Yang Shangkun

Early Years, Moscow and the Third Army Group (1907–1937)

Yang Shangkun was born on 3 August 1907 in Tongnan, Sichuan (now part of Chongqing). He joined the Communist Youth League in 1925 and became a member of the Chinese Communist Party in early 1926; in November that year he went to study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. Returning to China in early 1931, he served as propaganda chief of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and head of the CCP Central Propaganda Department.

Yang entered the Central Revolutionary Base Area in early 1933 and in June became director of the Political Department of the Red First Front Army. In January 1934 he took over as political commissar of the Red Third Army Group, and in the same month was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee at its Fifth Plenum; with the army group's commander, Peng Dehuai, he then fought in the Fifth Encirclement Campaign. In October 1934 the two led the Third Army Group on the Long March. In January 1935 he attended the Zunyi Conference, where, according to the obituary issued by the CCP Central Committee and other bodies in 1998, he "criticised the serious errors of Bo Gu and Otto Braun in military command and supported Comrade Mao Zedong's correct position". The Third Army Group subsequently fought at Loushan Pass, in the second capture of Zunyi and in the four crossings of the Chishui River. In August 1935 he became deputy director of the Red Army's General Political Department, travelled with the Right Column, and took part in the struggle against Zhang Guotao.

The Northern Bureau and the General Office (1937–1965)

After full-scale war with Japan broke out, Yang became deputy secretary and then, in November 1937, secretary of the CCP Northern Bureau, building Party, army and government organisations in north China; Hu Jintao's 2007 speech marking the centenary of his birth said he "took part in organising" the Hundred Regiments Offensive. He returned to Yan'an in early 1941 to work in the central Party apparatus, took part in the Rectification Movement, and attended the Seventh Party Congress in April 1945. After Japan's surrender he served as secretary-general of the Central Military Commission and deputy head of the central foreign affairs group, and later as director of the CCP General Office. In April 1947 he became deputy secretary of the Central Rear Committee under Ye Jianying, and in April 1948 deputy secretary-general of the Central Committee.

After the founding of the People's Republic, Yang remained deputy secretary-general of the Central Committee and director of the General Office, concurrently secretary-general of the Central Military Commission and Party secretary of the organs directly under the Central Committee. In September 1956 the Eighth Party Congress and the First Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee elected him a full member of the Central Committee and an alternate member of the Secretariat. From the winter of 1964 to the summer of 1965 he led General Office cadres to take part in the Four Cleanups campaign at Niujiao brigade, Doumen commune, Chang'an county, Shaanxi.

Dismissal, "Peng, Luo, Lu and Yang" and Imprisonment (1965–1978)

On 10 November 1965 Yang was removed as director of the General Office; the same day, Shanghai's Wenhui Bao published Yao Wenyuan's critique of the historical play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. On 23 May 1966 an enlarged Politburo meeting suspended him as an alternate secretary of the Secretariat, while also suspending or removing Peng Zhen, Lu Dingyi and Luo Ruiqing. A Central Committee circular of 24 May, "Explanation of the Errors of Comrades Lu Dingyi and Yang Shangkun", listed his "principal errors", the first being that "in disregard of repeated Central Committee decisions prohibiting the installation of listening devices, he secretly installed listening devices behind the Central Committee's back and secretly recorded the speeches of Chairman Mao and members of the Standing Committee"; others included passing confidential documents to others without authorisation and "extremely abnormal relations with Luo Ruiqing and others". The Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee approved the decision in August.

Yang was then subjected to prolonged investigation and detention; according to his official obituary he was "imprisoned for as long as 12 years". A Party-history entry on the CCP's official news site describes the "Peng, Luo, Lu and Yang" affair as the first frame-up engineered by the Lin Biao clique during the Cultural Revolution and says the so-called "errors" attributed to Yang were "entirely fabricated slander"; the Central Committee formally rehabilitated him in October 1980.

Guangdong and the Central Military Commission (1978–1988)

From December 1978 to the end of 1980 Yang served as second secretary of the Guangdong provincial Party committee and vice-governor, first secretary of the Guangzhou Party committee and chairman of its revolutionary committee, and first political commissar of the Guangdong Military District, assisting the provincial first secretary, Xi Zhongxun. According to a 2019 article by the CCP's Institute of Party History and Literature, an enlarged meeting of the provincial standing committee in early April 1979 agreed to "ask the Centre for special policies so that Guangdong can take the first step", a proposal Xi presented to the leadership on the committee's behalf; Xi and Yang then directed the drafting of preliminary plans for export zones at Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou and of the Regulations on Special Economic Zones in Guangdong Province, which the NPC Standing Committee approved in August 1980.

Yang was elected to the Central Committee in September 1979 and in September 1980 became vice-chairman and secretary-general of the NPC Standing Committee. In July 1981 he became a member of the Central Military Commission's standing committee and its secretary-general, and in September 1982 its permanent vice-chairman and secretary-general; that month the First Plenum of the 12th Central Committee elected him to the Politburo. Assisting the commission's chairman, Deng Xiaoping, in running its daily work, he in the mid-1980s carried out the reduction of the armed forces by one million. In May 1987 he visited the United States as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and met President Ronald Reagan at the White House. After the 13th Party Congress that November he remained permanent vice-chairman of the commission.

President of the People's Republic (1988–1993)

In April 1988 the First Session of the Seventh National People's Congress elected Yang President of the People's Republic of China. In the spring and summer of 1989 he took part in the leadership's handling of the student movement in Beijing; his official obituary says he "together with other Party and state leaders handled the political turmoil of the spring and summer of 1989". According to the report delivered to the NPC Standing Committee on 30 June 1989 by Beijing mayor Chen Xitong, one of the conditions student organisations set for leaving Tiananmen Square was that "Deng Xiaoping and Yang Shangkun retire". In November 1989, after Deng resigned as chairman of the Central Military Commission, Yang became its first vice-chairman, assisting the new chairman, Jiang Zemin, in running its daily work.

As President he carried a heavy load of foreign engagements. According to Tang Shubei, then executive vice-president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, Yang told Lee Kuan Yew during a 1992 visit to Singapore that conditions were not yet ripe for cross-Strait political talks and that the two sides could begin with economic matters; Lee passed the message on to Lee Teng-hui. In early 1992 he accompanied Deng Xiaoping on his inspection of Wuhan, Guangdong and Shanghai — the third time he had accompanied Deng on a trip south.

After the 14th Party Congress in October 1992 Yang left the Politburo and the Central Military Commission, and in March 1993 he stepped down as President and was succeeded by Jiang Zemin. His younger brother Yang Baibing was elected to the Politburo at the 14th Congress while giving up his posts as secretary-general of the Central Military Commission and director of the General Political Department. The Christian Science Monitor reported in February 1993 that Western and Chinese analysts believed the Yang brothers had been distrusted for allegedly trying to build an independent power base in the military and had been eased out of key posts by Deng and senior professional officers; the official account is that he stepped down in response to Deng's call to abolish life tenure in leadership posts.

Retirement and Death

In retirement Yang continued to follow reform and the question of cross-Strait unification. In 1998 he donated more than 20,000 yuan of back pay, restored to him after his rehabilitation, to disaster-stricken areas. He died of illness in Beijing at 01:17 on 14 September 1998; the obituary gave his age as 92 by the traditional reckoning. The obituary, issued jointly by the CCP Central Committee and four other bodies, called him "a great proletarian revolutionary, statesman and military strategist, a staunch Marxist, and an eminent leader of the Party, the state and the people's army". At a meeting marking the centenary of his birth in 2007, Hu Jintao repeated this assessment.