China

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1879–1942 ○ Natural causes

The New Culture revolutionary who founded the CCP and led it for six years

“Only science and democracy — these two gentlemen we must take as our teachers.” — New Youth

Principal founder of the Chinese Communist Party and its first General Secretary (1921–1927). He spearheaded the New Culture Movement through the journal New Youth. Dismissed by the Comintern after the collapse of the First United Front, he later embraced Trotskyism.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1886–1976 ○ Natural causes

Founder of the Chinese Red Army and the PLA, first among the Ten Marshals

Cornered by assassins, he told them "Don't shoot me — I'm only the cook," and survived; his men called him "Chief of the Cooks" ever after.

Commander-in-chief whose military leadership secured the Chinese Communist revolution. He joined Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan in 1928 to form the legendary Zhu-Mao Army, then elevated guerrilla warfare to a strategic art across the Long March, the war against Japan, and the Civil War. After the founding of the PRC he served as vice-chairman and chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and was named first among the Ten Marshals in 1955. His journey from warlord general to communist, breaking an opium addiction and starting again, traces the arc of the Chinese Revolution more completely than almost any other life.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1889–1927 ✕ Executed

The Peking University librarian who first embraced Marxism in China and nurtured the generation of Mao Zedong

In 'The Victory of Bolshevism' (November 1918): "Look! Every place in the world will see the victorious flag of Bolshevism and hear the triumphal song of Bolshevism. (…) From this day onward, this is no longer a world of the bourgeoisie, of capitalism, of imperialism. It is a world of labor, a world of Bolshevism!"

Pioneer of Chinese Marxism and co-founder of the CCP. As Peking University librarian he introduced Marxism to Mao Zedong and led the May Fourth Movement, championing the Russian Revolution. He architected the United Front and was executed by warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1927.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1892–1986 ○ Natural causes

The “one-eyed dragon”, Red Army chief of staff and Deng Xiaoping’s partner who commanded at Huaihai

He lost his right eye at Fengdu in 1916 and became the “One-Eyed Dragon”: a founder of the People’s Liberation Army and one of the strategists who commanded the Huaihai campaign in November 1948.

A Sichuan soldier who lost his right eye in battle in 1916, he joined the party in 1926 and took part in the Nanchang Uprising. Trained at the Frunze Military Academy, he was Red Army chief of staff on the Long March and, as commander of the 129th Division with Deng Xiaoping as political commissar, formed the “Liu–Deng” army in the war with Japan. In the civil war he led the 1947 thrust into the Dabie Mountains and the Huaihai campaign of 1948–1949, the decisive phase of the Communist victory. A marshal after 1949, he founded the Nanjing Military Academy and withdrew after being criticised for “dogmatism” in 1958.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

Chinese communism 1893–1981 ○ Natural causes

Sun Yat-sen’s widow who stayed with the Kuomintang left and became a vice-chair of the People’s Republic

At the 1922 mutiny she stayed behind to cover Sun Yat-sen's escape, saying 'China can do without me; it cannot do without you.' On 16 May 1981, weeks before her death, she was admitted to the CCP and named honorary chairman of the PRC.

The second of the three Soong sisters of a wealthy Christian Shanghai family, she married Sun Yat-sen in 1915. Opposing Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-Communist coup in 1927 she became the symbol of the Kuomintang left, went to Moscow, and in the 1930s led the China League for Civil Rights in Shanghai. During the war with Japan she organised the China Defence League in Hong Kong to supply the Communist base areas. In 1949 she became a vice-chair of the Central People’s Government; shortly before her death in 1981 she joined the Communist Party and was named honorary president. Her younger sister Soong Mei-ling was Chiang Kai-shek’s wife.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1896–1969 ○ Died in custody

The Hunanese who rose “with two kitchen knives”, commander of the Nanchang Uprising and the Second Front Army

Born to a poor peasant family in Sangzhi, Hunan, he left the legend of rising “with two kitchen knives”, commanded the Nanchang Uprising in 1927, and led the Second Front Army on the Long March.

