Hong Kuo-shu
Hong Kuo-shu was a politician and political theorist active during the Republican Era in Laeral. A member of the Republic of Laeral's ruling clique known as the Gang of Five, Hong held numerous government positions from 1923 to 1952, including serving as Prime Minister, Vice-President, and Party Secretary of the Social Democratic Party. A highly-effective guerrilla leader, Hong led the Rose Army in Western Laeral during the Laeralian Revolution, and later drew on this experience to write On People's War, a foundational manual on guerrilla warfare which became widely read by insurgents and revolutionaries worldwide.
He was appointed as Director of the National Rural Reconstruction Administration, responsible for land reform, following the Laeralian Revolution. A leading light in the Republican government's rural programs and as Interior Minister, Hong was named as the leading Social Democratic Party candidate in the 1932 Laeralian legislative election. Serving as prime minister for five years, Hong next became vice-president of Laeral during President J.P. Salaun's second term. A Gramontist theorist as well as a public official, Hong authored the Scientific Program for Virtue and Self-Strengthening during his tenure as Vice President, his crowning contribution to the Gramontist literature.
As a skilled political actor who had gained influence within the party and respect for his service as Vice-President, Hong became the leader of a powerful "vermilion" or "countryside" faction within the SDP, which opposed the liberalization programs of President Zhou Wei-lin. After the party's liberal "scarlet" faction triumphed in the power struggles of 1951-2, Hong and his supporters in the military attempted a coup in summer 1952, known as the Bloody Summer. When rebel forces were defeated, Hong was brought to trial in 1953, where he was sentenced to death.
Early Life
Hong was born in rural Sendrasi in 1885, the second-eldest of five children. His father was a low-level civil servant, allowing Hong to pursue an education. With the financial assistance of a sympathetic provincial minister, Hong attended high school and pursued college study equivalent to an associate's degree. Briefly appointed as a railroad stationmaster in 1908, Hong subsequently taught history at a lycée in Jinyu, where he was known for his fascination with military affairs. In this time, Hong joined the 6th of May Society, a secret society dedicated to liberal values, before leaving the organization due to its early endorsement of Augustin Brienne's policies as prime minister. In addition to his work as a teacher, Hong served as editor and chief copywriter at an underground newspaper, Current of Today, where he criticized government policies and endorsed socialism, land reform, and racial equality. He was briefly imprisoned in 1912 after criticizing the First Fellsian War, and was later conscripted into the army as a private, serving from 1914 to 1916.
Laeralian Revolution
With the outbreak of street violence in 1918 at the start of the Laeralian Revolution, Hong was immediately arrested only to be freed from prison in Jinyu during a riot. Assuming leadership of rioters in Jinyu due to his role at Current of Today, Hong attended the Renfeng Convention, where he became a member of the Committee for Democracy and Progress, signed the Renfeng Platform as the delegate for Therese, and first met fellow members of the Gang of Five, including René Gramont.
Hong's return to Jinyu was prevented due to the defeat of the uprising there. Returning home to Sendrasi in winter 1918, Hong assumed command of local forces using his status as a Renfeng Platform signatory. Alongside his brothers, Hong led the Rose Army's forces in the "Peichen Triangle" of Sendrasi, Meilun, and Fuxing provinces. Hong proved an exceptional guerrilla commander and overran government outposts in many cases without a fight, occasionally clashing with rival revolutionary groups such as Chang "the Cripple" Shuo-bin's Zhao nationalists. In the Peichen Triangle as in much of Western Laeral, fighting during the Revolution was chaotic with few fixed battle lines and frequent violence against civilians on all sides. Hong's forces were responsible for torching Arrivée villages and executing Arrivée captives and Loyalist collaborators. Most infamous was the Shougouang Massacre in Jianguo, where guerrillas under Hong's authority executed over 100 civilians in the village of Shougouang.
The effectiveness of Hong's military leadership is widely respected, as Hong built up Rose Army forces in the region and pushed Loyalist forces out of the Peichen Triangle entirely by late 1919. In September 1919, the Committee for Democracy and Progress named Hong as commander of the Western Front with the rank of Major General, on an equal footing with Yang Ching-tsan and J.P. Salaun and subordinate only to Gramont himself. Operating largely autonomously, Hong successfully subdued or subordinated all rival military forces in western Laeral over the course of 1919 and 1920. Under Hong's orders, soldiers in western Laeral carried out land reform, redistributing agricultural land from Arrivée settlers to Rén farmers. During his period as commander of the Western Front, Hong also wrote The Struggle in Western Laeral, which was later expanded into the 1925 book On People's War, a defining text on guerrilla warfare.
Republican Politics
In 1923, Hong was appointed as Director of the National Rural Reconstruction Administration, responsible for rural development and land reform. Although perhaps the position was intended to marginalize him, particularly at the behest of his rival General Yang Ching-tsan, the land reform program was wildly popular and Hong made himself a household name nationwide through his skill at self-promotion. In 1927, Hong's reputation as an efficient administrator led him to be named Interior Minister, responsible for rural development, public lands, and internal security. From this position, Hong began to develop a network of followers within the military and state apparatus; for instance, his brother Hong Shou-hsun was appointed as governor of Jianguo. After suppressing an uprising in Cenefort, Hong assumed military leadership in 1929 as Chief of the General Staff, the military's highest ranking officer, replacing his rival Yang Ching-tsan.
In 1932, Hong was appointed as the Social Democratic Party's leading candidate in the 1932 legislative election and assumed the role of Prime Minister. In this role, he sought to expand the SDP into a mass party and pursue collectivization of economic enterprises, as well as carrying out President J.P. Salaun's anti-clerical measures. He disliked the prime ministership's distance from his rural base of support and felt marginalized by Salaun and Vice-President Sun Jia-wei, and by 1937 at the Fourth SDP Congress, he engineered his own selection as Vice-President. By 1937, Hong had become a full member of the informal clique of SDP leaders which became known as the Gang of Five, which made collective decisions on the nation's course during the 1930s and 40s.
By 1942, having served five years as vice-president, Hong anticipated that he would be selected as Salaun's successor at the Fifth SDP Congress. However, his rivals in the party's moderate wing began a rumor campaign that Hong was morally dissolute and aimed to concentrate power among his own followers, successfully ensuring the selection of Zhou Wei-lin as president and Alban Hamel as vice-president. Hong was forced to accept a relative demotion as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense in Tsai Ming-yan's government, although true power in that cabinet was generally considered to rest with Hong. With influential followers such as Fai Chao-ming, whom Hong engineered as leader of the powerful Social Democratic Internal Investigations Office, Hong's power grew to rival that of President Zhou.
1923-1927: Director of the National Rural Reconstruction Administration 1927-1929: Interior Minister 1929-1932: Chief of the General Staff 1932-1937: Prime Minister 1937-1942: Vice-President 1942: defeated in bid for presidency by Zhou Wei-lin 1942-1947: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense 1947: defeated in bid for presidency by Sun Jia-wei 1947-1952: Deputy Prime Minister and SDP Party Secretary 1952: defeated in bid for presidency by Sun Jia-wei; Bloody Summer coup attempt
Former president René Gramont, meanwhile, had at this time distanced himself from internal party politics, instead concerning himself with cultural endeavors and his theoretical texts. In 1947, at the Sixth Social Democratic Party Congress, Hong's influence in the party meant that Zhou's renomination as president was blocked, yet, unable to engineer his own elevation to the presidency, Hong instead secured the position of Party Secretary. Coining the maxim "the conductor is the train's helmsman and the wheels only its base," Hong argued for the Party's reassertion of control over Laeralian public life.