GAO GANG

born c. 1902, , Heng-shan, Shensi Province, China died c. 1955, , China WadeGiles romanization Kao Kang one of the early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and one of the most important figures in the Communist government established after 1949. His purge in 195455 was the biggest scandal in the Chinese Communist movement from the mid-1930s to the 1960s. Gao joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1926 and spent much of the next 10 years participating in Communist guerrilla operations in his home Shensi Province. In the early 1930s he helped establish a Communist guerrilla base on the ShensiKansu provincial border. When the main Red Army under Mao Zedong occupied the area after completing the Long March, Gao became an important Communist official. By the early 1950s he was a full Politburo member, one of Mao Zedong's closest comrades, and the party and government head of the country's single most industrialized area, Manchuria (administratively designated the Northeast Region). Gao exercised virtually autonomous power in Manchuria and as such was the country's most powerful regional leader. He committed suicide shortly before he was publicly condemned by the party for deviating from Communist policies in April 1955. Gao's fall was accompanied by the purge of virtually all the key party leaders in the Northeast Region. The most credible speculation is that Gao and his close associates were purged because they had vehemently asserted their administrative independence of the central government in Peking.