From a poor family in western Hunan, he led local armed bands, rose to command a Nationalist army corps, and joined the party days after commanding the Nanchang Uprising of 1 August 1927. He built a base on the Hunan–Hubei border, led the Second Front Army on the Long March and the 120th Division in the war with Japan. After 1949 he was one of the ten marshals, chairman of the state sports commission and a vice-chairman of the Military Commission. Attacked by Lin Biao and Kang Sheng in the Cultural Revolution, he was confined and died in 1969 after being denied treatment; he was rehabilitated in 1974.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1897–1979 ↓ Removed 1938 · natural causes

Chair of the founding congress who split with Mao on the Long March and defected to the Nationalists

At the 1935 Long March reunion he insisted on turning south to Sichuan rather than north to Shaanxi. Losing over 75% of his 80,000 troops discredited him in his army and Comintern.

A Peking University student leader in May Fourth, he chaired the party’s founding congress in 1921. After years of labour organising he went to the Eyuwan Soviet in 1931 and became political leader of the Fourth Front Army, which met Mao’s Central Red Army in Sichuan on the Long March in 1935. Clashing with Mao over marching north or west, he set up a rival “centre” and turned south, lost much of his army, and rejoined at Yan’an in 1936. Criticised in 1937, he fled to the Nationalist zone in 1938 and was expelled; he later wrote his memoirs in Hong Kong and Canada and died in Toronto.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1897–1986 ○ Natural causes

From Whampoa instructor to marshal, the soldier who organised the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 and ended the Cultural Revolution

On 6 October 1976 he led the Party elders and generals who ordered the arrest of the Gang of Four, ending the Cultural Revolution.

A Hakka from Guangdong, he taught at the Whampoa Military Academy, joined the party in 1927 and took part in the Guangzhou Uprising. As chief of staff on the Long March he warned Mao of Zhang Guotao’s split, and he was chief of staff through the war with Japan and the civil war and took over Beiping in 1949. Made a marshal in 1955, he was criticised in the “February Countercurrent” of 1967 but survived to run the army after Lin Biao’s death. In October 1976, after Mao died, he decided and executed the arrest of the Gang of Four with Hua Guofeng and Wang Dongxing, and in 1978 backed Deng Xiaoping’s return. As chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (1978–1983) he acted as head of state.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1898–1974 ○ Died in prison

PLA marshal who commanded Chinese forces in Korea, then was purged for criticizing the Great Leap Forward

'I want to be a Hai Rui!' — In his 1962 'Letter of 80,000 Words' to Mao, invoking the Ming-dynasty official famed for his courage in admonishing the emperor

One of the ten marshals of the People's Liberation Army, he commanded the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War and, as Minister of National Defense, pursued a Soviet-model professionalization of the military. His 1959 letter to Mao criticizing the famine and failures of the Great Leap Forward led to his purge as head of an 'anti-Party clique'; imprisoned and tortured during the Cultural Revolution, he died in custody in 1974 and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1978.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1898–1975 ○ Natural causes

Mao’s inquisitor who ran party security and intelligence from the Yan’an “rescue” campaign to the Cultural Revolution

He died of bladder cancer in December 1975 and was buried with state honours as a “proletarian revolutionary”, but in October 1980, on the eve of the Gang of Four trial, he was posthumously expelled from the party and exhumed from Babaoshan.

From a Shandong landlord family, he worked in the Shanghai underground and in 1933 went to Moscow as Wang Ming’s deputy, where he studied the Soviet purges. Back at Yan’an in 1937 he sided with Mao and, as head of the Social Affairs Department, ran the rectification movement’s “rescue” campaign that branded thousands as enemy agents. Sidelined for a time after 1949, he returned in the Sino-Soviet polemics of the 1960s and as adviser to the Cultural Revolution Group directed the investigation and persecution of Liu Shaoqi, He Long and other veterans. He died of cancer in 1975 and was posthumously expelled from the party in 1980.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1898–1976 ○ Natural causes

The PRC's first premier and an architect of its foreign policy

His 1971 secret talks with Kissinger opened the way for Nixon's arrival in Beijing on 21 February 1972, and the Shanghai Communiqué of 28 February 1972 reordered the Cold War triangle.

A Chinese statesman born in Huai'an, Jiangsu in 1898 and died in Beijing in 1976. One of the CCP's earliest leaders, he joined a Chinese communist cell in Paris, served in the Political Department of the Whampoa Military Academy, and acted as the Party's chief negotiator through the Xi'an Incident and the Chongqing negotiations. Appointed premier (of the Government Administration Council, later the State Council) with the founding of the PRC in October 1949, he served until his death in 1976, and concurrently as foreign minister from 1949 to 1958, becoming an architect of early PRC foreign policy. After the Zunyi Conference he was subordinate to Mao, and amid the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution he kept the state running and managed the balance of power.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1899–1935 ✕ Executed

Marxist literary critic who first sang The Internationale in Chinese, and party leader in 1927

18 June 1935, a small hill in Changting's Zhongshan Park. Facing the firing squad, Qu Qiubai sat down on the grass, smiled at the executioner and said, "Right here is fine!" He died singing The Internationale.

