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He was the only founding general who was specially approved by Chairman Mao to allow "bringing guns" into Xinjiang, and he pulled up the construction corps of Xinjiang and made great contributions to the development of Xinjiang.
In 1985, in the list of deputy directors of the Central Advisory Committee drawn up by the Central Committee, he unexpectedly found himself ranked first, which Wang Zhen thought was inappropriate.
He objected, after all, he had only been in the Central Advisory Committee for a few months, how could his ranking be in front of his predecessor Bo Yibo, he asked the organization to re-rank, and proposed amendments, and took the initiative to rank his name backwards and hand it over to the organization for review.
To join the revolution is to call home
On April 11, 1908, Wang Zhen was born in a poor peasant family in Liuyang County, Hunan Province, and his childhood name was Wang Zhenglin.
At that time, the country was in turmoil, the people were displaced, and it was a luxury to have a full meal.
As early as when he was in primary school, he was educated in patriotism by his teacher, Mr. Li Zixuan, who was a member of the League, and Mr. Li often encouraged him and his classmates to have great ambitions, and become pillars of the country, so that when they grow up, they will "cherish the world and serve the nation".
This had a great impact on his later growth.
Later, under the influence of his teacher, he embraced many new ideas, which laid the foundation for the later revolutionary movement.
In 1922, he went to Changsha to join the army, and constantly came into contact with the ideas of the Communist Party, and became very interested in the ideas of the Communist Party to save the country and the people. In Changsha, he always paid attention to the party's trends and waited for opportunities to contribute to the party and the country.
In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek brazenly launched a counter-revolutionary coup d'état, and in the face of the enemy's white terror, a number of communists were arrested and killed, and some party members defected from the party, and the revolutionary forces suffered heavy losses.
In May of this year, Wang Zhenglin, a member of the Communist Youth League who worked on the Changsha Railway, resolutely joined the Communist Party of China.
After the start of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, he grew from a small railway worker and picket member on the Changsha Railway to the leader of the trade union picket squadron of the Changyue section of the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway.
In September of the same year, Mao Zedong launched and led the Autumn Harvest Uprising on the border of Hunan and Jiangxi. In order to cooperate with the Autumn Harvest Uprising troops to attack Changsha, Xinhe Station organized a road-breaking brigade, and Wang Zhen served as the captain of the first detachment of the brigade.
He actively cooperated with the uprising, organized his team members during the day, and began to organize the destruction of the railroad at night to prepare for the uprising.
On the night of the uprising, he led a team to break the road near Changsha Monkey Stone and Xinhe Station, causing a carriage of Kuomintang ammunition to explode and a carriage of Kuomintang reinforcements to be killed or wounded.
On 10 December, the Hunan Provincial CPC Committee and the Changsha Municipal CPC Committee launched three companies of the peasant army and the Kuomintang army on the outskirts of the city to stage an armed uprising.
At that time, the main task of the Xinhe Station Road Breaking Team was to control the Guanghua Electric Light Company in the city. Wang Zhen was ordered to close the electric gate so that the peasant army could enter the city smoothly.
In 1930, Wang Zhen led the guerrillas he developed and formed to participate in the establishment of the Xiangdong Independent Division. The guerrilla unit he formed was officially transformed into a regular Red Army and participated in the creation of a revolutionary base in the Hunan and Jiangxi Soviet regions.
After he served as the commander of the Liuyang detachment, his comrades-in-arms gave him a resounding name Wang Zhen.
He thinks this name is particularly good, for him who walks between life and death, it is very domineering and can suppress the enemy. Since then, he has abandoned the name Wang Yalin.
After that, he followed the team to fight in the south and the north, liaising with base areas in various parts of northern Shaanxi, and making great contributions to resisting the Kuomintang's anti-encirclement and suppression. In guerrilla warfare, he gave full play to his advantages and constantly established base areas behind enemy lines.
