When Yang resisted the rise of Jiang Zemin (who had been the Party secretary of Shanghai), whom Deng began to groom to succeed him as paramount leader, Deng successfully forced Yang to retire in 1993, along with some of his family. According to Voice of America, before he died in 1998, Yang Shangkun allegedly told army doctor Jiang Yanyong that the crackdown on June 4 had been the most serious mistake committed by the Communist Party in its history, a mistake that Yang believed he could not correct, but which he believed would eventually be corrected. Yang died on 14 September 1998, aged 91. His official obituary described him as "a great proletarian revolutionary, a statesman, a military strategist, a staunch Marxist, an outstanding leader of the party, the state, and the people's army." In 1929, Yang Shangkun married Li Bozhao. They had three sons.