A leading intellectual of the May Fourth generation, Qu learned Russian and became one of the first Chinese correspondents to report on Bolshevik Russia from Moscow. Returning in 1923, he succeeded Chen Duxiu as de facto leader of the CCP, directing an insurrectionary line that included the Guangzhou Uprising, and served on the Comintern Executive Committee Presidium. After his political fall, he co-led the League of Left-Wing Writers with Lu Xun and Mao Dun, laying the foundations of Marxist literary theory in China and translating Russian and Soviet literature: most enduringly The Internationale into Chinese. Arrested by the Kuomintang in 1935, he was executed in Changting, singing The Internationale on the way to his death.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1899–1967 ✕ Removed 1930 · suicide

Labour organiser whose 1930 urban-insurrection “Li Lisan line” led the party and cost him his position

Labour organiser in the CCP and director of its Central Committee, March to August 1930.

From Hunan, he joined the party while a work-study student in France and organised the Anyuan miners’ strike of 1922 and the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925. From 1928 he held effective control of the Central Committee and in 1930, declaring a revolutionary high tide, ordered attacks on Changsha, Wuhan and other cities that failed; condemned by the Comintern, he was removed and summoned to Moscow, where he stayed fifteen years and married a Soviet wife. He returned in 1946 and served as labour minister. Persecuted early in the Cultural Revolution, he killed himself in 1967 and was rehabilitated in 1980.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1899–1992 ○ Natural causes

Marshal who commanded the Jin-Cha-Ji base and then ran the “two bombs, one satellite” nuclear and missile programme

As head of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission from 1958, Nie directed China's nuclear programme: "…we must develop advanced weapons, missiles and atomic bombs, so that we have the minimum means of reprisal…"

From Sichuan, he studied in France, Belgium and the Soviet Union and was a political instructor at Whampoa. Political commissar of Lin Biao’s First Army Corps on the Long March, he founded and commanded the Jin-Cha-Ji base in north China during the war with Japan and was mayor of Beijing after the civil war. Made a marshal in 1955, from 1956 he was the vice-premier for science and technology and, after the Soviet advisers left, ran the defence-science programme that produced the atomic bomb in 1964, the hydrogen bomb in 1967 and a satellite in 1970. He was the last of the ten marshals to die, in 1992.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1900–1976 ↓ Removed 1959 · heart attack

A “28 Bolsheviks” returnee who became general secretary after Zunyi and sided with Peng Dehuai at Lushan in 1959

One of the “28 Bolsheviks” who replaced Bo Gu as general secretary after Zunyi, he backed Peng Dehuai at Lushan in 1959 and died in Wuxi in 1976.

A Sun Yat-sen University graduate counted among the “28 Bolsheviks”, he backed Mao against Bo Gu at the Zunyi Conference in 1935 and became the party’s general secretary. He led propaganda and theory at Yan’an and ceded real power to Mao after the rectification movement. After 1949 he was ambassador to Moscow and vice-minister of foreign affairs; at the 1959 Lushan Conference he criticised the Great Leap and was purged with Peng Dehuai as an “anti-party clique”. Exiled during the Cultural Revolution, he died of heart disease in 1976 and was rehabilitated in 1979.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1901–1972 ○ Natural causes

The poet-marshal who led the New Fourth Army and the Third Field Army and succeeded Zhou Enlai as foreign minister

Wounded and besieged on Meiling in the winter of 1936, Chen Yi wrote three poems as his dying words, hiding them in his clothes: "I go to the Springs to muster my old troops, a hundred thousand banners to behead the King of Hell."

