After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the chairman of the “Central People’s Government” was initially set up, and the state chairmanship began in 1954. Between 1966 and 1975, the post of State President was vacant for a long time because Liu Shaoqi, who had served as President, was persecuted to death, and no one served as President from early 1975 to December 1982 because the State President was formally abolished during this period and was not restored until the end of 1982.
In the eyes of the world, as vice-presidents of the Communist Party, they had enormous power and could do things that ordinary people could not do and enjoy a life that ordinary people could not hope for, so where could they or their families have any fear of imprisonment or even life? However, the fact is just the opposite, the chairmanship is not a safe deposit box, in the land of China without any legal protection, except for the lawless Mao Zedong, who was determined to get rid of the party rivals, except for Li Jishen and Zhang Lan, who were bailed out by Mao and died early, the above-mentioned national chairmen and vice chairmen were more or less persecuted by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, and some even lost their lives. It is worth mentioning them separately. Since Zhu De has been introduced in “Ten Marshals of the Chinese Communist Party who were persecuted”, this article is about Liu Shaoqi, Song Qingling, Gao Gang and Dong Biwu.
Above: Liu Shaoqi
Mao launched the Cultural Revolution against Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi, a leading member of the first generation of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, served as president from April 1959 to 1966 and was the number two person after Mao. As the conflict between Mao and Liu became increasingly acute during the “Four Clean-up Campaigns” that began in the early 1960s, Mao was no longer satisfied with “tinkering with the details” and turned to conceive and launch the “Cultural Revolution”. “, and hoped to use this to put Liu Shaoqi to death.
In this regard, many scholars who study the history of the CPC have long reached a consensus that Mao’s main purpose of launching the Cultural Revolution was to “rectify the faction in power in the Party that took the capitalist road”, whose representative was none other than Liu Shaoqi.
In May 1966, the Cultural Revolution broke out, and the Red Guard movement plunged the whole of China into chaos. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Liu Shaoqi shared Mao’s position on certain issues and said, “We support Chairman Mao now, and we will support Chairman Mao a hundred years from now. Mao Zedong Thought should continue, and Chairman Mao’s writings should become the textbook for the whole country, the guide to action for the whole country, and the guide to action for all Party members. ……”
In June 1966, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping organized a working group to go into large and middle schools and forbid students from demonstrating and posting large-character posters. Mao was very angry about this and ordered the working group to be withdrawn.
At the 11th Plenary Session of the 8th CPC Central Committee in August of that year, the “Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” was adopted. Mao targeted Liu Shaoqi as the “bourgeoisie commander”, and Lin Biao took over his position as the second most important person in the CPC, although Liu was still a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, his ranking was reduced, and his status as Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Committee was no longer mentioned. At the enlarged meeting of the Politburo on October 16, Liu was criticized by Chen Boda, Lin Biao and others. Then large-character posters and party newspapers began to criticize Liu and Deng one after another.
Tragically criticized
In December 1966, the issue of Liu Shaoqi finally became public. Jiang Qing openly declared that “Liu Shaoqi is the Khrushchev of the Party” and slogans of “Down with Liu Shaoqi” appeared in Beijing. At the same time, the central government set up the “Wang Guangmei Task Force” to investigate Liu Shaoqi and Wang Guangmei. This task force did not openly operate under the name of “Liu Shaoqi Wang Guangmei Task Force” until April 1968, with Zhou Enlai as its leader.
In January 1967, Mao met with Liu for the last time. On July 14, Mao left Beijing, and on July 18, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng and Chen Boda organized a conference to criticize Liu Shaoqi and Wang Guangmei.
According to the mainland publication Zhongnanhai People Spring and Autumn, outside Zhongnanhai, hundreds of thousands of people gathered around, carrying more than a hundred tweeters playing a high pitched racket; inside Zhongnanhai, the rebels seized Liu Shaoqi and Wang Guangmei to two canteens to criticize them, and raided their homes. Liu Shaoqi was forced to press his head, bent over in front of the meeting, he was not allowed to say a word, or he would use the quotations book to knock his face and mouth. The criticism lasted nearly two hours, nearly 70 years old Liu Shaoqi has been unbearable, beads of sweat constantly oozing from his face, he pulled out his hand to pull out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat, but unexpectedly standing next to him a fierce palm of the handkerchief knocked off, his sweat also flowed with the shock on the ground ……
On August 5, in order to echo the million people held in Tiananmen Square, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng and others planned to criticize Liu, Deng and Tao General Assembly, respectively, held in the courtyard of their respective homes. Liu Shaoqi was beaten up and bruised.
Protest is not effective
After the criticism meeting, Liu Shaoqi was escorted back to the office, he was exhausted, but the remaining anger, immediately ring the bell to call the secretary, took out the “Constitution of the People’s Republic of China”, sternly protested: “I am the President of the People’s Republic of China, how you treat me personally, it does not matter, but I want to defend the dignity of the State President, who removed me from the State President? If you want to try, you have to go through the People’s Congress, you are insulting our country by doing this, I am personally a citizen, why am I not allowed to speak?” Despite the secretary writing a report that night, Liu received no reply to his protest.
