- Hu Jintao
Hu Jintao (born December 21, 1942) is currently the Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China, holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China since 2002, President of the People's Republic of China since 2003, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2004, succeeding Jiang Zemin in the fourth generation leadership of the People's Republic of China.
- Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (August 22, 1904 - February 19, 1997) was a prominent Chinese politician and reformist, and the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CCP). Deng never held office as the head of state or the head of government, but served as the "de facto" leader of the People's Republic of China from the 1978 to the early 1990s. He pioneered "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and Chinese economic reform, also known as the "socialist market economy", …
- Wen Jiabao
Wen Jiabao (born September 1942) is the Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. He serves as a member of its Leading Party Members' Group and Secretary of the Financial Work Committee of the CPC Central Committee. Since taking office in 2003, Wen, ranked third in the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China hierarchy, has been a key part of the fourth generation of leadership in the Communist Party of China.
- Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai (March 5, 1898 - January 8, 1976), a prominent Communist Party of China leader, was Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 until his death in January 1976, and China's foreign minister from 1949 to 1958. Zhou was instrumental in the Communist Party's rise to power, and subsequently in the construction of the Chinese economy and reformation of Chinese society. On the international scene Zhou was a skilled and able diplomat, …
- Li Changchun
Li Changchun (born February 1944) is considered to be the propaganda chief of the Communist Party of China. He is now a member (ranked 8th out of 9) of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China. He was born in Dalian, in the northeastern province of Liaoning and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Harbin Institute of Technology in 1966. In 1983, at age 39, he became the youngest mayor and Party secretary of a major city, …
- Zeng Qinghong
Zeng Qinghong is PRC vice president and secretary general of the 17th CCP Congress. Zeng is a protege of former PRC president Jiang Zemin, having served under Jiang in Shanghai and having moved with him to Beijing. Zeng was born in July 1939 in Ji'an, Jiangxi.
- Jiang Zemin
- Wu Guanzheng
Wu Guanzheng (b. August 1938) is the head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, an anti-corruption body, and ranked 7 out of 9 on the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China. He is known to have good relationships with both President Hu Jintao and former President Jiang Zemin. Some sources consider him to be Hu's ally, while other consider him to be Jiang's.
- Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang (Chinese: 胡耀邦 Pinyin: Hú Yàobāng, Wade-Giles: Hu Yao-pang; November 20, 1915-April 15, 1989) was a leader of the People's Republic of China. His death in 1989 triggered a series of events which eventually led to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
- Lin Biao
Lin Biao (December 5, 1907 - September 13 1971 ?) was a Chinese Communist military leader that was instrumental in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. He rose to political prominence during the Cultural Revolution, climbing as high as second-in-charge and Mao Zedong's designated successor and comrade-in-arms, but after his death he was condemned as a traitor.
- Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi (November 24 1898 - November 12 1969) was a Chinese Communist leader. He was President of the People's Republic of China April 27 1959 - October 31 1968. Born into a rich peasant family in Yinshan, Hunan province (near Mao's Shaoshan), Liu attended the same school as Mao Zedong in Changsha, and then went to the Soviet Union and received his university education at the University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow. In 1921 he joined the newly formed CCP.
- Hua Guofeng
Hua Guofeng (born February 16, 1921) was Mao Zedong's designated successor as the paramount leader of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China. Upon Zhou Enlai's death in 1976, he succeeded him as Premier of the People's Republic of China. Months later, Mao died, and Hua succeeded Mao as the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, to the surprise and dismay of Jiang Qing and the rest of the Gang of Four.
- Zhu De
Zhu De began to read about Marxism and Leninism in Shanghai. In the mid-1920s, he went to Europe, studying at Göttingen University in Germany from 1922 to 1925 at which point he was expelled from the country by the government for his role in a number of student protests. Around this time, he joined the Communist Party. Zhou Enlai was one of his sponsors. In July 1925, he traveled to the Soviet Union to study military affairs.
- Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping is a politician in the People's Republic of China. Having served mostly in Fujian province earlier in his career, and moved onto Zhejiang as the provincial party chief from 2002-2007, he is currently Secretary of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee, therefore the number-one figure in Shanghai. Known for his liberal policies, tough stance on corruption, and a frank openness about political and market economy reforms, …
- Liu Bocheng
Liu Bocheng (December 4, 1892 - October 7, 1986) was a Chinese Communist military commander and Marshal of the People's Liberation Army. Liu Bocheng is known as one of the Three and A Half Strategists of China in modern history. (The other two are Lin Biao, commander of the CPC, and Kuomintang commander Bai Chongxi, and the half refers to CPC commander Su Yu.) Officially, Liu was recognised as a revolutionist, militarist and military theoretician, …
- Zhao Ziyang
Zhao Ziyang (October 17 1919-January 17 2005) was a politician in the People's Republic of China. He was Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1980 to 1987, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1987 to 1989. As a high-ranking government official, he was a leading reformer who implemented market reforms that greatly increased production and sought measures to streamline the bloated bureaucracy and fight corruption.
- Li Peng
Li Peng (b. October, 1928) was the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1998 to 2003 and was second-ranking in the Communist Party of China (CPC) behind Jiang Zemin on the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China until 2002. He served as Premier of the State Council between 1987 and 1998.
- Chen Duxiu
Chen Duxiu played many different roles in Chinese history. Along with Li Dazhao, Chen was a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. He was its first Chairman, first General Secretary and an educator, philosopher, and politician. His ancestral home was in Anqing (安慶), Anhui, where he established the influential vernacular Chinese newspaper "New Youth".
- Zhang Guotao
Zhang Guotao (1897 - December 3, 1979) was a founding member and leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the late 1920s and 1930s. He wrote several memoirs on the CPC that provide valuable information on its early history.
- Luo Gan
Luo Gan (罗干) (born July 1935) is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China and Political and Legislative Affairs Committee secretary of the People's Republic of China. Luo Gan was born in Shandong province and studied engineering at the Beijing Steel and Iron Institute. Luo joined the Communist Party of China in 1960.
- Ye Jianying
Ye Jianying (April 28, 1897-October 22, 1986) was a Chinese Communist general and the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1978 to 1983. Born Ye Yiwei (葉宜偉) into a wealthy merchant family in Meixian County, Guangdong Province, his courtesy name was Cangbai (滄白). He belonged to the Hakka minority. After graduation from the Yunnan Military Academy in 1919, he joined Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang (KMT).
- Chen Yi
Chen Yi (August 26, 1901 - June 6, 1972) was a Chinese communist military commander and politician. He was born in Lezhi, near Chengdu, Sichuan, into a moderately wealthy magistrate's family. A comrade of Lin Biao from their guerilla days, Chen was a commander of the New Fourth Army during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), spearheaded the Shandong counter-offensive during the Chinese Civil War, …
- Li Keqiang
Li Keqiang (Born July 1955) is currently the Communist Party of China Liaoning Province committee secretary in the People's Republic of China, an office that makes him first-in-charge in that province. He was earlier speculated as a possible successor to Hu Jintao in the "fifth generation" of CPC leadership. Li has degrees in law and economics (PhD) from the Peking University, …
- Peng Dehuai
Peng Dehuai (T. Chinese: 彭德懷, S. Chinese: 彭德怀, Pinyin: Péng Déhuái, Wade-Giles: P'eng Te-huai) (October 24, 1898 - November 29 1974) was a prominent Communist Party of China military leader.
- Wu Bangguo
Wu Bangguo (born July 1941) is a politician in the People's Republic of China. He is currently chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, a position generally recognized as the third-highest in the power structure of the PRC, and second in official rankings in the party. Wu was born in Feidong County, Anhui province.
- Wang Ming
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Communist Party of China (CPC) as well as the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism line. Wang epitomized the intellectualism and foreign dogmatism Mao criticized in his essays "On Practice" and "On Contradiction".