From Sichuan, he joined the party after work-study in France and with Zhu De led the remnants of the Nanchang Uprising to Jinggangshan. He stayed behind on the Long March to fight three years of guerrilla war in the south and became acting commander of the New Fourth Army after the 1941 incident. In the civil war he commanded the East China (Third) Field Army at Huaihai and took Shanghai, becoming its first mayor. A marshal in 1955 and foreign minister from 1958, he ran China’s Bandung-era diplomacy in Asia and Africa. Attacked in the “February Countercurrent” of 1967, he died of cancer in 1972; Mao attended the funeral.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1901–1990 ○ Natural causes

Marshal who commanded the Fourth Front Army through Zhang Guotao’s split and as defence minister directed the 1979 war with Vietnam

Hospitalized after a tuberculosis relapse in June 1990, he died on 21 September 1990 at eighty-nine, asking that there be no memorial or farewell and that his ashes be scattered over the Dabie, Daba and Taihang Mountains and the Hexi Corridor, where they were divided and scattered after cremation.

A Shanxi native in Whampoa’s first class, he became commander of the Fourth Front Army in the Eyuwan Soviet after the Guangzhou Uprising, followed Zhang Guotao’s southward decision on the Long March and in 1936 saw the Western Route Army destroyed in the Hexi Corridor. Deputy commander of the 129th Division in the war with Japan and of the North China Military Region in the civil war, he took Taiyuan in 1949. A marshal in 1955, he was sidelined after the “February Countercurrent” of 1967, returned in 1978 and as minister of defence directed the 1979 war with Vietnam.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1904–1950 ○ Cerebral haemorrhage

The organiser among Yan’an’s five secretaries, dead a year after the People’s Republic was founded

Back in Yan'an from 1940, he worked in the Secretariat and Organisation Department; the 1945 Seventh Congress made him a Politburo Standing Committee member behind Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. He died of a stroke in Beijing on 27 October 1950.

From Hunan, he studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow and led the Communist Youth League. On the Long March he commanded the Second Front Army with He Long, and as the party’s delegate to the Comintern in 1938 he helped win recognition of Mao’s leadership. From 1943 he ran party organisation and finance as a Secretariat member, one of the “five secretaries” with Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. His health failed after 1949 and he died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1950 at 46.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1904–1974 ○ Died

Leader of the "28 Bolsheviks" and Mao Zedong's foremost political rival

During the 1932 Shanghai Incident, Wang declared China faced "a struggle between two nations — the newborn Chinese Soviet Republic and the rotten Republic of China," calling this confrontation "the core of the total of the current Chinese political life."

The leading figure of the "28 Bolsheviks" trained at Moscow's Sun Yat-sen University, he imported a Comintern-loyal dogmatic line and led the early CCP's Moscow-aligned leadership. He was Mao Zedong's strongest rival, targeted in Mao's essays "On Practice" and "On Contradiction" and purged in the 1942 Rectification Movement as the symbol of dogmatism.

Chinese communism 1904–1986 ○ Natural causes

From Miss Sophia’s Diary to The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River, a writer who lived through Yan’an and the anti-rightist purge

Born in Linli, Hunan on 12 October 1904, she made her name with Miss Sophia’s Diary in 1928, was expelled from the party in 1958 during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and died in Beijing on 4 March 1986.

From Hunan, she made her name in 1928 with Miss Sophia’s Diary, a portrait of the modern woman’s inner life, and joined the party after the Nationalists executed her husband Hu Yepin in 1931. She reached the Red Army area in northern Shaanxi in 1936 and was welcomed by Mao, but her 1942 essay “Thoughts on March 8” on sexism at Yan’an drew criticism in the rectification movement. Her land-reform novel The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River won a Stalin Prize in 1951; in the 1957 anti-rightist campaign she was labelled a rightist and spent more than twenty years labouring on a farm in the Great Northern Wilderness. She was rehabilitated in 1979.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1904–1989 ↓ Removed 1970 · natural causes

Mao’s political secretary and the codifier of “Mao Zedong Thought”, head of the Cultural Revolution Group until his fall in 1970

“The Cultural Revolution was a mad age, and I was a madman then,” Chen Boda said in 1988, after his release. “My life has been a tragedy; let people draw lessons from it.”

