Yang Shangkun | |
|---|---|
| 杨尚昆 | |
 Yang in the 1960s | |
| President of China | |
| In office 8 April 1988 – 27 March 1993 | |
| Premier | Li Peng |
| Vice President | Wang Zhen |
| Leader | Zhao Ziyang Jiang Zemin |
| Preceded by | Li Xiannian |
| Succeeded by | Jiang Zemin |
| Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission | |
| In office State Commission: 20 June 1983 – 28 March 1993 Party Commission: 12 September 1982 – 19 October 1992 | |
| Chairman | Deng Xiaoping Jiang Zemin |
| Secretary-General of theCCP Central Military Commission | |
| In office August 1945 – November 1956 | |
| Succeeded by | Huang Kecheng |
| In office July 1981 – November 1989 | |
| Preceded by | Geng Biao |
| Succeeded by | Yang Baibing |
| Director of the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party | |
| In office 24 October 1945 – 10 November 1965 | |
| Chairman | Mao Zedong |
| Preceded by | Li Fuchun |
| Succeeded by | Wang Dongxing |
| Member of the National People's Congress | |
| In office 21 December 1964 – 13 January 1975 | |
| Constituency | PLA At-large |
| In office 25 March 1988 – 15 March 1993 | |
| Constituency | Sichuan At-large |
| 7thMayor of Guangzhou | |
| In office March 1979 – September 1981 | |
| Preceded by | Jiao Linyi |
| Succeeded by | Liang Lingguang |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1907-08-03)3 August 1907 |
| Died | 14 September 1998(1998-09-14) (aged 91) Beijing, China |
| Political party | Chinese Communist Party (1926–1998) |
| Spouse | |
| Relations | Yang Baibing |
| Children | 3 |
| Alma mater | Shanghai University,Moscow Sun Yat-sen University |
| Yang Shangkun | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 杨尚昆 | ||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 楊尚昆 | ||||||||||
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Yang Shangkun (3 August 1907[1] – 14 September 1998) was a ChineseCommunist military and political leader,president of China from 1988 to 1993, and one of theEight Elders that dominated the party after the death ofMao Zedong.[2]
Born to a prosperous land-owning family, Yang studied politics atShanghai University andMarxist philosophy and revolutionary tactics atMoscow Sun Yat-sen University. He went on to hold high office under bothMao Zedong and laterDeng Xiaoping; from 1945 to 1965 he was Director of theGeneral Office and from 1945 to 1956 Secretary–General of theCentral Military Commission (CMC). In these positions, Yang oversaw much of the day-to-day running of government and Party affairs, both political and military, amassing a great deal of bureaucratic power by controlling things like the flow of documents, the keeping of records, and the approval and allocation of funds.[2] Purged, arrested and imprisoned during theCultural Revolution, he spent 12 years in prison but staged a comeback in 1978, becoming a key ally of Deng, serving as Mayor ofGuangzhou (1979–81), and returning to the CMC as Secretary–General and also Vice Chairman (1981–89), before assuming the presidency.[2]
One of the earliest supporters ofreform and opening up, Yang justified it with references toVladimir Lenin and theNew Economic Policy. However, he strongly opposed any form of political reform, and, despite his own suffering during the Cultural Revolution, actively defended the image and record of Mao. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Yang and his half-brother, GeneralYang Baibing, were among the most powerful figures in thePeople's Liberation Army (PLA). Despite his initial hesitation, he went on to play a leading role in crushing the1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was actually the one who planned and supervised the operations to clear the square and surrounding streets. Yang's downfall came in 1993, when he failed in his attempts to undermine the new leadership ofJiang Zemin and to retain control of the PLA, and was forced to retire by a coalition of Party elders, including Deng himself.
