Ye Fei (May 1914 – 18 April 1999) was a Filipino-Chinese military general and politician of the People’s Republic of China.
Born Sixto Mercado Tiongco Yap in the Philippines to a Chinese father and a Filipina mother, he joined the Chinese Communist Party at a young age and fought many battles as a senior commander of the People’s Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. At age 40, he was among the first PLA commanders to be awarded the rank of General by the newly established People’s Republic of China and later served as Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Navy. He also served in a number of civilian posts including Governor and Communist Party Chief of Fujian Province, and Minister of Transport.
Ye Fei was born Sixto Mercado Tiongco on 7 May 1914 in the town of Tiaong in the then-named Tayabas Province, in the Philippines. His father was Yap Sun Uy (葉蓀衛; Yap is the Minnan pronunciation of the Chinese surname Ye), a Chinese merchant from Nan’an, Fujian Province who had moved to the Philippines in 1900 and adopted the Filipino name Tiongco. Yap converted to Catholicism in order to marry Ye Fei’s mother Francisca Mercado, a Filipina from a local Catholic family.
Ye Fei’s original Chinese name was Ye Qiheng (葉啟亨).
