China: Ren Bishi (1904-1950), Chinese communist military and political leader, commander of the Sixth Red...

Ren Bishi (30 April 1904 - 27 October 1950) was a military and political leader in the early Chinese Communist Party. He was born in Hunan. In the early 1930s Ren commanded the Sixth Red Army and occupied a soviet in Hunan, but he was forced to abandon his base after being pressured by Chiang Kai-shek's Encirclement Campaigns. In October 1934 Ren and his surviving forces joined the forces of He Long, who had set up a base in Guizhou. In the command structure of the new 'Second Front Army', He became the military commander and Ren became its political commissar. He and Ren abandoned their base and participated in the Long March in 1935, a year after forces led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De were forced to abandon their own bases. Ren was considered a rising figure within the Chinese Communist Party until his death at the age of 46. He was the 5th most senior Party member of the Chinese Politburo before his death.