Yao Yilin

People’s Republic of China state institutions Marxism–Leninism 1917–1994 ○ Natural causes

Conservative vice-premier in charge of economic planning and a driver of martial law in 1989

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Guichi, Anhui, he joined the Communist Party in 1935 and was secretary of the Beijing party study group during the December Ninth movement. After serving in the war against Japan as deputy director of the finance office of the Communist area, he held financial posts for many years. He became vice-premier in 1979, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Thirteenth Congress in 1987 and, as first vice-premier in 1988–1993, was responsible for economic planning and management. He drafted the 1988 “price breakthrough” plan and then agreed with Zhao Ziyang to postpone it. In the 1989 Tiananmen protests he stood with Li Peng on the conservative side, denying that the students were patriotic and urging swift suppression, and he is counted among the chief drivers of martial law. He died in 1994.