Yang Shangkun
Chinese President
Died when: 91 years 71 days (1094 months)Star Sign: Cancer
Yang Shangkun (3 August 1907 – 14 September 1998) was a Chinese Communist military and political leader, President of the People's Republic of China (de jure head of state) from 1988 to 1993, and one of the Eight Elders that dominated the Party after the death of Mao Zedong.
Born to a prosperous land-owning family, Yang studied politics at Shanghai University and Marxist philosophy and revolutionary tactics at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University.
He went on to hold high office under both Mao Zedong and later Deng Xiaoping; from 1945 to 1965 he was Director of the General Office and from 1945 to 1956 Secretary–General of the Central 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.
Purged, arrested and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, he spent 12 years in prison but staged a comeback in 1978, becoming a key ally of Deng, serving as Mayor of Guangzhou (1979–81), and returning to the CMC as Secretary–General and also Vice Chairman (1981–89), before assuming the Presidency.
One of the earliest supporters of Chinese economic reform, Yang justified it with references to Vladimir Lenin and the New 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.
Together with his half-brother, General Yang Baibing, Yang Shangkun effectively controlled the PLA for the entire 1980s and into the early 1990s.
Despite his initial hesitation, he went on to play a leading role in crushing the 1989 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 of Jiang Zemin and to retain control of the PLA, and was forced to retire by a coalition of Party elders, including Deng himself.
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