On March 1, Wang Jingqing, the husband of former Communist Party leader Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing’s only daughter Li Ne, died at the age of 94 after a long illness. Wang Jingqing was the second husband of Li Ne, who was introduced to her in 1984 and served as a guard for Mao Zedong and former Communist Party leader Liu Shaoqi.
According to Mao’s relatives, as quoted by Xinhua, the official media of the Communist Party, Wang Jingqing passed away at 6:58 a.m. Beijing Time on March 1 after his son-in-law failed to receive medical treatment. Wang Xiaozhi, son of Mao’s daughter Li Ne, said the farewell ceremony will be held at 9 a.m. on March 3 at Beijing’s Eight Treasure Mountains.
The report said that Wang Jingqing was born in 1927, a native of Yulin, Shaanxi province, and joined the Chinese Communist Army in 1940. In the early 1980s, Wang Jingqing was transferred to the chief of staff of the Nujiang Military Sub-district of the Yunnan Military Region. After being introduced by Mao Zedong’s former chief of security, Li Yinqiao and his wife, Wang Jingqing met Li Ne and they got married in early 1984. Wang Jingqing was retired from the Beijing Garrison District No. 2 Dry Retreat in Beijing.
Wang Jingqing’s wife Li Ne, the only daughter of Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing, was born in Yan’an in 1940, moved to Beijing with her Parents in 1949, and studied in the third grade at Yuying Primary School. After her graduation, Li Ne coincided with the rise of the Cultural Revolution, and because of her special background, she was assigned to work for the PLA newspaper.
During the Cultural Revolution, Li Ne organized the “Revolutionary Rebellion Commando Team” and posted a large-character poster “Where is the PLA Newspaper going” to “expose and criticize” Hu Zizi (who was then the acting president of Xinhua News Agency and a member of the All-Army Cultural Revolution Group), Song Qiong and Yang Zicai and other leaders, which swayed the direction of the newspaper. The direction of the movement was shaped by the newspaper. In 1973, Li Ne attended the 10th National Congress of the CPC, and from 1974 to 1975, Li Ne served as the secretary of Beijing Pinggu County Committee and the deputy secretary of Beijing Municipal Committee.
But with the death of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power, Li Ne’s days became increasingly difficult.
Deng Xiaoping actually hated Mao so much that he not only advocated beheading Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, but also made things difficult for Mao’s descendants, leaving Li Ne to live a miserable Life that was “surprisingly more difficult than most ordinary people,” according to an article by Radio Free Asia contributor Gao Xin in 2018.
According to the article, since the death of Mao Zedong, Li Ne always walks in the streets of Beijing wearing a white washed blue blouse and a pair of fat old army pants, an image of a poor and backward civilian crone. It is impossible to associate her with her role as Mao’s liaison officer, editor-in-chief of the PLA Daily and deputy secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee during the Cultural Revolution.
When Jiang Qing was sentenced to life imprisonment, Li Ne was also expelled from Zhongnanhai and disappeared mysteriously for five years. After regaining her freedom, Li Ne had fallen ill all over. Before Jiang Qing’s suicide, Li Ne needed treatment and maintenance for various chronic diseases and spent thousands of dollars on medical expenses before and after. However, when Li Ne went to the unit for reimbursement, most of the Medicine costs could not be reimbursed and she had to pay for them herself.
The article disclosed that Li Ne, looking at the debts she owed for medical treatment, had no choice but to write a letter to the CPC Central Committee asking whether she was entitled to inherit her father Mao Zedong’s property during his lifetime, especially the manuscript fees. She said she did not dare to expect more, but only wanted to inherit a part of the property, hoping to draw thousands of dollars from her father’s past manuscript fees to make up for the deficit owed due to medical treatment.
But after the report was submitted to Deng Xiaoping, Deng indifferently said, “Mao’s past property is the property of the party and the state, and no individual can just withdraw it.
After Li Ne was rejected, she asked Yang Shangkun for help through his son, Yang Shaoming, who told his Family that Deng Xiaoping was “not generous enough”.
Wang Xiuzhi: Learning to read people’s faces since I can remember
Wang Xiaozhi was born in Jiangxi in 1972 to Li Ne and her ex-husband, whose real name was Xu Xiaoning. 1984 Li Ne and Wang Jingqing remarried and Xu Xiaoning took her stepfather’s surname and changed her name to Wang Xiaozhi.
According to the article, Wang Xiaozhi followed his mother around the streets of Beijing since he was a child, looking for the cheapest “vegetable leaves”. When he saw leaves being thrown away under the counter at the vegetable market, he rushed to pick them up and put them in his mother’s basket. When the market saleswoman looked at the child, who had just reached school age, with pity, she could not believe that the child was Mao’s grandson.
Wang Xiaozhi himself recalled that he learned to “look at people’s faces” just as he started to remember, during a time when his family was undergoing major changes. “At that time, I felt I was a child who always made mistakes because people always stared at me.”
The article says that these little stories prove that Deng Xiaoping’s hatred for Mao had indeed reached the point of no return. The Cultural Revolution launched by Mao and his wife left Deng Xiaoping’s eldest son, Deng Pufang, paralyzed from the waist down, which made Deng angry at Mao’s descendants.
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