Qiu Heng
Qiu Heng | |
|---|---|
 | |
| President of the Republic of Daxia | |
| In office December 13th 1951 – May 18th 1964 | |
| Preceded by | Dai Hanjian |
| Succeeded by | Chi Long Qua |
| Personal details | |
| Born | May 16th 1896 Quyang |
| Died | July 18th 1964 Mirzak |
| Cause of death | Leukemia |
| Political party | National Reconstruction Front (Daxia) |
Qiu Heng (May 16 1896-July 18 1964) was a Daxian military officer and politician who served as the second president of the Republic of Daxia from 1951 to 1964; succeeding his old comrade and superior, General Dai Hanjian. Qiu Heng was a recipient of several military awards throught his career including the highest attainable existing one, the Medal of the Republic. He joined the army in 1913 and rose through the ranks, participating in the 1918 suppression of the Liyuan peasant uprising and serving in Rusana during the Al-Dukir War. During the Second Great War he commanded Daxian land forces during the Battle of Ayermer (1936) and became a national figure after its successful conclusion. The disappointing lack of progress on other Daxian fronts and the unchecked popular growth of socialism under the indolent gaze of Emperor Hongli led him to side with his friend Dai Hanjian and together they overthrew the imperial system during the Glorious Revolt; he became second in command of the military junta that was formed to rule the nation.
In 1944 he was promoted to Chieft of Staff of the armed forces and oversaw the rebuilding and expansion of Daxia's military might, and moved its doctrines towards a combined arms approach. As head of the military he supported Lixin Ji's push for the creation of the State Atomic Commission to spearhead the development of a nuclear weapons program. As president he guided the transition from a purely military regime to a hybrid one with the creation of the National Reconstruction Front and extended the latters political dominance and networks of patronage to cover most productive sectors. A lifelong opponent of socialist thought, he fiercely persecuted and jailed leftists throught his tenure, forcing the Communist Party of Daxia back underground. In 1962 he orchestrated the Daxian intervention in the long running Rusani Civil War known as the Little Incursion that swung the battlefield fortunes of the NCDP and allowed it to prevail by 1963. During the last months of his life he progressively forced the devastated Rusana into a subordinate position within Daxia's sphere of influence. He died in 1964 due to complications of leukemia.
Qiu Heng is a divisive figure in modern Daxia, on one hand he is celebrated for his many noteworthy military achievements, for strengthening Daxia's military capacities and for beginning the work of restoring the nation's place at the center of Audonia's power politics. On the other hand his detractors point to him as the principal architect of a repressive system that grew too sluggish and dysfunctional to keep up in the modern world and could only respond with brutality. He is vilified in Western sources especially for his mistreatment of prisoners of war and for the wholesale expulsion of Levantians from Ayermer.
Early life
On May 16 1896, Qiu Heng was born in the village of Quyang (曲阳) to a family of poor peasant farmers. Quyang and the wider province was going through a severe drought at the time so his family moved southeast to Xuhai in order to find work in that city. The family settled in the impoverished Wugou neighborhood, Qiu was enrolled in a local school while his parents found work as factory laborers. It was at this neighborhood school where Qiu met his lifelong friend Dai Hanjian, another student of peasant background. His father died falling from a construction scaffold when Qiu was seven and the family sunk deeper into poverty. Social advancement seemed impossible, except through the army; as luck would have it one of Dai Hanjian's maternal uncles was a lieutenant who helped the both of them be accepted into Zhaozou Military Academy when they reached 17.
Military career
Early military service
Upon graduation in 1917 from the academy with high honors, Heng was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He was assigned to the lead a platoon as part of the 2nd artillery batallion based at Taiqiu near the border with Lakdu. In 1918 his batallion was called into action alongside the rest of the of the 11th artillery regiment in suppressing an armed peasant uprising in Liyuan. Heng demonstrated quick thinking and bravery under fire and his unit served well in the seven months it took to defeat the peasant movement. He received two battlefield promotions to captain, one officer was killed in action and the other one reportedly fell down a set of stairs while drunk and broke his neck. Now leading his own artillery company he was sent in 1920 to the Emirate of Lakdu as part of the forces sent in support of Emir Abdul Razik who was battling the Al-Dukir tribe. With Barpubad's support the Al-Dukir tribal chiefs sought to overthrow Abdul Razik and put one of their own as emir; Razik however was a Qian client and secured the court's support through a large monetary bribe. The war to defeat the Al-Dukirs was brutal and devolved into guerrilla warfare as the tribesmen fought as irregulars and their forces blended very well with the populace. The Al-Dukirs were defeated in 1922 after their last stronghold near the Barpubad border was reduced to rubble by Daxian batteries. Qiu Heng secured an appointment as adjutant to Daxia's military attache to the court of Lakdu where he stayed until 1926. His experiences in southern Rusana would be very helpful to Qiu Heng thirty years later when he organized the Little Incursion. On his return to Daxia he married a cousin of his friend Dai Hanjian, cementing an alliance between the two men that would serve him well in later years.