From Fujian, he studied at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and from 1937 served at Yan’an as Mao’s political secretary, editing Mao’s writings and establishing the term “Mao Zedong Thought”. After 1949 he edited Red Flag and led propaganda work, supplying the theory of the Great Leap, and in 1966 headed the Central Cultural Revolution Group. At the 1970 Lushan plenum he sided with Lin Biao over the state chairmanship, provoked Mao’s anger and fell; in the 1981 trial of the “Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques” he received eighteen years. He died in 1989.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1905–1954 ✕ Suicide under house arrest

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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1905–1995 ○ Natural causes

CCP elder who designed China's socialist economic system with his 'bird-cage economy' concept

'The cage is the plan, and within it the bird [the economy] is free to fly as it wishes.' — 1982, formalizing his core vision of the market-plan relationship

A core figure in both the first and second generations of CCP leadership, Chen Yun was the architect of China's socialist economic construction. Starting as a typesetter at the Shanghai Commercial Press, he immersed himself in the labor movement, and through the Long March and the Yan'an Rectification Movement became Mao Zedong's trusted advisor as head of the CCP Organization Department. After 1949, as chairman of the Central Finance and Economic Commission, he drafted the First Five-Year Plan, stabilized prices, and, following the collapse of the Great Leap Forward, led economic reconstruction alongside Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. In the 1980s he formalized the 'bird-cage economy' (the market must fly freely within the cage of the plan) and became the second-most powerful figure in China after Deng, a gravitational center for Party conservatives moderating the pace of reform.

Chinese communism 1906–1947 ✕ Executed

The writer whose “Wild Lilies” criticised privilege at Yan’an and made him the rectification movement’s first victim

A Party member who in 1942 attacked Yan’an’s privileges in “Wild Lilies”, he was expelled, imprisoned and secretly executed in 1947; Dai Qing called his case the movement’s key measure of repression.

A translator and writer from Henan, he went to Yan’an in 1937 and translated Marxist classics. In March 1942 his essay “Wild Lilies” in Liberation Daily pointed to graded rations and clothing for cadres and to the disillusionment of the young; in the rectification movement he was branded a “Trotskyist” and became the target of mass criticism meetings. Arrested in 1943, he was executed at Xing County, Shanxi, in 1947 during the retreat from Yan’an before the Nationalist offensive. In 1991 the Ministry of Public Security formally withdrew the Trotskyist charge.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1906–1978 ↓ Removed 1965 · natural causes

First minister of public security and chief of the general staff, purged on the eve of the Cultural Revolution as Lin Biao’s target

Mao trusted him as his closest security chief, saying "if the sky falls, Luo the Tall will prop it up." First minister of public security from 1949, he built the police apparatus for a decade, then led the general staff until his purge in late 1965.

From Sichuan and Whampoa’s sixth class, he served in Red Army political and security work and ran the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University. As first minister of public security from 1949 he built the police system and the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries, and after Peng Dehuai’s fall in 1959 he managed the army as chief of the general staff. Putting training before politics, he was denounced by Lin Biao at the end of 1965 for plotting to seize military power, fell, and injured his legs in a suicide attempt in 1966. Rehabilitated in 1977 as secretary-general of the Military Commission, he died after surgery in West Germany the next year.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1906–1985 ○ Natural causes

Shaolin-trained Red Army general who led the Guangzhou military region on the eastern front of the 1979 war with Vietnam

In the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, Xu Shiyou commanded Chinese forces as head of the Guangzhou Military Region. Under his command, they advanced on the eastern front toward Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn in northern Vietnam.

From Xinxian in Henan, he studied martial arts at the Shaolin Temple for eight years and took a name meaning “friend of Buddhism”. Joining the Red Army, he fought the war against Japan and the civil war and long commanded the Nanjing military region. Moved to the Guangzhou region in 1974, he and political commissar Wei Guoqing protected Deng Xiaoping when the Gang of Four purged him after Zhou Enlai’s death in 1976. In the 1979 war with Vietnam he led the Chinese forces and commanded the eastern front towards Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn. A Politburo member from 1969 to 1982, he died in Nanjing in 1985.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1907–1946 ✕ Killed in crash

The CCP's young General Secretary who represented the Comintern line and later built the Party's press apparatus

During the Rectification Movement, he confessed: "I caused such great damage to the Party — no matter how hard I work, I can never make up for this loss." He added: "I am the person most responsible for all the disastrous consequences — here there is no 'one of.'"

General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (1931–1935), Bo Gu led the Party through the Jiangxi Soviet period and the early Long March. A member of the '28 Bolsheviks' trained at Moscow's Sun Yat-sen University, he represented the Comintern's left line alongside Wang Ming. After being ousted by Mao Zedong at the Zunyi Conference, he served as head of the Organization Department, director of Xinhua News Agency, and editor-in-chief of Liberation Daily, laying the institutional foundations of the CCP's press and propaganda apparatus. He died in a plane crash in 1946 while returning to Yan'an from the Chongqing negotiations.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1907–1971 ✕ Killed in crash

Mao's designated successor and the military genius who won the Chinese Civil War, third among the Ten Marshals

Told that the public saw him as 'Mao's best student,' Lin Biao was pleased and said: 'I don't have any talent. What I know, I learned from Chairman Mao.'

