People of the Revolution and the USSR

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.

Communist Party of China Chinese communism 1940–

The Xinhua reporter who lost his father to the famine and, in Tombstone, documented 36 million Great Famine deaths

A Xinhua reporter who from the mid-1990s raided provincial archives to compile the first detailed account of the Great Famine, published in 2008 as Tombstone: 36 million dead.

From Hubei, he watched his adoptive father starve in the Great Leap famine of 1959 without knowing it was a nationwide disaster. As a Xinhua reporter he began in the 1990s to search archives and interview survivors across the country, and after more than a decade published Tombstone in Hong Kong in 2008. The book estimates about 36 million famine deaths in 1958–1962 and traces them to the communes, forced procurement and “anti-rightist” politics; it is banned on the mainland. His history of the Cultural Revolution, The World Turned Upside Down, followed in 2016. He was deputy publisher of the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu.