or Liu Shao-ch'i
born Nov. 24, 1898, Ningxiang district, Hunan province, China
died Nov. 12, 1969, Kaifeng, Henan province
Chairman of the People's Republic of China (195968) and chief theoretician of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
An activist communist background from the 1920s helped Liu's rise within the CCP in the 1930s and '40s, while his excellent education and studies in the Soviet Union made him an effective spokesman for the new government in China. When Mao resigned as chairman after the failure of his Great Leap Forward , Liu assumed the title. His policies for revitalizing agriculture by permitting peasants to cultivate private plots and giving them monetary incentives were ones to which Mao later strongly objected. In 1968 Liu was purged from power for being a "capitalist roader" and Lin Biao was appointed Mao's successor. Not until 1974 was Liu's death in 1969 made public.