Liu Shaoqi

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Lore & Background

After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Liu became a vice chairman of the Central People's Government. After the establishment of the National People's Congress in 1954, Liu was elected as the chairman of its Standing Committee. In 1959, he succeeded Mao Zedong as the chairman of the People's Republic of China. During his chairmanship, he implemented policies of economic reconstruction in China, especially after the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in 1962. Liu was publicly named as Mao's chosen successor in 1961. However, he was criticized and then purged by Mao soon after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, eventually being placed under house arrest in 1967. He was forced out of public life and was labelled the 'commander of China's bourgeoisie headquarters', China's foremost 'capitalist roader', and a traitor to the revolution. He died in prison in 1969 due to complications from diabetes. Liu was widely condemned in the years following his death until he was posthumously rehabilitated by Deng Xiaoping's government in 1980, as part of the Boluan Fanzheng period. Deng's government granted Liu a national memorial service.

Reader's Guide

Liu Shaoqi's early life included participation in the labor movement, such as the May Thirtieth Movement. After the Chinese Civil War began in 1927, he was assigned by the CCP to work in Shanghai and Northeast China, and travelled to the Jiangxi Soviet in 1932. He participated in the Long March, and was appointed as the Party Secretary in North China in 1936 to lead anti-Japanese resistance efforts. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Liu led the CCP's Central Plains Bureau. After the New Fourth Army incident in 1941, Liu became a political commissar of the New Fourth Army. After returning to Yan'an in 1943, he became a secretary of the CCP Secretariat and a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. In his youth, Liu studied at various private schools, learning Chinese texts including the Classic of Poetry and Zuo Zhuan. In 1919, he attended the preparatory class for studying in France at Yude Middle School in Baoding, Hebei. In 1921, he arrived in Moscow and entered the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, where he changed from a member of the Chinese Socialist Youth League to a member of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1922, through Chen Duxiu's introduction, he went to Hunan to serve as a leader in the Secretariat of the Chinese Labor Union, and met with Mao Zedong in Changsha. He led railway workers' strikes, including the Anyuan Coal Mine Workers' Strike in September.

Did You Know?

• Liu Shaoqi was born in a mud-brick farmhouse at the foot of the eastern hillside of Tanzichong, Huaminglou Township, Ningxiang, Hunan Province.
• In 1916, Liu and his classmates marched in the streets to oppose Yuan Shikai's restoration of the monarchy.
• Liu studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow from 1921 to 1922, where he joined the Chinese Communist Party.
• Liu was publicly named as Mao's chosen successor in 1961, but was purged soon after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
• Liu died in prison in 1969 due to complications from diabetes, and was posthumously rehabilitated by Deng Xiaoping's government in 1980.