Tian Jiaying

Communist Party of China Maoism 1922–1966 ✕ Suicide

Mao’s secretary for eighteen years, editor of his Selected Works, whose field report questioned the Great Leap

Born Zeng Zhengchang in Chengdu, Sichuan, he lost his parents young and taught himself while apprenticed in a pharmacy, becoming known as a “prodigy” of poetry and prose at thirteen. Expelled from school for anti-Japanese activity, he went to Yan’an in 1938 and joined the Communist Party. On Hu Qiaomu’s recommendation he became Mao Zedong’s secretary in 1948 and served for eighteen years, heading the secretariat as deputy director of the General Office from 1954. He edited and annotated volumes one to four of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong. In 1961, on Mao’s orders, he led an investigation team to Hunan to examine how the commune regulations were carried out and sent back a report questioning the logic of the Great Leap. Purged in May 1966, he took his own life on the 23rd. He was rehabilitated in 1980.

Also known as: T'ien Chia-ying · Zeng Zhengchang