Liu Shaoqi

Liu Shaoqi, 1927

Liu was born into a moderately rich peasant family in Huaminglou,[2] Ningxiang, Hunan province;[3] his ancestral hometown is located at Jishui County, Jiangxi. He attended Ningxiang Zhusheng Middle School and was recommended to attend a class in Shanghai to prepare for studying in Russia. In 1920, he and Ren Bishi joined a Socialist Youth Corps; the next year, Liu was recruited to study at the Comintern's University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.[2]

He joined the newly formed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921. The next year he returned to China and, as secretary of the All-China Labor Syndicate, led several railway workers' strikes in the Yangzi Valley and at Anyuan on the Jiangxi-Hunan border.[2]

In 1925, Liu became a member of the Guangzhou-based All-China Federation of Labor Executive Committee. During the next two years he led numerous political campaigns and strikes in Hubei and Shanghai. He worked with Li Lisan in Shanghai in 1925, organizing Communist activity following the May Thirtieth Incident. After his work in Shanghai, Liu traveled to Wuhan. He was briefly arrested in Changsha and then returned to Guangzhou to help organize the 16-month-long Canton-Hong Kong strike.[4]

He was elected to the Party's Central Committee in 1927 and was appointed to the head of its Labor Department.[5] Liu returned to work at the Party headquarters in Shanghai in 1929 and was named Secretary of the Manchurian Party Committee in Fengtian.[6] In 1930 and 1931 he attended the Third and Fourth Plenums of the Sixth Central Committee, and was elected to the Central Executive Committee (i.e., Politburo) of the Chinese Soviet Republic in 1931 or 1932. Later in 1932, he left Shanghai and traveled to the Jiangxi Soviet.[7]

Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, 1939

Liu became the Party Secretary of Fujian Province in 1932. He accompanied the Long March in 1934 at least as far as the crucial Zunyi Conference, but was then sent to the so-called "White Areas" (areas controlled by the Kuomintang) to reorganize underground activities in northern China, centered around Beijing and Tianjin. He became Party Secretary in North China in 1936, leading the anti-Japanese movements in that area with the assistance of Peng Zhen, An Ziwen, Bo Yibo, Ke Qingshi, Liu Lantao, and Yao Yilin. In February 1937 he established, with the rest of the North China Bureau, in Beijing.[8]^: 104 In the same year, he challenged Zhang Wetian on the Party's historical problems, criticizing the leftist errors after 1927, thus breaching the consensus reached at the Zunyi Conference that the Party line had been essentially correct.[8]^: 103 Liu ran the Central Plains Bureau in 1939; and, in 1941, the Central China Bureau.

In 1937, Liu traveled to the Communist base at Yan'an; in 1941, he became a political commissar of the New Fourth Army.[9] He was elected as one of five CCP Secretaries at the Seventh National Party Congress in 1945. After that Congress, he became the supreme leader of all Communist forces in Manchuria and northern China,[9] a role frequently overlooked by historians.

Liu became the Vice Chairman of the Central People's Government in 1949. In 1954 China adopted a new constitution at the first National People's Congress (NPC); at the Congress's first session, he was elected chairman of the Congress's Standing Committee, a position he held until the second NPC in 1959. From 1956 until his downfall in 1966, he ranked as the First Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.[9]

Liu's work focused on party organizational and theoretical affairs.[10] He was an orthodox Soviet-style Communist and favored state planning and the development of heavy industry. He elaborated upon his political and economic beliefs in his writings. His best known works include How to be a Good Communist (1939), On the Party (1945), and Internationalism and Nationalism (1952).

Liu spoke very strongly in favour of the Great Leap Forward at the Eighth CCP National Congress in May 1958.[11] At this Congress Liu stood together with Deng Xiaoping and Peng Zhen in support of Mao's policies against those who were more critical, such as Chen Yun and Zhou Enlai.

As a result, Liu gained influence within the party. In April 1959, he succeeded Mao as Chairman of the People's Republic of China (Chinese President). However, Liu began to voice concern about the outcomes of the Great Leap in the August 1959 Lushan Plenum.[11] In order to correct the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward, Liu and Deng led economic reforms that bolstered their prestige among the party apparatus and the national populace. The economic policies of Deng and Liu were notable for being more moderate than Mao's radical ideas. For example, in the period when the economic turmoil of the Great Leap Forward prompted the Party to delay the Third Five Year Plan, Liu led a group of high officials which worked to revive the economy through an increased role for markets, greater material incentives for workers, a lower rate of investment, a more moderate pace for developmental goals, and increased funding for consumer industries.[12]^: 40 During preliminary work on the Third Five Year Plan, Liu stated:[12]^: 51

In the past, the infrastructure battlefront was too long. There were too many projects. Demands were too high and rushed. Designs were done badly, and projects were hurriedly begun ... We only paid attention to increasing output and ignored quality. We set targets too highly. We must always remember these painful learning experiences.

