In May 1961, Mao met with representatives from all walks of life in Shanghai, accompanied by Ke Qingshi (center).
In July 1950, when Ke Qing-shi, who had been the mayor of Shijiazhuang, was proposed to be the secretary of the Nanjing Municipal Committee, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Nie Rongzhen, secretary of the North China Bureau, called the East China Bureau jointly, saying that he had “shortcomings in uniting cadres and carrying out his work tasks” and that they hoped the East China Bureau would “pay attention to him at all times and help him. to help him. Before that, Ke Qingshi’s biography was already bad: in 1933, when the Central Committee sent him to Manchuria to carry out his mission, he fled in the middle of the mission because he was afraid of the enemy but lied that he had already gone, and the Yan’an rectification concluded that he had “made the mistake of wavering and deceiving the organization at the moment of danger.
In theory, such a “problematic official” would not be reappointed. However, after arriving in East China, Ke Qing Shi’s career was on the rise. In 1954, he succeeded Chen Yi as the first secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and secretary of the Shanghai Bureau of the CPC Central Committee (the only Central Bureau formed after the abolition of the Region), and in 1958 he was promoted to the Politburo after not being an alternate member of the Politburo at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, and in the same year he also became the mayor of Shanghai, the director of the East China Collaboration Zone, and the first political commissar of the Nanjing Military Region. In the same year, he also served as the mayor of Shanghai, the director of the East China Cooperation Zone, and the first political commissar of Nanjing Military Region.
In the history of the Republic at that time, Ke Qing Shi’s official success was rare, and the reason for it is also interesting. The reason for this is intriguing. Of course, this is related to the atmosphere of the times and the party system, but the main thing should be his insistence on bending over backwards to meet the top leader and peeking into the wind to move the code of officialdom. As Chen Yun said in 1980 about how to write Mao Zedong’s mistakes in his later years in the “Historical Resolution”: “Chairman Mao’s mistakes, some local people have considerable responsibility. Chairman Mao always talked about the bad air in Beijing and did not want to stay in Beijing” and “the first person he would listen to was Ke Qingshi in East China.” ③
A review of historical books shows that Ke Qingshi puzzled over Mao’s preferences when he was first in the late “socialist transformation”. A seemingly careless conversation he had with Mao Zedong had deeply touched him and changed some aspects of the history of the Republic at that time.
As we all know, the pace of “socialist transformation” had been relatively steady until the criticism of the so-called “small-footed woman walking” carried out in the Party in the summer of 1955. But in the summer of that year after Mao Zedong visited the South, from May, this work was suddenly accelerated by Mao Zedong, in just a few months in one fell swoop, because the requirements are too hasty, transformation is too fast, the work is too rough, the form is too simple and uniform, leaving a lot of problems. In recent years, many people have inquired into the reasons for Mao Zedong’s “May change”. Bo Yibo in his “review of some major decisions and events” pointed out that the most important one was the result of a situation told by Ke Qingshi to Mao Zedong on his southern tour, “saying that after his investigation, thirty percent of the cadres at the county, district and township levels reflected the sentiment that the peasants wanted ‘freedom’ and were not willing to engage in socialism”.
According to Bo Yibo, Ke Qingshi’s words were “pretending to be alarmist in order to impress the leaders”, and “at this very moment, more people in high places outside the Party spoke for the peasants, and some of them even said something similar to what Mr. Liang Shuming said in 1953: ‘The peasants are suffering. Some of them even said something similar to what Mr. Liang Shuming said in 1953: ‘The peasants are suffering. Chairman Mao was not very willing to listen to such words as ‘peasant suffering’. At that time he got the impression that these people who spoke of peasant suffering thought they represented the peasants, but in fact they did not represent the peasants, but were only unwilling to engage in industrialization and socialism.” As early as the early 1940s, Mao Zedong proposed the classic formula of “two steps” for the Chinese revolution. From the day the Chinese Communist Party was founded, he repeatedly called on the entire party to be a complete revolutionary and to strive to pass the socialist hurdle. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine how superb and wonderful this briefing by Ke Qing Shi is.
