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Nie Rongzhen




Nie was born in Jiangjin county in Sichuan , near Chongqing , the cosmopolitan and well-educated son of a wealthy family. In 1920 Nie joined the group of Chinese students in France on a work-study program, where he studied Engineering and became a protégé of Zhou Enlai . Zhou recruited him in 1921 when Nie was performing technical-scientific studies in Belgium , and he joined the Communist Party in 1923 . A graduate of the Soviet Red Army Military College and Whampoa Academy , Nie spent his early career first as a political officer in Whampoa's Political Department, where Zhou served as Director, and in the Chinese Red Army . During the Second Sino-Japanese War , he was first assigned as the deputy division commander of the 115th division of the Eighth Route Army , with the commander being Lin Biao , and in the late 1930 s he was given a field command close to Yan Xishan 's Shanxi stronghold. In the Chinese Civil War he commanded the Northern Chinese Field Army, and with his deputy Xu Xiangqian , his force defeated Fu Zuoyi 's forces in Tianjin near Beijing . During the Korean War , Nie took part in high command decision making, military operations planning, and shared responsibility for war mobilization. Nie was made a Marshal of the PLA in 1955 and later ran the Chinese Nuclear Weapons Program . He was purged during the Cultural Revolution .


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