Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1893–1976 ○ Natural causes

He rewrote the grammar of revolution for a peasant country

In a letter of 5 January 1930 to Lin Biao, he answered pessimism about the Red Army's prospects by invoking the old Chinese saying that 'a single spark can start a prairie fire.'

Born to a peasant family near Shaoshan, Hunan, he studied in Changsha and was shaped by the 1911 Revolution and by nationalist and anti-imperialist currents. Introduced to Marxism while working as a librarian at Peking University, he took part in the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and in July 1921 attended the Chinese Communist Party's First National Congress in Shanghai as one of thirteen delegates, becoming a founding member. He developed rural base areas, guerrilla warfare and protracted people's war; elected to the leadership at Zunyi in January 1935, he became Chairman of the Military Commission in November 1935 and took the party chairmanship only in 1943. He led land redistribution and industrialisation, intervened in the Korean War in October 1950, suppressed opponents, and presided over the Great Leap Forward of 1958–1962 and the Cultural Revolution launched in 1966.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1898–1969 ○ Died in prison

CCP chief theoretician and PRC Chairman (1959–68), designated successor to Mao who was purged as China's foremost 'capitalist roader'

'Fortunately, history is written by the people' — Liu's final words to his family in 1969, before being transported under guard to Kaifeng.

An early organizer of the CCP labour movement, he led the Anyuan coal miners' strike and built trade unions in Shanghai and Wuhan. His 1939 lectures 'How to Be a Good Communist' became a foundational text of Marxist party-building theory, and he was instrumental in enshrining Mao Zedong Thought in the 1945 Party Constitution. As PRC Chairman from 1959, he led post-Great Leap Forward economic adjustment with pragmatic measures including 'three freedoms and one guarantee,' which put him on a collision course with Mao. Denounced as the 'commander of the bourgeoisie headquarters' during the Cultural Revolution, he was expelled from the Party in 1968 and died in detention in 1969; Deng Xiaoping fully rehabilitated him as a 'great Marxist' in 1980.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1902–1997 ○ Blood cancer

Beijing mayor purged as the Cultural Revolution's first major target, then the architect of post-Mao China's legal-institutional foundations

"Chairman Mao was not without any mistakes either. … Even if Chairman Mao's prestige is not as high as Mount Everest, it's still as high as Mount Tai. Even if you shovel off a few tons of dirt, it's still just as high" — at the 1962 Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, publicly criticizing Mao

A founding CCP member in Shanxi (1923) who rose through the anti-Japanese war and civil war to the Politburo in 1945. As Beijing mayor and first party secretary (1951–66), he governed the capital for 15 years as a loyal party stronghold. In February 1966, his 'February Outline' tried to contain the Cultural Revolution within academic debate; Mao annulled it and had Peng purged as a 'counter-revolutionary revisionist,' subjected to over 53 public struggle sessions, the Cultural Revolution's opening act. Rehabilitated under Deng Xiaoping in 1979, he chaired the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, pushed seven foundational laws through the NPC in three months, and as NPC Standing Committee chairman (1983–88) laid the institutional foundations of China's post-Mao legal system.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1903–1975 ↓ Arrested 1955 · died in prison

The East China leader purged with Gao Gang in the “Gao–Rao anti-party alliance”, the People’s Republic’s first high-level purge

Ran East China with Chen Yi, then moved to Beijing in 1953 to head the Central Organisation Department. Purged with Gao Gang in 1954, stripped of party membership in 1955; died in custody in 1975, never rehabilitated.

From Jiangxi, he became political commissar of the New Fourth Army after the 1941 incident and, as secretary of the East China Bureau in the civil war, ran the region with Chen Yi. After 1949 he chaired the East China military-administrative committee and headed the Central Organisation Department. Accused in 1953–1954 of plotting with Gao Gang to displace Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, he was condemned as the “Gao–Rao anti-party alliance” and arrested in 1955. Held without trial, he died in prison in 1975 and, unlike Gao Gang, was never formally rehabilitated.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1904–1997 ○ Natural causes

The paramount leader who redirected China through reform and opening

The turn after 1978 reopened the question of the relationship between planning and socialism.

