Li Xiannian

Li Xiannian in 1974 in Romania

Li Xiannian as a guerrilla leader before 1937

Li Xiannian 1946

Li Xiannian (right) at Children's Day celebrations in 1956

Li Xiannian and wife Lin Jiamei visiting Ronald and Nancy Reagan , 1985

Li Xiannian ( Chinese  李先念 , Pinyin Lǐ Xiānniàn , W.-G. Li Hsien-nien ; born June 23, 1909 in Hong'an ( Hubei ); † June 21, 1992 in Beijing ) was a communist military leader, politician, finance minister and President of the People's Republic of China from 1983 to 1988 . Li belonged to the first generation of Chinese leaders and is one of the Eight Immortals of the Chinese Communist Party .

Youth to Long March

Li was the son of poor farmers and began training as a carpenter as a teenager, apart from that he only attended school for a short time. He began his military career in 1926 as a soldier in the army of Chiang Kai-shek during the northern campaign , with which Chiang wanted to reunite China, which was politically divided after the Xinhai Revolution . In 1927 the First United Front of the Communist Party and the Kuomintang broke up , so that the Communists had to go underground. Li returned to his homeland and worked in one of the communist youth organizations. In late 1927 he led peasants in the Hong'an Machang uprising , and in December 1927 he joined the Communist Party. In 1928 he joined the Red Army and became chairman of the Hong'an Soviet government. From then on he served in several positions in various communist local governments.

In 1931, Li became political commissar of a regiment in the 4th Front Army, which had recently been established . Together with the then regimental commander Xu Xiangqian , Li rose in the Red Army until he became a member of the Northwest Military Committee in December 1932 and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic in 1934 . Li was part of the troops that had to give up the Eyuwan Soviet under pressure from the Kuomintang in early 1933 and set up a new base area in northern Sichuan . There, in the summer of 1935, they met the 1st Front Army of Mao Zedong and Zhu De , which was on the verge of annihilation and had evacuated the Jiangxi Soviet with the Long March . However, the leaders of the two communist army groups, Zhang Guotao and Mao Zedong, fell out a short time later and Li was one of Zhang's troops who were supposed to move west. Li's 30th Army played the role of the vanguard in this very mountainous area in West Sichuan, in October 1936 Li's troops crossed the Yellow River and moved into what is now Ningxia , in spring they reached the border between Gansu and Xinjiang . Li's troops were particularly badly attacked and decimated by Ma Bufang's troops during these maneuvers , but they played the important role of securing the western flank of the Red Army. In December 1937, Li and the remaining soldiers arrived in Yan'an , which in the meantime had developed into the strongest communist base.

War on Japan and Civil War

In Yan'an, Li first attended the anti-Japan University of Military and Politics. After the formation of the Second United Front , Li was sent to Hubei in 1938 to lead Communist Party guerrilla units against the Japanese army . At this stage he was involved in the establishment of the New Fourth Army and its reorganization after the Anhui incident . He became political commissar of the 5th Division of this army, later also of the Hubei- Henan - Anhui - Hunan - Jiangxi Military District . In June 1945 he was elected to the Central Committee, when Japan surrendered he was commander of the Central Level Military District and deputy party secretary of the Communist Party Office for the Central Level.

After the outbreak of the Chinese civil war , Li was faced with a numerically and equipment-wise superior Kuomintang army. He was able to resist the attacks for a while, but then sent some of his troops to Jiangsu , where they reinforced the army of Chen Yi and Su Yu , and moved north himself, where he reinforced the troops around Mao's base in northern Shaanxi . In 1947 Li took part in the campaign in the Dabie Mountains , which part of the 8th March Army under the command of Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping carried out in order to tie up Chiang's troops in the central plains due to the threat to large population centers. Because of his proximity to Li's homeland, he was appointed chairman of the new party office for the central level. He then took part in the Huaihai campaign and, after the communist field army of the central plain had crossed the Yangtze and moved towards southwest China, he stayed in Hubei and became chairman of the Communist Party Committee and the People's Liberation Army . In May 1949 he became chairman of the Hubei Transitional Government. He stayed here after the People's Republic was proclaimed and was appointed mayor of Wuhan in 1952 .

