Kao Kang (1902-1954?), Chinese Communist guerrilla leader who helped establish the northern Shensi base area. From 1949 to 1953 he was the senior Communist official in the Northeast. He disappeared in 1954, and he and Jao Shu-shih (q.v.) were charged in 1955 with having formed an "anti-party alliance." The son of a landholder in Hengshan, Shensi, Kao Kang received his early education in his native district and then attended the Yülin Middle School. One of his schoolmates was Liu Chih-tan (q.v.) with whom he was to be associated for more than a decade. Kao came under the influence of liberal teachers at Yülin, and he soon joined the Socialist Youth League. In 1926 he enrolled at the Chungshan Military Academy, which had been established by Feng Yü-hsiang at Sanyuan, Shensi. Among his instructors at the academy were Liu Chih-tan and Teng Hsiao-p'ing. By the end of the year, Kao had joined the Chinese Communist party.

When the NationaHsts broke with the Chinese Communists and began a campaign against them in 1927, Liu Chih-tan and other radical instructors were dismissed from the academy at Sanyuan, and the cadet corps of the academy was reorganized and was placed under close surveillance. In the spring of 1928 Liu Chih-tan and others led an insurrection in the Weinan- Huayin area which became known as the Weihua uprising. Kao was among the cadets who participated in the insurrection. After it was quelled by the Nationalists, Kao Kang, Liu Chih-tan, and other surviving cadres were assigned by the Chinese Communist authorities in Shensi to spread propaganda and to subvert Nationalist military units in Shensi and Kansu.

The famine conditions then prevailing in the northwestern provinces of China facilitated Kao Kang's efforts to organize peasant uprisings and to form a guerrilla force in Shensi. Although the uprisings he led at Hsi-hua-ch'ih and in other areas of central Shensi were unsuccessful, he won the support of many of the starving peasants. In the autumn of 1931 Kao and his followers joined forces with guerrilla units led by Liu Chih-tan and Hsieh Tzu-ch'ang. After this combined force and remnants of the Twenty-fourth Red Army united to form the so-called Anti-Imperialist Allied Army, Kao served as Liu's political commissar. At the end of 1932, when the army was designated the Twenty-sixth Red Army, Kao was replaced as political commissar by Tu Heng. Kao retained membership on the provincial military affairs committee of the Chinese Communist party, but he was given no new assignments. Accordingly, he went to Yuehhsien and organized a small guerrilla force.

After the Twenty-sixth Red Army, which had moved to the ^Veinan area, had been defeated and disbanded, Liu Chih-tan and some of his men made their way back to central Shensi and joined forces with Kao Kang. By the end of 1933 Kao and Liu had organized a new Twentysixth Red Army of more than 1,000 men. Using Lang-chia-chai as a base, they worked to extend their control of central Shensi to the Kansu border. After encountering formidable opposition from the warlords of Shensi and Kansu, however, they decided to move to northern Shensi, which was loosely controlled by the independent and unpopular warlord Ching Yueh-hsiu. In the autumn of 1934 the Twentysixth Red Army was divided into three columns and was sent into action in central, eastern, and northern Shensi with all units moving northward. By the spring of 1935 a Shensi-Kansu soviet regime had been established in northern Shensi, with headquarters at Wa-yao-pao. The National Government had sent Kao Kuei-tzu to northern Shensi to smash the Communist stronghold. However, the Twenty-sixth Red Army and the newly formed Twenty-seventh Red Army soon consolidated control of the area surrounding the base by defeating the Nationalist troops and by conducting a successful campaign against Ching Yueh-hsiu's army. In the meantime, the Chinese Communist forces which had left the central Soviet district to begin the Long March in October 1934 had been working their way north. In the summer of 1935 the Twenty-fifth Red Army of Hsü Hai-tung (q.v.) arrived in Shensi from the Hupeh-Hunan-Anhwei (O-yu-wan) soviet area and joined with the Shensi forces to form the Fifteenth Army Group, with Hsü in over-all command. In August, after some members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party had arrived at Wa-yao-pao, Kao Kang, Liu Chih-tan and a number of local cadres were arrested and imprisoned on charges of deviation from the party line. When Mao Tse-tung reached northern Shensi in October, he ordered their release. An official Communist version of this incident blamed the imprisonment of Kao and Liu on the "subjectivism" and "sectarianism" of some ambitious party leaders. Kao Kang was made political commissar of the Fifteenth Army Group. In the spring of 1936 he accompanied Liu Chih-tan on a campaign in Shansi. Their long association ended in April, when Liu was fatally wounded in battle.