A Chinese Communist leader shaped by revolutionary work in France and Moscow, he returned after two purges during the Cultural Revolution and led economic reform and opening from 1978.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1915–1989 ↓ Removed 1987 · heart attack

The reformist general secretary who rehabilitated the Cultural Revolution’s victims and freed thought; his death sparked the 1989 protests

He died on 15 April 1989, days after a heart attack; a day later unofficial mourners demanded the state reassess him, and within a week about 100,000 students marched on Tiananmen Square.

From Hunan, he joined the Red Army at fourteen, marched on the Long March and led the Communist Youth League after 1949. Persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, as head of the Organisation Department from 1977 he reviewed and reversed millions of unjust cases and in 1978 organised the “criterion of truth” debate that underpinned Deng Xiaoping’s return. Party chairman in 1981 and general secretary from 1982, he drove reform and opening, but after the student protests of late 1986 he was forced to resign in January 1987 for laxity toward “bourgeois liberalisation”. He died of a heart attack on 15 April 1989, and the mourning gatherings grew into the Tiananmen protests.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1919–2005 ↓ Removed 1989 · died under house arrest

From Sichuan’s farm reforms to general secretary, the reformer who opposed martial law in 1989 and died under house arrest

Premier 1980-1987 and general secretary from 1987, in charge of political reform; he lost power over the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and lived under house arrest until his death

From Henan, he was a provincial cadre in Guangdong until purged in the Cultural Revolution, returned as Sichuan first secretary in 1975 and, with household contracting and enterprise autonomy, earned the saying “If you want to eat, look for Ziyang”. Premier from 1980 and general secretary from 1987, he pushed price reform and plans for political reform. In May 1989 he opposed martial law against the student protests, told students in the square “We have come too late”, and fell; he remained under house arrest in Beijing until his death in 2005. His secretly recorded memoirs were published posthumously in Hong Kong.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1921–2008 ↓ Left office 1981 · natural causes

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

On 6 October 1976, a month after Mao died, Hua had the Gang of Four arrested at Zhongnanhai with Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing, and took the party and Military Commission chairmanships. He then lost power to Deng Xiaoping by 1981.

From Shanxi, he rose as a provincial cadre in Hunan, caught Mao’s attention, and in 1976 became acting premier after Zhou Enlai’s death in January and first vice-chairman and premier after the April Tiananmen incident. After Mao died he arrested the Gang of Four in October with Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing and took the party and Military Commission chairmanships. He sought legitimacy in the “two whatevers” — uphold every decision Chairman Mao made, follow every instruction he gave — but lost the initiative to Deng Xiaoping in the 1978 debate on the criterion of truth and at the Third Plenum, giving up the premiership and party chairmanship in 1980–1981. He remained on the Central Committee until 2002.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1926–2022 ○ Natural causes

The “core” plucked from Shanghai in 1989 who led post-Tiananmen China into the market economy and the “Three Represents”

The compromise leader plucked from Shanghai after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, he became the "core" of the third generation and steered the party toward a market economy.

An electrical engineer from Jiangsu who trained at a Soviet car plant, he became mayor of Shanghai in 1985 and its party secretary in 1987. In 1989 he closed the liberal World Economic Herald and defused the Shanghai protests without major bloodshed, and in June was chosen to replace Zhao Ziyang as general secretary. After Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour in 1992 he made the “socialist market economy” the party’s goal and oversaw state-enterprise reform, WTO accession and the return of Hong Kong. Stepping down as general secretary in 2002 and Military Commission chairman in 2004, he left the “Three Represents”, which opened the party to private entrepreneurs. He died of leukaemia in 2022.

Political and party leadership People’s Republic of China 1935–1992 ↓ Arrested 1976 · illness

The Shanghai worker-rebel who rose “like a helicopter” to party vice-chairman, youngest of the Gang of Four

The youngest of the Gang of Four: from a Shanghai mill's militia office he led the November 1966 rebel headquarters and the 1967 Shanghai Commune, was second-ranked CCP vice-chairman by 38, and was seized in the 6 October 1976 coup.

From Jilin, he fought in the Korean War and became a security cadre at a Shanghai cotton mill. In 1966 he led the worker-rebel “Workers’ General Headquarters”, the driving force of the “January Storm” that seized the Shanghai government in 1967, and ran the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee with Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan. Picked by Mao as a successor of worker origin, he became party vice-chairman at the Tenth Congress in 1973, mocked as a “helicopter” for his rapid, inexperienced rise. Arrested with the Gang of Four in October 1976, he was sentenced to life in 1981 and died of liver disease in custody in 1992.