Lu Ti-p'ing (1887-31 January 1935), Hunanese military officer who served as field commander of the Second Army of the National Revolutionary Army during the Northern Expedition. He later held the governorships of Hunan (1928), Kiangsi (1929-31), and Chekiang (1931-34).

The younger of two sons in a family of modest means, Lu Ti-p'ing was born in Ninghsiang, Hunan. In the final years of the Ch'ing period, he left his home and a routine education in the Chinese classics to attend the Pin-mu Academy, a junior military training school in Changsha which boasted a course in modern military science. Upon graduation, he joined the imperial forces, and by the time of the revolution of 1911 he had become a battalion commander in the Hunan New Army. Little is known about his career from 1912 to 1916 except that he resigned from the New Army soon after the revolution.

After T'an Yen-k'ai (q.v.) resumed office as tutuh [military governor] of Hunan in the summer of 1916, he appointed Lu Ti-p'ing commander of the 6th Regiment of the Hunan Army. Lu succeeded in retaining his post when T'an was ousted in August 1917. The following year, he received command of the 3rd Brigade. He participated in the expulsion of the Peking appointee Chang Ching-yao from the military governorship of Hunan in 1920, and he was appointed commander of the 2nd Division in the ensuing reorganization of the Hunan forces. Chao Heng-t'i (q.v.), the new military governor, ordered Lu to station his troops at Yochow. ^Vhen a revolt against Chao Heng-t'i's authority broke out in mid- 1923, the southern government at Canton, hoping to exploit the situation, appointed T'an Yen-k'ai commander in chief of an expedition against Chao. The fighting proceeded in sporadic fashion until 1 September, when Chu Yao-hua, one of Lu Ti-p'ing's regimental commanders, staged a coup at Changsha and forced Chao to withdraw northward. Because Chao was now within reach of aid from Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.), Lu took the initiative in proposing and organizing a "peace conference" between Chao and T'an at Chiangch'a, near Hsiangtan. The conference broke down after two weeks, during which time Chao arranged for military aid from Wu P'ei-fu. Lu Ti-p'ing, his position with Chao Heng-t'i having been compromised by the action of his regimental commander and by his assumption of the role of neutral mediator at the conference, switched allegiance to T'an Yen-k'ai and received the title of commander of the Second Hunan Army (Lu's 2nd Division) in T'an's expeditionary force. By mid-November, Chao Hengt-t'i had driven T'an and Lu from Hunan. They reached the Canton area just in time to help beat back an attack by Ch'en Chiung-ming (q.v.).

In the autumn of 1924, when Sun Yat-sen proclaimed the launching of a northern expedition against Ts'ao K'un (q.v.) and Wu P'ei-fu, he designated the Hunanese troops and other forces under the over-all command of T'an Yen-k'ai the National Construction Army ^Chien-kuo chün). With the death of Sun Yat-sen in March 1925 and the subsequent organization of the National Government and the National Revolutionary Army, the Hunanese forces became the Second Army, with T'an Yen-k'ai as commander and Lu Ti-p'ing as deputy commander. Lu assumed field command of the Second Army during the Northern Expedition because T'an's government posts kept him in Canton. The Second Army engaged the forces of Sun Ch'uan-fang (q.v.) in September 1926, with three of Lu's four divisions advancing across the Hunan border to Pinghsiang. Lu's forces captured Changshu on 5 October and Chinhsien on 23 October, thus weakening Sun's position at Nanchang. These and other victories in the Nanchang sector led to the surrender of that city on 8 November.

On 24 March 1927 the Second Army of Lu Ti-p'ing and the Sixth Army of Ch'eng Ch'ien (q.v.) occupied Nanking. The entry of these forces into Nanking was attended by antiforeign actions that resulted in the loss of foreign lives and property. At first, Lu's 4th Division commander, Chang Hui-tsan, was blamed for the violence, and attention was called to the fact that Lu's political commissar, Li Fu-ch'un (q.v.), was a Communist; however, responsibility was finally attributed to elements of Ch'eng Ch'ien's Sixth Army, of which the Communist Lin Po-ch'ü (q.v.) was political commissar.

During the complicated political maneuvers that began in April 1927 with the break between the left-wing faction of the Kuomintang at Wuhan and Chiang Kai-shek's faction at Nanking and that ended in August 1927 with the temporary retirement of Chiang Kai-shek in the interests of party unity, Lu Ti-p'ing refused to take sides. When the National Government launched a campaign against T'ang Sheng-chih (q.v.) in October, the Second Army, then at Ichang, participated in it, but Lu, for reasons that are unclear, was in Shanghai. At any rate, he received full command of the Second Army that year, and in the spring of 1928 he became governor of Hunan and a member of the Wuhan branch of the Political Council. He introduced a system of civil-service examinations for the recruitment of hsien magistrates and revamped the province's financial structure. However, Lu soon came into conflict with the Kwangsi leaders Li Tsung-jen and Pai Ch'ung-hsi (qq.v.), who dominated the Wuhan branch of the Political Council; and on 21 February 1929 the council dismissed him from the governorship. Soon afterwards, Lu was appointed commander of the Fifth Anti-Rebel Army, and his troops cooperated with the military forces dispatched from Nanking in the campaign against the Kwangsi forces in the Wuhan area. With victory in early April, Lu was appointed garrison commander of the W'uhan area. By this time, he also had become an alternate member of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and a member of the Military Aff'airs Commission.

In September 1929 Lu Ti-p'ing was appointed governor of Kiangsi, which had become a center for Chinese Communists who had escaped the various purges of 1927. In mid1930, while the National Government was heavily engaged in meeting the challenge of the northern coalition {see Feng Yü-hsiang; Yen Hsi-shan), the Communist P'eng Te-huai (q.v.) attacked and occupied Changsha, and other forces led by Chu Teh (q.v.) and Mao Tse-tung attacked near Nanchang. Lu was appointed commander in chief of the National Government's first so-called bandit-suppression campaign that autumn, and his units drove deeply into the mountains of Kiangsi. However, he pulled back after the 18th Division of Chang Hui-tsan was ambushed and crushed. Although left with about half of his forces, Lu also participated in the equally unsuccessful second campaign against the Communists, which took place in April-May 1931.

In the governmental reorganization that followed Chiang Kai-shek's temporary retirement at the end of 1931, Lu Ti-p'ing was appointed governor of Chekiang. He immediately undertook such tasks as the reinforcement of provincial defenses, the building of roads and telecommunications networks, the development of industry and commerce, and the improvement of the provincial administration. His long years of military and public life began to take their toll, and he suffered a stroke in 1933. Despite his continued ill health, the National Government did not accept his resignation from the governorship until December 1934. Lu then went to Nanking to assume the sinecure post of deputy chairman of the Military Advisory Council, but on 31 January 1935 he suffered another stroke and died.

Lu Ti-p'ing was survived by his wife, nee Ting, by their son, Lu Cho-ch'ang, and by two small sons whose mother was his concubine, Miss Sha. All of them died, some naturally and some by execution, soon after the Communists came to power in 1949.

x-Editor's note: In assigning status — wife, concubine — to women in relation to their husbands, the editors of the Biographical Dictionary of Republican China have used terms that reflect the conventions of the time and/or notions that reflect a male-dominated society.