Yang was born to a land-owning family[3] in Shuangjiang,Tongnan County, near the city ofChongqing in Sichuan, and studied at Chengdu Higher Normal School and itsaffiliated secondary school in 1920–25, and then returned to Chongqing. His older brother,Yang Yingong[4] was one of the founding Executive Committee members of theChinese Communist Party (CCP) in Sichuan, and influenced Yang Shangkun's ideological orientation. After joining theCommunist Youth League in 1925, and the CCP in 1926, he enrolled inShanghai University, where he studied politics.[5] Later in 1927 Yang traveled to theSoviet Union and enrolled at theMoscow Sun Yat-sen University, where he studiedMarxist theory and techniques of political organization and mobilization.[2][3]
Yang was a member of a group of Chinese students who studied inMoscow and returned to China to take a leading role in the CCP, later known as the28 Bolsheviks.[5] TheComintern sent Yang back to China to assist and support other pro-Comintern CCP leaders, includingBo Gu,Wang Ming, andZhang Guotao, but Yang and some of the other 28 Bolsheviks, includingYe Jianying,Wang Jiaxiang andZhang Wentian supportedMao Zedong instead. On his return from Moscow in 1931, Yang Shangkun started his military career in theChinese Red Army, serving as Director of the Political Department in the 1st Red Army and moving around different battle areas under the command ofZhu De andZhou Enlai. In January 1934, he was appointedPolitical Commissar of the 3rd Red Army, commanded byPeng Dehuai.[6]
During theSecond Sino–Japanese War Yang Shangkun was Deputy Secretary of the CCPNorth China Bureau and worked withLiu Shaoqi behind the Japanese lines. In January 1939, Yang became Secretary of the North China Bureau and worked with Zhu De and Peng Dehuai to cooperate with the military operations of theEighth Route Army, including theHundred Regiments Campaign. In 1941, Yang returned toYan'an and worked as personal aide to Mao. In 1945, he became theDirector of the General Office of the Party, as well as Secretary–General of theCentral Military Commission, that was chaired by Mao himself. In these capacities, he was responsible for much of the day-to-day administration of the Party's military and political work, and carried out this duty with much success.[2]
In the subsequentChinese Civil War, Yang was Commander of the "Central Security Force" protecting the Party Center and, in his roles as Director of the General Office and Secretary–General of the CMC, played a significant role in the ultimate Communist victory and theestablishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.[3]
After the founding of the PRC in October 1949 and until the outbreak of theCultural Revolution in 1966, Yang Shangkun was one of very few CCP leaders who worked closely with Mao Zedong atZhongnanhai on a daily basis. As the Director of the General Office and Secretary–General of the CMC, he oversaw much of the actual day-to-day work of most party activities and military affairs.[3] On the eve of the Cultural Revolution Yang was identified as a supporter ofLiu Shaoqi andDeng Xiaoping, and was purged as acounter-revolutionary.[7] After being ejected from the Communist Party and removed from all positions, Yang was persecuted byRed Guards, who accused Yang of planting a covert listening device to spy on Mao, the same accusation shared byDeng Xiaoping.
Yang remained in prison until Mao died and Deng Xiaoping rose to power, in 1978. After Deng gained control of the military he recalled Yang, raised him to the position of general, and gave Yang the responsibility of reforming China's army, which Deng considered as larger than necessary and engaged in too many non-military activities. Deng raised Yang to the position of Vice Chairman of theCentral Military Commission in order to give Yang the authority to complete these reforms (Deng was chairman). In 1982 Yang was also appointed as a full member of thePolitburo.[8]
Along withXi Zhonguxn, Yang persuaded Deng thatGuangdong should be a national demonstration zone for Reform and Opening Up.[9]: xvii
Yang had a close friendship with Deng and shared many of Deng's long-term economic goals, but was far less enthusiastic about the agenda of political liberalization promoted by other senior leaders favored by Deng, includingHu Yaobang,Zhao Ziyang,Wan Li, andHu Qili. Yang justified his support of economic reforms by referencingVladimir Lenin and theNew Economic Policy, and he emphasized that the Communist Party should still enjoy overall control of the economy, even in private businesses, through the system of Party committees in all enterprises. He also always defended Mao Zedong as a great and historic leader, despite his own suffering at the hands of radical Maoists.
