National Communism: Difference between revisions

===[[File:Cball-China.png]] China [[File:HuaGuofeng.png]][[File:Dengf.png]] ===

<blockquote>''Main Articles: [[File: Mao.png]] [[Maoism]] and [[File: Dengf.png]] [[Dengism]]''</blockquote>

*'''[[File:LiPeng2.png]] Li Peng'''-Li Peng was a Chinese politician who served as the fourth Premier of the [[File:Cball-China.png]] the People's Republic of China from 1987 to 1998, and as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislative body, from 1998 to 2003.

In 1948, Li Peng was sent to [[File:Cball-USSR.png]] the Soviet Union to study at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. After his graduation in 1954, he returned to China (Now under Communist rule) to work at an important national power company. He managed to escape the political turmoil of [[File:Mao.png]] Mao's totalitarian regime due to his political connections and his employment in the company.

After the death of Mao and the opening up of China, during the Deng Xiaoping Era, Li Peng rapidly rose through the ranks of the Communist Party, with the help of Party Elder Chen Yun, and served as the Vice-Minister and Minister of Power between 1979 and 1983. Li Peng was raised to the position of Premier partially due to the departure of Hu Yaobang, who was forced to resign as General Secretary after conservative party members blamed him for a series of student-led protests in 1987.

Li Peng was an opponent of the market-liberal economic reforms pioneered by then General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, and argued that a market-driven economy and an open society would undermine the authority of the Communist Party and would make China susceptible to influence from "foreign hostile forces." Li Peng was most known for his staunch support for the use of force to quell the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He used his authority as premier to declare martial law and, in cooperation with Deng Xiaoping, who was the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, ordered the infamous June 4th military crackdown against student pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. This earned him the nickname the "Butcher of Beijing."

The death toll of the Tianmen Square crackdown is disputed by both scholars and Communist Party officials and ranges from 200 to several thousand. Zhao Zhiyang was removed from his position as General Secretary and put under life-long house arrest for his support of the protests and was replaced by former Shanghai Party Secretary [[File:Jiang_Tze-min.png]] Jiang Zemin.

After Zhao was removed from office, Li Peng would continue to resist economic reform but lost influence to his successor Zhu Rongji and was unable to prevent the increasing market liberalization of the Chinese economy during the late 1990s.