Yang Hucheng

Yang Hucheng (26 November 1893 – 6 September 1949) was a Chinese general during the Warlord Era of Republican China and Kuomintang general during the Chinese Civil War.

Warlord years
Yang Hucheng joined the Xinhai Revolution in his youth and had become a popular warlord of Shaanxi Province by 1926. Following the defeat of Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan in the Central Plains War of 1930, Yang allied himself with the Kuomintang's Republic of China government (the Nanjing Nationalist government), and became commander of the Kuomintang's Northwestern Army. Ordered to destroy the newly established Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stronghold at Yan'an with Zhang Xueliang's Northeastern Army in 1935, both Yang and Zhang were impressed with the Communists' determined defense and fighting capabilities. They were also convinced by the CCP proposal for a united Chinese defense against the Japanese invasion of China, in contrast to the Kuomintang strategy of "first internal pacification, then external resistance", a policy under which the encroaching Japanese forces were appeased in order to buy time to defeat the CCP.

Xi'an Incident
In November 1936, Kuomintang chairman Chiang Kai-shek flew to Xi'an in early December to speak to troops under the command of Yang and Zhang who no longer wanted to fight the CCP. On the night of December 12, 1936, bodyguards of Yang and Zhang stormed the cabin where Chiang was sleeping and attempted to arrest him. Although Chiang managed to initially evade capture, he was injured in the process and was arrested the following morning by Zhang's forces.

Yang and Zhang forced Chiang into negotiations with CCP representatives Zhou Enlai and Lin Boqu, which resulted in peace between the Nationalists and Communists and the Second United Front against the Japanese invasion, with Chiang taking command of the CCP forces. In the aftermath, Zhang Xueliang returned to Nanjing with Chiang Kai-Shek, where he was arrested upon their arrival, and Yang was later secretly arrested.

Imprisonment and execution
Yang remained imprisoned in Chongqing throughout the rest of the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1949, acting Chinese president Li Zongren, who favored negotiations with the CCP, ordered the release of Yang Hucheng, but the order was not implemented. On 10 June, the Central Supervisory Committee of the Kuomintang decided to permanently expel Yang from the party.

Shortly before the Communist capture of Nanking near the end of the Chinese Civil War the Chinese army prepared to abandon Chongqing, where Yang was imprisoned. On 6 September 1949, on the orders of Chiang Kai-Shek, Yang Hucheng was executed alongside his son, his daughter, his secretary Song Qiyun and Song's wife and son at the Sino-American Cooperative Organization headquarters in Happy Valley near Chongqing. Some of Yang's officers were executed in November that same year, shortly before the CCP's capture of Nanjing near the end of the Chinese Civil War. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Yang and his family and cohorts were buried in what is now the Martyrs Cemetery of General Yang Hucheng (杨虎城烈士陵园) in Chang'an District, Xi'an, in a funeral officiated by Peng Dehuai. However during the Cultural Revolution, Yang was considered a "Kuomintang reactionary" in the eyes of the Red Guards, and his tomb and tombstones were smashed. Some of Yang's surviving family members joined the CCP.