Long March and the Second Sino-Japanese War During the 1930s, Li served as a
political commissar in the
Red Army, and participated in the
Long March. During the
Second Sino-Japanese War, Li commanded military actions against the Japanese invasion in the northwest of China, including Inner
Mongolia and
Shanxi. In 1942, he joined the
Counter-Japanese Military University in
Yan'an, working under the direction of
Lin Biao.
Sichuan In 1949, working with
He Long and
Liu Bocheng, and Li commanded his troops to occupy all of
Sichuan province. It was then that he met
Deng Xiaoping, the secretary of the Southwest Bureau responsible for Sichuan, with whom he had a long working relationship. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Li became one of the dominant political figures in Sichuan. As in other areas of the Southwest, public security was a major early concern and
Mao Zedong praised and rewarded leaders who forcefully approached "anti-bandit" activity and the
Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries.
Socialist Transformation and Conflict with Tibetans in Sichuan (1955–1957) In October 1955, Mao Zedong called for an acceleration of agricultural collectivization around China. While Mao had explicitly exempted Tibet from this campaign, he had also left many decisions to local officials and warned them that those who were not able to carry out the cooperatives would simply be replaced. Chinese officials gathered together Tibetan peasants to provide "class education" and prepare for land reform and cooperatives, and also attempted to disarm the Khamba Tibetans, many of whom owned rifles. These steps angered local Tibetans and in February 1956, a number of uncoordinated attacks began against Chinese officials and soldiers, reaching most of Ganzi's eighteen counties. The Litang Monastery was a particular site of resistance; the Tibetans there had about a thousand rifles and when Chinese officials demanded they disarm and start land reforms in February 1956, a decision was made by the Tibetans to fight, and some Chinese workers were attacked on March 9, 1956.
Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) After
Mao Zedong launched the
Anti-Rightist Movement in 1957, Li became more radical, persecuting more than 50,000 "bourgeoisie rightist" elements, which represented 10% of the rightists persecuted nationwide during the movement. From 1958 to 1961, he participated enthusiastically in the
Great Leap Forward movement. Li's radical policies created major food shortages in Sichuan (a province famous for its crop surpluses), particularly the impoverished hilly ethnic regions in the mountains of western Sichuan and Chongqing where most of the people who were starved to death in the province were from, indicated that famine in the province was widespread, leading to the deaths of over 8 million people from starvation, disease or murder during the Great Leap Forward according to official statistics. In 1961, Li was made
Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of the Southwestern Bureau of China, and retained his position as Party Secretary of Sichuan province. Li, however, was dissatisfied with the agricultural results in Pi county where Mao had visited. According to Yang Jisheng's extensive history of the Great Leap Forward in Sichuan, Li Jingquan supported Mao strenuously throughout the campaign, even in periods when Mao's line seemed to be losing momentum. During the campaign, Li received a large number of county-level documents in Sichuan (then included all areas of Chongqing and parts of Tibetan areas), in particular the impoverished hilly ethnic regions in the mountains of western Sichuan and Chongqing where most of the people who were starved to death in the province were from, indicated that famine in the province was widespread. However, he chose to emphasize that other reasons such as hookworm might be responsible for deaths, downplayed major problems in the pork supplies in Sichuan, and pushed forward with overreporting grain totals even at the times when Mao himself had instructed the Party not to inflate the numbers. Sichuan therefore became one of the worst-hit famine provinces during the Great Leap Forward, with estimates as high as eight to ten million excess deaths.
Third Front construction During the
Third Front campaign to develop basic industry and national defense industry in China's rugged interior in preparation for potential invasions by the United States or the Soviet Union, Li was appointed in 1964 to lead the Southwest Third Front Preparatory
Small Group. This administrative body was established to oversee regional construction and planning. He was released in 1972 and rehabilitated in 1973.
Later life (1977–1989) Following the Cultural Revolution, Li served as a vice-chairman of the
Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and as a member of the
10th and
11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. ==Personal life==