Yang Shangkun (3 August 1907[1] – 14 September 1998) was a Chinese Communist military and political leader, president of the People's Republic of China from 1988 to 1993, and one of the Eight Elders that dominated the party after the death of Mao Zedong.

In these positions, Yang oversaw much of the day-to-day running of government and Party affairs, both political and military, amassing a great deal of bureaucratic power by controlling things like the flow of documents, the keeping of records, and the approval and allocation of funds.

[2] Purged, arrested and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, he spent 12 years in prison but staged a comeback in 1978, becoming a key ally of Deng, serving as Mayor of Guangzhou (1979–81), and returning to the CMC as Secretary–General and also Vice Chairman (1981–89), before assuming the presidency.

Yang's downfall came in 1993, when he failed in his attempts to undermine the new leadership of Jiang Zemin and to retain control of the PLA, and was forced to retire by a coalition of Party elders, including Deng himself.

[5] Later in 1927 Yang traveled to the Soviet Union and enrolled at the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, where he studied Marxist theory and techniques of political organization and mobilization.

[6] During the Second Sino–Japanese War Yang Shangkun was Deputy Secretary of the CCP North China Bureau and worked with Liu Shaoqi behind the Japanese lines.

In January 1939, Yang became Secretary of the North China Bureau and worked with Zhu De and Peng Dehuai to cooperate with the military operations of the Eighth Route Army, including the Hundred Regiments Campaign.

[3] After the founding of the PRC in October 1949 and until the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Yang Shangkun was one of very few CCP leaders who worked closely with Mao Zedong at Zhongnanhai on a daily basis.

Under the conventions of the 1982 Constitution, the president's role was largely symbolic,[8] with formal executive power wielded by the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Premier of the State Council.

[citation needed] After the hardliners gained the upper hand, Yang changed his position and supported the use of force to suppress student protestors.

In May 1989 Yang appeared on Chinese television, where he denounced the student demonstrations as "anarchy" and defended the imposition of martial law on several areas of Beijing affected by the protests.

His official obituary described him as "a great proletarian revolutionary, a statesman, a military strategist, a staunch Marxist, an outstanding leader of the party, the state, and the people's army."