Zhang Qinqiu

Zhang Qinqiu (; November 15, 1904 – April 22, 1968) was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, military commander, and politician. She was one of the first female members of the Chinese Communist Party, and one of the 28 Bolsheviks trained in Moscow. A high-ranking commander of the Fourth Front Army of the Chinese Red Army during the Long March, she is often considered the only woman general of the Red Army. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, she served as Deputy Minister of Textile Industry. She was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and committed suicide in 1968.

Early life and education

On 15 November 1904, Zhang Qinqiu was born to an affluent family in Shimen, Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province. She entered Hangzhou Girls Normal School (now Hangzhou No. 14 High School) in 1920, before going to Shanghai for further education. In Shanghai she met the famous novelist Mao Dun (Shen Yanbing), who was married to Zhang's elementary school classmate Kong Dezhi, and his younger brother Shen Zemin, one of the earliest members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In 1924, Zhang entered the sociology department of the left-wing Shanghai University, where Shen Zemin was an instructor and the early Communist leader Qu Qiubai was the department head. Zhang joined the CCP in November 1924, becoming one of the first female CCP members. She married Shen Zemin a year later.

After the Xi'an Incident in December 1936, the Kuomintang government and the CCP suspended their civil war and formed the Second United Front to resist the Japanese invasion. Zhang was released and sent to Yan'an, the de facto capital of the CCP.

Zhang's husband Chen Changhao had in 1938 gone to the Soviet Union for medical treatment, where he later lived with a Russian woman. Zhang divorced Chen in 1943, and married her third husband Su Jingguan (苏井观), an army doctor. She was a member of the Women's Committee of the Central Committee of the CCP in the 1940s, and attended the Second International Federation of Democratic Women of 1948 in Budapest.

People's Republic of China After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Zhang was appointed Vice Minister of Textile Industry, partly because of her earlier experience of organizing textile workers in Shanghai in the 1920s. Her husband Su Jingguan (died 1964) was appointed Vice Minister of Public Health. As a civilian, she did not receive a military rank when the People's Liberation Army first awarded them in 1955, even though many of her former subordinates, including Chen Geng, Xu Shiyou, Hong Xuezhi, and Liu Huaqing, were awarded the rank of general or grand general.