Last PLA 'founding general' in Long March dies at 111

Retired Major General Zhang Lixiong, a centenarian veteran of the People's Liberation Army, died in Nanjing, the capital of East China's Jiangsu province, on Tuesday at the age of 111.

Zhang was the last PLA "founding general" to have participated in the Long March, a strategic operation undertaken by the Red Army between 1934 and 1936. Founding general is an unofficial honorary title given to military officers who were conferred the rank of major general, lieutenant general or general in the PLA before 1966.

He was also one of the longest-serving members of the Chinese military.

Born into an impoverished farmer's family in Shanghang county, Fujian province, in November 1913, Zhang was a child laborer at a paper mill until he joined a clandestine group led by the regional branch of the Communist Party of China in 1929.

In 1931, at the age of 18, he became a member of the CPC. The next year, he enlisted in the Red Army.

Zhang took part in armed actions against the ruling Kuomintang regime before the CPC-led revolution met great setbacks and the major branch of the Red Army was forced to engage in strategic redeployment operations, later dubbed the Long March.

He was a political instructor at the time and fought in many battles.

In the following years, Zhang led soldiers in fighting the Japanese invaders and then in combat against Kuomintang forces, finally witnessing the founding of the People's Republic of China in October 1949.

He then remained in the military, in posts including deputy commander of the former Yunnan provincial command and deputy chief of staff of the former Kunming regional command.

In 1955, when the Central Military Commission conferred ranks to service members for the first time, the veteran warrior received the rank of senior colonel. Six years later, he was promoted to major general.

Zhang was a senior consultant to the former Fuzhou regional command before he retired from active service in 1983.

After his death, only one founding general remains alive, 100-year-old Wang Fuzhi, who joined the Red Army in 1935 and was deputy commander of the Urumqi regional command before retiring.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn