Liu Shao-ch'i 劉少奇 Pseud. Hu Fu 胡服 Liu Shao-ch'i (1900-), the Chinese Communist party's foremost expert on the theory and practice of organization and party structure, became Chairman of the People's Republic of China in April 1959. He was the second-ranking member of the party until 1966, when he became a principal target of the so-called Cultural Revolution.

Ninghsiang hsien, Hunan, was the native place of Liu Shao-ch'i. He was born in Yinshan, near Mao Tse-tung's native village of Shaoshan in Hsiangt'an hsien. The youngest of nine children, four boys and five girls, he was the son of a peasant landowner. After receiving his primary education in the Chinese classics, Liu went to Changsha in 1916 and enrolled at the Provincial First Normal School, where his schoolmates included Mao Tse-tung, Jen Pi-shih, and Li Li-san. At the school, Liu was introduced to radical and nationalistic ideas. He hoped to go to France after graduation on the work-study program (see Li Shih-tseng), and he went to north China in the summer of 1918 to prepare for the journey by studying French. Liu did not go to Europe, however, but returned to Hunan. In the summer of 1919 he may have assisted Mao Tse-tung in editing the short-lived but influential Hsiang-chiang p'ing-lun [Hsiang river review].

Liu Shao-ch'i went to Shanghai in the summer of 1920 to seek funds for further education. He joined the Socialist Youth League when it was organized in August by Gregory Voitinsky, the Comintern representative in China, and his young Chinese assistant Yang Ming-chai (q.v.). Liu then returned to Hunan, where he was arrested by Chao Heng-t'i (q.v.), then the acting governor of Hunan. After being released on bail, Liu returned to Shanghai and began to study Russian. "At that time," he later attested, "I only knew that Socialism was good, heard about Marx and Lenin and the October Revolution and the Bolshevik party, but I was not clear what Socialism was or how it could be realized." In the winter of 1920 the Comintern chose and sent a small group of Chinese students including Liu Shao-ch'i, Jen Pi-shih, Hsiao Ching-kuang, and P'eng Shu-chih (q.v.) to the Soviet Union. After arriving at Moscow in the spring of 1921, they were enrolled at the newly created Communist University for Toilers of the East, which had been established to train cadres from "eastern nationalities" of the Soviet Union and foreign students from the "colonial countries," especially the Asian countries. In 1921 the institution was not prepared to receive the Chinese students: there was no systematic course of study, and there were no interpreters to render lectures into Chinese. Until Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai (q.v.) was employed early in 1922 as a teaching assistant and interpreter, the Chinese students, whose knowledge of Russian was limited, could have absorbed little of the lecture material. After the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist party was held at Shanghai in July 1921, Liu joined the new party's branch at Moscow.

After returning to China in the spring of 1922, Liu Shao-ch'i was assigned to work in Shanghai under Chang Kuo-t'ao (q.v.), then a leader in Communist labor organization and chairman of the China Trade Union Secretariat. Several months later, he was sent to the Anyuan coal mines at P'inghsiang as the principal assistant labor organizer to Li Li-san (q.v.). The Anyuan colliery was part of the Han-yeh-p'ing iron and steel complex, which was composed of a steel mill at Hanyang, iron mines at Tsiyeh, and the coal mines at P'inghsiang. In September 1922 Li and Liu organized a successful strike of the Anyuan miners ; and they led a sympathy strike in February 1923 after Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.) executed railroad workers and Communist labor organizers on the Peking- Hankow rail line. When Li Li-san went to Peking early in 1923, Liu Shao-ch'i assumed charge of the Han-yeh-p'ing union activities. In the winter of 1923 Liu Shao-ch'i went to Canton, where plans were being made for the creation of a Kuomintang-Communist alliance, and entered the Hsuan-ch'uan chiang-hsi so, a propaganda school established by the central headquarters of the Kuomintang. He was one of the first twelve graduates of the school. In April 1924 he worked with Teng Chung-hsia (q.v.) in preparing for the convening of the first National Labor Congress. In April 1925 he wrote an article eulogizing Sun Yat-sen for the Chung-kuo kung-jen [Chinese worker]. When the second National Labor Congress met at Canton at the beginning of May 1925, Liu Shao-ch'i participated in the meetings as a delegate from the Han-yeh-p'ing unions. At the congress, he was elected vice chairman of the newly created All-China Federation of Labor. He returned to Shanghai, where, after the May Thirtieth Incident, he helped organize anti-British agitation (for details, see Li Li-san). In May 1926 he was again in Canton, where he served as secretary general of the third National Labor Congress and delivered major reports on the status and development of the Chinese labor movement.

