Hong Xuezhi, 94; helped lead China’s military in Korean War

Hong Xuezhi, 94, a retired general who was a vice commander of Chinese military forces during the Korean War, died Monday of an illness, the official Xinhua News Agency announced.

In 1989, near the end of his long career, he lost his post as deputy secretary-general of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, reportedly because he opposed the use of the army to crush the Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

During the Korean War, Hong was vice commander and head of logistics of the Chinese People’s Volunteers military forces, which China sent to help North Korea against U.S.-led United Nations and South Korean troops.

He also participated in cease-fire negotiations and in 1955 was promoted to general.

Hong was purged from the party and his military post in 1959 because of his close links to then-Defense Minister Peng Dehuai. Peng was fired for criticizing Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” economic experiment of 1958, the mobilization of peasants into self-sufficient “people’s communes.”

Red Guards harassed Hong during Mao’s Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when he served as director of Jilin province’s agricultural and mechanical department and director of the petrochemical bureau.

In 1977, after the Cultural Revolution ended, he became director of national industry in the State Council and was made a member of the Central Military Commission, which sets military policy, where he was later promoted. His rank of general was restored in 1988.