Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien (1902-), Communist military commander, served under Chang Kuo-t'ao in the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei soviet area (193132)' and in Szechwan and Sikang (1932-36). Wut'ai, Shansi, was the birthplace of Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien. Little is known about his background except that his father was a sheng-yuan. Hsü received a primary education in the Chinese classics and then enrolled at the Taiyuan Normal School. After graduation, he became a teacher in his native town.

In 1924 Hsü joined the Kuomintang and went to Canton, where he enrolled at the Whampoa Military Academy as a member of the first class. After serving as a squad leader in the 1925 eastern expedition against Ch'en Chiung-ming (q.v.), he joined the forces of Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) in north China as a political officer. By 1927 he had been promoted to regimental commander. When a branch of the Central Military Academy was established at Wuhan, he served on its staff as an instructor, with the rank of captain. About this time, he joined the Second Front Army of Chang Fa-k'uei (q.v.) as a staflT officer and became a member of the Chinese Communist party. After marching with Chang's army to Canton, he participated in the Canton Commune of 1 1 December 1927 {see Chang T'ai-lei). After the uprising failed, he went to Hailufeng in eastern Kwangtung, where he served under P'eng P'ai (q.v.) as chief of staff of the 4th Division of the Chinese Communist forces in the Hailufeng soviet area. When the Hailufeng base was crushed in February 1928, Hsü escaped to Shanghai. In June 1929 Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien was assigned to Hupeh, where Hsü Hai-tung (q.v.) had been working since 1927 to develop a Communist guerrilla force. The force had been designated the 32nd Division of the ^Vorkers and Peasants Red Army. Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien helped organize the 31st Division, with K'uang Chi-hsün as commander. The new division was based in the Huangan and Mach'eng districts. By the end of 1929 the Hupeh-Honan soviet had been established. In 1930 the Communists enlarged their base area to include four adjacent districts of Anhwei and created the Hupeh-Honan- Anhwei soviet, also known as the O-yu-wan soviet. Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien's troops, now part of the Fourth Front Army, successfully repulsed forces led by Hsia Tou-yin and others in the Nationalist campaigns to annihilate the Communists. In 1931 Chang Kuo-t'ao (q.v.) was assigned to create a border region administration for the area and to serve as political commissar of the Fourth Front Army. In July 1932 Chiang Kai-shek sent a large force to annihilate the Chinese Communists in the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei border area. K'uang Chi-hsün, then the commander of the Fourth Front Army, was relieved ofhis command on charges of ineffective performance, and Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien succeeded him. The Nationalist forces continued to press the Communists, forcing Chang Kuo-t'ao to issue an evacuation order. On 25 November, Chang and Hsü led the Fourth Front Army into Shensi. They encountered little resistance until they came within 30 miles of Sian. Instead of attempting to fight their way to the provincial capital, they crossed the Tapa mountains and entered Szechwan. Because T'ien Sung-yao, the garrison commander of that sector, had withdrawn most of his forces from northern Szechwan to fight Liu Wen-hui (q.v.), the Communists were able to establish a Szechwan-Shensi border area in February 1933. They set up a soviet government in the Pachung district, with Chang Kuot'ao as chairman and Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien as senior military commander.

Hsü and Chang worked to rehabilitate their forces and to bring more territory under their control. Their efforts were successful for a time because the Szechwan generals were fighting among themselves. In the autumn of 1933 Hsü led his army southward and defeated forces led by Yang Sen (q.v.). The Communists also used political means to achieve their ends. Among other things, they persuaded men serving under the senior Szechwan general Liu Ts'unhou to join the Fourth Front Army. Hsü soon reorganized the five divisions of his growing Fourth Front Army into four armies. Hsü's basic mission during this period was to maintain the security of the border area. He made good use of the natural features of the region in setting up defenses and used positional warfare tactics to stave off the forays of Szechwanese troops. Although his methods difTered greatly from the tactics of high mobility and swift action usually associated with Chinese Communist operations of this period {see Ho Lung), they were admirably suited to the requirements of his mission.

Late in 1934 National Government forces under the command of Hu Tsung-nan (q.v.), who had been a Whampoa classmate of Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien, were assigned to join with Szechwanese provincial troops in an attempt to destroy the Communist base in the Szechwan- Shensi border area. By February 1935 Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien and Chang Kuo-t'ao had been forced to retreat from the base area. They crossed the Chialing river and moved along the Szechwan-Sikang border to establish a new base. They had formed the so-called northwest revolutionary military council, with Chang Kuo-t'ao as chairman, Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien as military commander, and Ch'en Ch'ang-hao as political commissar, to extend Communist control into the areas of China's northwestern provinces inhabited by non-Chinese minority groups. In the summer of 1935 the Communist forces which had begun the Long March in Kiangsi in October 1934 reached the Szechwan-Sikang border. Chang Kuo-t'ao and Mao Tse-tung soon came into conflict with regard to future plans. Chang and Hsü wished to move west and establish a new base in Sikang ; Mao favored moving northward to the existing Communist base in Shensi. In the end, Hsü, Chang, and the Fourth Front Army remained in Sikang, and Mao moved the First Front Army on to Shensi. In October 1935 Chang and Hsü established a headquarters at K'angting and made plans to mobilize the non-Chinese minorities in the area. A few months later. National Government forces under Hsueh Yueh (q.v.) and Szechwanese provincial armies moved westward from Chengtu and forced the Communists to evacuate the new base area. By March 1936 the Fourth Front Army had retreated to Kantz'u. The food supply in that region was barely adequate, and, after being joined by Ho Lung's Second Front Army in June, the Communists abandoned Sikang. Hsü reached southern Kansu in July and attempted to move toward Sinkiang, but his ragged forces were pushed back by the vigorous Muslim cavalry of Ma Pu-fang. The survivors of this defeat marched to the central Communist base in northern Shensi. Western reporters who interviewed Hsü in Shensi at the end of the year found him to be reserved and gaunt. After the Sino-Japanese war began in the summer of 1937, the Chinese Communist forces were reorganized as the Eighth Route Army, composed of three divisions. Hsü Hsiangch'ien became deputy commander of Liu Poch'eng's 129th Division and played an active role in creating Communist bases behind the Japanese lines in Shantung and Hopei. After being wounded in 1941, he was assigned to Shensi. From 1942 to 1946 he served under Ho Lung as deputy commander of the defense headquarters for the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia and Shansi-Suiyuan regions. In 1945 he succeeded Lin Piao as president of Anti-Japanese Military and Political University in Yenan.

In the civil war between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists Hsü first served as commander of the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung- Honan military district. In 1948 he became deputy commander of the north China military district and headed Communist military operations in the Taiyuan area of Shansi. After the Central People's Government was established at Peking in October 1949, Hsü became a member of the Government Council. Although he was appointed chief of staff of the Chinese Communist forces, he remained in Shansi and did not assume that post. In 1954 he represented the People's Liberation Army at the National People's Congress and became a member of the Standing Committee. He also was appointed a vice chairman of the National Defense Council. In September 1955 Hsü was one of ten generals named to the rank of Marshal of the People's Republic of China. Hsü had become a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party about 1940, and he was reelected to it in 1945 and 1956. He also served on the influential standing committee of the party's Military AfTairs Committee. In the 1960's, despite reports that he was in ill health, Hsü continued to participate in public ceremonies. He was a prominent figure on the reviewing stand at the celebrations in October 1965 to commemorate the establishment of the People's Republic of China. In January 1967 he became head of a new committee which had charge of the socalled cultural revolution.