In February 1949, in accordance with the instructions of the Central Military Commission, the East China Field Army was officially reorganized into the Third Field Army, which consisted of four corps and a special forces column. The four corps were the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Corps. The commander of the Seventh Corps was Wang Jian'an, and the political commissar was Tan Qilong. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Wang Jian'an was awarded the rank of general, but Tan Qilong was not awarded the title because he left the military system. However, Tan Qilong was highly regarded locally and was an unranked general who had served as secretary of five provincial party committees.
In fact, Tan Qilong had a very unfortunate childhood. When he was less than ten years old, his parents left him one after another, and Tan Qilong became an orphan. In desperation, he was forced to come to the landlord's house and work as a cowherd. During this period, he was often bullied by the landlord, and often did not have enough to eat. He suffered a lot. Under this situation, Tan Qilong could not see any hope.
However, when he was 15 years old, the Red Army came to Tan Qilong’s hometown of Yongxin County, Jiangxi.
Here, the Red Army attacked the local tyrants and the common people got the land. In this way, the army that made the decision for the people could not be unsupported by the common people. Tan Qilong also saw hope in the Red Army and signed up to join the Red Army without hesitation. In this way, Tan Qilong became a "red kid".
At the beginning, because Tan Qilong was young, he mainly served as Young Pioneer captain or inspector. As he grew older and gained experience in the previous anti-"encirclement and suppression" struggles, Tan Qilong quickly grew up and held some important positions, such as Secretary of the Northwest Special Committee of the Communist Party of China in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi Province.
After the failure of the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, Tan Qilong did not participate in the Long March, but stayed in the south and carried out three years of extremely arduous guerrilla warfare. After the full-scale Anti-Japanese War broke out, the guerrillas in the south were reorganized into the New Fourth Army. In this way, Tan Qilong became a member of the New Fourth Army. He once served as the political commissar of the New Fourth Army's East Zhejiang Guerrilla Column. During this period, Tan Qilong did a lot of work to lead the anti-Japanese resistance behind enemy lines in the East Zhejiang region.
During the War of Liberation, the East Zhejiang guerrilla column led by Tan Qilong was incorporated into the East China Field Army and participated in a series of battles such as the liberation of Shandong, Huaihai , and Jiangsu and Zhejiang. After the liberation of Zhejiang, Tan Qilong also participated in the takeover and stayed in Zhejiang to serve as the second secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. The first secretary was Tan Zhenlin, the former deputy political commissar of the East China Field Army.
In 1952, Tan Qilong became the first secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. During this period, Chairman Mao came to Zhejiang for an inspection and recognized Tan Qilong at a glance as the cowherd boy. Unexpectedly, time passed by and the cowherd boy had grown into the secretary of the provincial party committee.
In 1954, Tan Qilong was transferred to Shandong and served as the First Secretary of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee. Because Tan Qilong served in a local government department and had left the army, he did not participate in the subsequent conferment ceremony and became an "unranked general." However, at the local level, Tan Qilong was a proper "frontier official". Since then, Tan Qilong has also served as Secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee, First Secretary of the Qinghai Provincial Party Committee, and First Secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee, and was re-elected as Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee of five provinces. This kind of resume is very rare in the party.
In addition, while serving as secretary of the local provincial party committee, Tan Qilong also took care of the political commissar work of the local military region. For example, Tan Qilong served as the political commissar of the Jinan Military Region and Chengdu Military Region, and also served as the political commissar of Zhejiang, Shandong, Qinghai, Sichuan and other provincial military regions. This shows that the achievements of this "unranked general" are indeed extraordinary.
However, Tan Qilong’s life experience was not smooth sailing. He was persecuted during the Ten-Year Special Period and was isolated for review in 1966. Later, with the intervention of Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou, he came back and arranged his work. This can be regarded as a kind of "tempering" for Tan Qilong.
In the 1980s, Tan Qilong gradually retreated to the second line and was twice elected as a member of the Central Advisory Committee. After retirement, he chose to settle in Shandong. In 2003, Tan Qilong died of illness in Jinan, Shandong at the age of 90.
