Yu Qiuli

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Yu Qiuli (1955)

Yu Qiuli ( Chinese  余 秋 里 ; born November 15, 1914 in Ji'an , Jiangxi ; † February 3, 1999 in Beijing ) was a Chinese lieutenant general of the People's Liberation Army and a politician of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who, among other things, from 1975 to 1982 Vice Prime Minister and a member of the CCP Political Bureau . The participant in the Long March of 1934/35 was an important figure during the reign of Mao Zedong and is considered to be the founder of today's oil industry in the People's Republic of China and a supporter of the modernization of the People's Liberation Army during Deng Xiaoping's de facto term in office .

Life

Participant in the Long March, officer and minister

Yu Qiuli came from an impoverished peasant family and participated in a peasant uprising in 1928 at the age of fourteen. In 1930 he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and was one of tens of thousands of guerrillas and their supporters who began the Long March in 1934 to break the blockades by the national Chinese around the communist bases in southern China . In 1935 he suffered an arm wound during a battle with Chinese national units, but continued to take part in the breach of hostile territories towards northern China . After completing the Long March, his arm had to be amputated nine months later. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, which began on July 7, 1937 and lasted until 1945, and the Chinese Civil War , which lasted until 1949 , he was a leading political commissar and training officer in the communist army.

After the communist victory and the establishment of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, Yu became head of the military academy and then took on various functions within the central military command, such as head of the army's finance department with the rank of lieutenant general . In 1958 he was appointed Minister of the Petroleum Industry, playing a central role in government during the Great Leap . After the discovery of the Daqing oil fields in 1959, he was largely responsible for the development of Daqing into a model city of the Chinese economy. The marshland of Daqing, which had been plagued by mosquitos in the summer and in permanent ice in the winter, was expanded under his leadership to become the largest oil production center in the country and a synonym for proletarian heroism. Following the example of Daqing, he developed several other main production centers in the following years before the People's Republic of China became self-sufficient in oil in 1964.

In 1964, Yu Qiuli moved to the most important economic ministry of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and became vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission . As such, he was named by Mao Zedong in 1965 to be primarily responsible for the third five-year plan and thus the leading person for economic growth in the hitherto backward hinterland of southwest China . He survived the Cultural Revolution that lasted between 1966 and 1975 without any significant loss of power.

Vice Prime Minister and Member of the Politburo

Yu was on the IX. Elected a member of the CCP Central Committee in 1973, and appointed Vice Prime Minister alongside Deng Xiaoping in 1975 . After Mao Zedong's death, he became a member of the CCP's Politburo in 1977 , making him one of the highest governing bodies of the ruling Communist Party. In this function he was considered a member of the so-called "Petroleum Faction", a group of older party officials who spoke out in favor of using the income from oil exports to finance imports of high technology from the West. This group were basically conservative Stalinists in their economic way of thinking, who promoted central planning and heavy industry and with their strategy ran into contradiction with the rising Deng.

With the increase in power of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, the influence of the oil faction waned. Yu himself was forced to criticize himself after a Japanese- operated drilling platform collapsed in Bohai Bay in 1979 . He then lost his post as deputy chairman of the State Planning Commission and became chairman of the State Energy Commission instead. In 1982 he was recalled to the People's Liberation Army and appointed head of its Political Central Administration after the previous head Wei Guoqing was dismissed for an article critical of Deng in the military newspaper. Despite his differences with Deng Xiaoping over his economic policies, Yu Qiuli was seen as largely unleashed from ancient Maoist ideology, allowing him to help modernize the military. Between 1982 and 1984 he was also a member of the State Council and from 1982 to 1987 Vice Secretary General of the Central Military Commission .

In 1987 Yu Qiuli resigned from his offices as a member of the Politburo, as Vice-Secretary General of the Central Military Commission, as a member of the Central Committee of the LPCh and as head of the Political Central Administration of the People's Liberation Army. He was succeeded in this post by General Yang Baibing .

Background literature

Web links

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Yu is the family name here, Qiuli is the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Yu, Qiuli
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 余 秋 里 (Chinese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese lieutenant general, minister and official of the CPC
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Ji'an , Jiangxi
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1999
Place of death Beijing