Mao’s political secretary and the codifier of “Mao Zedong Thought”, head of the Cultural Revolution Group until his fall in 1970
“The Cultural Revolution was a mad age, and I was a madman then,” Chen Boda said in 1988, after his release. “My life has been a tragedy; let people draw lessons from it.”
From Fujian, he studied at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and from 1937 served at Yan’an as Mao’s political secretary, editing Mao’s writings and establishing the term “Mao Zedong Thought”. After 1949 he edited Red Flag and led propaganda work, supplying the theory of the Great Leap, and in 1966 headed the Central Cultural Revolution Group. At the 1970 Lushan plenum he sided with Lin Biao over the state chairmanship, provoked Mao’s anger and fell; in the 1981 trial of the “Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques” he received eighteen years. He died in 1989.
Career timeline
- 1958–1966Editor-in-chief of Red Flag
- 1966–1970Head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group
Theoretician of the Gang of Four who organized the Shanghai People's Commune and championed all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie
At his 1980 trial, Zhang remained silent and refused to speak until his family was permitted to visit him years later.
A core theoretician of China's Cultural Revolution and member of the Gang of Four. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1938 and rose as editor of Shanghai's Jiefang Daily. His 1958 article 'Destroy the Ideology of Bourgeois Right' caught Mao Zedong's attention; as a member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, he organized the Shanghai People's Commune in 1967, overthrowing the existing municipal government. As vice premier in 1975, he authored 'On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie,' formalizing the class-struggle line of the socialist transition, and remained faithful to his Maoist convictions through arrest and imprisonment until his release in 1998.
Career timeline
- 1938Joined the Chinese Communist Party
- 1949–1966Editor, Jiefang Daily (Shanghai)
- 1966–1969Member, Central Cultural Revolution Group
- 1967–1976Chairman, Shanghai Revolutionary Committee (mayor)
- 1969–1973Politburo → 1973–1976: Standing Committee
- 1975–1976Vice Premier; Director, PLA General Political Dept.
- 1976Arrested with the Gang of Four
- 1984–1998Death sentence → life → 18 years → medical release
