In 1896, a generation of famous generals Ye Ting was born in a peasant family in Zhoutian Village, Huiyang, Guangdong Province, graduated from the Baoding Army Officer School in 1918, joined the Fujian-Guangdong Army in 1919, and joined the Kuomintang in the same year.
In 1921, Ye Ting was appointed commander of the second battalion of Sun Yat-sen's guard regiment.
In 1924, Ye Ting studied at the Communist University of Eastern Workers (Oriental University) and the Chinese class of the Red Army School in the Soviet Union, and joined the Communist Party of China in December, changing from belief in the Three People's Principles to communism.
Ye Ting was a general with deep military attainments, and he was present in the three major uprisings in the early days of our Party—he was the main military leader of the two uprisings.
During the Nanchang Uprising, Ye Ting was the commander-in-chief of the former enemy. The Guangzhou Uprising was the first to play the banner of the "Red Army", and Ye Ting was appointed commander-in-chief (the commander-in-chief of the Guangzhou Uprising was Zhang Tailei, an outstanding leader in the early days, who unfortunately died in this battle).
After the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising, in early 1928, under the actual presidency of Li Lisan, the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee held a meeting in Hong Kong to summarize and examine the issues concerning the Guangzhou Uprising. Some of the leaders of the Guangzhou uprising also attended the meeting.
Li Lisan did not participate in the Guangzhou uprising, nor did he have a serious understanding and study of the situation of the uprising, so he described the uprising as useless. He criticized the main reason for the failure of the uprising in a non-factual way, because the provincial and insurrection leaders had made the mistake of military speculation and blind activism, had wavered at crucial moments, had failed to direct the uprising, and so on.
At the meeting, many people expressed disagreement with him, but Li Lisan stubbornly adhered to his own views, and at the same time took punitive measures, giving various sanctions to the leaders of the uprising, and Ye Tingyin, who was appointed commander-in-chief of the Red Army, "expressed negativity and should be placed on probation for 6 months."
After the meeting, Li Lisan reported the punishment decision to the CPC Central Committee. However, the central authorities criticized Li Lisan's approach, believing that his punitive approach was imprudent and demanding that the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee draw a new conclusion. The Guangdong Provincial Party Committee later re-issued a resolution revoking the original disciplinary decision.
At this time, due to the successive destruction of some organs of the Communist Party in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong authorities stepped up their search for Communists in Hong Kong at the request of the Kuomintang government. Ye Ting, who had retreated to Hong Kong due to the failure of the uprising, became the focus of their arrest.
With the consent of the organization, in early 1928, Ye Ting left Hong Kong and went to his relatives and friends in the mountains of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to take shelter.
In June, Ye Ting received a notice from the party organization to rush to Moscow, Soviet Union.
In Moscow, Ye Ting, combining his personal experience and experience in the Guangzhou uprising, wrote a report to the party organization on the lessons learned from the Guangzhou uprising, believing that when the revolution was at a low ebb, it was difficult to achieve complete victory in an armed uprising in a big city like Guangzhou. Ye Ting still insisted on his views in his report on the issue that after the uprising was held, because the enemy was outnumbered and outnumbered, the rebel troops could not stick to Guangzhou, but should withdraw in time and be transferred to Hailufeng and combine with the peasant movement led by Peng Pan.
At this time, the "Sixth National Congress" of the Communist Party of China was being held in Moscow. The congress set up the "Guangzhou Riot Committee" with Su Zhaozheng as the convener, and conducted a special discussion on the issue of the Guangzhou uprising. At the congress, Ye Ting's report was severely criticized and ruthlessly attacked by Wang Ming and others who had already emerged in the party.
Wang Ming was teaching at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow at the time, a red man of the Comintern and a stubborn adherent of the "city center theory".
