Liu Shaoqi
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Liu Shaoqi (Template:Small Template:IPAc-cmn; Template:Zh; 24 November 1898Template:Spaced ndash12 November 1969) was a Chinese revolutionary, politician, and theorist. He was Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee from 1954 to 1959, First Vice Chairman of the Communist Party of China from 1956 to 1966 and President of the People's Republic of China, China's de jure head of state, from 1959 to 1968, during which he implemented policies of economic reconstruction in China.
For 15 years, President Liu was the third most powerful man in China, behind only Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai. Originally groomed as Mao's successor, Liu antagonized him in the early 1960s before the Cultural Revolution, and from 1966 onward was criticized, then purged, by Mao. Liu disappeared from public life in 1968 and was labelled the "commander of China's bourgeoisie headquarters", China's foremost "capitalist-roader", and a traitor to the revolution.
He died under harsh treatment in late 1969, but was posthumously rehabilitated by Deng Xiaoping's government in 1980 and granted a national memorial service.
