On October 9, 1949, the First National Committee of the Chinese National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. In addition to the high-level leaders represented by Zhou Enlai and the people's deputies elected by the people, there was also a person with a very special identity -- Fu Zuoyi, a former high-ranking Kuomintang official.
At the meeting, when Premier Zhou was making a serious speech, Fu Zuoyi suddenly stood up and covered his face with his hands and cried bitterly. Then, he excitedly raised his arms and shouted "Long live the Communist Party!" "Long live Chairman Mao!"
Because his emotions were so intense, the meeting even had to be suspended. But the delegates present not only did not blame Fu Zuoyi, but applauded and cheered for him.
What's going on? Why was it that Fu Zuoyi, who was a high-ranking Kuomintang official, was not only not arrested, but was allowed to attend this meeting? What did Premier Zhou say that made the battle-hardened General Fu Zuoyi so excited?
Fu Zuoyi
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="65" > Fu Zuoyi's hesitation: Follow Chiang Kai-shek or the Communist Party? </h1>
In September 1948, the Battle of Jinan ended, the Kuomintang North China Military Region and the Southern Front Group completely lost contact, and the North China Army fell into a dilemma of isolation and helplessness.
Faced with the increasingly decadent situation of the Kuomintang in north China and even the whole country, the Kuomintang general Fu Zuoyi felt tremendous pressure, and he and the Chiang Kai-shek clique had to start thinking about how the Kuomintang army in North China should take the next step.
The relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and Fu Zuoyi was intricate. Because Fu Zuoyi was not a general of Chiang Kai-shek's lineage, but he was the head of a local military group with Suiyuan as the basic territory, it was difficult to control.
On the other hand, Fu Zuoyi had the idea of loving the country and the people, was a soldier with great ambitions, had a practical spirit, and had a clear understanding of the corrupt regime of the Kuomintang, so he had long shown his dissatisfaction with the practices of the Chiang Kai-shek clique.
Although Chiang Kai-shek would reuse Fu Zuoyi, he was not at ease with him, and would even plant a dark line around him, and Fu Zuoyi's every move, every word and deed was reported to Chiang Kai-shek.
Chiang Kai-shek (2nd from left) and Fu Zuoyi (3rd from left)
By mid-October, the Communists had won more and more victories in the Northeast Theater, and in order to cope with the tense situation, Chiang Kai-shek even personally went to Beiping to take the lead in planning. When deploying how to reinforce Jinzhou, he proposed that Fu Zuoyi's family be transferred to Fuzhou first, and if the Kuomintang lost, they could first retreat to Qingdao.
These hints from Chiang Kai-shek were actually an arrangement for the defeat in the war in North China. Fu Zuoyi could not but think deeply about this, and if it really failed, where should the small group he had worked so hard to run for twenty years go.
Before the Battle of Pingjin was about to begin, these questions kept haunting Fu Zuoyi's mind: What should I do next? Did he follow the Kuomintang or the Communist Party?
On the afternoon of November 4, Fu Zuoyi attended a military conference held by the Kuomintang Ministry of National Defense. Recently, the state of the Ministry of Defence has been very sluggish, and the content of the report has been even more subdued, and the meeting has been filled with pessimism and disappointment.
In the evening, when Fu Zuoyi attended Chiang Kai-shek's dinner party at the presidential residence, he did not elaborate on Chiang Kai-shek's questions about the situation in North China, but only said: "It is very difficult!" It's difficult! When Chiang Kai-shek saw that Fu Zuoyi's face was difficult, he asked all the senior generals present to go back and think about it and talk about it the next day.
Soon, Chiang Kai-shek invited Fu Zuoyi to his mansion again to continue discussing the strategic plan for North China. He again proposed that Fu Zuoyi's family be placed in Fuzhou first, and Fu Zuoyi took the opportunity to show Chiang Kai-shek that the situation in north China could still be reversed, that retreating south was a last resort, and that "sticking to north China is the overall situation, and retreating to Jiangnan is partial."
Fu Zuoyi's remarks touched Chiang Kai-shek's heart, especially the phrase "partial an jiangnan" deeply stimulated Chiang Kai-shek, and the dynasties in China's history that favored the south of the an river have never had a good ending, and they have also been despised by posterity. After much thought, Chiang Kai-shek wavered and decided to change the original decision to let Fu Zuoyi's entire army withdraw to the south.
Chiang Kai-shek
The final result of the Nanjing High Military Conference agreed on a policy of confrontation that would wait and see for the time being. And this policy is exactly in the heart of Fu Zuoyi.
Although Fu Zuoyi advocated sticking to Northern China and was unwilling to withdraw south under the guise of the "main war faction," in fact he was thinking about the interests of his own clique and had the same dream as Chiang Kai-shek.
