In June 1954, Li Xiannian, then vice chairman of the Central And southern Military and Political Committee and commander of the Hubei Provincial Military Region, was ordered to beijing and learned that he would become vice premier of the State Council and minister of finance, and he excitedly and with trepidation reported to Chairman Mao Zedong: I can't do the minister of finance, I don't have the ability and level, or ask the central authorities to consider others.
Chairman Mao and Li Xiannian
In front of general Ai, Mao Zedong humored a little, smiled and said: "If you don't want to do it, then I have to invite Song Ziwen, the finance minister of the Kuomintang, back from Taiwan and let him do a good job." ”
Li Xiannian was anxious to hear this, and quickly said: Chairman, that is enough, and I resolutely obey the decision of the Central Committee.
At this time, Li Xiannian, in chairman Mao's eyes, could completely replace Song Ziwen, so how did he transform himself from a hehezhan general into an "economic big man" in New China and finally ascend to the top of the state presidency?
During the war years, he twice led his troops to break through the Jedi, and after his death, he returned to the battlefield to accompany his comrades
In 1909, Li Xiannian was born in Huang'an, Hubei Province, in this rural area that was stained red by the blood of revolutionary martyrs and became today's "Hong'an County", he studied private school, learned carpentry, joined the peasant movement at the age of 17, joined the jute uprising and joined the Communist Party at the age of 18, and led the entire guerrilla army to join the Red Army at the age of 19.
In 1933, Li Xiannian served as the political commissar of the 30th Army of the Red Fourth Front, and grew from a grassroots cadre to a senior commander of the Red Army.
Li Xiannian, political commissar of the Thirtieth Army of the Fourth Front of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army
In 1935, in order to cope with the Long March of the Central Red Army, Li Xiannian and Cheng Shicai, the acting commander of the Red Army, led the Red 30th Army to march twice and cross the meadow three times, and successively participated in the Maogong and Baozuo Battles, and finally joined the Red First and Second Fronts in northern Shaanxi.
In November 1936, the Red 30Th Army led by Li Xiannian was incorporated into the Western Route Army, and he was appointed as a member of the Military and Political Committee of the Western Route Army, commanding the Red 30th Army to make a surprise attack to the west, preparing to kill a way for the Red Army that was "temporarily resting" in Shaanxi Province--borrowing a way from the pro-Soviet and pro-Communist Xinjiang warlord Sheng Shicai, opening up ties with the Soviet Union, and promoting the great development of the domestic revolution with international strength.
However, the Kuomintang diehards have never relaxed their encirclement and suppression of the Red Army, and the main forces besieging the Western Route Army this time are Ma Bufang, Ma Hongkui, and Ma Hongbin's troops, who are known as the "Three Horses of the Northwest." The ancestors of the "Three Horses" began to develop in Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, and other places during the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty.
In March 1937, when the Western Route Army was facing a critical moment of life and death, the commander-in-chief Xu Xiangqian and the political commissar Chen Changhao broke away from the main force and returned to Shaanxi to report to the central authorities, while Li Xiannian was appointed as a member of the Working Committee of the Western Route Army and was responsible for the military command of the remaining Red Army.
Relying on their firm will and flexible tactics, Li Xiannian, Cheng Shicai, and others gathered Red Army officers scattered everywhere, organized troops to break through to the west, and after jumping out of the encirclement circle of majiajun, entered the Qilian Mountains, which were snowy and deserted all year round, marched the Gobi Desert full of yellow sand, and endured 47 days of arduous Small Long March, at the end of April, they brought more than 400 soldiers of the Western Route Army to Xingxing Gorge at the junction of Gansu and Xinjiang, and under the reception of the central deputies, they transferred to Dihua, preserving a number of revolutionary products for the party and the Red Army "Sparks".
Coincidentally, nine years later, Li Xiannian once again led his troops to "highlight" the heavy encirclement of the Kuomintang army.
This time, the 5th Division of the New Fourth Army led by Li Xiannian has developed into the Central Plains Military Region, with nearly 60,000 officers and men under its command, three times that of the original Red Army's Western Route Army; this time, surrounded by layers and layers of the surrounding areas, are the Kuomintang's newly reorganized more than 300,000 regular troops, fully equipped with American equipment, taking advantage of the opportunity of the Peace Talks between the Kuomintang and the Republic of China, quietly moving closer to the Liberated Areas of the Central Plains in an attempt to eliminate the effective forces of our army, so as to chase the Central Plains and stabilize the situation.
Fortunately, Chairman Mao Zedong and the PARTY Central Committee's eyes were shining brightly; they saw through the conspiracy of the Chiang Kai-shek clique to "fake peace and talk about real attacks, and promptly issued instructions to the Central Plains Bureau that "survival comes first and victory comes first." Li Xiannian keenly grasped the situation; while warmly receiving the "military dispatch" personnel sent by the United States at Xuanhuadian, they quietly arranged for the troops to assemble covertly, and before the enemy army launched a general offensive, they led the main force to break through the gaps in the enemy army in two ways, jumping out of the heavy pursuit and blockade arrangements laid out by the Kuomintang troops along the way. New liberated areas have been opened up.
