Yang Shangkun

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This is a Chinese name; the family name is Yang.

Yang Shangkun

President of the People's Republic of China
In office 8 April 1988 – March 27, 1993
Preceded by	Li Xiannian
Succeeded by	Jiang Zemin

Born	25 May 1907 Tongnan, Sichuan, China
Died	14 September 1998
Political party	Communist Party of China
Spouse	Li Bozhao

Yáng Shàngkūn (May 25, 1907–September 14, 1998) was President of the People's Republic of China from 1988 to 1993, and was permanent Vice-chair of the Central Military Commission.

Born in Tongnan, Sichuan province, became a communist and was sent to former-USSR to study in the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, and became one of 28 Bolsheviks. The original intention of the Comintern after sending him back to China was to have him help Wang Ming, but during the Long March, Yang defected to Mao Zedong's camp by supporting Mao at the Zunyi Conference, thus earning Mao's trust. Since Wang Ming's policy caused catastrophic failure for the Chinese communists, the Comintern was forced to accept the leadership change of the Chinese Communist Party, but unwilling to let Mao and other local factions take control, the Comintern appointed a new leader of the Chinese communist party Zhang Guotao, a former political rival of Wang Ming, but was still Soviet-trained and much more pro-Comintern than Mao and his followers who had never been to former-Soviet Union. Yang Shangkun and other communists who were trained in the former-Soviet Union were ordered and expected to support this new appointee who once opposed Wang Ming.

However, the hope of the Comintern was crashed once again when many of the former-Soviet trained Chinese communist cadres such as Yang Shangkun and Ye Jianying once again supported Mao instead of the appointee the Comintern had preferred. During the latter stage of the Long March, Yang was with Zhang Guotao's force, because the Comintern perfered Zhang over Mao and hoped the Zhang would have support from the Chinese communists who were in the former-Soviet Union. However, Yang defected again to Mao Zedong's side when Zhang Guotao and Mao Zedong disagreed on the destination and Zhang led his force to the south. After Ye Jianying fled Zhang's headquarter with all of the maps and code books to Mao's camp, Yang and another colleague also fled from Zhang Guotao's headquarter with top secret documents, and they were forced to hide in order along the way to escape the Zhang's cavalry sent to capture them, and eventually they made it safely to Mao's headquarter with these important documents from Zhang's headquarter, and thus Mao's trust in Yang Shangkun was further strengthened. However, Yang's wife was forced to march with Zhang's force and the couple did not reunit years later when Zhang's force finally returned to the communist base in Shaanxi after Zhang's disastrous failure which cost 75% of his force.

He held a senior position in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1956 to 1966, but lost Mao's favor when he voiced his opposition to Mao's policy and supported Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping in their attempt to salvage China from the depths of the Great Leap Forward movement after witnessing the disastrous result of Mao's Great Leap Forward. As a result, Yang Shangkun was demoted during the Cultural Revolution, during which he was struggled by the Red Guards, and he was accused of planting covert listening device to spy on Mao, the same accusation shared by Deng Xiaoping, and he was not rehabilitated until 1978, after which was elected to the Politburo in 1982. Such experience only strengthed Yang's support for the Chinese economic reform as well as his friendship with Deng Xiaoping, but in comparison to Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Wan Li, Hu Qili and other reformers, Yang was far less enthusiastic about political reform. However, Yang's attitude of aggresive support for the Chinese economic reform and conservative stand against the political reform at the same time just fits perfectly with Deng Xiaoping's view and thus earning him further trust from Deng. Many critics of Yang accurately point out that one of the main reasons of Yang's strong support of the Chinese economic reform is that his children were assigned important posts in those state-owned enterprises that monopolized the particular market segments in the areas they dominated, and thus Yang's children benefit hugely from the economic reform, accummulating great wealth via legal means, thanks to the state run monopoly.

During the Tiananmen protests of 1989, Yang was first sympathetic to the student and he sided with Zhao Ziyang and as the PRC president, even praised Zhao's decision by claiming that “[Zhao] Ziyang’s notion of pacifying the student movement through democracy and law is good and seem quite workable right now.” However, after learning the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's intention to crackdown, Yang quickly changed his position and used his authority as President to declare martial law, and in cooperation with Deng Xiaoping, who was the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, to order the June 1989 military crackdown against student pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. His nephew, Yang Jianhua, commanded the highly disciplined 27th Group Army, which was brought in from Hebei province to suppress the demonstrators.

Extremely influential in the People's Liberation Army, he was removed by Deng Xiaoping in 1992 for attempting to replace Jiang Zemin as party leader.

He is considered as one of the Eight Immortals of Communist Party of China.