Wang Fuzhi
Hunanese people are associated with political revolutions in 19th and 20th centuries China. The Xiang Army, commanded Zeng Guofan, was instrumental in defeating the Taiping Rebellion. Hunan-born Huang Xing was the leader of the Wuchang Uprising, the first successful uprising against the Qing dynasty and the first army commander-in-chief of the Republic of China. In the 1920s, locals inspired by Wang Fuzhi, a seventeenth-century scholar who had advocated for "Western" ideas of progress, humanism, and nationalism, created the Hunanese self-government movement, which was championed by Peng Huang and the young Mao Zedong. Three of the "Big Five" original Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China members were from Hunan.