Talk:Zhu De

Untitled
The list for Ten Marshals for People's Republic of China contains only 9 names; Liu Bocheng was missing from the list. Is there anyway that the list is curved blackets be edited?

I've added some additional information to this article and deleted some things like ". After he returned to China, Zhu served in a training regiment of Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang army and Chief of Public Security in Nanchang. Following two arrests for revolutionary activities in China, he was exiled. " which are completley incorrect. Not Worth Waiting For 07:24, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Zhou Enlai's recruit
It's been said that Zhou Enlai recruited him in Berlin and turned him from warlordship to communism.

Takima 23:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Edgar Snow (Red Star Over China, p. 465) says he joined the CCP in Berlin "through the influence of" Zhou Enlai.DOR (HK) (talk) 07:23, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Read Smedley's biography for the accurate account. He'd been a warlord and was mistrusted when he tried to join the Communist movement. Zhou's role was to decide he could be trusted. --GwydionM (talk) 11:28, 24 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Snow points out that Smedley's work on Zhu's early life was from secondary sources, whereas his own was from personal interviews. DOR (HK) (talk) 07:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Early Years
I've added a few bits about the 1920s. DOR (HK) (talk) 04:11, 25 April 2008 (UTC) And added further details and footnotes. Liebatron (talk) 05:08, 28 February 2013 (UTC) www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDzhu.htm states that Zhu De was the son of a wealthy landlord. But Spartacus quotes Red Star Over China. I have that, so I looked it up.

The original 1936 edition did not include biographical information about Zhu De's family, however it did mention that "Helped by his family's political influence, he was accepted in the new Yunnan Military Academy", making it unlikely that he was born to a tenant farming family. However the 1960 revised version includes a list of biographical sketches based on unpublished original notes from Snow's interview notes and on another work, The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh. (NY 1956) The biographical sketch clears some things up; Zhu De's immediate family was a poor family, and the idea that it was also a tenant farming family would be expected under the circumstances, "Chu Teh was born in Hung, Szechuan, on December 18, 1886, in a family which had emigrated from Kwantung. He was one of thirteen children." This doesn't fit with Snow's initial account and Li Chiang's interview stating that his family had political influence, however that is explained soon thereafter, "The Author was told that Chu Teh came from a family of rich landlords. In reality his father was an impoverished peasant; at the age of nine Chu Teh was adopted by a prosperous uncle, who helped educate him." This is more fitting with the idea of his family helping him gain admission to a school.

Also the statement that his ancestors came from Guangdong appears to be based on a broad, sweeping statement that "Most of the Hakka people there are migrants who were forced by Manchurian rulers into Sichuan Province from Guangdong, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces during the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)." Although Zhu De may be a Hakka, Snow's report states specifically, not in a broad sense, where his family emigrated from.

I'm going to change the article to reflect this; specifically stating that

'Zhu De was born in Hung, Sichuan, on December 18, 1886. Zhu De was one of thirteen children in his family, a poor tenant farming family recently emigrated from Kwantung to Sichuan. At age nine, Zhu De was adopted by his prosperous uncle, who later helped him gain admission to the Yunnan Military Academy.'Liebatron (talk) 05:08, 28 February 2013 (UTC)Liebatron 2-28-2013

Check Dates
I don't know what dates this guy really was Head of State of the People's Republic of China and 2nd Chairman of the NPCSC, but if he died in 1976 it certainly wasn't in May of 1981. :) Can someone who knows the real answer please fix that? Pyran (talk) 15:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out; I've corrected it and removed the erronous reference to Marshall Zhu as PRC President. DOR (HK) (talk) 03:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Zhu and Opium
Could somebody confirm or infirm the following story I heard from a Chinese historian: Zhu quit opium not in a Shanghai hospital (as written in almost all Wikipedia sites - except the chinese one who doesn't say a word about it) but on a boat, completely isolated in the middle of a remote lake. The story seems a little bit hagiographic, yet Zhu is also well know to be a strong personnality... Any comment would be welcome Thanks Thomas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.158.226.33 (talk) 03:22, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