Lin Biao was one of the Chinese Communist Party's most brilliant military commanders, who led the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns in Manchuria to annihilate the Kuomintang's main forces and marched the People's Liberation Army into Beijing. Ranked third among the Ten Marshals in 1955, he became Minister of National Defense and spearheaded Mao Zedong's personality cult while vigorously advancing the Cultural Revolution. In 1966 he was made the Party's sole Vice Chairman and Mao's designated successor, reaching the apex of power before falling out with Mao in the early 1970s. After a failed coup attempt, he died in a plane crash over Mongolia on 13 September 1971 while fleeing toward the Soviet Union.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1908–2007 ○ Natural causes

First finance minister and central figure of the “61 renegades” case, who returned in the reform era as a conservative elder

Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan named the operation the Hundred Regiments Offensive on 26 August 1940, but its launching was later revived as a charge against Peng in his line dispute with Mao.

From Shanxi, he was one of the 61 men who on party orders signed “recantations” to leave a Kuomintang prison in 1936, an episode revived in the Cultural Revolution as the “61 renegades” case that kept him confined for twelve years. As the first finance minister after 1949 he unified taxation and currency and was criticised by Mao in the 1953 “new tax system” affair. Returning in 1979 as vice-premier and vice-chairman of the Central Advisory Commission, he was one of the “eight elders” and chaired the meeting that removed Hu Yaobang in 1987. He died in 2007 at 98; Bo Xilai is his son.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1909–1992 ○ Natural causes

The finance chief who survived the Cultural Revolution, helped arrest the Gang of Four and became president; one of the “eight elders”

An orthodox, Soviet-style communist and firm believer in central planning, he blocked marketization and enthusiastically advocated military suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

A carpenter from Hubei, he was a political commissar of the Fourth Front Army and survived the destruction of the Western Route Army. He founded the New Fourth Army’s Fifth Division in Hubei during the war with Japan and led the breakout from the Central Plains at the start of the civil war. Finance minister for twenty-two years from 1954, he ran the economy and survived the Cultural Revolution at Zhou Enlai’s side. He joined the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 and, between Hua Guofeng’s “two whatevers” and Deng Xiaoping, argued with Chen Yun for the primacy of planning. President from 1983 to 1988, he backed the crackdown of 1989.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1910–1980 ○ Natural causes

A field commander who read the course of war

He left for the north after telling his wife, “A general may well die on the battlefield.”

Deng Hua was a People’s Liberation Army general who commanded large formations through the Communist revolution and the Chinese Civil War. In 1950 he organized and trained the Northeast Border Defense Army, preparing the force that would cross the Yalu, then supported the Korean War as Peng Dehuai’s first deputy commander. From 1952 he led the Chinese People’s Volunteers through major operations and the armistice phase. Implicated in Peng Dehuai’s downfall, he was dismissed, persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and rehabilitated in 1980.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1911–1994 ○ Natural causes

General who fought in Korea, commanded the Kunming region on the western front in 1979 and became chief of the General Staff

Appointed Kunming Military Region commander in January 1979, he directed the Yunnan front in the war with Vietnam. The following year he became PLA chief of the General Staff.

Born in Liling, Hunan, he joined the Red Army in 1928 and fought against Japan, in the civil war and in Korea. After commanding the Jinan and Wuhan military regions he took over the Kunming region in January 1979 and commanded the western front in the northwest in the war with Vietnam, while Xu Shiyou led the east. He became chief of the PLA General Staff in 1980 and died in Beijing in 1994.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1912–1966 ✕ Suicide

People’s Daily editor whose Evening Chats at Yanshan were read as satire of the Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution’s first victim

In 1966 his Evening Chats at Yanshan and Notes from Three-Family Village were condemned as “anti-party poisonous weeds”, making him a nationwide target; he took his own life at home on 18 May 1966 and was rehabilitated in February 1979.

