In August 1949, Chen Mingren joined forces with General Cheng Qian to lead more than 70,000 Kuomintang officers and soldiers to launch an uprising in Changsha, Hunan Province. There were many generals in the Nationalist uprising at that time, but Chen Mingren was originally considered to be the "most unlikely to revolt", and he also gained the trust of Lao Jiang and Bai Chongxi and others, serving as the commander of the 1st Corps of the Nationalist Army stationed in Changsha.
Why is it so difficult to have Chen Mingren's uprising? First of all, the vast majority of the rebel generals were from miscellaneous armies and local armed forces, and the warlords had been suppressed by Lao Chiang for many years, looking respectful and unconvinced, and it was not surprising that they led the uprising under the obvious change in the balance of the war. After these generals joined the camp of our army, they also received good care and preferential treatment, and most of them were retained a certain status, even military power. Chen Mingren's situation is completely different, and the old Chiang Kai-shek made his fortune in his early years and relied on the Whampoa Military Academy. The sons of the military academy were known as the generals of the Central Army, and Chen Mingren was the elite who graduated from the first phase of Whampoa. In the War of Liberation, he was one of the few Kuomintang generals who won more than we lost, and before Chen Mingren there was no uprising of the Central Army generals of the same rank, and Chen Mingren was the first.
There is another reason related to Chen Mingren's earlier combat experience. In 1947, he once defeated Li Tianyou and other famous generals of our army in Siping City, and became a thorn in Lin Shuai's heart. The Fourth Field Army is also the strongest strategic front of our army, its backbone is the continuation of the Central Red Army and the 115th Division, and many generals of our army have a certain hostility towards Chen Mingren, which makes him have to weigh up the future problems after his uprising (it turns out that he was worried about it later).
Chen Mingren's choice of uprising in Changsha is indeed quite unexpected, and the above unfavorable conditions are not empty. Because of his concerns about the future, Chen Mingren put forward some conditions to our side before the uprising, some of which were even extremely harsh, and were considered difficult to accept, and finally the chairman personally agreed to it. For example, Chen Mingren went so far as to propose that the logo of the troops after the uprising should be hung with the words "The First Corps of the Kuomintang People's Liberation Army." Such a request is astonishing, not made by other rebel generals, and is excessive. It can be seen from this that before Chen Mingren's uprising, there was still the idea of "left and right Fengyuan", to a certain extent, hoping to leave a way out for himself.
But even so, the "First Corps of the Kuomintang People's Liberation Army" was established, and Chen Mingren's troops at the beginning of the uprising bore such a name. Chen Mingren deeply feels that our policy is generous and is very grateful in his heart. However, after just over a month, he repented, and even personally made a request to the chairman: he wanted to revoke this non-trivial name and change it to a new name, why did he do this? How did the Chairman respond to him?
Chen Mingren's request to the chairman to "change the name" of the troops was made in September 1949 when he went to Beijing to attend the CPPCC meeting and met with the chairman. It turned out that in the process of Chen Mingren launching the Changsha uprising, the internal obstruction force was relatively large, and the officers and soldiers did not know the truth, and were seduced by Bai Chongxi and others, and more than 70,000 rebel troops fled back to more than 30,000 people, and finally the Changsha uprising left some regrets, and the whole process was even more thrilling. Without the help of the Four Wild Army, Chen Mingren's uprising might even have failed completely. After the uprising, many people looked at this new corps that still had the word "Kuomintang" hanging on them, and after receiving political education, the liberation fighters in the corps felt that the names of their units were very different, as if they were not really PLA soldiers, and their internal reaction was very bad.
Chen Mingren realized how unreasonable the requirements he had made before were, and the pattern was not high before, and he felt very embarrassed about it. So he had a strong desire to change the unit number as soon as possible, and took the opportunity to meet with the chairman to make this request. When the chairman learned of Chen Mingren's idea, he smiled heartily, immediately approved his request, and hoped that General Chen would not have a psychological burden, saying that he had great merit in the uprising and his military command ability was also outstanding, and took a cordial photo with Chen Mingren at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.