In October 1926, after the first stage of the Northern Expedition had ended with the capture of Wuhan and many Communist labor organizers had gathered in that important industrial area, Liu Shao-ch'i became secretary general of the Hupeh provincial labor union. In January 1927 he organized an anti-British demonstration at Hankow that led to a clash with marines guarding the British concession (for background, see Ch'en, Eugene). The Nationalists assumed control of the concession by force, and a committee composed of T. V. Soong, Sun Fo (qq.v.), and Eugene Ch'en took chaige of its administration. On 1 April, Liu spoke at a meeting honoring the Communist minister of labor in the Wuhan government, Su Chao-cheng (q.v.), who had arrived from Canton with an international delegation that included Jacques Doriot from France, Earl Browder from the United States, and Tom Mann from England.

The anti-Communist drive begun by Chiang Kai-shek and his associates on 12 April 1927 severely damaged the Chinese labor movement. Many members of labor unions in the Shanghai and Nanking areas were arrested and executed. Later that month, Liu Shao-ch'i was elected to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party, and in May he was one of three Chinese delegates, the other two being Li Li-san and Su Chao-cheng, to the Pan-Pacific Labor Conference at Hankow. He was appointed secretary general of the conference, and he gave a major report on the Chinese labor movement on 23 May. Also in May, he became general secretary of the All-China Federation of Labor. That summer, the Communist labor organizations were shattered when Feng Yü-hsiang and Wang Ching-wei (qq.v.) decided to purge the Communists in areas under their control. After the Kuomintang-Communist split of 1927, Liu Shao-ch'i, like the Chinese Communist party he served, was faced with the basic problem of survival. Because Liu spent much of his time as an underground agent in Nationalist-controlled areas, little reliable information concerning his whereabouts during the next three years is available. At the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, held at Moscow in 1928, he was named director of the workers department. In 1929 he was appointed provincial secretary of the party organization in Manchuria. About 1930 he returned to Shanghai, where he worked with Chou En-lai and others in reconstructing Communist labor unions. He organized a strike to protest the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 18 September 1931.

In the autumn of 1932 Liu Shao-ch'i moved from Shanghai to the central Communist base in Kiangsi, where he organized rural workers for and in the primitive arsenals and workshops of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army. He served as chairman of the All-China Federation of Labor in 1933 and presented the summary report on the labor situation in the Communist areas at the second All-China Congress of Soviets in January 1934. His rising political status was confirmed when he was elected to membership on the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist party at the fifth plenum of the sixth Central Committee in January 1934.

Although Liu Shao-ch'i accompanied the Communist forces when they began the Long March in October 1934, he later left them to resume political Work in what the Communists termed the "White areas." Late in 1935 he was in Peiping, where he used the alias Hu Fu, a term used in ancient China to refer to the dress of northern barbarians. He was associated with the student demonstrations of 9 December 1935, which were prompted by Japanese attempts to create an autonomous regime in north China.

Between 1936 and 1942 Liu Shao-ch'i served successively as head of the north China, central plains, and central China bureaus of the Central Committee. In 1945 the Chinese Communist party praised him for his direction of underground work in these key areas. He shaped a political program that was essentially conservative, with long-range goals. He attempted to maintain the party apparatus despite stringent Nationalist controls and censorship, relying on the "utmost possible exploitation of overt, legitimate means" to increase Communist influence.