A historian and journalist from Fujian, he ran newspapers in the Jin-Cha-Ji base during the war with Japan and edited the first Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Editor and then director of People’s Daily from 1949, he was rebuked by Mao in 1957 for running a “scholars’ paper” and stepped down. As a Beijing party secretary he wrote Evening Chats at Yanshan for the Beijing Evening News in 1961–1962 and, with Wu Han and Liao Mosha, Notes from Three-Family Village; in 1966 these were condemned as “anti-party poisonous weeds”, opening the Cultural Revolution, and he killed himself that May. He was rehabilitated in 1979.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1913–1989 ○ Natural causes

Zhuang general sent in 1950 to head the Chinese Military Advisory Group to the Viet Minh, who also attended the Geneva conference

Sent to Vietnam in 1950 to lead China's Military Advisory Group, Wei Guoqing advised Ho Chi Minh on the war against France; at the 1954 Geneva Conference, he discussed military matters with the Vietnamese delegation.

A Zhuang from Guangxi, he joined the Red Army and in the civil war was deputy political commissar of the Third Field Army’s Tenth Army Group. In April 1950 Liu Shaoqi sent him to Vietnam as head of the Chinese Military Advisory Group to advise Ho Chi Minh on the war with France. He is said to have handed Ho a copy of the French Navarre plan in October 1953, and he attended the 1954 Geneva conference with Zhou Enlai. He later chaired Guangxi (1958–1975), sat on the Politburo (1973–1982) and headed the PLA General Political Department, escaping the purges of the Cultural Revolution and after.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1913–2002 ↓ Removed 1962 · natural causes

A founder of the northern Shaanxi base, purged for sixteen years, who opened Guangdong’s special economic zones

He built the Shaanxi–Gansu base with Liu Zhidan that became the Long March's destination, was purged in 1962 and confined for sixteen years, then opened the special economic zones as Guangdong's first secretary in 1978.

From Shaanxi, he founded the Shaanxi–Gansu base with Liu Zhidan, the destination of the Long March. After 1949 he headed the Northwest Bureau and served as State Council secretary-general and vice-premier, but in 1962 Kang Sheng denounced the novel Liu Zhidan as an “anti-party” defence of Gao Gang and Xi was purged, spending sixteen years in confinement and rural exile. Returning as Guangdong first secretary in 1978, he asked the centre for the power to “take one step ahead” to stem the flight to Hong Kong, which led to the Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou special economic zones in 1980. A Secretariat member in the 1980s, he supported Hu Yaobang and opposed his removal in 1987. He was Xi Jinping’s father.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1914–1991 ✕ Suicide

From the Shanghai stage to the pinnacle of the Cultural Revolution: Mao's wife who led the Gang of Four and remade Chinese revolutionary art

At her 1980 trial, Jiang Qing defied the court: 'I was Chairman Mao's dog — I bit whomever he asked me to bite.' Dragged from the courtroom, she shouted revolutionary slogans.

A central leader of China's Cultural Revolution and head of the Gang of Four, Jiang Qing was, as Mao Zedong's wife, the most powerful woman in the Chinese Communist Party. After working as a left-wing stage and film actress in 1930s Shanghai, she went to Yan'an in 1937 and married Mao; barred from politics for twenty years, she returned to the public stage in 1963 through a campaign to revolutionize Peking opera. Appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group in 1966, she opened the Cultural Revolution with the attack on the play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, established eight revolutionary model operas (yangbanxi), and was elected to the Politburo in 1969. Arrested in October 1976 after Mao's death, she was sentenced to death for 'counter-revolutionary crimes,' saw her sentence commuted, and died by suicide in a Beijing hospital in May 1991.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1915–1986 ↓ Left office 1980 · lung cancer

The peasant leader of the model village behind “In agriculture, learn from Dazhai”, who rose to vice-premier

The symbol of Mao-era self-reliance: after Mao's 1964 “In agriculture, learn from Dazhai” his brigade became the national model, and he rose to the Politburo and vice-premiership before the reforms sidelined him in 1980.

A barely literate peasant from Dazhai in Xiyang County, Shanxi, he terraced hillsides as brigade secretary and rebuilt the village after the 1963 floods without state aid. When Mao said in 1964 “In agriculture, learn from Dazhai” the village became the national model, and Chen became a Central Committee member in 1969, a Politburo member in 1973 and vice-premier for agriculture in 1975. The Dazhai model preached collective labour and self-reliance, but inflated statistics and coercion came to light; after the reforms began he left the vice-premiership in 1980, lived on a farm outside Beijing and died of lung cancer.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1916–2015 ○ Natural causes

“If you want rice, look for Wan Li” — the reform pioneer who let Anhui’s peasants contract land to households

“If you want to eat rice, look for Wan Li”: the reformist leader who first implemented the household-responsibility system in Anhui, then served as First Vice Premier (1983–1988) and NPC Standing Committee Chairman (1988–1993).