Beaten down completely
On September 13, Liu Shaoqi’s children were expelled from Zhongnanhai, Wang Guangmei was arrested and imprisoned, and Liu was forced to have his belt removed and put under “strict guard”. Liu developed symptoms such as a mental trance. In addition, due to the injury to his right leg, Liu was unable to go to meals by himself, and the supervisors were reluctant to go to meals, so he had to eat several meals at a time.
Liu’s body became weaker and weaker. Although Liu was not paralyzed, he could only lie on the bed and was unable to get up, no one changed his clothes, no one helped him get up to urinate and defecate; due to inactivity, the muscles of his legs gradually atrophied; his arms and hips were also rotten due to the injection, and the nursing log wrote that there was not a single good blood vessel in his body.
On October 18, 1968, Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and Xie Fuzhi, members of the CPC Central Committee’s ad hoc review panel, presented the “Review Report on the Crimes of Traitor, Traitor, and Worker Thief Liu Shaoqi,” including the findings of Liu Shaoqi’s counterrevolutionary crimes of being arrested and defecting, surrendering to the enemy, and acting as a traitor and worker thief in 1925, 1927, and 1929. on October 31, the 8th CPC 10th The report was approved by the Second Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee, which concluded that “Liu Shaoqi, the Party’s number one capitalist faction in power, is a traitor, traitor and worker traitor buried in the Party, and a lackey of imperialism, modern revisionism and the Kuomintang reactionary faction who has committed many crimes.” And a resolution was passed: “To expel Liu Shaoqi from the Party forever, to revoke all his posts inside and outside the Party, and to continue to liquidate the crimes of Liu Shaoqi and his associates for their treason against the Party and the country.” At the same time, it called on “all Party comrades and the whole country to continue to carry out a deep revolutionary mass fight to purge the Party of the counter-revolutionary revisionist ideas of Liu Shaoqi and a small group of the largest capitalist stragglers in the Party.”
On November 24, Liu Shaoqi’s 70th birthday, Mao and Zhou specially instructed Wang Dongxing to bring Liu Shaoqi a special birthday present – a radio, the purpose of which was to let him listen to the communiqué of the 12th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee. Liu was mentally crushed at once after hearing it, reportedly sweating profusely, breathing rapidly, blue lips, vomiting frequently, blood pressure rose steeply to 260/130 mmHg, body temperature reached 40 ℃.
From then on, Liu Shaoqi chose to be silent, no longer say a word, even if it is the treatment and life phrases are not a word.
No one shape before the tragic death
On October 17, 1969, according to Lin Biao’s “No. 1 order”, Liu Shaoqi, who could die at any time, was sent to Kaifeng, Henan Province, by special plane. At this time, Liu was already covered with rotten and fishy odor, as thin as wood, and his breath was dying. The central commissioner neither allowed to take a bath, nor allowed to turn over and change clothes, but stripped him naked, wrapped in a quilt in a plane from Beijing to Kaifeng, imprisoned in a strong bunker basement. When he had a high fever, not only was he denied medicine, but all the medical staff was transferred.
At 6 a.m. on November 12, Liu left this life at the age of 71. At the time of his death, Liu had no human form, and his unkempt white hair was two feet long. Two days later in the middle of the night, Liu was cremated according to the treatment of virulent infectious diseases, and the used bedding and pillows and other relics were incinerated. Liu’s death card reads: name: Liu Wei Huang; occupation: unemployed; cause of death: died of disease. The whereabouts of his ashes are unknown.
The titular president of the country was thus persecuted by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party to death, and died in vain. Not only that, a large number of party, government and military leaders were also falsely accused of being “Liu Shaoqi’s agents”, and countless others were implicated.
The root cause of his tragic ordeal
Although Liu Shaoqi’s experience was rather tragic, he and Mao were in fact not essentially different, even Mao and Liu were very similar in thought and language, and there was actually a lot of criticism of him.
At the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1945, it was he who first proposed that “Mao Zedong Thought is the guiding ideology of the Party and the guideline for all the work of the Party”, and wrote it into the Party constitution and the Party program. Mao’s personal superstition and personal authority first opened the situation, he has the first credit. Therefore, also by Mao’s favor, the status gradually rose.
At the 1959 Lushan Conference, Liu reprimanded Peng Dehuai, and ignored his conscience, disregarding the facts and killing loyalists. Then look at his actions in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, which were even more toothsome.
In a normal society, Liu Shaoqi and others would not have ended up so miserable. Liu Shaoqi’s death was the result of a failed power struggle within the Chinese Communist Party, but the ultimate cause was the evil Chinese Communist system.
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