The Japanese military threat to China enabled Liu to direct nationalistic sentiments into anti-Kuomintang channels. In 1936, for example, anti-Japanese feeling ran strong in the major universities at Peiping and Tientsin. As head of the party's north China bureau, Liu worked to channel this tide of sentiment into the "Anti-Japanese National Salvation" movement. By taking advantage of the tensions created by Chiang Kai-shek's inaction with regard to north China and by enlisting the political support of patriotic young intellectuals who wanted a united front against the Japanese, the Communists came to have considerable influence in Nationalist-controlled north China. The underground work of Liu Shao-ch'i and other Communists in north China was rewarded after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 when a considerable number of university students and graduates made their way to Communist-held areas.

During this period Liu also helped indirectly to present the Chinese Communist story to the Western world. Many years later, it was confirmed that he had authorized the "invisible ink" letter of introduction that had enabled the American journalist Edgar Snow to enter the Communist areas of northern Shensi in 1936.

Liu Shao-ch'i went to Yenan in 1937 to assume new responsibilities in the organization department. He reportedly helped Mao Tse-tung to undermine the prestige and authority of Chang Kuo-t'ao. At Yenan, Edgar Snow's wife, Nym Wales, interviewed Liu, whom she described as the Chinese Communist party's "leading expert on labor problems." Much of the information Liu provided was published in her 1945 book. The Chinese Labor Movement. In July 1939 Liu Shao-ch'i delivered an important speech at the Institute of Marxism- Leninism in Yenan. This report, Lun kung-ch'an-tang-juan ti hsiu-yang (How To Be a Good Communist) was the first of Liu's political statements to be published under his own name. After being presented as two lectures on 8 July, it appeared in three issues oi Chieh-fang [liberation], published at Yenan by the Hsin-hua shu-tien [new China bookstore]. Liu argued that because many party members come from non-proletarian families and thus bring remnants of tainted ideologies into the party with them, they therefore must pass through an extended period of "steeling and self-cultivation" to acquire a proper proletarian outlook. Accordingly, each party member must train himself, through sustained study of Marxism- Leninism and direct participation in "revolutionary struggles," to be a model Communist, "honest, pure, and progressive." Two of Liu's concepts merit special attention. First, he stressed that being a good Communist is essentially a matter of self-discipline, self-examination, self-criticism, and self-cultivation. The concept of self-cultivation, with its distinctly Confucian antecedents, is implicit in the term hsiu-yang, which Liu used in the Chinese title of this work. Second, Liu argued that being a good Communist is a function of one's state of mind rather than something determined by economic or social circumstances. Accordingly, a person may acquire a proletarian outlook regardless of his background. Thus, by combining these two ideas, the basic Marxist concept of the proletariat was expanded in Chinese Communist usage and freed from its socio-economic connotations. For a party which was by definition the vanguard of the proletariat, this approach had great potentialities in wartime China, where nationalism was at least as important as the class struggle in expanding Communist power.

After becoming secretary of the central China bureau of the Chinese Communist party in 1939, Liu worked to spur the formation of guerrilla units in Kiangsu and Anhwei, thus moving into new areas of organization and discipline. Following the so-called New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941 (see Yeh T'ing), Liu played a key role in the reconstruction of the New Fourth Army. On 22 January, Liu was named political commissar of the New- Fourth Army, with Ch'en Yi (1901-; q.v.) as acting commander and Teng Tzu-hui (q.v.) as chief of its political department. Liu set policy guidelines in an article entitled "Present Conditions and Tasks in Central Kiangsu," which was published at Yench'eng in the New Fourth Army journal, Chiang-Huai jih-pao [Yangtze and Huai river daily]. He stressed Communist-directed mass education as a means of instilling national consciousness in the populace. His June 1941 statement, "On the Class Character of Man," reiterated basic Marxist-Leninist tenets, and his important speech of 2 July 1941, "On Inner Party Struggle" [Lun tang-nei tou-cheng], delivered at the Central Party School, defined "struggle" and commented on its nature and importance in the Chinese Communist party.

