Chen Geng (; 27 February 1903 - 16 March 1961) was a Chinese military officer who served as a senior general in the People's Liberation Army. Enlisting in a warlord's army at the age of 13, Chen Geng joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1922 and was accepted into Whampoa Military Academy in 1924. He approached Chiang Kai-shek and even saved his life by preventing him from committing suicide. He served as a Communist spy in the National Revolutionary Army for 6 years. After being discovered, he joined the Communist base in Jiangxi and participated in the Long March. He fought the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and then the Nationalists during the Chinese Civil War. Once victory was obtained, he went to Vietnam to help Hồ Chí Minh against the French during the First Indochina War and then participated in the Korean War with the People's Volunteer Army. He became a senior general in 1955. He then founded an academy of military technologies but died before finalizing the ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. Biography Born in Xiangxiang, Hunan, Chen Geng is the second child in a sibling group of 12. His grandfather Chen Yihuai () was an officer in the Xiang Army led by Zeng Guofan, a statesman, military general, and Confucian scholar of the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911). After his retirement, Chen Yihuai bought agricultural land with the reward, and by the time Chen Geng was born, his family owned several hundred mu and became one of the wealthiest in the region. Chen's father named Chen Daoliang and his mother named Peng Xuexian. But as his only older brother dies young from illness, Chen becomes the eldest son of the family. At 13, his father arranged a marriage with a daughter two years older, but Cheng refused the marriage and left his family to join the warlord's army. It is a disillusioned Chen who left the army at 18 and found a job at the Hunan Railway Bureau as a receptionist. During this period, he met Mao Zedong. Chen joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1922 and studied at Whampoa Military Academy in 1924. Chen, , and , were considered the top three students of the academy at the time. Chen gained the confidence of Chiang Kai-shek and became commander of his garrison. In October 1925, during the second campaign against the local warlord