Xiong Zhaoren

Xiong Zhaoren (; February 1912 – 7 April 2019) was a Chinese Communist military officer who fought in the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War. His role in the 1949 Yangtze River Crossing Campaign was adapted into the 1954 film Reconnaissance Across the Yangtze directed by Tang Xiaodan. He was awarded the rank of major general in 1955 and served as deputy chief of staff of the Fuzhou Military Region. He lived to the age of 107, the longest-lived founding general of the People's Republic of China.

Wartime career Xiong was born in February 1912 in Yongding, Fujian, Republic of China. He enlisted in the Chinese Red Army in 1929, joined the Communist Youth League of China in 1931, and became a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1933. After the Red Army went on the Long March toward Yan'an in North China, Xiong remained in the south and fought a guerrilla war against the Kuomintang government for three years.

The Chinese Civil War was suspended with the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and Xiong joined the CCP's New Fourth Army and fought against Japan. Starting as a company commander in the Fourth Regiment of the army, he rose through the ranks to become battalion commissar, chief of staff of the New Third Regiment, political commissar of the 47th Regiment, and deputy commander of the Third Military Subdistrict of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military District. He disappeared from public life during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). After re-emerging in 1977, he again served as deputy chief of staff of the Fuzhou Military Region from 1980 to 1982.

Legacy Xiong's role in the 1949 Yangtze Crossing Campaign is celebrated in the 1954 film Reconnaissance Across the Yangtze , He is the prototype of the leader of the People's Liberation Army unit glorified in the film, which became a major hit in the 1950s. It won the Chinese government's Best Film Award in 1957 and was remade in colour during the Cultural Revolution.