Key figures in Mao's China

Lin Biao (1907-1971)

• Experienced soldier

• Lin helped lead the Red Army to victory over the Japanese during WW2

• Replaced Peng Duhaui as Minister of Defence in 1959

• Helped build Mao’s Cult of personality by publishing the Little Red Book

• Post CR he feared that Mao had turned against him & attempted to flee

• He died when his plane crashed (potential malpractice)

Chen Boda (1904-1989)

• Mao’s close ally & ideological adviser

• Chen helped organise the CCP’s propaganda

• Editor of the Party’s journal - ‘The Red Flag’

• He was a radical & totally loyal to Mao - was feared by other communist leaders

• He was accused of being a ‘revisionist secret agent’ & arrested

Zhou Enlai (1898-1976)

• Long-time communist

• Travelled to Europe & helped from 1949

• He was foreign minister

• Politically astute - careful to never alienate Mao

• Genuinely popular

• Zhou’s death caused an outpour of popular grief that led to demonstrations against radicals in the ‘Tiananmen Square Incident’

Lei Feng (1940-1962)

• Chinese soldier who was committed to communism

• After his death his devotion to communism was used to inspire other people’s loyalty to the party

Chiang Kai-Shek (1887-1975)

• Chinese Nationalist leader

• Led the Kuomintang army against the communists during the Civil War

• Forced to flee to Taiwan (post loss)

• In Taiwan, he established a pro-Western gov. that was a capitalist ally of the West

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971)

• Leader of the Soviet Union

• Reduced use of secret police & terror to control the Soviet people

• Attempted to ‘peacefully coexist’ with the US during the Cold War

• 1956: secret speech - denounced Stalin’s personality cult

  → This angered Mao as he believed K wasn’t ideologically committed to communism

• Cuban Missile Crisis debacle forced K out of office

Dalai Lama (1935-?)

• Tibetan Buddhist leader

• When the PLA seized Tibet in 1951, he was forced to sign an agreement that gave power over Tibet to the Communist gov.

• When Tibetans revolted against Chinese rule in 1959, he escaped into exile

Ding Ling (1904-1986)

• Communist author who was imprisoned by the Kuomintang

• Wrote up to their promises to create genuine gender equality

• Later damned as a ‘rightist’ & her work was banned

• Imprisoned during the CR - she was sent to do manual rl on a farm before her release in 1978

Jiang Qing (1914-1991)

• Mao’s 4th wife

• stayed out of politics until 1938 - Mao gave her the task of remoulding Chinese culture as part of the CR

• A radical - was a member of the Gang of Four

• arrested after Mao’s death

• committed suicide in 1991

Song Qingling (1893-1981)

• 2nd wife of Sun Yat-Sen

• A leader of the 1911 rev. that had helped end the rile of dynasties & created the Chinese republic

• She was held in high esteem by com. teachers

• Became Vice-President of China

• Travelled abroad to represent the PRC

• Was attacked during the CR

• Zhou Enlai protected her from the Red Guards

Liu Shaoqi (1898-1969)

• Long-time ally of Mao

• Liu had travelled to Moscow to study communism as a student

• Vice-Chairman of the CCP & named president of the PRC in 1959

• He was a pragmatist

• Angered Mao as he introduced rational, successful policies after failures of the GLF

• Mao used the CR to attack Liu

  → he was stripped of his offices, tortured, imprisoned, dying due to medical neglect in 1969

Kang Sheng (1898-1975)

• Trained in torture techniques by Stalin’s secret police

• King helped Mao persecute, torture & murder his opponents during the CR

• He died of cancer in 1975

Mao Zedong (1893-1976)

• Led the communists to victory in the Civil War & established the PRC in 1949

• Believed that China could only make up for its backward status by ‘mobilising’ the pop. into working to create a communist state

• 1958: launched the GLF - attempt to radically stimulate the economy

• This led to the famine (ill-conceived)

• Mao was side-lined from politics & returned by launching the CR in 1965 (caused violence & chaos across China)