People of the Mao era 22

Military commander 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

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.

Military commander 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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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.

Military commander 1899–1992 ○ Natural causes

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

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.

Military commander 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.

Military commander 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

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.

Socialist-bloc leader 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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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

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.

Theorist 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

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.

Socialist-bloc leader 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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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

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.

Military commander 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.

Scholar 1909–1969 ○ Died in prison

Ming historian and Beijing vice-mayor whose play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office became the fuse of the Cultural Revolution

A Ming historian from Zhejiang and a student of Hu Shih, he was active in the Democratic League in the 1940s and after 1949 served as vice-mayor of Beijing for culture and education. His 1961 play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, written at Mao’s own suggestion, told of an upright official dismissed by the emperor; in November 1965 Yao Wenyuan’s attack on it as a “poisonous weed” defending Peng Dehuai was the opening shot of the Cultural Revolution. Arrested in 1966, he died in prison in 1969; his wife and daughter also died in the persecution. He was rehabilitated in 1979.

Socialist-bloc leader 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”

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.

Military commander 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.

Writers and artists 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

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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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

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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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”

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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 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”

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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1935–1992 ↓ Arrested 1976 · illness

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

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.