Sun Yi, 100; Military Leader Fought Japanese, Nationalists in China
Sun Yi, 100, a Chinese military commander during World War II and the communists’ rise to power, died July 5 in Beijing of natural causes, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.
Born in northern China’s Hebei province, Sun joined the Communist Party in 1933 and fought both Japanese invaders and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. Sun also participated in the epic Long March: the Red Army’s 7,750-mile retreat west to escape Chiang’s forces in the mid-1930s.
After the communists took power in China in 1949, Sun was a department chief in the People’s Liberation Army and became a mid-ranking general in 1955, Xinhua said.
Sun was also a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a top-level advisory body to the legislature.
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