Ye Ting Statue

Ye Ting, born in Huiyang, Guangdong, was a Chinese military leader who played a key role in the Northern Expedition to reunify China after the 1911 Revolution. He started out with the Kuomintang but later joined the Communist Party of China.

Ye was the eighth child of Ye Xi and Wu Shi.:3Ye joined the Kuomintang when Sun Yat-sen founded it in 1919 and became a battalion commander in the National Revolutionary Army in 1921. In 1924 he studied in the Soviet Union, joining the CPC in December of that year, and transferred to the Institute of Red Professors for his military education in February 1925.:5-6 In September 1925 he returned to China to serve first as staff officer, then as independent regiment commander, in the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army.