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Liu Shaoqi

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Liu Shaoqi (November 24 1898 – November 12 1969) was a Chinese Communist leader. He was Chairman of the People's Republic of China from April 27, 1959 to October 31, 1968.

Biography

Born into a rich peasant family in Yinshan, Hunan province (near Mao's Shaoshan), Liu attended Ningxiang Zhusheng Middle School (宁乡驻省中学), while Mao Zedong was in Changsha First Normal School (长沙第一师范). They were both in Changsha and Mao was 1 grade higher than Liu. Liu then went to the Soviet Union and received his university education at the University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow. In 1921 he joined the newly formed CCP. He went back to China in 1922, and led several railway workers' strikes. During the period of 1925 to 1926, he led many political campaigns and strikes in Hubei and Shanghai. In 1927 he was elected to the Party's Central Committee.

In 1932 Liu became the Party Secretary in Fujian Province. Two years later he joined the Long March and was one of the supporters of Mao Zedong during the Zunyi Conference. In 1936 he was Party Secretary in North China, leading the anti-Japanese movements in that area. He was elected as one of 5 CPC Secretaries in 1945.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Liu worked mainly in economic areas. In 1956 he was Party Deputy Chairman and was regarded as number two person in Party and State leadership. An orthodox Soviet-style Communist, he favored state planning and the development of heavy industry. He was therefore skeptical about Mao's Great Leap Forward movement which began in 1958. Alerted by his sister to the developing famine in rural areas in 1960, he became a determined opponent of Mao's policies, while at the same time, his dedication of orthodox Soviet-style communism was significantly decreased after witnessing Mao's disastrous policy. In the wake of the Great Leap Forward's catastrophic failure he began to be seen as Mao's likely successor. His more moderate economic policies helped to lead China from the depths of the Great Leap Forward. Liu Shaoqi favored and implemented Deng Xiaoping's idea of piece work, greater wage differentials and other measures.

Halfway through the 1960s, however, Mao rebuilt his position in the Party and in 1966 he launched the Cultural Revolution as a means of destroying his enemies in the Party. Liu and Deng Xiaoping, along with many others, were denounced as "capitalist roaders." Liu was labeled as a "traitor," "scab," and "the biggest capitalist roader in the Party." In July 1966 he was displaced as Party Deputy Chairman by Lin Biao. By 1967 Liu and his wife Wang Guangmei were under house arrest in Beijing.

Liu was removed from all his positions and expelled from the Party in October 1968 and disappeared from view. The exact conditions of his death remain uncertain and contested. One version attributes his death to "medical neglect", (untreated diabetes and pneumonia). Several weeks after his death, Red Guards discovered him lying on the floor covered in diarrhea and vomit, with a foot of unkempt hair protruding from his scalp. It was here that the former premier of China died on November 12, 1969. At midnight, under secrecy, his remains were brought in a jeep to a crematorium, his legs hanging out the back, and he was cremated under the name Liu Huihuang. The cause of death was recorded as illness, and his family was not informed for another three years after this date, and the people in China for ten years . The ashes of his body are said to be held at Babao shan.

After Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, Liu was politically rehabilitated (in February 1980), with a belated state funeral over a decade after his death.

Liu's best known writings include How to be a Good Communist (1939), On the Party (1945), and Internationalism and Nationalism (1952).

See also

References

  • "Fifth Plenary Session of 11th C.C.P. Central Committee," Beijing Review, No. 10 (March 10, 1980), pp. 3–10, which describes the official rehabilitation measures.

External links



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