By the time of the cheng-feng [political rectification] movement of 1942 (for details, see Mao Tse-tung), Liu Shao-ch'i had achieved party recognition as a reliable spokesman on problems of organization and control and as a stern but realistic political moralist. After being recalled to Yenan in October 1942, arriving there early in 1943, he served as a vice chairman of the People's Revolutionary Military Council and as a member of the five-man Secretariat of the Central Committee, the other members being Mao Tse-tung, Chu Teh, Chou En-lai, and Jen Pi-shih. He was chosen to write the principal article for the twenty-second anniversary celebrations of the Chinese Communist party. This article, "Liquidate the Menshevist Ideology Within the Party" (Ch'ing-suan tangnei ti meng-she-wei chu-i ssu-hsiang), appeared on 1 July 1943. In May 1944 Liu Shao-ch'i made a major speech at a conference of workers from factories and textile cooperatives in the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region; the meeting, at which Kao Kang and Teng Fa (qq.v.) also spoke, dealt with the problems faced by the Communists in achieving self-sufficiency in industrial production under wartime conditions.

While working to confirm and strengthen the Leninist nature of their party, the Chinese Communists also emphasized to American representatives in China the potential importance of American economic assistance to China's postwar reconstruction. This point was made by Liu Shao-ch"i and his associates at Yenan in conversations with American Foieign Service officer John S. Service in 1944. The position of Liu Shao-ch'i as the Political Bureau member most concerned with problems of organization and party structure w-as confirmed on 14 May 1945, when he presented a lengthy report on revision of the party constitution at the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party. In this statement, usually known by its abridged English title. On the Party and often regarded as a tactical companion piece to Mao Tse-tung's "On Coalition Government," Liu confirmed the party's reliance on conventional "democratic centralism" and explicitly placed the Thought of Mao Tse-tung at the heart of its ideological structure. Liu also confirmed the Chinese
ommunist contention that political and ideological, rather than social, factors shaped the Chinese Communist party as the "political : party of the proletariat." At this time, Liu became the third-ranking member of the Central Committee, following Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh, and a vice chairman of the H Political Bureau.

By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Liu Shao-ch'i, though little known in the West, was one of the small group of men standing closest to Mao Tse-tung in authority at Yenan. When Mao flew to Chungking in the early autumn of 1945 for discussions with Chiang Kai-shek, Liu served as his surrogate at Yenan. In the spring of 1946, Liu told the American journalist Anna Louise Strong that Mao Tse-tung had transformed traditional Marxism- Leninism into a practical creed for application in Asia. Mao's revolutionary theories, he stated, charted a path to power not only for the Chinese Communists but also for "the billion people who live in the colonial countries of Southeast Asia." He stressed that the Chinese Communists were building a "new capitalism" as a precursor to the socialist revolution and contrasted this with the "military communism" of the Soviet Union. Miss Strong later recounted this interview in "The Thought of Mao Tse-tung," which appeared in Amerasia in June 1947.

Liu remained in Yenan after the collapse of American mediation efforts in China in 1946 and after the outbreak of civil war between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists. When a Nationalist drive forced the Communists to evacuate Yenan in March 1947, the high command separated; Mao Tse-tung, Jen Pi-shih, and Chou En-lai remained in northern Shensi, while Liu Shao-ch'i, Chu Teh, and an alternate working committee moved to the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei base area. The working committee, headed by Liu, was located in 1947 at Hsipo in P'ingshan hsien, Hopei. That September, Liu presided over a conference on agriculture which formulated and drafted a land law for application in Communist-controlled areas. This law, promulgated by the Chinese Communist party in October, served as the basis for national land reform legislation after 1949.

Although military operations and political planning were of primary importance during this period, the Chinese Communists did not neglect international issues. After the Tito apostasy in the summer of 1948, Liu Shao-ch'i, on behalf of the party leadership, released the statement On Internationalism and Nationalism (Lun kuo-chi chu-ijü min-chu chu-i) on 1 November. He criticized Belgrade's recalcitrance and condemned Tito, not for a breach of political discipline, but for the fundamental ideological error of "bourgeois nationalism." In contradistinction, Liu stressed "proletarian internationalism," interpreted by the Chinese Communists to mean a federation of national Communist parties allied on an equal and voluntary footing and united in a common ideology and a common allegiance to the Soviet Union.

