Xiao Ke

▪ 2009

      Chinese military official and writer

born July 14, 1907, Jiahe county, Hunan province, China

died Oct. 24, 2008, Beijing, China

was the last surviving military leader of the Long March (1934–36), the epic 10,000-km (6,000-mi) trek of the Chinese communists into northwestern China. Xiao was the commander of the Red Army's Sixth Army group, which suffered the loss of some 6,000 of its 9,000 troops in an attack by Nationalist forces at the outset of the march. Xiao later served as Red Army field commander Lin Biao's chief of staff. Although named a general in 1955, Xiao was subsequently denounced by Mao Zedong and spent several years in rural exile before being rehabilitated in the 1970s. Xiao became a member of China's Central Military Commission and was a vice-chairman of the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He was known for his opposition to the use of troops to suppress the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989—a position he refused to retract despite political pressure to do so. Xiao was also a notable writer; he received a Mao Dun Literature Prize in 1988 for his novel Bloody Heaven.

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