As Bo Yibo said, “Ke had puzzled over Chairman Mao’s thoughts and likes, and his words left a deep impression on Chairman Mao. Chairman Mao immediately thought: such ‘people who are not willing to engage in socialism’ are found below, in the provinces, and among the cadres of the central government organs.” (Three years later, during the Second Session of the Eighth CPC Congress, Mao again mentioned this report by Ke Qingshi in a speech, which proves that Bo’s words were true.) So, after the southern inspection back to Beijing, Mao Zedong with anger and concern to the foreground, began to force the crowd, boldly promote agricultural cooperation; do not know the bottom, Deng Zichuan advocate cooperation should be a steady pace, naturally, he was denounced as “small-footed woman walking”. The criticism of the so-called “small-footed woman walking” not only led to the rapid progress of the entire socialist transformation, but also led to the adventurous economic construction of the Republic in 1956. Therefore, some commentators point out, “In contemporary Chinese history, this is the first record of using false facts to deceive the top and the bottom, causing the Party’s policy to go astray.” ④
Ke Qingshi’s this speech to Mao Zedong undoubtedly won him the headlines. He followed the Supreme Leader more closely in everything and made it a point to be ahead of the trend. Perhaps it was because of Ke Qingshi that Mao Zedong was particularly fond of the East China region from this time onwards. at the end of 1957, Mao Zedong, who had returned from his second visit to the Soviet Union and was planning the Great Leap Forward, came to stay here for nearly a month. Bo Yibo later said, “Chairman Mao thought that at that time the air in Beijing was dull and the air in East China was active, and wanted to promote Beijing with the place.” As the saying goes, when Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward, he criticized the anti-adventurous idea of changing the route of the 8th Congress and his ambition of “catching up with Britain in 15 years”, the party leader in Shanghai was the one who followed closely in words and deeds.
At the end of that year, Ke Qing Shi made a report at the second session of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Shanghai, which smelled strongly of impatience and adventurism – “Riding the Wind and Waves, Accelerating the Construction of a New Socialist Shanghai”. In his report, he fiercely attacked the anti-adventurous progress in 1956: “There were some people who, contrary to the Party’s view, regarded this revolutionary attitude, revolutionary spirit and revolutionary speed as adventurous, as ‘good and big’. They always say that they have done more of this and faster, that they have ventured into this and that. They just don’t look at whether socialism is advancing or capitalism is advancing; whether socialism is more and faster or capitalism is more and faster; whether it is ‘good’ socialism that is ‘big’ and ‘good’ socialism that is ‘big’ and ‘good’ socialism that is ‘big’. happy’ with the ‘merits’ of socialism, or the opposite. Is it wrong to ask whether, with some effort, socialism can be made to advance a little faster and more?” (⑤)
Ke Qingshi’s article on rising false fire was undoubtedly a timely support for Mao Zedong’s criticism of the idea of anti-adventuring and preparation for the Great Leap Forward. Mao, who felt that he could not find a soulmate in Beijing, found one here. He instructed the People’s Daily to publish Ke Qingshi’s article. At the Nanning Conference in January of the following year, Ke Qing Shi became the only star who was constantly praised by Mao Zedong by name. Mao said that Ke Qing Shi had compared many comrades of the Central Committee, that the truth did not come out of Beijing, but from Shanghai; that Shanghai was the place where the Chinese working class was concentrated, and that without the strong passion of the working class to build socialism, such a good article could not be written. Speaking with excitement, he even took out Ke Qingshi’s article and said to Zhou Enlai: “You are the Premier, look, can you write this article or not?”