Early in 1949 the Chinese Communist leaders gathered in southern Hopei for a Central Committee meeting, held from 16 to 23 March, at which the shifting of the revolution's center of gravity from the rural to the urban areas and the importance to China of industrialization were stressed. At the end of March, the senior party leaders moved to Peiping. In September, they convened the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to create a new government for China, and, on 1 October, Mao Tse-tung became Chairman of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, with Chu Teh as the senior-ranking vice chairman and Liu Shao-ch'i as the second vice chairman. By this time, Liu also had become general secretary of the party Secretariat. In addition, he held top posts in what the Chinese Communists termed "people's organizations." Between 1949 and 1954 he headed the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association, and he was elected honorary chairman of the All-China Federation of Labor at its sixth congress in 1949 and its seventh congress in 1953.

When the Central People's Government was reorganized in 1954, Liu Shao-ch'i became chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, the organ to which all other government organs theoretically were responsible. Changes were made in the top party hierarchy at the first session in September 1956 and the second session in May 1958 of the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party. Teng Hsiao-p'ing (q.v.) became general secretary of the Central Committee, thus assuming tasks that Liu had performed since 1945. The top decision-making organ of the party came to be the seven-man standing committee of the Political Bureau, on which Liu was the second-ranking member. After an announcement was made in December 1958 that Mao Tse-tung intended to relinquish his governmental responsibilities, Liu Shao-ch'i was elected Chairman of the People's Republic of China in April 1959. At that time, he was described in official publications as Mao's "closest comrade in arms." Liu's election to this office appeared to raise him above possible rivals and thereby to ensure his later succession to the chairmanship of the Chinese Communist party.

Liu Shao-ch'i's public statements and activities after 1949 to some degree may be considered a guide to Peking's evolving policies on many domestic and international questions. In his November 1949 speech to the Trade Union Conference of Asian and Australasian Countries at Peking, he set forth basic Chinese Communist tenets on foreign relations, presented the process of creating the People's Republic of China as the model for all revolutionary movements in "colonial and semi-colonial countries," and set the tone of nationalistic militancy that characterized Peking's early pronouncements on foreign policy. Liu's two major speeches of 1950 set forth Peking's relatively moderate labor and agricultural policies. On 1 July 1951, the Chinese Communist party's thirtieth anniversary, Liu presented a report laced with adulation of "Chairman Mao's correct leadership" and stressed that Mao alone had consistently understood the correct application of Marxism-Leninism in China. Early in November of that year, Liu delivered a major speech on qualifications for Chinese Communist party members.

Liu Shao-ch'i went to Moscow in October 1952 to attend the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. He remained in Moscow until January 1953, three months after the congress closed, but the purpose of his mission was never explained. In February 1953 he delivered the principal speech on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance.

After the death of Stalin in March 1953 and the signing of an armistice agreement in Korea in July of that year, Peking shifted its attention to problems of political consolidation and economic development. Soon afterwards, the top command of the party dealt sharply with a short-lived threat to its authority. Acting in accordance with a Political Bureau resolution of December 1953, the Central Committee met on 6-10 February 1954, and Liu Shao-ch'i delivered a slashing attack on dissidents and emphasized the need for "collective leadership" under Mao Tse-tung. This meeting was a prelude to the disclosures regarding the alleged "anti-party faction" of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih (q.v.).