- Nie Rongzhen
Nie Rongzhen (December 29, 1899 - May 14, 1992) was a Chinese Communist military leader. Nie was born in Jiangjin county in Sichuan, near Chongqing, the cosmopolitan and well-educated son of a wealthy family. In 1920 Nie joined the group of Chinese students in France on a work-study program, where he studied engineering and became a protégé of Zhou Enlai. Zhou recruited him in 1921 when Nie was performing technical-scientific studies in Belgium, …
- Li Dazhao
Li Dazhao (October 29, 1888 - April 28, 1927) was a Chinese intellectual who co-founded the Communist Party of China with Chen Duxiu in 1921. Li was born in Leting (a county of Tangshan), Hebei province to a peasant family. From 1913 to 1917 Li studied political economy at Waseda University in Japan before returning to China in 1918. As head librarian at the Peking University Library, …
- Chen Yun
Chen Yun (June 13, 1905 - April 10, 1995) was one of the most influential leaders of the People's Republic of China and one of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party for almost its entire history. He is also known as as Liao Chengyun (廖程雲); it's unclear whether this was his original name or a pseudonym he used during his underground work in Shanghai. He was one of the Big Five in Communist China along with Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, …
- Zhang Wentian
Zhang Wentian (1900-July 1, 1976), also known as Luo Fu, was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1935 to March 20, 1943. A native of Pudong Shanghai, Zhang joined the CPC in 1925 and was sent to study at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, which was set up under Kuomintang's founder Sun Yat-sen's policy of alliance between the Soviet Union and CPC to train Chinese revolutionaries and named after him.
- Liu Qi
Liu Qi (刘淇) (b. November 1942) is the CPC Beijing Committee Secretary, first-in-charge of Beijing, and also a member of the CPC Politburo Central Committee. Until 2003, he was Mayor of Beijing.
- Deng Yingchao
Deng Yingchao, was the Chairwoman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1983 to 1988 and a member of the Communist Party of China. With ancestry in Guangshan County (光山縣), Henan, she was born Deng Wenshu (鄧文淑) in Nanning (南寧), Guangxi. Growing up in the poverty-stricken family, her father died when she was at a young age and her single mother taught and practiced medicine.
- Huang Ju
Huang Ju was the Executive Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China. He joined the Communist Party of China in March 1966. He was ranked 6th out of 9, and was one of the least popular members of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Party. Huang, considered "one of China's most mysterious politicians", was a powerful member of the "Shanghai clique". Enjoying very close relations with his patron Jiang Zemin, he was known to be strongly opposed to President Hu Jintao.
- Qu Qiubai
Qu Qiubai (January 29, 1899 - June 18, 1935) was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu, China. He was a leader of the Communist Party of China in the late 1920s and important Chinese Marxist writer and thinker. Qu spent much of his early life in Moscow and was heavily influenced by Stalin. He became acting Chairman of Politburo in 1927 after the fall of Chen Duxiu, thus becoming the "de facto" leader of the party.
- Li Xiannian
Li Xiannian (June 23, 1909-June 21, 1992) was President of the People's Republic of China between 1983 and 1988 and then president of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference until his death. Li joined the Communist Party of China in 1927, and served as an army captain and political commissar for the Chinese Red Army during the Long March. He was an influential political figure throughout the PRC, …
- Yang Shangkun
- Bo Yibo
Bo Yibo, (February 17, 1908 - January 15, 2007) was a Chinese politician and one of the Eight Immortals of the Communist Party of China. He was alternate member and then member of the Politburo, deputy prime minister, chairman of State Economic Commission and vice-chairman of Central Advisory Commission of the Communist Party of China. Joining the Communist Party of China when he was seventeen, …
- Qin Bangxian
Qin Bangxian or Bo Gu (May 14,1907-April 8, 1946) was a senior leader of Communist Party of China in early stage, and well known for being a member of the famous group 28 Bolsheviks. A native of Wuxi, Jiangsu, Qin was born in 1907. He studied in the Suzhou Industrial School in his early years, and took an active role in the activities against imperialism and warlords tyrannizing China at that time.
- Zhu Rongji
Zhū Róngjī was the Premier of the People's Republic of China State Council from March 1998 to March 2003. His time in office saw the continued double-digit growth of the Chinese economy and China's increased assertiveness in international affairs. Known to be engaged in a testy relationship with President Jiang Zemin, who he served under, Zhu provided a novel pragmatism and hard work ethic in the government and party leadership increasingly infested by corruption, …
- Tang Jiaxuan
Tang Jiaxuan (born January 17, 1938) was foreign minister of the People's Republic of China from 1998-2003. After various diplomatic postings in Japan, he became Assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1991, Vice minister of foreign affairs in 1993 and Minister of foreign affairs from 1998 to 2003. He continues to serve on the State Council.