In many speeches during the meeting, the 65-year-old Mao repeatedly called the 56-year-old Ke Qingshi “Ke Lao”, which was said to be the only person in the Party who was respected by Mao as “a certain old man” and whose actual age was younger than Mao. At the Chengdu meeting in March, where Mao continued to conceive the “Great Leap Forward,” Wu Lengxi recalled that “Ke Qing Shi was very active” and that when the meeting summed up the lessons of the so-called “anti-adventuring” in 1956, he “even interjected the lessons of the so-called “anti-adventuring. When he spoke at the meeting to sum up the lessons of the so-called “anti-progressive” activities in 1956, he “interjected three times, always with the tone of lecturing people”. (6) His best performance was when he said, “Believe in Chairman Mao to the extent of superstition, and obey Chairman Mao to the extent of blind obedience. This famous phrase was conveyed throughout the party after the meeting, and he earned the reputation of being a “good student of Chairman Mao” from then on. Many years later, Hu Qiaomu said with a heavy heart in a speech about this matter: “This was brought up openly at a formal meeting, not by a few people talking in private, let alone by anyone who made it up.” (7)
In May 1958, the Second Session of the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of China, which officially launched the “Great Leap Forward,” was held. Mao Zedong continued to call on people to “break down superstition and liberate their minds. As a matter of fact, the call to speak up and do something was overwhelming in the speeches of the Congress. The most bizarre was Ke Qingshi’s speech on the romantic prospects of the Great Leap Forward in culture, education and health.
–In fifteen years or more, primary and secondary education will have become universal in China, and not only universities or colleges will be established in every district and county, but also in the vast number of villages, and everyone will know how to read and understand (socialism and communism), and everyone will have a relatively high level of scientific and cultural knowledge.
— By then, people will live extremely civilized and hygienic lives. Flies, mosquitoes, bedbugs, rats, sparrows, etc. will have long been extinct. Children read about these things in books as mysteriously as they talk about the monsters of Greek mythology. They will see it as a curiosity to hear the older generation talk about the poison that people have endured from these little things for thousands of years. People will be as interested in seeing specimens of these things in museums as they are now in looking at dinosaur fossils.
— By that time, the new cultural and artistic life will be a daily routine in the lives of workers and peasants, with libraries, cultural centers, singing and acting teams in every factory, mine and rural area, and every production team and group will have its own Li Bai, Lu Xun and Nie Er, its own Mei Lanfang and Guo Lanying.
–By then, communist morality had basically expelled the old ideas and habits left over from the old society, and the comradeship and cooperation between leaders and the masses, and the relationship of “we for all, all for me” had already become a new social trend, and with the development of collective labor and collective life, people’s collectivism would be greatly strengthened, and the whole country would really become a big, close, harmonious family.
This “Ke Lao” also said: “Is this vision realistic? I’m afraid our vision is still small, not far enough to think big.”
According to Li Rui, Ke Qingshi’s speech “seems to be Zhang Chunqiao’s handiwork”, and at the Chengdu meeting Ke Qingshi “seems to have received a cold shoulder, which he probably felt was related to the failure to deliver an article. So the old man approached me and asked me to write an article for him. His main idea was to make a great leap forward in education and culture and a great revolution at the same time as the great leap forward in industry and agriculture, but he could not talk much about the details. I was very reluctant to write one or two thousand words and handed in the paper. As a result, this article was not issued. Later, Tian Jiaying told me that Ke told him: Li Rui’s article was not well written. In the future, the Central Committee meeting, he must bring Zhang Chunqiao”. In fact, Ke Qingshi’s graphic description of the future society was not his invention, but his specific elaboration of Mao’s vision of the future society in this period. As a matter of fact, he was again praised by Mao Zedong at the Nanning Conference, where he had won many prizes since that time, and at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee held immediately afterwards, he was co-opted as a member of the Politburo together with Li Jingquan of the Southwest Bureau as the head of the local party committee.
Since he became a member of the Politburo, Ke Qing Shi had more opportunities to get close to Mao Zedong, and he could more easily understand the leader’s intentions and ideas from his remarks, and then advocate and expound them with the boldness of the first wind. Thus, in the subsequent years of the “Great Leap Forward”, Ke Qing Shi’s long deliberation and inspiration were even more spectacular.
