Beijing mayor purged as the Cultural Revolution's first major target, then the architect of post-Mao China's legal-institutional foundations
"Chairman Mao was not without any mistakes either. … Even if Chairman Mao's prestige is not as high as Mount Everest, it's still as high as Mount Tai. Even if you shovel off a few tons of dirt, it's still just as high" — at the 1962 Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, publicly criticizing Mao
A founding CCP member in Shanxi (1923) who rose through the anti-Japanese war and civil war to the Politburo in 1945. As Beijing mayor and first party secretary (1951–66), he governed the capital for 15 years as a loyal party stronghold. In February 1966, his 'February Outline' tried to contain the Cultural Revolution within academic debate; Mao annulled it and had Peng purged as a 'counter-revolutionary revisionist,' subjected to over 53 public struggle sessions, the Cultural Revolution's opening act. Rehabilitated under Deng Xiaoping in 1979, he chaired the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, pushed seven foundational laws through the NPC in three months, and as NPC Standing Committee chairman (1983–88) laid the institutional foundations of China's post-Mao legal system.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1923Joined CCP in Taiyuan; founding member in Shanxi province
- 1929–1935Imprisoned in Beijing and Tianjin; continued underground work from prison
- 1937–1941Organization director, North China Bureau; secretary, Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region
- 1941–1944Deputy director, Central Party School; led the Yan'an Rectification purge at the school
- 1945Elected to Politburo; sent to lead Northeast Bureau — removed 1946 after military defeats
- 1951–1966Mayor of Beijing and First Secretary of Beijing Municipal Committee
- 1966Head of Five Man Group, drafted February Outline; purged at May 1966 conference, opening the Cultural Revolution
- 1979–1988Chair of NPC Legal Affairs Commission, secretary of Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission; Chairman of 6th NPC Standing Committee (1983–88)
Related historical events
The "Peng-Luo-Lu-Yang" Case and a Decade of Imprisonment
The purge of spring 1966 was carried out through the party's own disciplinary machinery rather than as an individual punishment. From May 4 to May 24, 1966, an enlarged Politburo meeting took up criticism of Peng together with Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi and Yang Shangkun; the charge assigned to Peng was that he had drafted the "February Outline" and blocked the campaign against Wu Han's play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. Mao denounced him as a "Party tyrant" who had shielded the "scholar tyrant" Wu Han, and Peng's fall was read as the opening shot of Mao's counter-offensive against Liu Shaoqi's group. On May 24 the Politburo Standing Committee established a special case-review committee designating the four an "anti-Party clique"; Peng's Central Secretariat post was suspended, he was stripped of the Beijing first secretaryship and mayoralty, and he was branded a "special agent." The May 16 Circular, which denounced him by name and annulled both the February Outline and the Five Man Group, transferred their authority to the Central Cultural Revolution Group that replaced the Five Man Group. The case is recorded as the first internal frame-up case Lin Biao manufactured during the Cultural Revolution.
In December of that year Peng was seized and imprisoned by Red Guards, including Ye Xiangzhen and Liu Shikun. On May 19, 1975 he was transferred from Beijing to Shang County in Shaanxi, where he remained under restrictions. During his imprisonment his home village in Houma, Shanxi, was also attacked; his 85-year-old mother and his younger brother died after being struggled against and tormented, and his nephew committed suicide in despair. His wife Zhang Jieqing was imprisoned as well, released in 1975 and sent into exile in Shangluo, Shaanxi; the couple returned to Beijing only at the end of 1978. Peng returned to Beijing on December 28, 1978, after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, and on February 17, 1979 the CCP Central Committee issued a notice rehabilitating him, declaring that all the charges and false accusations imposed on him during the Cultural Revolution should be overturned. The decade of confinement, and his reflection on what the Cultural Revolution had done to Chinese political life, became the background to his later work in building legal institutions.