From Shandong, he was vice-mayor of Beijing after 1949, directing the “ten great buildings” including the Great Hall of the People, and was persecuted in the Cultural Revolution. Appointed Anhui first secretary in 1977, he tolerated the secret land division at Xiaogang village and with the provincial “six articles” allowed household contracting in the famine-stricken countryside, the starting point of rural reform. As vice-premier for agriculture from 1980 he dismantled the people’s communes, and he chaired the National People’s Congress Standing Committee from 1988 to 1993. Returning from abroad in May 1989, he endorsed martial law. He died in 2015 at 99.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1916–2015 ↓ Left office 1980 · natural causes

Mao’s bodyguard chief whose Zhongnanhai Unit 8341 arrested the Gang of Four, then pushed aside for the “two whatevers”

"A loyal soldier of Chairman Mao to the end": he guarded Mao for decades and had Unit 8341 arrest the Gang of Four in 1976.

From Jiangxi, he guarded Mao after the Long March and from 1949 headed the Central Guard Bureau (Unit 8341), managing the leadership’s security and daily life. Director of the General Office during the Cultural Revolution and trusted by Mao, in October 1976 he used Unit 8341 with Ye Jianying and Hua Guofeng to arrest Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four. Made party vice-chairman in 1977, he backed Hua’s “two whatevers” against Deng Xiaoping, resigned the vice-chairmanship in 1980 and left politics. He died in 2015 at 99.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1917–2005 ○ Sentenced to death, commuted; released 1998

Theoretician of the Gang of Four who organized the Shanghai People's Commune and championed all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie

At his 1980 trial, Zhang remained silent and refused to speak until his family was permitted to visit him years later.

A core theoretician of China's Cultural Revolution and member of the Gang of Four. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1938 and rose as editor of Shanghai's Jiefang Daily. His 1958 article 'Destroy the Ideology of Bourgeois Right' caught Mao Zedong's attention; as a member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, he organized the Shanghai People's Commune in 1967, overthrowing the existing municipal government. As vice premier in 1975, he authored 'On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie,' formalizing the class-struggle line of the socialist transition, and remained faithful to his Maoist convictions through arrest and imprisonment until his release in 1998.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1928–2019 ○ Natural causes

The premier who declared martial law in May 1989, called “the butcher of Beijing”; Zhou Enlai’s ward

An engineer who became premier in 1987, declared martial law in Beijing on 20 May 1989, and was the government official held responsible for the military crackdown of 3-4 June.

From Sichuan, he was raised under the protection of Zhou Enlai and his wife after the Nationalists executed his father in 1931. Trained in hydroelectric engineering at the Moscow Power Institute, he rose through the electricity ministry and succeeded Zhao Ziyang as premier in 1987. After the televised dialogue with student representatives collapsed on 18 May 1989 he declared martial law in Beijing on 20 May and was the government’s responsible official for the crackdown of 4 June. As premier he pushed through the Three Gorges Dam, and he chaired the National People’s Congress Standing Committee from 1998 to 2003. He died in 2019.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 1931–2005 ↓ Arrested 1976 · natural causes

The Gang of Four’s theorist whose attack on Hai Rui Dismissed from Office opened the Cultural Revolution; the critic nicknamed “the cudgel”

Born 1931 in Zhuji, Zhejiang. His November 10, 1965 article in Wenhui Bao, “On the New Historical Beijing Opera ‘Hai Rui Dismissed from Office’”, launched the Cultural Revolution; arrested on October 6, 1976, and sentenced to twenty years in 1981.

A Shanghai literary critic, he caught Mao’s eye with aggressive polemics during the 1957 anti-rightist campaign. At the direction of Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao he published “On the New Historical Play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office” in Wenhui Bao in November 1965, the opening of the Cultural Revolution, and as a member of the Cultural Revolution Group controlled propaganda. A Politburo member from 1969 and part of the Shanghai group, he ran campaigns such as “Criticise Lin Biao and Confucius”. Arrested with the Gang of Four in October 1976, he received twenty years in 1981, was released in 1996 and died in 2005.

People’s Republic of China Chinese communism 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.