This Week in China’s History: The Suicide of Gao Gang

August 17, 1954

Listen to the narration of this column, read by Kaiser!

At the founding of the People’s Republic, the new country’s leadership was embodied — if not in Mao Zedong himself — in the five-member Standing Committee of the Politburo: Mao, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and Chen Yun. Those five men, surely familiar to many readers of this column, were the royalty of the new state, making critical decisions in the capital.

Almost as powerful was another layer of important men. To help administer the People’s Republic, the Party and the People’s Liberation Army divided the country into six military regions based on the theaters of operations during the Civil War and the war against Japan. This list included men who would enjoy national prominence like Peng Dehuai, Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping. But probably the most powerful at the time was an ambitious party official named Gao Gang.

Gao’s career trajectory paralleled those of Deng, Liu, and Zhou, suggesting that he would be among the PRC’s leadership for decades to come. Yet, his career ended abruptly and prematurely when he took his life at the urging of his prosecutors — or is it persecutors? — on August 17, 1954.