After the second meeting of the Eighth National Congress, the Great Leap Forward movement was spread on all fronts in the country. High targets and pompous winds were the first to rise unprecedentedly. In June, the East China Cooperative Region, which was under his administration, took the lead in putting out “satellites” in the agricultural sector, saying that the total grain output of the five provinces and cities in East China was 71.5 billion jins last year, and that the summer harvest this year would be 20.3 billion jins, plus 120 billion jins in autumn, an increase of nearly 70% over last year. East China also planned to reach a production capacity of 8 million tons of steel in the five provinces and cities of East China (excluding Shandong) by 1959. Bo Yibo said this had a decisive influence on Mao Zedong’s final determination to make “107 million tons” of steel in 1958, “I can conclude that Chairman Mao was influenced by him. This is evidenced by Chairman Mao’s many subsequent conversations”, Ke “prompted him to break into this mess”. The danger of the 1958 steelmaking goal of “10700” to the economic construction of the republic in that year and after is well known. 1959 Lushan meeting before, Zhou Enlai said last year’s 10.7 million tons of steel, the chairman was originally proposed to ask, we did not go through much investigation and study, the whole party acted, which is a serious lesson. A serious lesson.
In that year’s people’s commune movement, Ke Qingshi also created the slogan of “no money for meals” in the people’s commune. It is said that when the People’s Commune of Xinxiang, Henan Province, was first established, Ke Qing Shi sent Zhang Chun Qiao, the propaganda minister of the Shanghai Municipal Committee, to visit the commune, and Zhang found that there was no money for meals and reported back to Ke, who then spread the slogan. So it was rumored in the party that “no money for meals” was Ke’s “first creation”. Li Rui said: “The slogan of “no money for meals” was mentioned by Ke Qingshi at the second meeting of the Eighth Congress, and once it was publicized in the newspapers, it was widely spread. Thus, McFarquhar, the famous British expert on China, pointed out that “the issue of free meals was apparently raised by Ke Qingshi, the first secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee.” Ke Qingshi’s slogan apparently won Mao Zedong’s heart, and at the subsequent Beidaihe meeting, Mao Zedong repeatedly talked about “no money for meals.
Therefore, when discussing rural work at the meeting on August 23, Ke Qingshi formally proposed that “meals should be free in communes”, which was immediately approved by many people. However, due to the explicit negation of Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi, the resolution on the issue of people’s communes was not included in the meeting. The proposal of “free meals” was not officially approved, but Ke kept in mind Mao Zedong’s speech on the abolition of bourgeois legal power at the meeting. After returning to Shanghai in early September, Ke told his “consigliere” Zhang Chunqiao, who immediately wrote an article — the abolition of bourgeois legal power thought, which was unexpected to anyone at that time. The article holds that “the core of bourgeois legal power is the hierarchy”; After citing the example of Master Zhao in Lu Xun’s novel, who scolded Ah Q for not being surnamed Zhao, Mr. Zhang said that in the old days, “the bourgeoisie had the right of law in everything” from whether he deserved to be surnamed Zhao, to how he dressed, ate, lived in an apartment, how fast he walked and how he smoked. The article further denies the necessity of changing the supply system to the salary system after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, arguing that this reform “protected the unequal bourgeois legal rights” and “struck the revolutionary tradition of the proletariat”. Sure enough, Mao Zedong, who read the article, appreciated it. At his direction, the People’s Daily on October 13 reprinted the full text of an editor’s note by Zhang Wen, who was ghostwritten by Mao Zedong, saying: “This issue needs to be discussed because it is an important issue at present. We think Zhang Wen is basically right.” This led to a large discussion for two or three months, which further created public opinion for communism and the spread of communism at that time.
The tumultuous Great Leap Forward did not last long. In the autumn and winter of 1958, Mao Zedong took the lead in rectifying “leftists” when he realized that there were many troubles in the “Great Leap Forward” and the people’s commune movement. But Ke Qingshi, the right hand man of the Great Leap Forward, was defiant. At a meeting in Shanghai in early 1959, when Tao Lujia, then first secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee, recalled, when he told the meeting that the four targets had been set too high, Ke Qingshi told them to be ambitious. If a Communist does not speak big, it will not count; if a Communist speaks big, it will count only seven. On another occasion, Ke used a figurative metaphor to make his point: picking apples in an orchard and jumping up to get them when they were out of reach.
