Here is the full English translation of my detailed explanation about Tong Shijun, Li Qiang, Gao Hua, and Yan Jiaqi and their analyses of personal cult from psychological and socio-psychological perspectives:

Tong Shijun (Political Philosophy / Political Culture)

Who / Field: Professor of philosophy at East China Normal University; his work focuses on Enlightenment, modernity, public reason, and political culture.
Connection to “cult of personality”: Tong frames the cult of personality as a product of the deficit of public reason and the persistence of “authority dependence” in political culture. In times of crisis or uncertainty, groups tend to outsource order and meaning to a “sacralized authority,” producing psychological projection and submission to a father-like or savior-like figure.
Key point: Personal cults are sustained by the interaction of institutional structures and psychological mechanisms; propaganda alone is not enough—lack of open debate and free criticism allows cult psychology to solidify.
Representative contribution: His discussions of modernity and secular public reason provide the methodological ground for analyzing how political culture shapes cultic devotion.

Who / Field: Professor of sociology at Tsinghua University; research on social stratification, trust, and social structure.
Connection to “cult of personality”:
Patriarchal / bureaucratic authority habits embedded in kinship and social networks create a logic of “dependence upward—submission downward.” In political mobilization, this becomes the social base for personality cults.
Trust and order: Where public trust and institutional rules are weak, people tend to rely on strong authority figures to guarantee order. Psychologically this strengthens expectations of and dependence on “strongman” leaders.
One-line summary: Li Qiang provides the micro/mid-level sociological mechanisms—social structure, trust, and authority dependence—that explain why cults emerge in certain contexts.

Gao Hua (History / Political Mobilization and Thought Reform)

Who / Field: Historian at Nanjing University; author of How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement.
Connection to “cult of personality”:
Yan’an Rectification showed how thought reform, organizational control, and propaganda rituals combined to turn political loyalty into internalized psychological allegiance. The “Leader’s Thought” became the only source of legitimacy, and through study, criticism, and self-confession, people internalized conformity.
Gao emphasized the institutionalization process: not one-time propaganda, but continuous governance by movement, organization, and punishment that transformed external obedience into inner belief and self-monitoring.
One-line summary: Gao reconstructed the historical and psychological process by which cults are built: thought reform → discursive monopoly → ritualized loyalty → internalization.

Yan Jiaqi (Political Science / Institutions and Cult Reinforcement)

Who / Field: Former researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; co-authored Ten Years of the Cultural Revolution with Gao Gao.
Connection to “cult of personality”:
Institutional premise: When top leadership lacks term limits and oversight fails, the “leader cult” becomes a systemic outcome, not just manipulation.
Cultural Revolution experience: The book devotes chapters to how the need for ever-greater cult mobilization was coupled with organizational structures that turned mass anxiety and desire for identity into sacralization of the leader.
Practical warning: In later interviews, Yan stressed that abolishing life tenure and ensuring press freedom are key institutional safeguards against renewed cults.
One-line summary: Yan interprets cults as an effect of institutional gaps and power concentration: lack of constraints → unchecked power → cult normalization.

Synthesis: Four Complementary Frameworks

Tong Shijun: “Enlightenment–public reason–political culture” → cult as projection of authority dependence in the absence of open debate.
Li Qiang: “Social structure–trust–authority dependence” → the sociological soil of cults.
Gao Hua: “Thought reform–propaganda–organization” → the historical process of turning obedience into belief.
Yan Jiaqi: “Institutions–unchecked power” → cults as systemic products of structural flaws.

Would you like me to now prepare a “one-page quick reference sheet” with their core arguments + evidence + quotable sources side-by-side, so you can cite them directly in your own writing?