People's Republic of China

After the centralization of the party and government with the adoption of the 1954 Constitution , Li Xiannian was transferred to Beijing, where he became Deputy Prime Minister of the State Council , Minister of Finance and a member of the National Defense Council . At the 8th Congress , Li was also elected to the Politburo . In 1962 he became chairman of the State Planning Commission . In these positions, Li played an important role when, under the leadership of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, the economy had to be stabilized after the failed Great Leap Forward . Here Li stood for a moderate economic and financial policy course; overall, he drove the People's Republic's economic policy out of politics during Chen Yun's absence . During the Cultural Revolution , Li initially managed to gain the trust of Mao Zedong . In 1967, however, he was one of those high-ranking party members who criticized the course of the Cultural Revolution and its ongoing radicalization. Despite the protection by Zhou Enlai succeeded the radical left to the later gang of four , to cause Lis criminal degradation. Li was transferred to a sawmill north of Beijing , where he had to do physical labor until he was rehabilitated. In April 1969 he became a member of the Central Committee again.

When Zhou Enlai became terminally ill in 1975, Mao installed Deng Xiaoping as the first deputy prime minister. Li was clearly on Deng's side in his arguments with the radicals. When Deng was deposed in 1976, Li was demoted too. After Zhou's death, Li, along with high-ranking party officials and the military, supported the new Prime Minister Hua Guofeng , who also became Mao's inheritance after Mao's death in September 1976. In the power struggles between the radicals and the moderates after Mao's death, the former pushed for the expulsion of Li and Ye Jianying from the Politburo - both of whom were highly respected veterans of the war against Japan and had strong ties with the leadership of the People's Liberation Army . When rumors of a coup d'état by the Gang of Four emerged, Ye Jianying, in coordination with Li and Hua, took the initiative and had the Gang of Four arrested on October 6, 1976. Li then became a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo , Vice Chairman of the Central Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Military Commission . In the period from 1978 to 1980, when a possible return of Deng to the state and party leadership was discussed, Li began to support Deng. In particular, Li did not approve of Hua's adherence to Maoist concepts and the so-called ten-year plan for economic reconstruction; At the same time, he approved the first projects involving foreign investments and supported the introduction of the one-child policy . In March 1979, Li took over the deputy chairmanship of the State Council's Economic and Financial Policy Commission and helped Deng drive Hua out of his party and government offices. When Hua was criticized in 1980 and ousted in 1981, Li Deng provided crucial backing. From 1981 onwards, although Li was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and commented on the important issues, the daily decisions were made by Deng, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang .

In June 1983, Li was appointed the first president, he held this mostly ceremonial function until March 1988. Subsequently, until his death he was chairman of the Political Consultative Conference of the Chinese People , which Deng had created in order to be able to retire honorable politicians. In these functions, Li sided with the conservatives when Deng and economic politicians led by Chen Yun wrestled with the speed of liberalization. Li also rejected Deng's designated successors, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, as being too liberal. In 1989, he supported the decision to use military force to end the protests in Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, overthrow Zhao Ziyang and replace him with Jiang Zemin .

Publications

• Closing speech at the XII. Chinese Communist Party Congress. (in: The XII Congress of the Communist Party of China. Documents. Foreign Language Literature Publishing House, Beijing 1982.)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Lawrence R. Sullivan: Historical dictionary of the Chinese Communist Party . Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-7470-1 , pp. 161 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Law Yuk-Fun: Li Xiannian . In: Xiaobing Li (Ed.): China at War - An Encyclopedia . ABC-CLIO, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59884-416-0 , p. 226-227 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} John Kong-Cheong Leung: Li Xiannian . In: Leung, Pak-Wah (Ed.): Political leaders of modern China: a biographical dictionary . 1st edition. Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 2002, ISBN 0-313-30216-2 , pp. 89-92 .
4. ↑ Dieter Kuhn : The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 567 .
5. ↑ Christopher R. Lew and Edwin Pak-wah Leung: Historical dictionary of the Chinese Civil War . 2nd Edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-7874-7 , pp. 73-75 .
6. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 353 .
7. ^ ^{A b c} Guo Jian, Song Yongyi and Zhou Yuan: Historical dictionary of the Chinese cultural revolution . Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2015, ISBN 978-1-4422-5171-7 , pp. 174-175 .
8. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 397 .
9. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 493 .
10. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 189-193 .
11. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 380 .
12. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 622 .