After repeated calculations and successful persuasion of Chiang Kai-shek, Fu Zuoyi returned to Beiping. After that, while actively preparing for war, he began to seek peace with the Communists under extremely secret circumstances.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="64" > Fu Zuoyi's decision: abandon the dark and cast the light</h1>
Because the whole country had already revealed the trend of the Kuomintang's inevitable victory, coupled with Chiang Kai-shek's constant suspicions, Fu Zuoyi decided to consider the interests of the army and the interests of the Chinese nation, and the idea of seeking peace in war came into play.
At this time, people from all walks of life in Peiping were vigorously calling for "peace", teachers, students and scholars from universities and middle schools took to the streets to march, and celebrities wrote books and published magazines to express the "anti-civil war" initiative to the government. As the military leader of the local Kuomintang, Fu Zuoyi was influenced by this "seeking peace" trend.
Student uprising
However, Fu Zuoyi still had some concerns: First, after the peace, would the Communist Party deal with him for war crimes? Second, will he become the target of the Kuomintang's eradication?
In the end, Fu Zuoyi, who was bitterly worried, decided to give up his position that he had painstakingly managed for many years and lay down his body to seek peace with the Communist Party. It can be said that this road of negotiation is a choice he made at the cost of risking his life and losing his own power.
In mid-November 1948, Fu Zuoyi, through Peng Zexiang, discussed with Fu Dingyi and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the affairs of Fu Zuo's uprising. A few days later, Peng Zexiang and Fu Dingyi arrived in Shijiazhuang and told the relevant CPC personnel that Fu Zuoyi's uprising was roughly decided, and asked the CPC Central Committee to consider the timing of the uprising, as well as the contacts between the two sides and the arrangements after the fact.
Peng Zexiang
After consideration, the Central Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee held that Fu Zuoyi's idea was unrealistic. Because at that time, the Kuomintang's army in North China was about 600,000 people, most of whom were kuomintang central troops, and were stationed in the Pingjintang area, while Fu Zuoyi's concubine troops were only 200,000 and scattered on the Pingzhang Line.
Once Fu Zuoyi revolted, it was very likely that the Central Army of Chiang Kai-shek's clique would suppress it, leading to the defeat of Fu Zuoyi's army, or it would probably cause the Central Army to abandon the city and flee, thus failing to achieve the goal of annihilating the Kuomintang army in North China on the spot. Therefore, the CCP did not agree to the uprising.
In addition, the personnel sent by Fu Zuoyi to negotiate this time were not Fu Zuoyi's cronies, nor did they have any real power, and they could not truly represent Fu Zuoyi's intentions; the peace talks were obviously of a tentative and contact nature, and the negotiations with Peng Zexiang and Fu Dingyi did not achieve substantive results.
The Central Military Commission instructed relevant personnel to tell Fu Dingyi, "We welcome fu to send people to negotiate." In fact, this is to imply that the two cannot negotiate as Fu Zuoyi's representatives, and that another suitable representative must be sent to negotiate. Although the negotiations did not bear fruit, they played an important role in promoting the relationship between the two sides of the negotiations.
Fu Dingyi and Chairman Mao
After the talks, the Chinese Communists decided to take the principle of resolving the Kuomintang's military strength as the general policy for settling the Pingjin issue. To this end, the CPC Central Committee transferred the Northeast Field Army into the customs, which greatly increased the chinese communists' strength in the Pingjin area.
On January 7, 1949, Fu Zuoyi sent his long-time friend Major General Zhou Beifeng to negotiate with Zhang Dongsun, a professor at Yenching University. Both of them were important figures who often came to negotiate on behalf of the Kuomintang, and the Communist Party preferred the negotiators this time.
During Fu Zuoyi's peace talks with the Chinese Communists, Chiang Kai-shek also sensed that something was wrong. He sent people to intimidate and induce four times, and asked Fu Zuoyi to lead his troops to retreat south, but fu Zuoyi refused.
Chiang Kai-shek had a premonition that Fu Zuoyi's peace talks with the Chinese Communists had "cooked rice with raw rice," and he sent a telegram to Fu Zuoyi on the evening of 17 January.
Fu Zuoyi (1st from left) and Chiang Kai-shek (2nd from left)
He mentioned in the telegram that it was really helpless to understand that Fu Zuoyi was forced to make a choice because of the situation, and only asked Fu Zuoyi one thing. That is, from the 18th, he would send planes to transport air force officials and important military weapons, which would take about a week, hoping that Fu Zuoyi would "read the good deeds of many years and assist him" and urge Fu Zuoyi to reply immediately.
