Deng Zihui

Communist Party of China Maoism 1896–1972 ○ Accident

Rural Work chief condemned as a “woman with bound feet” for slowing collectivisation; pioneer of household contracting

Born to a family of impoverished rural scholars in Longyan, Fujian, he abandoned study in Japan through illness, worked as a teacher and shop clerk, and joined the Communist Party in 1926. His land-reform experiments in Minxi from 1928 became a model for the land policy of the Jiangxi Soviet; he handled finance in the Ruijin government and was a leading figure of the New Fourth Army against Japan. Head of the party’s Rural Work Department from early 1953 and vice-premier in charge of agriculture from 1954, he defended peasant property rights and opposed forced collectivisation, clashing with Mao over the pace of co-operatives in 1955 and being condemned for “Right opportunism”. Attacked again in 1962 for advocating household contracting, he lost all his posts in the Cultural Revolution and died in 1972. He was rehabilitated posthumously.

Also known as: Teng Tzu-hui