![]() Mao brought Deng back to the leadership in 1973, appointing him vice premier and giving him day to day control of the government. He was then sent to work at a tractor factory. Deng Xiaoping People walk past a poster of late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who launched the country on its ‘Reform and Opening’ programme, in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China, DecemĪ founding revolutionary of the CCP, Deng was purged from the party twice during the Mao era (1949- 1976).ĭuring the Cultural Revolution, Deng’s economic pragmatism and ties to Mao’s rivals within the Communist leadership, including Liu Shaoqi, cost him his party posts. He died in 1969, but his death was not announced until 1974. In 1968, he was stripped of his positions and expelled from the party. Liu, who replaced Mao as the Chinese head of state in 1959, was condemned by the Red Guards as a “renegade, traitor, scab” and a “capitalist roader” intent on defeating the Communist revolution. Once considered the heir apparent to Mao, Liu was another prominent victim of the Cultural Revolution. Liu Shaoqi From left: Chinese top communist leaders Zhou Enlai, prime minister of the People’s Republic of China from its inception in 1949 until his death, Chen Yun, China chief’s planner, Liu Shaoqi, China head of state, Mao Zedong, leading theorist of the Chinese communist revolution, chairman of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and president of the Republic, and the ‘modernizer’ Deng Xiaoping chat during a meeting of the Central Committee of the CCP in 1962 in Beijing He died in 1974 while held in solitary confinement. Peng was arrested in 1966, imprisoned and tortured, with Red Guards beating him until his back was “splintered”, according to the People’s Daily. He was also one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution, a campaign of extreme violence launched in 1966 when fanatical Red Guards loyal to Mao set out to destroy all vestiges of China’s feudal culture and root out the chairman’s perceived enemies. ![]() But he was dismissed from office after he called policies of the Great Leap Forward impractical. Peng – who had led Chinese forces in the Korean war and signed the armistice that ended hostilities – was appointed defence minister in 1954. One of China’s greatest military leaders, Peng fell from grace when he criticised Mao’s Great Leap Forward, an economic programme in the late 1950s that aimed to push China into the industrial age by collectivising agriculture and creating steel in backyard furnaces, but ended up with as many as 30 million people starving to death. Here are some of the most prominent figures who were purged: Peng Dehuai ![]() Nowhere is this more evident than in the cases of purged party insiders.įrom Peng Dehuai, the general who was tortured for opposing Mao’s disastrous economic policies, to Zhao Ziyang, the premier erased from history for seeking compromise with protesters when Deng favoured guns and tanks, and Zhou Yongkang, the ex-security chief who reportedly threatened Xi’s ascent only to get jailed for corruption – political purges are a time-honoured CCP tradition. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 100-year history is not just one of revolution and rejuvenation, but also ruthlessness.įrom Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution to Deng Xiaoping’s Tiananmen Square crackdown and Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crusade, leaders of the CCP have not hesitated to take whatever steps they deem necessary to secure and remain in power.
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