After Fu Zuoyi asked people to draw up a telegram to "follow the handling", he felt that he was not safe enough to do so, so he asked Wang Kejun to discuss the matter. After the two men discussed for a long time, Fu Zuoyi decided to send a telegram in the name of Wang Kejun to the Pingjin Front Command of the People's Liberation Army, explaining the content of Chiang Kai-shek's call and asking the PEOPLE's Liberation Army outside the city to shell the temporary airport of the Temple of Heaven when planes came to prevent the landing.
On the 18th, as soon as the planes sent by Chiang Kai-shek arrived near the Temple of Heaven, the People's Liberation Army concentrated artillery fire on them. Heavy artillery fire prevented the plane from landing, and had to flee Beiping in a gray and slippery manner. This time, Chiang Kai-shek's plan to transport the elite corps and equipment of the Concubine clan by plane was completely smashed.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="44" > Fu Zuoyi's ending: China's first minister of water resources</h1>
After the peaceful liberation of Peiping, Fu Zuoyi believed that the war crimes he committed during the Liberation War should be punished by the people and requested that he surrender. However, Chairman Mao not only did not blame him in the past, but fully trusted him and repeatedly came forward to do mass ideological work for Fu Zuoyi.
At the Xibaipo Guest House, Chairman Mao shook Fu Zuoyi's hand and said very humorously: "In the past, we were enemies on the battlefield, and when we met, we had to fight and kill each other. But now that you have dumped Chiang Kai-shek, our relationship is like that of an uncle and relative, inseparable. ”
Fu Zuoyi was a little embarrassed and said, "I am guilty! ”
Chairman Mao smiled again and said, "You have merit. Thank you, you have done a great thing, and the people will never forget you. ”
At this time, Fu Zuoyi's condensed worries in his heart only melted away.
Fu Zuoyi (right 3)
In March 1949, Chairman Mao moved from Xibaipo to Shuangqing Villa in Xiangshan, Beiping, and Fu Zuoyi met Chairman Mao for the second time. The purpose of this meeting with Chairman Mao was to make a request, that is, to get Chairman Mao to approve him to return to Suiyuan Province to work.
He said to Chairman Mao: "Mr. Mao, after the establishment of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, I went back to Suiyuan Province to work, and I was very interested in water conservancy work, so I became a director of the water conservancy bureau in Suiyuan Province, and I did a good job in water conservancy construction in the Hetao area. ”
Chairman Mao did not grant Fu Zuoyi's request. Because he thought that Fu Zuoyi's idea was too small, how could such a general who had made great contributions let him work in a province!
Therefore, Chairman Mao said to Fu Zuoyi:
General Fu is interested in water conservancy construction work, which is very good. It is too condescending to be a water conservancy director in a province. We want to build a lot of water conservancy projects, especially the Yellow River, the Huai River Basin, and the Hai River Basin, which often flood and become disasters, and you will grasp the water conservancy construction work throughout the country.
Chairman Mao and Fu Zuoyi
The decision to make Fu Zuoyi minister of water resources officially announced to the public was made at the First National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of the Chinese on October 9, 1949.
On that day, Premier Zhou Enlai stood on the podium and announced in a loud voice: "The Central Committee has decided that Comrade Fu Zuoyi, the first minister of water resources in New China, will be appointed!" ”
Suddenly, overwhelming applause spread throughout the Great Hall of the People. Fu Zuoyi stood up excitedly and covered his face and cried. Because his emotions were so intense, the meeting even had to be suspended.
Fu Zuoyi was very touched that he had been a high-ranking member of the Kuomintang and an opponent of the Communist Party, but Chairman Mao and other deputies had such trust in him, which made him feel very emotional. Fu Zuoyi said while crying: "In the past, a box of gold could not be exchanged for a minister of the Kuomintang. But now, Chairman Mao and the Communist Party don't want anything, and they are willing to let me be an uprising general as a minister. If the Communist Party does not want to live under the heavens, it is difficult to tolerate it! ”
Fu Zuoyi delivered a speech
Then, he raised his arms and shouted "Long live the Chinese Communist Party!" "Long live Chairman Mao!" The people present were all infected by his high emotions, shouting and crying together. At this moment, there is no estrangement, only the determination to unite and build the motherland together.
And Fu Zuoyi's actions did not disappoint Chairman Mao's Central Committee. In the following decades, he traveled between mountains and rivers, and wherever there was water conservancy project construction, he was present.
When a rare flood occurred in the Hebei Plain, Fu Zuoyi, who had just been discharged from the hospital, immediately called the flood control headquarters and then asked to be on the front line of flood control.
During his 22 years in office, Fu Zuoyi traveled to most of China and made important contributions to the development of new China's water conservancy undertakings.
On April 19, 1974, Fu Zuoyi died of illness in Beijing at the age of 79.