Wang Guangmei (1921-2006)
October 15, 2006
THE MOST shocking thing about the death of Wang Guangmei, widow of former Chinese head of state Liu Shaoqi, is that she had survived so long and so peaceably after the tumults that destroyed her husband in 1969. One of the most notable victims of the Cultural Revolution, the sophisticated and multilingual Wang watched helplessly as Liu Shaoqi - dubbed "China's number one Khrushchev puppet, revisionist and capitalist roader" - was persecuted to death at the behest of Chairman Mao and his grisly, fanatical acolytes known as the Gang of Four. She spent the duration of the Cultural Revolution behind bars, emerging only after Mao's death to witness her own and her husband's rehabilitation.
Wang graduated from the Furen School in Beijing, a school founded by missionaries, and became an English interpreter for the Chinese Communist Party in 1946, whereupon she fled to Yan'an, the Communist base in northern Shaanxi Province. She married Liu Shaoqi in 1948. Her role as translator in the US-mediated talks between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek were later used, ridiculously, as evidence that she was an American spy.
The story of the Cultural Revolution is often rendered unnecessarily complicated by its various ideological implications. Western Marxists believed it to be a way out of the impasse brought about by the creation of a privileged new ruling class of Party cadres - symbolised by President Liu Shaoqi himself - which had developed interests that were "dialectically opposed" to the interests of the masses. Others, of course, have said that the whole affair was little more than a coup d'etat by the sidelined Mao Zedong against Liu's new and more pragmatic leadership.
In the febrile and all-encompassing atmosphere of the Chinese Communist Party, the personal was the political. Mao's doctor, Li Zhisui, said that Wang Guangmei "enjoyed the limelight" that ensued from her husband's political success, thus arousing the displeasure of Mao's wife, Jiang Qing as early as the 1950s. At a Party gathering at the resort town of Beidaihe in 1956, Dr. Li says that Jiang Qing was obviously embittered by Wang's relaxed and sociable ways, and suggested that this was one of the reasons why Jiang was so merciless in her persecution of Liu Shaoqi and his family ten years later.
Liu Shaoqi's power grew in the early sixties following the unparalleled catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward, and the motivating presence of Wang Guangmei did not go unnoticed in Mao's closest circles. Wang Guangmei is said to have encouraged Liu to stand up to Mao, now chastened by failure, during the "Seven Thousand Conference" in 1962.
Dr. Li also notes that Mao was particularly angered by "the fanfare that accompanied Wang Guangmei's departure [to the countryside to investigate a production brigade]" in 1964. Mao, said Li, felt upstaged by both Li and his wife, and he reprimanded Liu for allowing his wife to participate in politics. Later, Wang Guangmei was given an even bigger profile, appearing on front-page stories in the People's Daily.
And so, the campaign against Liu and his wife was particularly bitter and vicious. As they were being "struggled against", loudspeakers denouncing both Liu and Wang were installed by rebels in Zhongnanhai, and insults were scrawled on their residence buildings, and the writing was indeed on the wall. Liu was condemned as the biggest capitalist roader in the country by the People's Daily.
Wang herself became the principle victim of a "struggle session" in 1967, with students from Tsinghua University taking particular umbrage at the fact that she had worn a traditional qipao and string of pearls while meeting Indonesian President Sukarno in 1963. She was accused of "becoming Sukarno's whore". Wang, unbowed, was beaten and forced by the students to wear a tight qipao and a string of ping-pong balls around her neck.
According to Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's Mao: The Unknown Story, Mao knew how much strength Liu derived from his wife and promptly ordered their separation in July 1967. Kept in solitary confinement, they saw each other only once more, during another struggle session. Liu died a long, miserable death, finally succumbing in November 1969. Wang Guangmei was finally released in 1979, after which she led an active life at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