In the early 1980s, Yang explicitly backed the efforts of a foreign China historian,Harrison Salisbury, to compile an account of the Long March by conducting extensive interviews with surviving Long March participants. The resulting book,Long March: The Untold Story, has been praised by China scholars as an excellent synthesis of first-hand oral sources. Within China, many Chinese veterans asked why it took a foreigner to produce such a book.[10]
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In 1988, Yang was appointedpresident of China replacingLi Xiannian, making him the only president who was not a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Under the conventions of the1982 Constitution, the president's role was largely symbolic,[8] with formal executive power wielded by theGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party and thePremier of the State Council. In practice, party and state leaders still deferred toparamount leaderDeng Xiaoping, who, however, was not all-powerful, as he still had to compromise on some policies with other party elders such asChen Yun and Li Xiannian.
Yang's role during theTiananmen protests of 1989 caused a fundamental shift in China's political structure. Yang was at first sympathetic to the students and sided with General SecretaryZhao Ziyang in supporting them. As the Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of theCentral Military Commission, he even praised Zhao's position by claiming that Zhao "Ziyang’s notion of pacifying the student movement through democracy and law is good and seems quite workable right now." Zhao's position was contested by PremierLi Peng and Party elderLi Xiannian, who wanted to use force to suppress the student demonstrations and engaged in an internal power struggle with Zhao to convince other senior leaders of their position.[citation needed]
After the hardliners gained the upper hand, Yang changed his position and supported the use of force to suppress student protestors. In May 1989 Yang appeared on Chinese television, where he denounced the student demonstrations as "anarchy" and defended the imposition of martial law on several areas of Beijing affected by the protests. Yang then mobilized and planned the suppression of the demonstrators, an operation in which several hundred protesters were killed on 4 June and subsequent days.[8] Yang's nephew, Yang Jianhua, commanded the highly disciplined27th Group Army, which was brought into Beijing fromHebei to suppress the demonstrators.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Yang Shangkun was hugely influential within thePeople's Liberation Army. Yang and his younger half-brother,Yang Baibing, purged China's military of any officers who had not sufficiently supported the government's violent crackdown on students. Yang then began an organized attempt to fill as many senior military positions as possible with his supporters, generating an attitude of resentment among other military elders, who accused Yang of attempting to dominate the army and possibly challenge Deng's authority by developing a "Yang family clique". When Yang resisted the rise ofJiang Zemin (who had been the Party secretary ofShanghai), whom Deng began to groom to succeed him asparamount leader, party elders, including Deng himself forced Yang to retire in 1993, along with some of his family.[7]
According toVoice of America, before Yang Shangkun died in 1998, he allegedly told army doctorJiang Yanyong that the crackdown on 4 June had been the most serious mistake committed by Li Peng and the Communist Party in its history, a mistake that Yang believed he could not correct, but which he believed would eventually be corrected.[11]
Yang died on 14 September 1998, aged 91. His official obituary described him as "a great proletarian revolutionary, a statesman, a military strategist, a staunch Marxist, an outstanding leader of the party, the state, and the people's army." On 2001, the ashes of Yang and his wife were interred at a cemetery named after him in Tongnan District, Chongqing.[7][12]
In 1929, he married Li Bozhao, a woman who participated in theLong March alongside Yang. They had three sons.[13]
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Chairman of the Guangzhou Revolutionary Committee 1979–1981 | Succeeded byas Mayor of Guangzhou |
| Preceded by | Secretary-General of theStanding Committee of the National People's Congress 1980–1983 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the People's Republic of China 1988–1993 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | First Vice Chairman of thePRC Central Military Commission 1989–1993 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chief of theGeneral Office of the Chinese Communist Party 1945–1965 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by none | Secretary-General of theCCP Central Military Commission 1945–1956 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Secretary-General of theCCP Central Military Commission 1981–1989 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of theCentral Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs 1987–1989 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | First Vice Chairman of theCCP Central Military Commission 1989–1992 | Succeeded by |
| Order of precedence | ||
| Preceded byas Chairman of the Central Military Commission (2nd-ranked) | Orders of precedence in the People's Republic of China (President of China; 3rd-ranked) 1988–1993 | Succeeded byas Premier (4th-ranked) |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
