Gao Gang
Gao Gang | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
高岗 | |||||||||
| Vice Chairman of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China | |||||||||
| In office September 1949 – August 1954 | |||||||||
| Leader | Mao Zedong | ||||||||
| Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||
| Succeeded by | Position abolished | ||||||||
| Chairman of the State Planning Commission | |||||||||
| In office November 1952 – February 1954 | |||||||||
| Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||
| Succeeded by | Li Fuchun | ||||||||
| Chairman of the Northeast People's Government of the People's Republic of China | |||||||||
| In office April 1949 – January 1953 | |||||||||
| Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||
| Succeeded by | Position abolished | ||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||
| Born | Gao Chongde (高崇德) October 25, 1905 | ||||||||
| Died | August 17, 1954 (aged 48) | ||||||||
| Party | Chinese Communist Party (posthumously expelled in 1955) | ||||||||
| Spouses | Yang Zhifang
(m. 1925; div. 1938)Li Liqun (1940–1954) | ||||||||
| Children | 1 (son) | ||||||||
| Alma mater | Yulin Middle School | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 高崗 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 高岗 | ||||||||
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Gao Gang (Chinese: 高岗; Wade–Giles: Kao Kang; 1905 – August 1954) was a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader during the Chinese Civil War and the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Born in rural Shaanxi province in 1905, Gao Gang joined the party in 1926 and led a revolutionary guerrilla base there during the Chinese Civil War. He was of peasant background with a low level of education: he is said to have not been very literate. Among his colleagues in the party, he gained a reputation as having great confidence and ambition, as well as of being a womanizer. Trusted by Mao Zedong, Gao was dramatically promoted in the final years of the civil war to become the party state and military head of Manchuria, the key Northeast area of China. In 1952, he was ordered to Beijing to become head of the State Planning Commission of China (SPC).
Beginning in late 1952 or early 1953, he attempted to challenge the political power of Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai and to increase his own standing. This effort failed. During the “Gao Gang Affair,” Party leadership criticized Gao. Based on various grounds — true, false, and contended — Gao was deemed to have created an anti-party clique. Associates of Gao were politically purged and Gao was placed under house arrest. He killed himself in August 1954.