Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Last member of China’s Cultural Revolution Group, Qi Benyu, dies at 85

Qi Benyu,

Qi Benyu, a Communist Party theorist and propagandist who played a significant role in the Cultural Revolution, died Monday in Shanghai at the age of 85.

Qi was the last member of the ultra-left Cultural Revolution Group , which had superseded the party’s top decision-making Politburo and Secretariat to emerge as the de facto top power organ of the country at the height of the political turmoil between 1966 and 1976 that resulted in the deaths of millions.

Qi, a Shandong resident born in Shanghai in 1931, died of cancer, according to Chinese media

Once  Mao Zedong’s right-hand man for propaganda, Qi is said to have played a role that led to the purge of President Liu Shaoqi.

Until recently, Qi continued to air his ultra-left views, with radical calls to relaunch the Cultural Revolution in the country.

Qi’s political career was associated with Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife. He was made a staff member at Mao’s personal office in 1950 after graduating from the Youth League school. The office was led by Jiang. Qi had been elevated to become the acting director of the general office of the party’s Central Committee and the deputy editor of Red Flag, the ruling party’s theoretical journal and a key source of Maoist ideological inspiration and guidance during the Cultural Revolution. It was replaced by a magazine called Qiushi, or Seeking Truth, in 1988.

Qi and Yao Wenyuan, a member of the notorious “Gang of Four” led by Jiang, played the crucial role in a campaign to denounce a historic Beijing opera called Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, which was seen as a prelude to the launch of the Cultural ­Revolution.

As a secretary at Mao’s office and a close aide of Jiang, Qi had also played a key role in the draft of the so-called “May 16 Notification”, which, formalised by “an expanded Politburo” meeting, announced the establishment of the CRG and also declared the launch of the Cultural Revolution by announcing the overthrow of a group of moderates, including Beijing party boss Peng Zhen and police chief Luo ­Ruiqing.

(via South China Morning Post)

3 comments:

  1. Just this morning I was thinking how the US and other foreign governments have spent so much money and manpower tracking down former Nazis and putting them on trial for the murder of Jews. However former Soviets or Chinese revolutionary type people who were responsible for the murder of many more millions are never mentioned. In fact, instead of discussion of putting them on trial for murder, they're often praised!

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  2. Abe Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, none of these murderers were held accountable (unless you consider the assassination of Lincoln as an accounting). And while individual Nazis were hunted down, their ideology was repackaged as "progressivism" and lives on to do more damage. Its human nature to put the past behind us and to endure life's harsh lessons repeatedly before learning the lesson. Sometimes it never seems to sink in...

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