival political council at Kweisui under Fu Tso-yi's direction, and the occupation of Pailingmiao by Suiyuan forces in November 1936. Despite Japanese protests, Fu continued his drive against Te Wang's forces and pressed them back into eastern Chahar. He was decorated in 1936 by the National Government. In 1935 he had been elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.

At the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in July 1937, the defending forces in Suiyuan were composed of the forces under Fu's personal command, three cavalry divisions, a Nationalist division, several units that had defected from the Manchoukuo forces in Jehol and Inner Mongolia, and a cavalry brigade of the Northeastern Vanguard Army of Ma Chan-shan (q.v.).

The Japanese had indicated their strong interest in Chahar and Suiyuan; if they captured that sector, they could command the vital northwest China plateau and maintain a force against the flank of the Mongolian People's Republic and the Soviet Union. They now drove in that direction with a combined Manchoukuo-Mongol force, supported by a Japanese contingent. The Chinese position in north China crumbled rapidly. Kalgan soon was abandoned; Tat'ung was given up without a fight; and the approaches to Inner Mongolia were left undefended. Fu Tso-yi's defense preparations in Suiyuan were of no use because the Chinese units there were outnumbered. The Japanese-sponsored invaders captured Kweisui on 13 October 1937 and then drove on to Paotow.

Fu Tso-yi was transferred to northern Shansi. The Japanese soon broke through the northern and eastern defenses of Shansi and took the provincial capital of Taiyuan in November. Fu remained in the Second War Area until 1939, when he was appointed deputy commander of the Eighth War Area, under Chu Shao-liang (q.v.).

Because they hoped to terminate the war through a political settlement with the National Government, the Japanese did not press on past Paotow. In the winter of 1939, after becoming deputy commander in that sector, Fu Tso-yi deployed his forces against the Japanese position at Paotow, but the attack did not succeed. The Japanese brought in reinforcements, and in January 1940 they drove westwards to occupy Wuyuan. They continued on to Linho and Shanpa, but then met Chinese resistance. The Japanese attacked again in March, but they were defeated. At the beginning of April 1940, the Chinese reoccupied Wuyuan and went on to reestablish their original battle positions. Fu Tso-yi again was decorated by the National Government. In July 1945 the National Government converted Suiyuan and Ninghsia into the Twelfth War Area, with Fu Tso-yi as commander. Fu was charged with recovering Suiyuan after the Japanese surrender. His forces occupied Paotow and Kweisui on 1 1 August, just after Tokyo announced Japan's willingness to surrender. By early October, the disarming of the Japanese units in Suiyuan had been completed.

Fu's haste was motivated by more than a general desire to restore his primacy in Suiyuan. One of his wartime functions in the Suiyuan- Shensi-Ninghsia area had been to contain the military and political operations of the Communist commander Ho Lung (q.v.), who had established a territorial base in Suiyuan. The Communist objective in the Chahar- Suiyuan area was to hold a corridor through which Communist troops could pass from the northwest and north China into Manchuria. Once that mission had been accomplished, the Communists relaxed their pressure on Suiyuan. When political negotiations between the Nationalists and the Communists broke down in the summer of 1946, the Chinese civil war resumed. Fu Tso-yi's forces lost, but then recaptured, several points on the Peiping- Suiyuan railroad, and they succeeded in lifting the siege of Tat'ung in Shansi. On October 11, 1946 Fu took Kalgan from the Communists. That move constituted the basis for the Communists' repeated charge that the Nationalists were taking "provocative" action. Fu Tso-yi nevertheless retained Kalgan, and in November 1946 he was appointed governor of Chahar province. In March 1947 the Twelfth War Area became the Kalgan pacification headquarters, with Fu as its chairman. In August 1947 he was named commander in chief of the newly established bandit-suppression headquarters in north China. North China was relatively quiet; most of the Communist forces were concentrated in Manchuria and elsewhere in China. On 24 September 1948, however, the Nationalist garrison at Tsinan, Shantung, surrendered with hardly a fight, thus isolating north China from the Nationalist stronghold in the Hsuchow sector to the south. Fu Tso-yi was assigned to reinforce the Nationalist troops at Chinchow in the Liaoning corridor. Manchuria was taken by the Communists at the beginning of November, and the Nationalists lost troops and large stores of munitions that might have been used to strengthen Fu Tso-yi's line of defense along the Great Wall. When the Hwai-Hai battle began in the Kiangsu-Anhwei sector in early November 1948, the National Government at Nanking was so hard-pressed that it could not provide support for Fu in north China. Fu Tso-yi controlled a strategically important zone extending from Shanhaikuan and Tangku on the east to Ninghsia province on the west. This zone included such important cities as Tientsin, Peiping, Kalgan, Tat'ung, and Chengteh in Jehol, commanding the Kupeikow pass. There were more than 500,000 fighting men under Fu's general command. Immediately after the capture of the Manchurian port of Yingkow on 5 November 1948, the combined Communist forces of Lin Piao and Nieh Jung-chen (qq.v.) began to threaten Fu's positions. Fu realized that the war had been lost in Manchuria and that the massive Hwai-Hai battle would probably mark the end of organized Nationalist military strength on the mainland. Accordingly, he did not take the field against the advancing Chinese Communist forces but limited himself to delaying actions and planned retreats.

