Talk:Peng Dehuai

message: These were other major issues in the 1959 dispute.  Peng had made the army more professional and less political, changes reversed when Lin Biao replaced him.  He had also shown signs of not liking the break with Moscow.  Mao in 1959 was in too weak a position to have removed Peng if others had not also been suspicious.
He may also have been blamed for the unsuccessful confrontation over Taiwan the previous year:
"On Sept. 17 [1959] Peking announced that Marshal Lin Piao had succeeded Marshal Peng Teh-huai as defence minister…
"Marshal Lin Piao was commander-in-chief of the people’s liberation army which conquered the whole of mainland China in 1948-49, but owing to a breakdown of health he was inactive for many years.  His return to health and to official activity was indicated when, in 1958, he was appointed a member of the Politburo.  Marshal Peng, whose fame was not enhanced by the failure of the Quemoy operation in 1958, remained a deputy prime minister."
(Britannica Book of the year 1960)
At the time, there was little dispute that the weather was a major cause of China's problems.  "China entered 1959 in a mood of confident but grim sobriety.  The high tide of effervescence had markedly diminished…  It was made clear later, in party and other pronouncements, that though Mao had relinquished the post of chairman of the republic, he remained not only head of the party but the most potent personality in the regime…
“The increasing preoccupation with the weather, which began when vast areas in north and northeast China suffered a lack of snowfall and spring rain, grew steadily with the constant threat of floods throughout the southern provinces and a persistent plague of locusts in the region along the yellow river…  The deluge in June (which brought 30 in. of rain to Hong Kong in five days) moved northward, flooding the countryside as it moved, so that the greater part of the country south of the Yangtze was seriously affected."  (Ibid.)
Mao was probably thinking long-term.  He gave one of his major jobs to Liu Shaoqi, who had no significant army support.  He removed Peng and replaced him with Lin Biao, whose military reputation was at least equal to Peng and who would support Mao later when he launched the Cultural Revolution.
People should also think about the alternatives.  Suppose Peng had replaced Mao rather than the other way round.  Would China have ended up as another North Korea, sticking to the Soviet link to the bitter end?
--GwydionM 21:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  1959 dispute 

message: Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 20:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008 

message: 1) In paragraph "Fall from power" it is stated that "This statement would later cost him his life during the Cultural Revolution." However, in "Persecution, death, and exoneration" it is stated that "He died of cancer in November 29, 1974". Could anyone help with this? Did he died from cancer, or during the Cultural Revolution?
2) Again in "Persecution, death, and exoneration" it is mentioned that he was "beaten 130 times until his internal organs were crushed and his back splintered". If this is true, I would assume that he was fataly wounded and possibly died due to implications and not from cancer? Anyhow citations would be very helpful if anyone knows these details!Xebeche (talk) 13:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: All of these issues have since been resolved.Ferox Seneca (talk) 20:59, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguities in text 

message: Given the news and mass entertainment sources are typically not reliable history resource, I move the below statement from main article to here so that other people can find better sources to support those statements before move it back to main article space.
* According to Chinese record, Stalin has favored Peng over Russian counsel of NKPA,calling Peng "talented militar".十大元帅中谁被斯大林称为天才军事家？
* Peng had accumulated a lot of bias against another prominent general Su Yu so in 1958,after harsh accusation such as secretly relating with Russia, Su was relieved of all positions, not to be rehabilitated until his death. Such conflict has lingered until now. For example the Biography of Peng accuses Su of abusing power as Chief of Staff, signing an aborted attack on Matsu Islands and withdrawing troops from Noth Korea without authorization.http://news.ifeng.com/history/zhongguoxiandaishi/200912/1215_7179_1475023_2.shtml
Cheers. Jim101 (talk) 17:03, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The first statement is probably true: Peng had a good relationship with Soviet military leaders, and this probably extended to Stalin. I do not believe that the second claim is completely accurate, though. The only book I have read that discusses the relationship between Peng and Su is Domes, who states that Deng turned on Su and scapegoated him at the urging of Mao Zedong, which alienated Deng from Su's allies, including at least two of the other "Ten Marshals". Domes believes that Mao's actions were part of a plan he had to isolate Peng politically, so that Mao could more easily remove Peng from power. The bad relationship between Peng and Su only occurred as the result of a plot by Mao, and the fact that Peng bought into it only made it much easier for Mao to remove Peng from office the next year, in 1959.Ferox Seneca (talk) 16:06, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving questionable source information from main article to here until better sources are found. 

message: The tagged section is sourced to Peng's standard English-language biography, and the information included in the section is a fairly close paraphrase of what the book says. Domes is an academic historian: he is a reliable source. My understanding of the content was that the primary source(s) the author found describing that event did not state the outcome of the event clearly, and so the outcome "could not be known" according to the author's research. I think that is a reasonable and honest interpretation.
The old Red Guards (and their children) that I have met have been very reluctant to talk in any detail about the things that they did or witnessed during the Cultural Revolution. It isn't unreasonable that the people who took part in persecuting Peng Dehuai would not be enthusiastic about advertising their participation, especially to foreign researchers. 
If you are interested in how this event might have ended, I encourage you to do more research on the subject and clarify the article. Something might have turned up since that book was written, but calling reliably-sourced, reasonable interpretations "dubious" in the body of an article without submitting alternative reliably sourced information violates WP:OR.Ferox Seneca (talk) 07:07, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: "dubious" tag 

message: The following quote appears in the article right now:
> On May 4 Peng's forces attacked an isolated supply depot in northeast Shaanxi, arrested its commander, and captured food reserves, 40,000 army uniforms, and a collection of arms that included over a million pieces of artillery.[32] 
This is flatly impossible. For reference, artillery production for the entirety of WW2, for the USSR, USA, and British Empire combined, was 1,000,151 pieces.  This has to be a misinterpretation of the source material somewhere along the line. A million total weapons, including some artillery, is quite possible, but the vast majority of those weapons would be infantry weapons (rifles, pistols, etc.). The cited work is quoted accurately (see here), but the authors are both from the international relations side of things, not military. I don't have a good source on what the captured materiel actually was, so I'm reluctant to edit it myself, but I'll tag it Dubious. Alsadius (talk) 13:32, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Captured artillery 

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thread_title:  Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion