Mao’s inquisitor who ran party security and intelligence from the Yan’an “rescue” campaign to the Cultural Revolution
He died of bladder cancer in December 1975 and was buried with state honours as a “proletarian revolutionary”, but in October 1980, on the eve of the Gang of Four trial, he was posthumously expelled from the party and exhumed from Babaoshan.
From a Shandong landlord family, he worked in the Shanghai underground and in 1933 went to Moscow as Wang Ming’s deputy, where he studied the Soviet purges. Back at Yan’an in 1937 he sided with Mao and, as head of the Social Affairs Department, ran the rectification movement’s “rescue” campaign that branded thousands as enemy agents. Sidelined for a time after 1949, he returned in the Sino-Soviet polemics of the 1960s and as adviser to the Cultural Revolution Group directed the investigation and persecution of Liu Shaoqi, He Long and other veterans. He died of cancer in 1975 and was posthumously expelled from the party in 1980.
Career Timeline
- 1939–1946Head of the Social Affairs Department (intelligence and security)
- 1966–1969Adviser to the Central Cultural Revolution Group
- 1973–1975Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee
Related historical events
- 1937–1945The war with Japan and the second united frontDirected the rectification “rescue campaign”As Social Affairs chief ran the 1943 cadre screening and forced confessions.
- 1956–1957From the Hundred Flowers to the Anti-Rightist CampaignHardliner in theory and propagandaRegained influence in theory and culture after the anti-rightist turn.
- 1966–1976The Cultural RevolutionAdviser to the Group and investigator of fabricated casesDirected the “special case” investigations of Liu Shaoqi, He Long and others.