Nieh Jung-chen's forces took Chengteh on 9 November 1948; Lin Piao occupied Shanhaikuan on 18 November, and Communist forces took Kupeikow on 2 December. Lin Piao's Fourth Field Army then launched a general offensive along a front extending from Tangku to Kalgan. By 7 December the Fourth Field Army was within 30 miles of Peiping. The Communists then broke through Fu Tso-yi's front and isolated Peiping, Tientsin, and Kalgan from each other. By mid-December, Peiping, guarded by some 25 infantry divisions, had been encircled. The Communist occupation of Kalgan on 23 December isolated Fu Tso-yi from his base in Suiyuan. The Hwai-Hai battle, a debacle for the Nationalists, ended in early January 1949, and Tientsin fell, after sharp fighting, on 15 January. When the military situation disintegrated, Chiang Kai-shek called a conference of his military commanders at Nanking. That meeting confirmed the obvious: that a coordinated Nationalist military effort was no longer possible and that each military commander should put up the best fight he could. Fu Tso-yi, recognizing that the Nationalist cause was lost, did not attend the Nanking conference and began to make independent arrangements for peace.

As early as December 1948 Fu had established informal contact with the field headquarters of the attacking Communist forces under the command of Lin Piao. That covert liaison was reportedly arranged by Chi Ch'aoting (q.v.), a fellow native of Shansi who served in Peiping as economic adviser to Fu Tso-yi, and by Yenching University professor Chang Tung-sun (q.v.), a prominent figure in the China Democratic League. Fu Tso-yi still held a relatively strong bargaining position. His military forces were largely intact and were based in the Peiping area and in Suiyuan, where they were in a position to join with the Muslim generals of northwest China. The Peiping garrison force alone numbered more than 200,000 men, supported by a substantial artillery force, and Fu was known for his determination in holding besieged points against strong attacking forces. The Communists had an interest in arranging a peaceful entry into the ancient capital and in avoiding a battle that would threaten the historical monuments and national treasures of the city. An arrangement was made whereby Fu Tso-yi could save face by nominally fulfilling his duties as a Nationalist military officer. On 22 January 1949, the day after Chiang Kai-shek retired from the presidency, Fu signed an agreement with his Communist opponents in north China. He surrendered with the Peiping garrison, and, on 31 January, troops of the Communist Fourth Field Army began to enter Peiping. The agreement negotiated by Fu Tso-yi protected the city's treasures and even guaranteed the safety of foreign consular officers stationed there. It also protected Fu's personal position. It later became evident that the agreement had made provision for the preservation of Fu's troops in Suiyuan, where two of his subordinate generals, Tung Ch'i-wu and Sun Lan-feng (qq.v.), retained command of some of his troops. The Communists permitted Tung Ch'i-wu to remain in office as governor of Suiyuan after that province was surrendered to them. The Kuomintang responded to the agreement by expelling Fu Tso-yi from its ranks.

As one of the most senior Nationalist generals to make separate peace with the Communists, Fu Tso-yi was rewarded with senior offices when the Central People's Government was established in October 1949. He became minister of water conservancy, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of the People's Revolutionary Military Council. When the government at Peking was reorganized in 1954, Fu continued to be the minister of water conservancy and became a vice chairman of the National Defense Council. In September 1955 he was awarded the Liberation Medal, first class. He visited Europe in the spring of 1956 as a special delegate from China to the meeting of the World Peace Council at Stockholm, and he also headed a Chinese delegation that visited the Soviet Union to inspect flood control methods. In February 1958, he became minister of water conservancy and electric power at Peking.

Fu Tso-yi was married to Liu Yun-sheng.