So far the only references that point out Zhe De was a warlord and smoke Opium is from the pro-Taiwan writer. This seriously put the reliablity of the source into question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.124.72.82 (talk) 18:39, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If you can reference any sources that contradict the references that you keep removing then please do so. Keep in mind that there is no place for original research on Wikipedia. See: No original research. Rafał Pocztarski 19:00, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Lynch's Mao mentions that Zhu De had an addiction to opium (p.66). Zhu admitted as much to Agnes Smedley (in The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh), hardly an anti-Communist source. That Zhu was an opium addict in the 1920s does not appear to be in dispute among serious historians. --Yaush (talk) 19:49, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Unreadable Garbage
Large parts of this are so badly written that the meaning is impossible to discern.221.213.126.88 (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

What "neutrality dispute"?
There is nothing in the Talk pages that warrants this label. Would someone please remove it? Thanks. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Removed POV label
Removed POV label pending supporting discussion. However, this article does have severe problems, with many factual errors, references that are irrelevant to the places referenced, disconnected paragraphs, and confused or contradictory claims. Use at your own risk until a rewrite is available. Rgr09 (talk) 14:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Commander in Chief
If the post has revived, that is utterly different from being a successor. Maybe a new section should be added to explain. --GwydionM (talk) 08:12, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Recent changes - October 2020
My main objection is that he was a conventional warlord for many years and then quit this role to become a Communist. The change obscures that.

Please rethink and be more accurate, if you want to make changes.--GwydionM (talk) 09:25, 18 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Zhu was a warlord for 11 years, and a communist commander for 50. If you want to mention that some 20% of his adult life was spent as something other than a communist, perhaps you should think about justifying that decision. .DOR (HK) (talk) 22:35, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

General and strategist
Someone thought they were the same. Generals mostly command a battle, tactics. Not all get an independent command, which needs some skill at strategy.

Tactics is about winning battles. Strategy is about winning a war, sometimes without battles. GwydionM (talk) 07:24, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Later life / recent edit
Is there some reason for the "Order Number One" sending officials out of Beijing and Zhu's status on the Politburo / Standing Committee? Having the two in the same paragraph implies there is a link, but none is mentioned. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 22:40, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Zhu De's Hakka roots (or lack thereof)
Smedley's The Great Road (the cited source of the info that Zhu was not a Hakka) is a bit ambiguous on this subject: she never explicitly writes that Zhu wasn't a Hakka but instead refers to others as Hakka in a way that implies Zhu himself was not, e.g. "General Chu Teh’s chief of staff, General Yeh Chien-ying, was himself a Hakka, as were many of his troops and a number of his commanders" (p. 23). The biography of Zhu De (朱德传) compiled by the CPC Central Committee Party Literature Research Center (中共中央文献研究室) and published in 1993 (with a revised edition in 2006) states the following about Zhu's Hakka roots (pagination from the two-volume reprint of 2016):

"朱德的祖上原是广东省韶关县的客家人. Zhu De's ancestors were originally Hakkas from Shaoguan County, Guangdong Province. (p. 1)"

"朱德回到家乡后，用祖上传下的客家话问堂兄弟：“你们为啥都这么黄皮寡瘦，说话都吊不起气？” After Zhu De returned to his hometown, he asked his cousins in the Hakka language handed down from their ancestors: 'Why are you so sallow and thin? Why is it so exhausting to speak?' (p. 834)"

These appear to be the only mentions of Zhu De's Hakka ancestry in the entire 890-page text, which suggests he didn't make much of it. That might account for Smedley's apparent unawareness.

I could just go ahead and add this info to the article, since I think a quasi-official biography compiled within the last few decades trumps an ambiguous passage in an unfinished biography from the 1950s. But I thought it best to bring it up here first in case anyone has more insight into this question. -206.77.150.85 (talk) 23:32, 13 November 2023 (UTC)