[1] Shortly after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Deng Xiaoping gave a speech which referred to Mao Zedong, himself, and Jiang Zemin as the respective "core" of the first, second, and third generations of leadership.
[6] Jiang, in turn, remained chairman of the Central Military Commission after being succeeded as General Secretary by "fourth" generation" Hu Jintao.
[10] These included - at various times - Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, Deng Xiaoping, Peng Dehuai, and Lin Biao.
[citation needed] Of the other members identified above, Chen Yun was sidelined from the early 1960s, lost his party position in 1969, but survived to play an influential role in the second generation of leadership.
The death of Mao, Zhou and Zhu in 1976, and soon afterwards the coup that resulted in the arrest of the Gang of Four, ushered in the era now identified as the "second generation" of leaders.
During this period the most power and influence was held by a group of old party veterans, known as the Eight Elders, whose main members were Li Xiannian and Chen Yun, together with Deng.
Soon afterwards, Deng resigned his last major party post, as chairman of the central military committee, although he remained influential behind the scenes until his death in 1997.
[citation needed] Between 1989 and 1992, Jiang was believed to be simply a transitional figure to protect the party from a power vacuum (or even an Eastern Bloc style collapse) until a more stable successor government to Deng Xiaoping could be put in place.
Because of this, the era of the "third generation" is not regarded to have begun until 1992, with the election of the new CCP Politburo standing committee and Jiang consolidating his power without Deng.
As a result, many of them did not wield any significant political power prior to the 1980s, spending their time during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath working for the civil infrastructure of the state and were protected from the purges, as opposed to their predecessors.
For the first time since 1982, the three centres of power of the presidency, the party general secretaryship and the chairmanship of the central military commission were concentrated in a single person, Jiang Zemin.
The new leaders were elected to the Communist Party's Politburo in November 2002, and took up their governmental positions in March 2003, while the most prominent of their "third generation" predecessors stepped down at the same time.
[15][non-primary source needed] Thus, the era of the "fourth generation" is officially regarded to have begun in 2002, and lasted until 2012, when the next election for the party leadership occurred.
This generation of leaders, born mainly in the World War II years from 1939 to 1944, represented a new technocratic style governance and a less centralized political structure.
The majority of this generation of leaders were engineers whose academic lives were disrupted by the Cultural Revolution and, unlike both their predecessors and likely successors, have spent very little time overseas.
However, following Xi Jinping's consolidation of power at the 19th Party Congress, the future of the "sixth generation" was cast into doubt as clear successor figures failed to be named to senior leadership posts, particularly the Politburo Standing Committee.
[citation needed] U.S.-based newspaper Duo Wei Times also listed four figures who have since fallen from grace, former Fujian Governor Su Shulin, former President of the Supreme People's Court Zhou Qiang, former Heilongjiang Party Secretary Zhang Qingwei, and former Minister of Natural Resources Lu Hao, as other potential figures in this generation of leadership.
Others in this rough age group ascending in the ranks include Zhang Guoqing (now a Vice-Premier) and Chen Min'er (party secretary of Chongqing and then Tianjin).
Only two were full provincial-ministerial leaders: Li Yunze, Director of the National Administration of Financial Regulation,[21] and A Dong [zh], First Secretary of the Communist Youth League of China.