In July, at the beginning of the republic of China in the history of the famous lushan meeting, face the painful lessons of “the great leap forward”, most of the attendees can calmly analyze the problems, reflect on lessons learned, said that due to his lack of experience, hot-headed, to the central reflect some information and data is not exact, feel a heavy heart, whereas KeQing applied repeatedly to cover one’s mistakes. Through the meeting of li later in lushan meeting a memoir, “says he is” left “command is 1, the said part of the people is always in a peek, led by him, wind direction, make waves, catering for the year to… not only have no guilt, instead make disease of Q: touch can not, a touch namely jump, too justifying a fault, too to protect themselves. After Peng Dehuai’s letter was issued by Mao Zedong on the 16th, Ke Qingshi, with his unique political sensitivity, immediately understood the leader’s intention. Even before Mao did, he called Peng Dehuai’s letter “poisonous weed.” He criticized Peng’s “gain outweighs loss” and said: the relationship between gain and loss is not “gain outweighs loss”, nor is it “gain and loss”, but “gain outweighs loss”; As a Shanghai worker put it, “Don’t say it’s not easy to be a leader, and it’s not easy for me to be a small family. I often forget to buy ginger when I buy scallions.”
On the 21st, when Zhang Wentian spoke at the panel meeting in support of Peng Dehuai’s opinion in the letter, Ke Qingshi kept chipping in. The next day, Mao Zedong asked for a talk. Ke Qingshi said that now it is very necessary for the chairman to speak out and stand up to the wind, otherwise the team will disperse and all the people will be dragged by Peng Dehuai. This contributed to Mao Zedong’s subjective and arbitrary belief that Peng Dehuai was “commanding against Mao” and “Wei Yan against bone”. Immediately after Mao Zedong’s speech on the 23rd, Ke Qingshi said in his subsequent speech that the whole content of Peng Xin “should be definitely wrong”, which was in fact a denial of the Great Leap Forward and the correctness of the general line. This was the first time Peng was criticized in the group discussion. In his speech on the 30th, Ke Qingshi further attacked Peng Dehuai for wavering at the critical juncture of the previous revolutions and always standing on the wrong line. It was no accident that he led the opposition party in the general line this time. The meeting of the immortals eventually became the meeting of the protectors of the gods, and China continued to be pushed toward catastrophe.
The construction of the Republic entered a difficult period of adjustment from 1961 onwards. But the party’s views on the difficult situation and its causes differ. Some of those who have spared no effort to promote the “Great Leap Forward” insist that the difficulties are not great and the situation is still good. This not only seriously affected the depth of the adjustment work, but also gradually generated the differences between Mao and Liu in the central leadership core. In this respect, Ke Qingshi is a typical representative. At the beginning of this year, Mao Zedong called for a year of seeking truth from facts, a year of adjustment. In early February, Mao Zedong, eager to know the real situation in the countryside, convened local party leaders in Hangzhou to hear a report on the correction of the “five customs”. Ke Qingshi was still talking about how well the canteen was run and how many benefits it had. Fortunately, Mao Zedong, after learning from other sources that public canteens were a serious problem, gave in to the farmers’ desire to shut them down in late 1961.
At the beginning of the next year’s meeting of the 7,000-person National People’s Congress, Ke Qingshi was extremely dissatisfied with Liu Shaoqi’s analysis of the situation and the tasks he proposed in the report submitted on behalf of the Central Committee, and raised a series of questions: “Do you want the 40 Articles of the Agricultural Development Program? How many years to solve food and clothing? How about catching up with England in 15 years? … Motivation or not? What methods are used to boost motivation? … Indicators or not?” And he said, “The more I look at it, the less interesting it is.” For this period of Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi presided over the adjustment of literary policy, Ke Qingshi was quite dissatisfied. In June 1961, the Propropaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Ministry of Culture held a symposium on work and a conference on feature film creation in Beijing. Ke Qingshi instructed the Shanghai delegates: “Only listen with your ears, not your mouth. Shanghai is on the right track.”
