Nie Rongzhen, 93, Last Marshal Of China's Communist Revolution
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF,
Published: May 16, 1992
BEIJING, May 15— Nie Rongzhen, the last surviving marshal of China's Communist revolution and the man who oversaw the development of China's atomic bomb, died on Thursday, the Government announced today. He was 92 years old.
Mr. Nie died in Beijing of an unspecified illness, the official New China News Agency said. The agency described him as "an outstanding proletarian revolutionary and strategist."
A member of the Communist Party for the last 69 years, one year longer than Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader, Mr. Nie was the oldest of the veteran revolutionaries who still control China and the last of 10 marshals who led the Communist revolution. After his retirement from the Politburo in 1985, Mr. Nie had been in poor health and was not directly involved in decision-making.
One of the last times he took a public role was in May 1989 at the time of the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. When the Government imposed martial law, the official newspapers quoted Mr. Nie as telling students that it was a "false rumor" that troops would use force against the Tiananmen democracy movement. Reported to Oppose Violence
Mr. Nie told the students that the troops had been called in only to preserve order in the capital. Less than two weeks later, the same troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing hundreds and wounding thousands. The reports in Beijing suggested that Mr. Nie had opposed the use of violence against the students, but this was never confirmed. Nor was it clear whether he had been consulted on the decision to open fire.
Mr. Nie's happier moments were in the 1950's and early 1960's, when he headed the commissions in the military that were assigned to develop an atomic bomb.
The result was Beijing's surprise announcement in October 1964: "China exploded an atomic bomb at 1500 hours on Oct. 16, 1964, thereby successfully carrying out its first nuclear test. This is a major achievement of the Chinese people in their struggle to strengthen their national defense and oppose the U.S. imperialist policy of nuclear blackmail and nuclear threats."
The son of a landlord, he was born in Sichuan Province on Dec. 29, 1899. He studied in France and the newly founded Soviet Union before returning to China as a committed Communist in 1925. He served as a political instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy, the training ground for many of China's generals, and took part in unsuccessful uprisings in Nanchang and Guangzhou.
Beginning in 1930, he worked in China's Red Army under Mao Zedong and other future leaders like Lin Biao. He took part in the Long March, the famed trek from a threatened guerrilla base in eastern China to safety in northwest China, and spent much of the 1930's and early 1940's fighting the Japanese forces that then occupied China. He recruited some 150,000 troops to the Communist cause, sending some to other units but retaining 64,000 soldiers under his own command.
After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Mr. Nie fought the Nationalist Chinese forces led by Chiang Kai-shek. Mr. Nie was a primary figure in the battle for Beijing and the neighboring city of Tianjin, and was the Communist negotiator who arranged the surrender of the Nationalist troops in Beijing.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949, Mr. Nie served as Mayor of Beijing and the acting chief of the army's General Staff. It was he who warned the United States that Chinese leaders would not watch "with their hands in their laps" if American forces in Korea crossed the Yalu River. In the end, it was Chinese Army troops who crossed the Yalu to fight alongside besieged North Korean forces in the Korean War. Victim of Cultural Revolution
Mr. Nie was apointed Deputy Prime Minister in 1956, a post he retained until 1974, and beginning in 1957 he served as head of the science and technology commissions that developed China's atomic bomb.
Assailed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mr. Nie protected himself by criticizing those who had been purged, including Mr. Deng, and by emphasizing the importance of his work on the atomic bomb. After Mr. Deng came to power, Mr. Nie worked with him in the 1980's on China's open-door policy and the scientific modernization of the Chinese Red Army.
Little is known of Mr. Nie's family, except that one daughter is Maj. Gen. Nie Li, a key figure in the army's Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.