In the Huaihai Campaign, which was determining battle of the Chinese Civil War, he failed to save General Huang Baitao's 7th corps and later committed suicide on the battlefield.

When the KMT-CCP split occurred, he was arrested along with other Chiang protégés by the Communist government in Wuhan under Premier Wang Jingwei and they somehow managed to escape to Nanjing.

In 1934 he was sent to Germany to study tank warfare and became a student of Heinz Guderian in the Prussian Military Academy, when he returned to China he became a founding member of the nationalist armored troops, and was assigned as chief of staff of the Training Division, one of Chiang's elite units.

In 1942, after working as a staff officer for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, he was promoted to lieutenant general, and became the commander of the 5th corps and participated a number of actions against the Imperial Japanese Army in Yunnan province.

The Communist moles inside nationalist high command, which included the deputy chief of staff and director of the war planning board start to spread rumors that resulted in a complete breakup of any working relations between the two generals.

But after 11 days of seesaw fighting, 160,000 nationalist troops were unable to break the defense lines of the opposing 170,000 communist soldiers, On 22 November, General Huang Baitao took his own life in his headquarters and the 7th army was lost.