Hsiao K'o (August 1909-), Chinese Communist army officer, served under Yeh T'ing and Chu Teh in the 1920's and under Ho Lung in the 1930's and 1940's. After 1949 he held office as director of the general training department of the Chinese Communist military forces. Chiaho hsien, Hunan, was the birthplace of Hsiao K'o. His father was a scholar who had received the sheng-yuan degree. Hsiao K'o received a conventional Chinese education in his native village. About 1921 his elder brother participated in a local peasant uprising, and his father was imprisoned soon afterward. Although the family's finances became straitened, Hsiao K'o was able to continue his education. He studied at a provincial normal school in Hunan after his graduation from higher primary school.

In 1926 Hsiao went to Canton, where he joined Chiang Kai-shek's 65th Gendarme Regiment. When the Northern Expedition began, Hsiao was assigned as a company-level political officer in the 24th Division, commanded by Yeh T'ing (q.v.), of Chang Fa-k'uei's Fourth Army. He joined the Chinese Communist party in the summer of 1927 and participated in the uprising at Xanchang in August as a company commander. After the failure of the action at Nanchang, Hsiao K'o joined the forces commanded by Chu Teh (q.v.) which moved southward toward Kwangtung. However, Hsiao's unit soon was defeated and dispersed. He then served with Chiang Kai-shek's Thirteenth Army for a brief period and returned to his native village in Hunan. At the beginning of 1928 Communist troops under Chu Teh moved into southern Hunan, and in the spring they succeeded in joining forces with Mao Tse-tung in the Ching-kang mountains. Hsiao, who had been organizing a peasant insurrection at Ichang, led a small group of men to join Chu and Mao. He became a company commander in the newly created Fourth Red Army.

In 1929 Hsiao was promoted to regimental commander. After fighting in Kiangsi, Fukien, and Kwangtung, he became a division commander. He assumed command of the Sixth Red Army in September 1932, after the death of Chou I-ch'un. Jen Pi-shih (q.v.) joined Hsiao as political commissar in 1933. Hsiao's troops began the Long March in the early autumn of 1934, before the main Communist forces under Chu Teh and Mao Tse-tung evacuated the central soviet base area in Kiangsi. In October 1934 the Sixth Red Army joined forces in Kweichow with the Second Red Army under Ho Lung and Kuan Hsiang-ying to form the Second Front Army, with Ho Lung as over-all commander and Jen Pi-shih as political commissar.

Hsiao K'o remained in the Szechwan- Hunan-Hupeh-Kweichow base area from late 1934 until November 1935, when the Second Front Army began a separate retreat. Hsiao and his associates reached Kantzu, Sikang, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, in June 1936 and joined forces with the Fourth Front Army under Chang Kuo-t'ao and Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien (qq.v.). Hsiao K'o and his troops finally arrived at the Communist base area in northern Shensi in October 1936. He then was assigned to command the Thirtyfirst Army. After the Sino-Japanese war began in the summer of 1937, the Eighth Route Army, composed of three Communist divisions, was organized. Hsiao K'o was named deputy commander of the 120th Division, led by his fellow-provincial Ho Lung. In 1938 the main force of the 120th Division moved eastward from Shansi into Hopei province, where Hsiao spent the remaining war years helping to mobilize support for the Chinese Communists in the rural areas around Peiping and in Jehol province.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Hsiao K'o continued to be active in the Communist military command structure, with jurisdiction over portions of north China, including Hopei and Shansi; Inner Mongolia, notably Jehol and Chahar; and Liaoning in southern Manchuria. In 1949 he became chief of staff to Lin Piao (q.v.), who commanded the Fourth Field Army. From 1949 to 1951 Hsiao served as chief of staff of the Central-South Military District; he also was a member of the Central- South Military and Administrative Committee, the regional government structure established by the Communists to consolidate political control.

In 1953 Hsiao K'o was named director of the general training department of the People's Revolutionary Military Council. He represented the North China Military District at the first National People's Congress in 1954. With the reorganization of the Central People's Government in that year, Hsiao became a vice minister of national defense, deputy director of the general training department, and a member of the National Defense Council. In June 1955 he led a Chinese delegation to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Hsiao K'o was raised to the rank of colonel general in September 1955 and was awarded all top military decorations given by the Central People's Government. At the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, he was elected to the Central Committee. In November 1957 he was named director of the general training department, succeeding Liu Po-ch'eng (q.v.), who had held that post from 1954 to 1957. In the government reorganization of 1959 Hsiao K'o became a vice minister in the ministry of state farms and land reclamation, headed by Wang Chen (q.v.), a veteran Communist general with whom Hsiao had been associated in the Hunan-Hupeh soviet area in the 1930's. Hsiao was reappointed to the National Defense Council in April 1959. He succeeded Wang Chen as acting minister of state farms and land reclamation in 1963.