Gu Junshan (; born October 1956) is a former lieutenant general in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China who was sentenced to prison for corruption. He served as the deputy director of the PLA General Logistics Department (GLD) from December 2009 to February 2012. During his tenure he oversaw the consolidation and sale of military real estate assets. Prior to that, he served as the chief of the barracks and housing division of the GLD, in charge of upgrades to the facilities and residences of army personnel.
Born into a family of farmers, Gu joined the military when he was 17 years old. He worked in Northeast China, but was transferred back to his home province during the downsizing of the PLA in the 1980s. He then worked in logistics coordination for the Jinan Military Region, and was rapidly promoted thereafter. Gu attained the rank of major general (shao jiang) in July 2003 and lieutenant-general (zhong jiang) in July 2011. Gu was removed from office in 2012, as the authorities opened a far-reaching corruption investigation which resulted in the seizure of many Gu family assets. In 2015, Gu was tried and convicted on charges of bribery, embezzlement, illegally moving public funds, and abuse of power by a military court, and sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.
Biography
Early life
Gu was born and raised in the village of Dongbaicang (), in the outskirts of the city of Puyang, Henan. He was the son of Gu Yansheng (), a farmer born in 1924, and a woman from a neighbouring village. Gu Junshan was the eldest of six children. Gu studied at Dongbaicang Primary School (), then he attended Nanlixiang Middle School (). He was considered a "troublemaker" during his teenage years, and an unremarkable student.
In 1971, Gu joined the People's Liberation Army and was assigned to Shenyang Military Region, in China's northeast. He operated instruments for a local air force division as a cadet in Liuhe County, Jilin. Gu was considered a mediocre soldier in terms of technical ability and competence, but was adept at managing relationships with his officers. However, he received "poor" ratings several times in his performance evaluations, and was publicly reprimanded several times by his superior Zhang Longhai (). Gu was widely recognized in his division, however, for his adept ability to earn the trust and patronage of higher-ranked officers, sometimes through doing favours or giving gifts. Gu also became involved with Zhang Longhai's daughter, Zhang Shuyan. The elder Zhang was initially reluctant about the pairing, even going as far as transferring Gu into a different town to take up a job training new soldiers in order to avoid further liaisons with his daughter. However, eventually Gu and Zhang married anyway.
Career in Puyang and Jinan Military Region
In June 1985, the government announced a significant scaling down of the PLA, forcing soldiers to pursue other professions. Gu was transferred back to work in his hometown of Puyang, Henan province, and remained in the military with the help of his father-in-law, Zhang Longhai. His wife was given a job in Puyang's police department. In the next decade, Gu worked as a military liaison with the Zhongyuan oil field () of Sinopec. Zhongyuan sponsored several programs in the local military, including a jointly operated rubber factory. By this point, Gu had earned the rank of major (shaoxiao), and soon rose to become one of the people in charge of the office running the joint military-business operations in the area. He mainly worked to manage relationships between the factory and various government and military stakeholders. Gu's detractors say that he used this period to profit off of selling commodities at inflated prices and then dividing the spoils to earn favours, though his immediate superior had a positive impression of Gu's work, saying that he was very competent and excelled at any task he was given.
By March 1993, Gu had become the Puyang military district's chief of logistics. In 1994, Gu was noticed by a visiting general from Jinan in neighbouring Shandong province, who spoke highly of his work and later transferred him to work in the production department of the Jinan Military Region. A few years later he was offered a leading post at the Jinan PLA Ground Force College (). He then went on to study at the PLA National Defence University, a breeding ground for China's top military brass.