He began his revolutionary career after avenging the death of his uncle, when he fled to become an outlaw and attracted a small personal army around him.

He rebelled against the Kuomintang after Chiang Kai-shek began violently suppressing Communists, when he planned and led the unsuccessful Nanchang Uprising.

After escaping, he organized a soviet in rural Hunan (and later Guizhou), but was forced to abandon his bases when pressured by Chiang's Encirclement Campaigns.

In 1955, his contributions to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party were recognized when he was named one of the Ten Marshals, and he served as China's vice premier.

[1] Born in the Sangzhi, Hunan, he and his siblings, including He Ying, grew up in a poor peasant household, despite his father being a minor Qing military officer.

[citation needed] After the failure of the Nanchang Uprising, He turned down an offer by the CCP Central Committee to study in Russia and returned to Hunan, where he raised a new force in 1930.

[9] He's responsibilities increased during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and in 1943 he was promoted to be the overall commander of Communist forces in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia.

[5] By the end of World War II He commanded a force of approximately 175,000 troops across northwestern China.

Part of He's success was due to the social confusion caused by Japan's Ichi-Go offensive in the areas of China that Japanese operations effected.

He was frequently able to expand Communist areas of operation by allying with local, independent guerrilla forces who were also fighting the Japanese.

He's experience fighting the Kuomintang and the Japanese led him to question Mao's unconditional emphasis on the importance of ideological guerrilla warfare at the expense of conventional tactics and military organization.

[11] In October 1945, one month after the Japanese surrender, the command of He's forces was transferred to Peng Dehuai, which operated as the "Northwest Field Army".

He became Peng's second-in-command, but spent most of the rest of the Chinese Civil War in central CCP headquarters, in and around Yan'an.

[10] After the Japanese surrender, in 1945, He was elected to the CCP Central Committee, and his influence rose within both the military and the communist political system.

Near the end of the Chinese Civil War He was promoted to command the First Field Army, which was active in Southwest China.

[9] He's military accomplishments were recognized when he was promoted to being one of the Ten Marshals in 1955,[11] and he served in a number of civilian positions.

[12]: 139  He was one of the most well-traveled members of the CCP elite, and led numerous delegations abroad, meeting with leaders of other Asian countries, the Soviet Union, and East Germany.

He described the conditions of his imprisonment as a period of slow torture, in which his captors "intended to destroy my health so that they can murder me without spilling my blood".