43 Facts About Liu Shaoqi

Liu Shaoqi was a Chinese revolutionary, politician, and theorist.

Liu Shaoqi was Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee from 1954 to 1959, First Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1956 to 1966 and Chairman of the People's Republic of China, the de jure head of state, from 1959 to 1968, during which he implemented policies of economic reconstruction in China.

For 15 years, Liu held high positions in Chinese leadership, behind only Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai.

Liu Shaoqi 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.

Liu Shaoqi died in prison in 1969 due to complication from diabetes.

Liu Shaoqi was widely condemned in the years following his death until he was posthumously rehabilitated by Deng Xiaoping's government in 1980.

Liu Shaoqi was born into a moderately rich peasant family in Huaminglou, Ningxiang, Hunan province; his ancestral hometown is located at Jishui County, Jiangxi.

Liu Shaoqi 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 Shaoqi was recruited to study at the Comintern's University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.

Liu Shaoqi joined the newly formed Chinese Communist Party in 1921.

In 1925, Liu Shaoqi became a member of the Guangzhou-based All-China Federation of Labor Executive Committee.

Liu Shaoqi worked with Li Lisan in Shanghai in 1925, organizing Communist activity following the May Thirtieth Incident.

Liu Shaoqi was briefly arrested in Changsha and then returned to Guangzhou to help organize the 16-month-long Canton-Hong Kong strike.

Liu Shaoqi was elected to the Party's Central Committee in 1927 and was appointed to the head of its Labor Department.

Liu Shaoqi returned to work at the Party headquarters in Shanghai in 1929 and was named Secretary of the Manchurian Party Committee in Fengtian.

Liu Shaoqi became the Party Secretary of Fujian Province in 1932.

Liu Shaoqi 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" to reorganize underground activities in northern China, centered around Beijing and Tianjin.

Liu Shaoqi 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.

Liu Shaoqi ran the Central Plains Bureau in 1939; and, in 1941, the Central China Bureau.

In 1937, Liu Shaoqi traveled to the Communist base at Yan'an; in 1941, he became a political commissar of the New Fourth Army.

Liu Shaoqi was elected as one of five CCP Secretaries at the Seventh National Party Congress in 1945.

Liu Shaoqi became the Vice Chairman of the Central People's Government in 1949.

Liu Shaoqi was an orthodox Soviet-style Communist and favored state planning and the development of heavy industry.

Liu Shaoqi elaborated upon his political and economic beliefs in his writings.

Liu Shaoqi's best known works include How to be a Good Communist, On the Party, and Internationalism and Nationalism.

Liu Shaoqi spoke very strongly in favour of the Great Leap Forward at the Eighth CCP National Congress in May 1958.

At this Congress Liu Shaoqi 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.

However, Liu Shaoqi began to voice concern about the outcomes of the Great Leap in the August 1959 Lushan Plenum.

The economic policies of Deng and Liu Shaoqi 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 Shaoqi 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.

Liu Shaoqi was publicly acknowledged as Mao's chosen successor in 1961; however, by 1962 his opposition to Mao's policies had led Mao to mistrust him.

Liu Shaoqi 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.

Liu Shaoqi was labeled as a "traitor" and "the biggest capitalist roader in the Party"; he was displaced as Party Deputy Chairman by Lin Biao in July 1966.

Liu Shaoqi was removed from all his positions and expelled from the Party in October 1968.

At the Ninth Party Congress, Liu Shaoqi was denounced as a traitor and an enemy agent.

Zhou Enlai read the Party verdict that Liu Shaoqi was "a criminal traitor, enemy agent and scab in the service of the imperialists, modern revisionists and the Kuomintang reactionaries".

Liu Shaoqi's conditions did not improve after he was denounced in the Congress, and he died soon afterward.

Liu Shaoqi was closely monitored on a daily basis by a medical team, and they made the best effort given the adverse circumstances.

The resolution fully rehabilitated Liu Shaoqi, 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.

Liu Shaoqi married five times, including to He Baozhen and Wang Guangmei.

Liu Shaoqi's son Liu Yunbin was a prominent physicist who was singled out for abuse during the Cultural Revolution.

Liu Shaoqi committed suicide in 1967 by lying on the tracks before an oncoming train.

Liu Shaoqi Yunbin was posthumously rehabilitated and his reputation restored in 1978.