After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, he commanded the troops to fight bravely against the Japanese invaders, cooperated with the Xinkou Battle to effectively strike at the enemy, and participated in the struggle to establish an anti-Japanese base in the northwest of Shanxi Province.
During this period, Wang Zhen led his troops to engage in more than 100 battles with the Japanese army, inflicting heavy losses on the Japanese army many times, and winning successive battles, and was awarded the titles of "Model Party Army" and "Iron Army of Hundred Battles and Victories" by the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army and the border district government respectively.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he served as the military and political commissar of the Eighth Route Army, went to the anti-Japanese front line in Shanxi, and had outstanding performances in many battles.
During the Liberation War, he participated in the Luliang Campaign and the Fenxiao Campaign, which played a major role in containing the Kuomintang army in the Shanxi battlefield. Later, he served as the secretary of the Luliang District Party Committee and contributed to the economic construction of Luliang District.
Vigorously fighting and ruling Xinjiang
In June 1949, Wang Zhen commanded the army to attack Baoji, conquer Tianshui, drink Magannan, and forcibly cross the Yellow River. Later, braving the severe cold of minus 20 degrees, he went north from Xining, crossed the Qilian Mountain, which was covered with snow all year round, and approached the gate of Xinjiang, which frightened the Kuomintang troops in Xinjiang.
Under the leadership of Wang Zhen, the troops entering Xinjiang braved the wind and snow, trekked through mountains and rivers, slept in the open air, traveled day and night, and advanced to the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains.
On January 20, 1950, the two armies arrived at the designated places one after another, eliminated the Kuomintang rebel forces, took over all important cities, important military points and thousand-mile border defenses in Xinjiang, and planted the five-star red flag on the Tianshan Mountains, Altay Mountains and the Pamir Plateau, successfully completing the strategic task of liberating Xinjiang.
It took Wang Zhen only six months to complete the task of liberating Xinjiang, and the speed was so fast that the ancients were ashamed.
Xinjiang is vast and sparsely populated, and it has been neglected for many years, resulting in frequent bandits. After Wang Zhen arrived, he severely cracked down on the bandits who often haunted and protected the rights and interests of the local people.
In the process of fighting bandits, he realized that Xinjiang is rich in resources and strategically located, but it has not yet been developed, which has led to widespread poverty now.
So he began field trips to prepare for the construction of Xinjiang. For nearly a month, he inspected various localities and built Xinjiang in batches in light of local conditions.
He set up a construction corps in Xinjiang, and took care of the reclamation of wasteland, water conservancy construction, and approval of construction projects.
In more than two years, the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains set off a production boom, built a large number of water conservancy projects, opened up millions of acres of wasteland, successfully planted cotton and sugar beet for the first time in northern Xinjiang, and achieved high yields, ending the history of "no cotton planting in northern Xinjiang since ancient times".
He enabled Xinjiang's economy to achieve sustained growth year after year, and the people's economic level was also greatly improved.
The history of hundreds of thousands of PLA officers and soldiers forging swords into plowshares and cultivating barren land is great. In order to stabilize the officers and soldiers in the border areas, Wang Zhen applied to the central government to recruit female soldiers, and recruited 8,000 female soldiers from his hometown Hunan.
Wang Zhen made an indelible contribution to Xinjiang's stability, so much so that the people later commented that those who dared to go to the Tianshan Mountains were Zuo Zongtang and Wang Zhen.
Wang Zhen became famous in Xinjiang, and for a while, hard bones from all over the country came to Wang Zhen.
Pay attention to talents and lead the "Great Northern Wilderness" to become the "Great Northern Warehouse"
In May 1956, Wang Zhen was appointed by the Party Central Committee and the State Council as the Minister of Agricultural Reclamation. "At that time, the level of agricultural production on the mainland was very low, and many people did not have enough to eat.
The central authorities asked him to grasp the work of agricultural reclamation, undoubtedly in order to increase grain production. In this special era, Wang Zhen led the army to overcome obstacles and work hard, so that the Great Northern Wilderness, which had been sleeping for many years, went down in history.