Second Great War
The outbreak of the Second Great War did not take the imperial government by surprise, a general conflagration in Sarpedon was expected from a revanchist Caphiria. Starting in 1936 the Daxian government joined efforts to cobble together the National-Continental Co-Belligerency League with a strong emphasis on pushing Burgundie out of the continent for good. Daxia's first focus was the liberation of the island of Ayermer, an island close to the mainland that had been occupied by Burgundie for two hundred years that the Qian saw as a sword aimed at them. By this time Qiu Heng was one of the youngest generals in the army, thanks in part to connections made during his service in Rusana and the patronage of General Dai Ju, one of the strong men of the Qian army establishment. An operation was meticulously planned to take Ayermer in the autumn to coincide with a number of uprisings in Burgundie's colonies across the continent that would draw up their resources and attention. Qiu Heng was selected by high command to take charge of the ground elements involved in the operation, some seventy thousand men divided in four divisions and one volunteer Zaclarian brigade. Daxia declared war on the 28 of september of 1934 and the attack on the island began early the next day. A blockade of the island by a Daxian squadron proceeded for roughly a month but was forced to withdraw after under attack by a larger Burgoignesc fleet coming from Umardwal. The arrival of the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible swung the naval battle in favor of Daxia again, blockading the island for good and allowing ground operations to finally begin.
Landings began in October and fierce fighting ensued, the hilly jungle terrain favoring the defenders who also possessed a vast network of defensive tunnels. The greatest casualties for the Daxians was assaulting the intricate underground network; Qiu Heng gave draconian orders that anyone caught inside a tunnel was giving up their right to surrender, soldiers and civilians alike. On February 1935 finally all resistance was extinguished with over 2,500 dead and 37,000 captured Bergendii. These prisoners of war were interned on camps on the mainland as was the entire population of the island. The victory during the Battle of Ayermer favorably boosted Qiu Heng's reputation with the public and imperial court. He was wary however feasibility of the plans made to invade Pukhgundi and avoided taking a command in the offensive to avoid a dent to his newfound popularity should it go badly. He went on medical leave ostensibly to deal with complications from early stage leukemia but he possibly made the affliction up. The Pukhgundi offensive went surprisingly well for Daxia, with enemy forces pushed out the capital Sarkar and of most of the country after that, falling back to a defensive line on the southwestern peninsula. Qiu Heng requested and was granted command of a divisional force and participated in operations to brech the defensive lines, efforts which were ultimately thwarted. On November 1935 Qiu Heng's command post was targeted by artillery, he survived the attack but was left with shrapnel lodged on his left leg which caused him to limp and require a cane for the rest of his life; this incident put an effective end to Qiu Heng's service during the war and began his involvement in politics.
Glorious Revolt and Republic
Qiu Heng ended the war with the rank of full general, as did his friend and colleague Dai Hanjian who was one of the main planners and executors of the offensives in west Audonia and the Caldera operation. He was made chief of staff of the land forces one year after the end of hostilities, both to to install someone seen as a monarchist and to restore the confidence of the army in the leadership. Both him and his colleague Dai Hanjian them believed the home front had been badly neglected by the imperial government and the drug addled emperor Hongli. They especially disliked the growing popularity of democratic and socialist movements and their demands for a liberalization of the political system. To many in the military, the imperial system and bureaucracy had stopped being a guarantee of stability and transformed into a liability that stood in the way of dealing with internal agitators.
The two officers created a secret society named the Lodge of the Righteous Serpents to gather like minded officers and overthrow the Imperial system and replace it with a military dictatorship. On December 16th tank columns aligned with the lodge entered the capital from all sides while squads of soldiers went took over ministries.Other groups went to the houses of ministers to arrest them, the minister of defense was shot and killed after he tried to resist his captors. Qiu Heng himself led the takeover of the imperial palace and the capture of Hongli, forcing the imperial guards to surrender or the emperor and his family would be executed once the palace was inevitably taken. The coup was carried out in two hours and resulted in minimal casualties on both sides, stemming from the element of complete surprise achieved by the putschists and unwillingness on the part of many soldiers to defend the failing monarchy. An ecstatic Dai Hanjian took to the airwaves and announced the Glorious Revolt had succeeded and the era of dynastic rule had come to a definitive end; he declared the formation of the Committee of National Restoration that would lead the country with himself as its head and Qiu Heng as his deputy.