At the meeting, Zhou Enlai criticized some wrong practices in the literary and art circles as “five children enrolling in the examination”, but Ke was not allowed to convey this speech in Shanghai. So much so that Zhou Enlai said angrily at a later meeting: “Who are you?” Xie Jin, a famous director and former vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Literary and Cultural Arts, later recalled: I was sitting in the front row and saw it very clearly. I was startled and Premier Zhou’s face turned red. Everyone wondered who he was talking about, but in fact he was talking about Ko Ching-shi, just not by name.
After 1962, with the development of the opposition to the “modern revisionism” of the Soviet Communist Party, Mao Zedong turned his attention from the setbacks of the “Great Leap Forward” to the class struggle again, and the ideological field became the primary focus of his scrutiny. Aware of the shift in excitement among the Supreme Leader, Ko Ching-shi immediately followed suit and began to pay more attention to the literary world.
At the end of this year, in a talk in Shanghai, Mao Zedong first criticized the drama work: emperors, generals and ministers, talented scholars and beautiful women increased, and the west wind prevailed over the east wind, and the east wind was more dominant. “Liangshanbo” does not produce grain, “tea picking lamp” does not pick tea, the old troupe more. Therefore, Ke Qingshi, who was not familiar with the rules of literary creation, immediately put forward the slogan of “capital thirteen years”. In his speech at the Shanghai Literary and Art Workers’ Gala at the beginning of the next year, he said: In future, as a guiding ideology, we must advocate and adhere to the principle of “enhancing the present and improving the ancient”. We should focus on writing about the living in the thirteen years after liberation, not the ancient or the dead. Only by writing 13 years of modern themes can we help people establish socialist thoughts; Only when it reflects life in the 13 years since the founding of the People’s Republic can it be socialist literature and art. He even said that as long as it was written for 13 years, I would take my wife and children to buy a ticket to see it. If it was not written for 13 years, I would not read it.
On January 6, 1963, Shanghai’s Jiefang Daily and Wen Wei Po simultaneously reported Ke Qingshi’s speech. The bizarre notion of “13 years in a capital case” drew immediate criticism from literary and art circles, but it was in line with the ideas of Jiang Qing, the “floating sentinel” who at the time was trying to get into politics but was ignored in Beijing. In late February, Jiang Qing came to Shanghai to establish her “experimental base for literary revolution”. Ke Qingshi had already understood the importance of Chiang Ch ‘ing from Mao’s shifting attention, and the two sides hit it off. Since Jiang Qing came under the banner of “culture,” Ke formally introduced her to Zhang Chunqiao, the alternate secretary in charge of culture and education of Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. The literary work conference convened in April, the central propaganda department KeQing shi put forward the slogan of “capital 13 years” is a fierce debate, zhou, Lin Mohan, Shao Quan ‘etc. In his speech pointed out that this slogan have great one-sided sex, is not in conformity with the “double hundred” policy, while according to the Shanghai zhang chunqiao, yao wenyuan KeQing will, shi made up ten advantage “capital” for 13 years. This pits Beijing and Shanghai against each other.
Shortly after the meeting, with the support of Jiang Qing, who had a special status, Ke and Zhang began to act in real earnest in Shanghai. On May 6, Shanghai Wenhui Daily published written by jiang qing, KeQing organization man “ghost” harmless “theory”, the kunqu opera “li huiniang’s revenge” and “in ghosts harmless” theory of Liao Mosha political criticism, thus leading up to the mid 60 s literary mounting criticism movement, established in Shanghai also marks the “literary revolution test base”, jiang qing and KeQing, zhang chunqiao began to “work together”. China’s literary arena has increasingly become a political arena. A few years later, Jiang Qing, an important member of the Central Committee of the Cultural Revolution, said gratefully, “The first truly significant article criticizing the theory that ghosts are harmless was written by Comrade Ke Qingshi in Shanghai with the support of him.”