The "Great Northern Wilderness" used to refer to the vast barren areas of the Sanjiang Plain, the Heilongjiang Riverside Plain and the Nenjiang River Basin in northern Heilongjiang Province, China. This piece of land is extremely difficult to cultivate, and the yield is very low.
In 1956, under Wang Zhen's careful arrangement, more than 17,000 demobilized officers and soldiers from 9 divisions of the railway corps and an officer reserve unit were successively driven into the Great Northern Wilderness for reclamation.
In the spring of 1958, proposed by Wang Zhen and approved by the Central Committee, 100,000 demobilized officers and soldiers from all over the army drove into the Great Northern Wilderness.
He personally led the veteran army reclamation troops to overcome obstacles and work hard in the Great Northern Wilderness, and reclaimed thousands of acres of land.
In the nine years from 1957 to 1966, he spent five Spring Festivals in the Great Northern Wilderness with the soldiers of the military reclamation.
Later, batches of thousands of educated youths came here to continue to participate in the development of the Great Northern Wilderness. After generations of hard work, the place has changed dramatically.
Today, there are 29.12 million acres of arable land here, and it is famous for its abundance of wheat, soybeans, corn, rice and other food crops.
Wang Zhen has great respect for knowledge and talent, and is good at uniting and using intellectuals and making friends with them. During the war years, intellectuals were also actively recruited to participate in the revolution and the building of the armed forces was strengthened.
When the 359th Brigade went south, he took a group of scientists, writers, and intellectuals with other specialties to the south to open up and establish anti-Japanese base areas.
When he was working in Xinjiang in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, he attached great importance to recruiting experts in agriculture, animal husbandry, water conservancy, geology, metallurgy, and other fields to participate in Xinjiang's construction.
In the days when he led the development of the Great Northern Wilderness, he still treated intellectuals such as poet Ai Qing and writer Ding Ling and his wife as comrades, and gave them sincere care and love, so that they regained confidence and devoted themselves to the construction of the Great Northern Wilderness.
At that time, a large number of intellectuals were sent to rural labor.
Wang Zhen always took advantage of his status as a member of the Central Committee and other members of the Central Committee and the opportunity of going out to inspect the intellectuals to visit them, listen to their opinions, and do his best to take care of the intellectuals.
He often had close contacts with intellectuals such as Hua Luogeng, Du Pengcheng, Ding Ling, Hu Cheng, Ai Qing, Li Siguang, Chen Baichen, and Wu Zuguang, and made friends.
In the new period of reform and opening up, he vigorously promoted the implementation of the party's policy on intellectuals, established sincere friendship with many intellectuals, and brought the role of intellectuals into greater play.
In 1985, the Central Committee decided to propose Wang Zhen to join the Central Advisory Committee and serve as deputy director. As a result, Wang Zhen found that he was ranked first, but Bo Yibo was behind him and was still in charge.
Wang Zhen was anxious at this time, he said: "Bo Lao is not simple, he is the party, government, military, masses, finance, literature and other work. How can I be ahead of him? So he circled Bo Lao in front of him with a pencil.
When the matter reached Bo Yibo, he returned the list the way it came: "I am the executive director, and I have the authority to insist on this proposal." ”
As a result, after the election, Wang Zhen still ranked first in the ranking of the deputy director of the Central Advisory Committee, and Bo Yibo ranked second.
In the eyes of the Central Advisory Committee, Wang Zhen's ability to rank in front of Bo Yibo is obviously related to his merits.
Wang Zhen was a founding general with outstanding achievements, who made indelible contributions to the revolution on the mainland and the construction of New China.
Resources:
"Remembering the Beloved Bo Yibo Lao: Remembering the Exchanges and Friendship between Comrade Bo Yibo and Comrade Wang Zhen" Author: Li Shenming, China Social Science Net, 2008-03-17