Deputy junta leader
The junta moved quickly to assert its authority and shore up popular support; a line up of technocratic ministers were appointed to replace the old dynasty loyal bureaucrats and the Emperor was made to officially abdicate the throne and renounced the Heavenly Mandate before being put under house arrest until 1948 when he died of complications of diabetes; his teenage son and heir died soon after in unclear circumstances. Hongli's royal consort, Princess Keuto of Metzetta was allowed to depart back to her homeland with two of the emperor's daughters. Many other members of the former imperial family were either put in prison, work camps or sent into exile to Metzetta or Yueguo. A referendum was organized asking the population if it agreed with the junta's capture of power and despite reported instances of pressuring people into voting, threats of violence and transporting people from rural areas on military buses to voting booths the result was overwhelmingly positive with an approval of 86%.
This period is where the political qualities of Qiu Heng first began to rise to the surface, while Dai Hanjian was the public leader and face of the junta and was fairly charismatic, Heng was the real operator behind the scenes. Ambitious officers soon began to be sidelined from the ranks of the junta, some were arrested after being accused of plotting a countercoup or of missappropiating army supplies; by 1948 out of ten military zones, eight were commanded by people considered to be part of Qiu Heng's political clique. If Dai had any misgivings about the growing influence of his friend he gave no indication in public or private conversation that survives; he gave the post of Minister of Defense to Qiu in 1949 and allowed him to staff its structure as he saw fit. Shortly after Qiu began speaking of setting up a political structure to gain more legitimacy in the eyes of influential Western nations, whose financial help might be needed to continue army expansion. The junta leader seemingly disagreed with these notions and intimated that he would get the job done and if necessary would stay on the job for twenty years.
The insinuation of quasi imperial ruling for life was not lost on Qiu Heng who may have begun quiet preparations to oust Dai, or perhaps have him assasinated. According to medical records Dai Hanjian fell gravely ill from a bladder infection of worrisome intensity. Despite all attempts to save his life, the junta leader died on December 12 1951 at the age of 56. Authors critical of Qiu Heng suggest he had Dai poisoned with arsenic to get him out of the way of political reforms and stop his succession plan which may not have included Qiu in it anymore; no conclusive evidence has ever been found to corroborate this accusation. As deputy leader of the Committee of National Restoration, Qiu was sworn in two days later as leader of the junta and the country.
Presidency
National Reconstruction Front
Qiu Heng's ascended to the leadership of the country with his mind set on normalizing the political situation, he saw the perpetuation of the military junta system as inherently unstable, absent an electoral mandate of sorts, any general in charge of a division could see feel themselves justified in attempting to take power the same way as the junta did in the first place. Since Qiu distrusted the established but outlawed old political parties, he decided instead to build a new party from the ground up. As a base he chose a pro-military civic association called the National Daxian Rally-NDR that had existed since 1945 but had never reached much relevance. Qiu directed the Ministry of Social Services and the Ministry of Finance to direct significant financial resources to the NDR to support its growth. The junta leader himself joined the NDR in the summer of 1952 and was elected its leader 'by acclamation' of the party delegates. This was followed by a massive bump in party membership as government employees joined en masse(to curry favor, preserve their jobs or genuine agreement) and trade unions and government contractors enjoined their affiliates and employees to do the same. In this early stage the biggest labor union of the country, the then All-Daxian Workers Central Union negotiated generous terms on collective bargaining and perks for its members in exchange for its unrestricted support for the new political machinery. Qiu Heng announced the first national elections for President and a new National Assembly would take place concurrently in mid 1952, he also announced his candidacy at the head of the now renamed National Reconstruction Front-NRF. To contest in these elections, Qiu's junta released the leaders of the Daxian Liberal Party, while of the more popular communist cadres only a handful were released. The campaigning was anything but fair, opposition events were routinely cancelled or when they went ahead they were not televised or were broken up by thugs. Several campaign aides of the communist party were assasinated and offices of the Liberal Party attacked by mobs (historians agree the mobs were paid by the government). The NRF campaigned mainly on a platform of nationalist xenophobia; its political rivals were painted as inwardly thinking like Bergendii wearing Daxian faces, lovers of all things foreign and traitorous internationalists willing to sacrifice the Daxian people in exchange for utopias being created abroad. On economics the party swung hard towards economic protectionism with policies such as the creation of nationally owned companies on strategic sectors like oil to massively employ people.