Beginning in 1937 Kao Kang held important posts in Mao Tse-tung's government at Yenan. He became chairman of the people's council of the government in 1939. An indication of Kao's standing during the Yenan period is to be found in pre- 1956 editions of Mao Tse-tung hsuan-chi {Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung) : "I came to northern Shensi five or six years ago, yet I cannot compare with comrades like Kao Kang in my knowledge of conditions here or in relations with people of this region. No matter what progress I make in investigation and research, I shall always be somewhat inferior to our northern Shensi cadres." Kao Kang also held important posts in the Chinese Communist party during this period. He was made political commissar of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region military district in the late 1930's and secretary of the party's northwest bureau a few years later. In November 1942 he presented a major address at a conference held at Yenan to discuss the Chinese Communist party's first rectification movement, which had been inaugurated in February by Mao Tse-tung. Kao's report, "Pien-ch'ü tang ti li-shih wen-t'i chient'ao" [examination and discussion of problems concerning party history in the border region], was a detailed analysis of past political disagreements between the central party authorities and the local Shensi Communists and a justification of the guerrilla strategy used by Kao and Liu Chih-tan. In the early 1940's Kao was elected to regular membership in the party's Central Committee.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Mao Tse-tung sent such Communist leaders as Kao Kang, Lin Piao, Ch'en Yun, and P'eng Chen to the Northeast, for he was well aware of its crucial importance to all who sought control of China. Kao served as commander of the Kirin-Heilungkiang military district, with responsibility for political mobilization in rural areas, organization of cavalry units, and work among non-Chinese minority groups. It is interesting to note that a Mongol cavalry unit joined the People's Liberation Army during the battles between the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists in the spring of 1947. At the end of 1948 Lin Piao's forces left Manchuria, which had come under Communist control, and moved into north China. Kao Kang remained at Mukden as the senior party, government, and military official in the Northeast. By mid- 1949 he had become secretary of the party's Northeast bureau, commander and political commissar of the Northeast military district, and chairman of the Northeast Administrative Council. In July 1949 he headed a delegation to Moscow which negotiated, a trade agreement between the Chinese Communist regime in the Northeast and the Soviet Union. In August, he assumed the chairmanship of the newly created Northeast People's Government.

When the Central People's Government was established at Peking in October 1949, Kao Kang became one of its six vice chairmen and a member of the People's Revolutionary Military Council. Beginning in November 1951 he served as vice chairman of the Military Council. Although his posts at Peking were of high importance, he remained in Mukden from 1949 to 1953, for Manchuria was crucial to both the domestic and foreign affairs of the People's Republic of China. Because the region had achieved a relatively high level of political and economic development, it served as a testing area for political campaigns, industrial and agricultural innovations, and economic development programs. Its geographical location made it an important supply and staging area during the Korean conflict.

In the early 1950's Kao Kang was considered to be one of the ten most important men in the Chinese Communist party. In November 1952 he was appointed chairman of the State Planning Committee at Peking, which had been established to direct the first five-year plan for the economic and industrial development of the People's Republic of China. He was transferred to Peking early in 1953. Soon afterwards, Jao Shu-shih (q.v.) became a member of the State Planning Committee. A year later, however, both men mysteriously dropped from view. Kao made his last recorded public appearance in January 1954, at which time he was identified as a member of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist party.

In February 1954, at a plenary session of the Central Committee, Liu Shao-ch'i (q.v.) called for party unity and made scathing reference to those who "regarded the region or department under their leadership as their individual inheritance or independent kingdom." This reference was not given full explanation until 4 April 1955, when Peking issued a report on the so-called anti-party alliance of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih; it incorporated a resolution on the alleged alliance which had been passed at a national conference of the Chinese Communist party. The two men and a number of their subordinates had been expelled from the party for anti-party activities. According to the report, Kao Kang had "engaged in conspiratorial activities" with the aim of seizing the leadership of the party and the government. He had "created and spread many rumors" designed to slander the Central Committee and to enhance his personal position. His "anti-party faction" in Manchuria had created discord and dissension and had attempted to make the Northeast "the independent kingdom of Kao Kang." After his transfer to Peking in 1953, he had tried to instigate party members "to support his conspiracy" against the Central Committee and had argued that as the representative of the "party of the revolutionary bases and the army" he should become vice chairman of the party's Central Committee and premier of the State Council. The report stated that although serious warning was given him in February 1954, "Kao Kang not only did not admit his guilt but even committed suicide as an expression of the ultimate betrayal of the party." Thus, Kao Kang, who had been known as an "ever-correct comrade" and a trusted associate of Mao Tse-tung, ended his long career in the Chinese Communist party by becoming the central figure in the first major upheaval to jar the party and government structure of the People's Republic of China.