People
Political and party leadership
People’s Republic of China state institutions
Background: China
Clear all
- Mao Zedong 毛泽东 He rewrote the grammar of revolution for a peasant country
- Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇 CCP chief theoretician and PRC Chairman (1959–68), designated successor to Mao who was purged as China's foremost 'capitalist roader'
- Peng Zhen 彭真 Beijing mayor purged as the Cultural Revolution's first major target, then the architect of post-Mao China's legal-institutional foundations
- Rao Shushi 饶漱石 The East China leader purged with Gao Gang in the “Gao–Rao anti-party alliance”, the People’s Republic’s first high-level purge
- Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 The paramount leader who redirected China through reform and opening
- Hu Yaobang 胡耀邦 The reformist general secretary who rehabilitated the Cultural Revolution’s victims and freed thought; his death sparked the 1989 protests
- Zhao Ziyang 赵紫阳 From Sichuan’s farm reforms to general secretary, the reformer who opposed martial law in 1989 and died under house arrest
- Hua Guofeng 华国锋 Mao’s designated successor — “With you in charge, I am at ease” — who arrested the Gang of Four and was eased out by Deng Xiaoping
- Jiang Zemin 江泽民 The “core” plucked from Shanghai in 1989 who led post-Tiananmen China into the market economy and the “Three Represents”
- Wang Hongwen 王洪文 The Shanghai worker-rebel who rose “like a helicopter” to party vice-chairman, youngest of the Gang of Four