After that, Ke Qingshi, who was good at figuring things out, took a new approach: he promoted the activities of the Story-Telling Association in Shanghai to educate the workers, peasants and soldiers about their class by telling stories. On December 9, the central propaganda department reported his report on art and literature of the new initiatives: KeQing comrades personally catch quyi work, one is involved in the construction of pingtan long new titles, “KeQing comrades mentioned, do you have any more on thought and art are good long modern bibliography, is related to the socialist literature and art can occupy position problem”; The other is to catch the story teller, the story teller in coordination with the socialist education movement, telling revolutionary stories, played the role of red propagandists, very popular with the masses. Soon, when Mao Zedong saw the material, he ordered Beijing leaders Peng Zhen and Liu Ren to read it, which was clearly intended to criticize Beijing for embracing the literary and art circles and adhering to conventions, not as tightly as Shanghai. It seems that his idea of accusing Beijing of “no needle can be inserted and no water can be splashed” had been formed at that moment.
It was on this material that Mao Zedong made the first of his two famous instructions on literature and art before the Cultural Revolution: “It is strange that many communists are zealous in advocating feudalism and capitalist art, but not socialist art.” Therefore, some people pointed out that “Ke Qingshi’s new move directly triggered Mao Zedong’s special feeling towards the literary and art circles, which led to the final threshold of disaster.” Pet-name ruby
No doubt, Ke learned of Mao’s instructions very quickly, as can be seen from his criticism of theater work at the opening ceremony of the East China Drama Festival on December 25: “In the past 15 years, we have made very few achievements, and I do not know what we have done. They are keen on bourgeois and feudal dramas, are keen on promoting foreign things and ancient things, and put on ‘dead people’ and ‘ghost plays’… All this profoundly reflects the struggle between two paths and two directions in our theatrical and literary circles.”
At the drama observation meeting held under the “leadership” of Ke Qingshi and the “care” of Jiang Qing, Tian Hanlian, the chairman of China Drama Association, who came specially to attend the meeting, was treated with malice and contempt. He had to leave Shanghai quietly when he learned that his seat was not arranged on the rostum at the closing meeting.
In early 1964, Ke Qingshi was found to have lung cancer and was hospitalized and recuperated. He died in Chengdu in April the following year at the age of 63. His death was followed by solemn ceremonies in Beijing and Shanghai, and the party’s central obituary described him as “a close comrade in arms of Comrade Mao Zedong”. During this period, Jiang Qing traveled frequently between Beijing and Shanghai, and the article “Comment on the New Historical Dra < Hai Rui Discharged from Office >”, which ignited the fire of the Cultural Revolution in the following ten years, was being secretly produced in Shanghai. “Cultural Revolution” is about to open, Ke Qingshi did not catch up with that era, is it unfortunate? Or is it lucky? People have gone, but it seems impossible to say for sure. To this day, Ke Qingshi is still the only one of the 20 members of the eight-term Politburo before the “Cultural Revolution” who has not had a personal biography passed down.
【 notes 】
① Chen Pixian: Chen Pixian’s Memoirs — In the Heart of the January Storm, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2005, p. 190.
(2) Chen Pixian: Chen Pixian’s Memoirs — In the Heart of the January Storm, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2005, p. 190.
③ Hu Qiaomu on the History of the Communist Party of China, People’s Publishing House, 1999, p. 138.
④ Ling Zhijun, History No Longer Wandering — The Rise and Failure of the People’s Commune in China, People’s Publishing House, 1997, p. 34.
⑤ Xiao Donglian, “Searching for China — History of the First Ten Years of the Cultural Revolution”, Hongqi Publishing House, 1999, p. 287.
⑥ Wu Lengxi, Memory of President, Xinhua Publishing House, 1995, p. 65.
⑦ Hu Qiaomu on the History of the CPC, People’s Publishing House, 1999, p. 155.
⑧ Bo Yibo, Review of Some Major Decisions and Events, Vol. 2, History of the Communist Party of China Press, 2008, p. 493.
⑨ Chen Jin: Mao Zedong, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2005, 540 pages.
Yanhuang Spring and Autumn Annals, No.10, 2008
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