Ulanhu

Ulanhu was a Chinese communist revolutionary leader and politician, who served as the Chairman of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the Vice President of the People's Republic of China. He was born into a Mongol noble family in Tumed Left Banner, Inner Mongolia, and received a classical education. He joined the Communist Youth League of China in 1925, and participated in the Northern Expedition that unified China under the Kuomintang. He then went to Moscow in 1929 to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. While there, he adopted the name Ulanhu, meaning "red warrior" in Mongolian. He returned to China in 1932, organizing resistance against the Japanese invasion in his native Inner Mongolia, which landed him in prison for three years. Upon his release, he joined the Eighth Route Army led by Mao Zedong, and became the leader of the Mongolian branch of the Communist Party of China. He took part in the Long March, and later held various positions in the Communist government, such as the Minister of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, the Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, and the Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. He was also one of the main drafters of the 1954 Constitution of the People's Republic of China, and advocated for the autonomy and development of ethnic minorities in China. He was elected as the Chairman of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1947, and served as the Vice President of the People's Republic of China between 1983 and 1988. He was one of the few senior leaders who survived the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and was re-elected as the Chairman of Inner Mongolia in 1979. He died of a heart attack in Beijing on 8 December 1988, at the age of 81. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Republic, the highest state honor in China .