The second-most powerful man in the CCP who wielded virtually autonomous power in Manchuria, then walked into Mao's trap and fell
'This medal should go to old pockmarked Gao Gang': Peng Dehuai, receiving the DPRK's highest award in Pyongyang, July 1953, crediting Gao's logistics and rear-base work
A CCP leader who rose from Shaanxi guerrilla bases to become the party, state and military boss of Manchuria (Dongbei), the PRC's most industrialized region, and a vice-chairman of the Central People's Government in 1949. During the Korean War, as commander and commissar of the Northeast Military Region, he organized the entire rear base and logistical network for the Chinese People's Volunteer Army; Peng Dehuai later said the medal he received 'should have gone to old pockmarked Gao Gang' for his home-front work. Summoned to Beijing in 1952 as chairman of the State Planning Commission to lead the First Five-Year Plan, he attempted to displace Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai from the Party hierarchy, a power play that Mao first encouraged then turned into the Gao-Rao Anti-Party Alliance purge. Placed under house arrest, he killed himself with sleeping pills in August 1954.
Career Timeline
- 1926Joined the Chinese Communist Party
- 1932–1935Co-founded the Shaanxi-Gansu Soviet base; provided terminus for the Long March
- 1941Member, Central Rectification Campaign Leading Group
- 1945–1952Deputy Secretary then Secretary, CCP Northeast Bureau; Chairman, Northeast People's Government; Commander and Commissar, Northeast Military Region
- 1949Vice-Chairman, Central People's Government
- 1950–1953Commander, Northern Frontier Guards; overall responsibility for CPVA rear bases and logistics
- 1952–1954Chairman, State Planning Commission; led the First Five-Year Plan
- 1954Purged in the Gao-Rao Anti-Party Alliance affair; suicide in August