The Moscow Eastern University intended to invite Ye Ting to give a report on the Guangzhou uprising. When the Comintern found out, it intervened immediately and did not allow Ye Ting to make a report. At the time of the Guangzhou uprising, Wang Ming was not present at all, but he disguised himself as the "authority" on the issue of the Guangzhou uprising, subjectively and arbitrarily fabricated a "Record of the Guangdong Uprising" with tens of thousands of words, attacked Ye Ting without any basis for "arriving from Hong Kong to Guangzhou six hours before the uprising," scolded Ye Ting for "not being familiar with military planning, so he showed passivity and slackness," and so on.
In particular, this article makes a ridiculous criticism of Ye Ting's correct proposition of moving the rebel troops to the countryside in a timely manner during the uprising.
Wang Ming's bad deeds are beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
Ye Ting felt extremely depressed and wandering about these unreasonable accusations that did not conform to the facts, that he could not go back to China for the time being, and that the Nanjing government was still wanting him as a "rebel criminal." After the defeat of the Great Revolution, many people with lofty ideals went to Europe to investigate, including Communists and Leftists of the Kuomintang, and Ye Ting decided to follow in their footsteps. After making this determination, he left Moscow alone, left the Party organization, and began a long and arduous wandering life. His first stop was to choose the place he had dreamed of going as a young man——— Germany. Since then, Ye Ting has left the party and spent ten years in exile overseas.
During his military studies in Germany, Ye Ting opened a restaurant due to difficulties in life. After five years in Europe, Ye Ting returned to Macau. When the Kuomintang asked people to learn of it, they sent gifts one after another to win them over, but Ye Ting refused and actively sought out the Communist Party.
In November 1933, Ye Ting went to Fuzhou to help Cai Tingkai, Jiang Guangnai and others establish the "People's Revolutionary Government of the Republic of China" after the "Fujian Incident". In 1934, he joined the Chinese National Revolutionary League organized by Li Jishen and Chen Mingshu in Hong Kong with the main purpose of resisting Japan.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, Ye Ting went to Yan'an and expressed his complete acceptance of the leadership of the Communist Party of China and resolutely resisted the War to the end. Chairman Mao presided over a welcome meeting for him. At the meeting, Ye Ting said excitedly: "The revolution is like climbing a mountain, and many comrades are not afraid of the height of the mountain and the danger of the road, and have been going upwards." I climbed halfway up the mountain and turned back for a while, and now I'm keeping up again! ”
Entrusted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Ye Ting, as a non-party member, negotiated with the Kuomintang to reorganize the Red Army guerrillas in the eight southern provinces into the New Fourth Army and served as its commander. Command troops to advance behind enemy lines in central China and carry out guerrilla warfare.
After the Anhui Incident, Ye Ting was detained by the Kuomintang when he was ordered to negotiate. In the face of Chiang Kai-shek's coercion and inducement, he was unyielding and unyielding, and was successively imprisoned in Shangrao, Jiangxi, Enshi, Hubei, Guilin, Guangxi, and finally transferred to the concentration camp of the "Sino-US Special Technical Cooperation Institute" in Chongqing.
After long negotiations by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Ye Ting was released in March 1946. The day after his release from prison, Ye Ting called the central government to request to join the party again, and two days later he was approved.
On April 8, 1946, when Ye Ting went to Yan'an, he was killed by a plane hitting a mountain in heavy fog. The victims of the same plane also included party leaders Wang Ruofei, Bogu (Qin Bangxian), Deng Fa, Ye Ting's wife Li Xiuwen, the fifth daughter Yang Mei, and the youngest son Ah Jiu.
After the bad news broke, Chairman Mao issued a eulogy in the "Liberation Daily", saying: "It is still honorable to die for the people. ”
In 1955, when the Chinese People's Liberation Army conferred the title, Chen Yi once lamented to Ye Jianying: "If Comrade Ye Ting is still there, there should be two Ye Shuai!" ”
Ye Ting's posthumous works include "The Nanchang Rebellion to the Defeat of Chaoshan" and "The Nature, Characteristics and Command of Modern Warfare", and his heirloom photographs of recording his military career have become rare and precious revolutionary historical materials.