Su Yu was born in Huitong County, Hunan province on August 10, 1907 to an ethnic Dong family, but he considered himself a Han Chinese. He was the third child among six siblings. Su's father was Su Zhouheng, his mother was Liang Manmei, and the family depended on the 30 mu of inherited farmland for survival. By the age of 18, Su Yu entered the Hunan Provincial 2nd Normal School at Changde for his post-secondary education.
In the Second Sino-Japanese War, he won the Cheqiao Campaign against the Japanese Army. After this, he had some other campaigns in Central Jiangsu. He was also responsible for expanding communist power bases in Shandong and Jiangsu provinces by attacking nationalist-controlled cities; the nationalist forces under General Gu Zhutong retaliated by wiping out a large segment of communist troops in the New Fourth Army Incident, which marked the end of the united front. During the war, Su Yu was the commander for New Fourth Army's first division, he established himself as one of the Communist armed force's most capable commander, won a series of skirmish campaigns against overwhelming enemy - KMT Army, Puppet regime force and Japanese Army. By the end of war, he was made Commander in Chief for Communists' Central China's Military Region, cover a vast region in East Central China.
Chinese Civil War
During the Civil War, Su Yu started as second in command for Communists's East China Field Army, eventually made to second in command of Third Field Army by the end of war. The successes of the battle persuaded Mao Zedong to change his military strategy of the Chinese Civil War, from traditional guerrilla style warfare to a more mobile and conventional approach. In July 1946, he led 30,000 communist troops which triumphed over 120,000 American-armed nationalist troops in seven different engagements, captured and killed 53,000 Kuomintang soldiers and stunned the country. The Central Jiangsu Campaign was the first of many of the brilliant campaigns that defined his legacy. He was also the commander of the PLA in the famous and much propagandized Menglianggu Campaign. In this campaign, the elite Nationalist Seventy-Fourth division was completely destroyed after Su Yu succeeded in encircling the unit. He was the major commander during the Huaihai Campaign. It was at his suggestion on January 22, 1948 that the two armies of Liu and Su followed a sudden-concentrate, sudden-disperse strategy that led to this decisive victory in late 1948, with the destruction of five Nationalist armies and the killing or capture of 550,000 Nationalist soldiers. Su's army alone destroyed 4 nationalist armies, and was the decisive force in destroying the fifth.
After the establishment of the PRC
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, it was rumored that Su Yu was the commander that Mao wanted to lead the Chinese People's Volunteer Army into Korea, because of his experience of commanding a large number of troops. However, because of his illness, neither Su nor Lin Biao was able to command the CVA. In the end, Peng Dehuai was selected. He was made a da jiang in 1955. He served in numerous positions, including Chief of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Department in the 1950s. In his later years, he published The Memoirs of Su Yu. He died in Beijing on February 5, 1984 at the age of 77.
Family
Su Yu married Chu Qing in February 1941. They had three children, all of whom joined the PLA. The eldest son Su Rongsheng was born in 1942, followed by the second son Su Hansheng, and the youngest, a daughter Su Huining, who married Chen Xiaolu in August 1975. Chen Xiaolu was the youngest son of Chen Yi who was Su Yu's direct superior during wartime. According to Su Rongsheng, Su Yu was an extremely strict father. When Su Rongsheng was only three years old, Su Yu forced him to learn how to swim by giving him only a piece of bamboo as a float, and pushed him into the water in front of his mother, and prohibited anyone from attempting to save Su Rongsheng. Su Yu's wife, Chu Qing was outraged and asked Su Yu angrily whether he was not worried about Su Rongsheng being drowned. But Su Yu answered that Su Rongsheng would have never learned how to swim any other way and besides, he was not being drowned. At age of 20, Su Rongsheng joined the PLA and remained in service for 45 years, rising from an ordinary soldier to a lieutenant general when he retired as the deputy commander-in-chief of Beijing Military District at age 65.