In 1944, Li Xiannian, Zheng Weisan (center) and Chen Shaomin (left) at Xuanhua Store in Dawu County, Hubei Province
In the two Jedi breakouts, Li Xiannian came out and went to a higher leadership position, he could never forget those comrades who fell around, he could not forget their bloody sacrifices, and in his lifetime, for the victory of the revolution and the construction of new China, he could not accompany them, but one day he would be reunited with them again. Therefore, he left a will: scatter the ashes to the place where I once fought - Dabie Mountain, Daba Mountain, Qilian Mountain!
For the trust of the chairman, he was willing to be a student to grasp the finances, and lost the rank of general
In the two Jedi breakthroughs, Li Xiannian's military talent was brought into full play, and Chairman Mao Zedong, who had the insight and talent, saw his tenacious will to fight and his outstanding ability to "walk the road", so in 1954 he personally appointed Li Xiannian as vice premier of the State Council and minister of finance.
On September 27, 1954, Li Xiannian was at the first session of the First National People's Congress
More than 400 Red Army soldiers who accompanied Li Xiannian out of the Xingxing Gorge became founding generals after the founding of the People's Republic of China; among the comrades-in-arms of the Central Plains Military Region and Li Xiannian who broke through successively, deputy commander Wang Shusheng was awarded the rank of general in 1955.
Li Xiannian took off his military hat because he was in charge of the Ministry of Finance, and after losing his rank as a great general, he thought of living up to the chairman's heavy trust and grasping the economy of new China.
Therefore, he took the initiative to become a "student", learned from Chen Yun and other comrades in the party who had been engaged in economic work for a long time, and Ma Yin's junior non-party experts and scholars, starting from basic economic theory, combined with the practice of China's economy at that time, while learning and doing, and quickly completed the recovery and transformation of the entire national economy after the founding of New China, and promoted the domestic economy into the "First Five-Year Plan".
In fact, Li Xiannian's life, which can also be said to be a life of learning and growth, in his own words: marshal Xu Qianqian went to school in the military, Chen Yun was his teacher economically, diplomacy has been directly guided by Premier Zhou, and Mao Zedong is his mentor for a lifetime.
It is precisely because of such a group of high-standard "old mentors" and because of such continuous study that Li Xiannian, a "student", has completed the transformation from a war general to a minister of finance, and has been deeply valued by Chairman Mao Zedong and the Central Committee, and has been vice premier for 26 years since 1954.
In times of crisis, he bravely took on the responsibility of saving the country and promoting reform
In the era of peace, Li Xiannian served as vice premier for 26 years, neither in the sky nor in the sky, some people jokingly called him a tumbler of the "Elder of the Three Dynasties", and some people secretly said that he was a wall-riding faction of "left and right", until the autumn and winter of 1976, everyone knew his real responsibility as a Communist Party member in times of crisis.
After the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, the counterrevolutionary clique headed by Jiang Qing, Wang Hongwen, and other "Gang of Four" accelerated the pace of competing for the supreme power of the party and the state; Comrade Hua Guofeng, as the supreme leader of the party, government, and army, was on the verge of being "hollowed out," and China's fate came to the edge of the precipice.
At this time, Li Xiannian's position in the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee was very crucial; he firmly supported Hua Guofeng's work, acted as a bridge of communication between Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying, and a large number of old comrades; even at the critical moment when he was physically ill and the minions of the "Gang of Four" reached out to him personally to force him to go out for medical treatment, he also reached a tacit understanding with Hua Guofeng, and sat in Beijing like a "needle in the sea", which finally contributed to the rapid settlement of the "Gang of Four" problem and ensured the smooth transition of China's political and social situation.
In fact, even during the special period of the Cultural Revolution, Li Xiannian always used his position and prestige to spare no effort to support the work of Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and others, and made a great deal of efforts for the orderly development of China's economy and politics.
After the smashing of the "Gang of Four," China's economic and social situation moved toward rapid development, and Li Xiannian became an important part of the "acceleration." In order to normalize and standardize the political life within the party as soon as possible, he supported Deng Xiaoping's idea of separating the party from the government and personally promoted it.
In June 1983, at the first session of the Sixth National People's Congress, Li Xiannian was elected president, becoming the third president of the People's Republic of China after Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi.
As the country's political and economic situation improved day by day, Li Xiannian stood at the forefront of the "reform" of the central leadership's alternating old and new normalization.
In 1986, deng xiaoping, Li Xiannian and Chen Yun were all in their old age among the five politburo standing committee members of the CPC Central Committee.
In the same year, Liu Bocheng, Ye Jianying, Huang Kecheng and several other veteran revolutionaries died one after another, especially the death of Marshal Ye Jianying, which caused a huge shock at home and abroad.
That same year, Deng Xiaoping and Li Xiannian came to Chen Yun's home, and the three had a long secret conversation.
The content of this conversation has not been declassified so far, but at the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in October 1987, four news stories unexpectedly broke out:
Deng Xiaoping no longer served as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and director of the Central Advisory Committee, but only as chairman of the Central Military Commission of the party and the state.
Li Xiannian no longer serves as a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the chairman of the State Council, and only serves as the chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Chen Yun no longer serves as a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the first secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, but only as director of the Central Advisory Committee.
Peng Zhen, Deng Yingchao, Xu Xiangqian, Nie Rongzhen, and other "four elders" invariably "all retired" and no longer held any posts.
The highest leadership of the CPC Central Committee has successfully realized the replacement of old and new.