Liu Shaoqi and Indira Gandhi, 1954

Liu was publicly acknowledged as Mao's chosen successor in 1961;[2] however, by 1962 his opposition to Mao's policies had led Mao to mistrust him.[13] After Mao succeeded in restoring his prestige during the 1960s,[14] Liu's eventual downfall became "inevitable". Liu's position as the second-most powerful leader of the CCP contributed to Mao's rivalry with him at least as much as Liu's political beliefs or factional allegiances in the 1960s,[13] especially during and after the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, indicating that Liu's later persecution was the result of a power struggle that went beyond the goals and well-being of either China or the Party.

Liu was among the senior officials who in 1964 were initially reluctant to support Mao's proposed Third Front campaign to develop basic industry and national defense industry in China's interior to address the risk of invasion by the United States or the Soviet Union.[12]^: 41 In an effort to stall, Liu proposed additional surveys and planning.[12]^: 40 Academic Covell F. Meyskens writes that Liu and the high-ranking colleagues who agreed with him did not want to engage in another rapid industrialization campaign so soon after the failure of the Great Leap Forward and that instead they sought to continue the gradual approach of developing areas and increasing consumption.[12]^: 41 When fears of American invasion increased after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Liu and his colleagues changed their views and began fully supporting the Third Front construction.[12]^: 7

Liu Shaoqi in June 1966, the first year of the Cultural Revolution

By 1966, few senior leaders in China questioned the need for a widespread reform to combat the growing problems of corruption and bureaucratization within the Party and the government. With the goal of reforming the government to be more efficient and true to the Communist ideal, Liu himself chaired the enlarged Politburo meeting that officially began the Cultural Revolution. However, Liu and his political allies quickly lost control of the Cultural Revolution soon after it was called, when Mao used the movement to progressively monopolize political power and to destroy his perceived enemies.[15]

Whatever its other causes, the Cultural Revolution, declared in 1966, was overtly pro-Maoist, and gave Mao the power and influence to purge the Party of his political enemies at the highest levels of government. Along with closing China's schools and universities, and Mao's exhortations to young Chinese to randomly destroy old buildings, temples, and art, and to attack their teachers, school administrators, party leaders, and parents,[16] the Cultural Revolution also increased Mao's prestige so much that entire villages adopted the practice of offering prayers to Mao before every meal.[17]

In both national politics and Chinese popular culture, Mao established himself as a demigod accountable to no one, purging any that he suspected of opposing him[18] and directing the masses and Red Guards "to destroy virtually all state and party institutions".[15] After the Cultural Revolution was announced, most of the most senior members of the CCP who had voiced any hesitation in following Mao's direction, including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, were removed from their posts almost immediately and, with their families, subjected to mass criticism and humiliation.[16] Liu and Deng, along with many others, were denounced as "capitalist roaders". Liu was labeled as a "traitor" and "the biggest capitalist roader in the Party"; he was displaced as Vice Chairman of the CCP by Lin Biao in July 1966.

By 1967, Liu and his wife Wang Guangmei were placed under house arrest in Beijing. Liu's major economic positions were attacked, including his "three freedoms and one guarantee" (which promoted private land plots, free markets, independent accounting for small enterprises, and household output quotas) and "four freedoms" (which permitted individuals in the countryside to lease land, lend money, hire wage laborers, and engage in trade).[19]

Liu was removed from all his positions and expelled from the Party in October 1968. After his arrest, Liu disappeared from public view.

Liu Shaoqi being subjected to public humiliation at a rally during the Cultural Revolution

At the Ninth Party Congress, Liu was denounced as a traitor and an enemy agent. Zhou Enlai read the Party verdict that Liu was "a criminal traitor, enemy agent and scab in the service of the imperialists, modern revisionists and the Kuomintang reactionaries". Liu's conditions did not improve after he was denounced in the Congress, and he died soon afterward.[20][21]

In a memoir written by Liu's principal physician, he disputed the alleged medical maltreatment of Liu during his last days. According to Dr. Gu Qihua, there was a dedicated medical team in charge of treating Liu's illness; between July 1968 and October 1969, Liu had seven total occurrences of pneumonia due to his deteriorating immune system, and there had been a total of 40 group consultations by top medical professionals regarding the treatment of this disease. Liu was closely monitored on a daily basis by a medical team, and they made the best effort given the adverse circumstances. He died in prison from complications due to diabetes at 6:45 a.m. on 12 November 1969 under a pseudonym in Kaifeng, and was cremated the next day.[22][23][1]

In February 1980, two years after Deng Xiaoping came to power, the Fifth Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued the "Resolution on the Rehabilitation of Comrade Liu Shaoqi". The resolution fully rehabilitated Liu, declaring his ouster to be unjust and removing the labels of "renegade, traitor and scab" that had been attached to him at the time of his death. It also declared him to be "a great Marxist and proletarian revolutionary" and recognized him as one of the principal leaders of the Party. Lin Biao was blamed for "concocting false evidence" against Liu, and for working with the Gang of Four to subject him to "political frame-up and physical persecution". A high-profile national memorial ceremony was held for Liu on 17 May 1980, and his ashes were scattered into the sea at Qingdao in accordance with his last wishes.[24][25]

On 23 November 2018, the CCP's general secretary Xi Jinping delivered a speech in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the birth of Liu Shaoqi.[26]