Despite the clearly tilted electoral campaign, Qiu Heng enjoyed geniune popularity with the population for his wartime achievements, his role in overthrowing an unpopular monarchy and his penchant for curbing and publicly punishing the excesses of other military officials. In one such instance he demoted a general to the rank of private for proposing that farmers protesting against the building of a railroad through their lands should simply be mowed down with machine guns; the dressing down and demotion was televised. Despite his reserved personality, he actively promoted his public persona as the 'People's General' with working tours of the countryside, visits to factories, children's nurseries and schools; polls of the time giving him a seventy percent preference of the vote may have been skewed but their trajectory was nonetheless true, his advantage over his rivals was an insurmountable chasm. The May 1952 polls resulted in an overwhelming victory for him; the NRF and Qiu Heng won with 73% of the vote, the Liberals won 13%, the Communists won 9% and the Peasant and Farmers Party won 5%. The NRF and the army could comfortably rule alone and had pushed the opposition to the margins of political representation, the Peasant and Farmers Party soon after decided to merge with the NRF arguing their objectives were better served as part of the governing party. The 1952 election was a watershed in the politics of Daxia, it marked the beginning of an almost uninterrupted thirty four year period of rule for the NRF, its percentage in national elections would not dip under eighty percent until 1984 when Yang Qiu secured 'merely' sixty nine percent of the vote during his reelection campaign.
Persecution of communists
The new President and the military establishment despite allowing it to run in elections, still saw the CPD with its radical ideas on wealth and land redistribution, world revolution and its 'massification' of the army, as its main internal enemy. With a strong public mandate secured and with the communists revealing part of their underground networks during the presidential campaign to try and amp up their political mobilization, the government organs began to take aim at them. While CPD parliamentarians were booed and drowned out every day by the NRF majority in the National Assembly, their associates on the outside began to be arrested, assassinated and abducted in plain daylight. In the face of government repressive tactics, the CPD's internal consensus to participate in electoral politics began to crumble and the party withdrew entirely from the Assembly a year before the 1956 election to 'pursue the interests of the people in other fronts', an euphemism for armed struggle. The struggle to rebuild an exhausted organization bled dry by killings and arrests during its three year dalliance with electoral politics was to be a fraught one, the CPD would not be a serious foe at all during all of Qiu Heng's three presidential terms. The party mostly fled the cities other than its birthplace of Khov, preferring to concentrate its cadres in hidden bases in rural locales and this mostly in the far west of the country. Most of the second genertion of communist party leaders were killed during Qiu Heng's first term and the third generation of leaders were mostly from peasant origins; the Red Peasant faction would become dominant in the 1960's and 1970's and were fairly disconnected from the industrial urban worker class.
Stabilizing growth
During Qiu Heng's presidency the country saw sustained economic growth, a period known as the Stablizing Growth that was fueled by import substitution and low rates of inflation. An important factor helping the sustained growth in the period was the reduction of political turmoil, particularly around national elections, with the creation of a single, overly dominant party. Qiu Heng nationalized all of the oil fields, the railroads, the telephone companies and the ports; many of these companies had been owned by members of the Qian elites and now passed into the hands of the state which created vast and byzantine hierarchies of bureaucrats to manage these massive state companies. And of course the All-Daxian Workers Central Union made sure new syndicates were created to go with the new shiny state companies, new dutiful 'soldiers' of the NRF system. In 1956 the National Development Bank was founded to fund the expansion of the industrial sector and the building of massive infrastructure projects such as improving the road networks and electricity generating hydroelectric dams. A fully fledged import-substitution program which stimulated output by boosting internal demand was put in place. The government raised import controls on foreign consumer goods but relaxed them on capital goods (such as machinery for domestic production of consumer goods), which it purchased with accumulated international reserves. This period also saw massive investment in education, enrollment at the primary and secondary levels quintupled from the levels reached in 1945. The higher employability and earning power of this growing skilled labor pool stimulated the internal consumer market and the expansion of the middle class. Daxian strong economic performance continued into the 1960s, when GDP growth averaged about 8 percent overall and about 3 percent per capita. Consumer price inflation averaged only 4 percent per year. Manufacturing remained the country's dominant growth sector, expanding 12 percent annually and attracting considerable foreign investment. Mining grew at an annual rate of nearly 5 percent, trade at 6 percent, and agriculture at 6 percent. By 1970 Daxia had diversified its export base and become largely self-sufficient in food crops, steel, and most consumer goods. Although its imports remained high, most were capital goods used to expand its own domestic production.
The Little Incursion
Another area of importance that Qiu Heng sought to address during his terms in office was the rebuilding of the traditional Daxian sphere of influence, nations like the newly formed Rusana(a state composed of former Qian tributary states) and Canpei had drifted out of their relations of dependence. The Rusani Civil War had been raging almost since he was first democratically elected and he wanted the disruption to border security and trade to end. He also was unwilling to countenance a victory of the 'Front for the Defense of the Homeland' or FDH, a grouping of conservative and islamist forces who were extremely hostile to Daxia. The FDH wanted to expel all Daxians and ethnic groups related to them from Rusana, these groups totaled some fifteen percent of the population at the time. Qiu Heng was convinced the FDH's secular opponents, the National Congress for the Defense of the People (NCDP) led by Farrukhzad Khosa, were unable to achieve victory on its own after almost nine years of war. After a series of meetings in November 1962 with Farrukhzad Khosa, an agreement was finalized to 'assist the legitimate government of Rusana in restoring its territorial integrity'. The state propaganda apparatus began driving the narrative that ethnic Daxian's were in grave danger of annihilation and that a short and victorious war was needed to save them. On December of the same year some forty thousand Daxians entered into Rusana from the Xiazhai Pass in the far south; this military action would be known as the Little Incursion in Daxian history, after the term the president used for the operation.
Boosted by Daxian mechanized forces and modern aviation, the NCDP began a series of successful offensives over the course of two months that pushed the FDH back towards the Mursi river in disarray and then forced them across with terrible losses of men and vehicles. Some 7,000 men from the FDH are thought to have been killed fighting to defend the FDH perimeter on the south bank of the Mursi as its limited transport capacity struggled to ferry as many of the trapped troops to the other side. The FDH lack of modern planes meant that their armored columns were prone to being destroyed by enemy aviation before they could be properly deployed for battle or were blown up piecemeal as sitting ducks. By July 1963 the NCDP had made further advanced north and retaken the capital of Tabish almost without a fight, the FDH too battered and demoralized to be able to mount an effective defense even with the benefit of fighting on an urban area, which favors the defenders. Only a month later the two sides of the civil war signed a cessation of hostilities that froze the conflict lines, the FDH only controlled a corner of territory in the northwest, some 8% of Rusana while their rivals controlled the rest of the country. Qiu Heng had maintained his promise to the people and delivered a short and victorious war. The NCDP began the process of reasserting its control over the destroyed country and rebuilding its political structures, only now heavily in debt to Daxia politically, militarily and economically; with numerous Daxian bases established in its territory. The Rusana Patriotic Alliance which is the direct political successor of the NCDP continues to steer Rusana into its neighbor's embrace, to the point of dependence.
Final years
Starting in 1962 the president began to suffer the debilitating effects of leukemia, a disease he has been accussed of faking during the Second Great War. Quite real now by all accounts, he rarely appeared in public but to do rare public addresses; he practically lived in the building of the War Ministry during the Little Incursion to manage the war from there. On December 1963 he had to be hospitalized for an acute infection that left him bedridden. With the president's health in dire state, the issue of succession should he die jumped to the forefront in the minds of the country's political and military elites. They settled on general Chi Long Qua, commander of Daxian forces during the Little Incursion and a political unknown. Qiu Heng was said to dislike the man but his say on the matter was practically ignored, he fell into a coma in mid May of 1964 and died in July 18th just a few months short of the end of his term. The government declared a week long period of mourning after the state funeral took place, Qiu Heng was then buried in a specially built mausoleum that was called the Temple of the Republic. Even today the PDD commemorates Qiu Heng's birthday with events in the mausoleum, there have been proposals to paint its roof yellow to more closely depict Qiu Heng as aligned to the Party's views.
Personal life
Qiu Heng was married twice during his lifetime. His first wife was Li Shenfi, a cousin of Dai Hanjian with whom he had one daughter named Qiu Yue. Qiu Yue became a physicist and worked on the State Atomic Commission and was a university lecturer. After Li Shenfi died of stomach cancer, Qiu Heng married one of his secretaries named Cui Yang, a woman twenty years younger than him. They had a son named Qiu Kezhen who became a lawyer and had several positions in the central bureaucracy.
Legacy
Qiu Heng is a divisive figure to this day. His achievements before his presidency especially the recapture of Ayermer are still celebrated for restoring Daxia's territorial integrity. During his twelve year presidency he created the foundations upon which the modern state rests, grew the economy and lifted millions from poverty. But he also built the repressive system which the Party of Daxian Democrats began to follow like a blueprint and later began to add to and made their own. In recent years the Party has decidedly inducted Qiu Heng into its pantheon of national heroes, harnessing his achievements as precursors and guidelines for of the Party's own.