In September 1954 Liu Shao-ch'i delivered an authoritative report on the draft constitution submitted to the National People's Congress. It later was adopted by that body as the formal framework of authority for the People's Republic of China. Two years later, Liu presented the principal political report to the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party. When Mao Tse-tung went to Moscow in 1957 for the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution, Liu remained in Peking as Mao's proxy and spoke to a rally on The Significance of the October Revolution (Shih-yüeh ke-ming ti i-i). This speech was a significant indicator of Peking's awareness of changes in world political geography and interest in the developing nations of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In May 1958, at the second session of the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, Liu focused attention on the party's role in China's '"socialist construction" and outlined a new development strategy that involved the mobilization of underemployed rural labor on an unprecedented scale. On 1 October 1959, when Nikita Khrushchev was in China for the tenth anniversary celebrations of the People's Republic of China, Liu's commemorative article. The Victory of Marxism-Leninism in China Ma-k'e-ssu Lieh-ning chu-i tsai Chung-kuo ti sheng-li) was released in both Peking and Moscow. It vindicated the Great Leap Forward, supported the concept of "permanent revolution," and contained implied criticisms of the Soviet Union. By I960 increasing Sino-Soviet antagonism was becoming apparent. One key issue in the developing conflict within the Communist bloc was the problem of the international position and prestige of Mao Tse-tung. The Chinese Communists placed Mao in direct succession to the classical theorists of Communist revolution — Marx, Engels, and Lenin—as the principal arbiter of strategy for the emerging nations. Partly because other Communist bloc leaders did not accept this evaluation, Mao did not attend the forty-third anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution, but sent Liu Shao-ch'i to Moscow in his stead. As the second-ranking leader of the Chinese Communist party, Liu Shao-ch'i made the principal speech at the meeting celebrating its fortieth anniversary on 30 June 1961, by which time the party membership had grown to about 17,000,000. In August 1962 both the Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily] and the theoretical journal Hung-ch'i [red flag] reprinted his 1939 speech, How to Be a Good Communist. In political terms, the reprinting of this statement constituted a high accolade which was normally reserved for the writings of Mao Tse-tung and seemed to confirm that Liu had been chosen as Mao's successor. Although the fundamental structure and argument of the 1962 edition was unchanged, the phraseology differed considerably from the 1939 version. Comments bearing on the Sino-Soviet conflict were added to the text, as were new quotations from such writings of Mao Tse-tung as On Practice and On Contradition. An English translation of How To Be a Good Communist was published in 1964.

Liu Shao-ch'i made his first trip outside the Communist orbit in 1963 when, accompanied by Ch'en Yi, he traveled to Indonesia, Burma, Cambodia, and North Viet Nam. In March 1966, again accompanied by the foreign minister and a large official party, he made a state visit to Pakistan, where he was greeted by President Mohammed Ayub Khan. Liu emphasized China's friendship for Pakistan, which had been made manifest in the backing given Pakistan in the inconclusive conflict with India in the autumn of 1965 and in the continued flow of military supplies from the People's Republic of China to Pakistan.

Beginning in 1966 Liu Shao-ch'i became a target of severe public censure as the so-called Cultural Revolution gained momentum in China. At the eleventh plenum of the eighth Central Committee, held in August 1966, Lin Piao (q.v.) emerged as Mao Tse-tung's new heir apparent. In late December the Japanese press released a document purported to be a political confession made by Liu Shao-ch'i at a Central Committee meeting in the last week of October. He allegedly admitted to political errors extending back to 1946 and stated that he had made particularly serious blunders in the weeks prior to the Central Committee meeting of August 1966. The leaders of the Cultural Revolution singled out for attack many of the bases of political power closely associated with Liu Shao-ch'i—municipal party committees, propaganda organs, labor unions, and official youth groups. The spring of 1967 brought mounting public demonstrations against Liu in every major city of China, and the press devoted major attention to his political sins. On 1 July 1967, the forty-sixth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party, the ideological journal Hung-ch'i [red flag] proclaimed the "overthrow" of Liu Shao-ch'i and a "handful of party people" associated with him.

Some outside observers estimated that the Cultural Revolution in China reflected an impatience on the part of Mao Tse-tung with the Communist party structure as an apparatus of control and a calculated intention to rely increasingly on the "broad masses of the people" to achieve long-range political goals. Liu Shao-ch'i, as the party's foremost expert on the theory and practice of organization and as a proponent of strong organizational structure as the basis of the party, represented an approach to government and the socialist revolution that conflicted with the stated aims of the new movement.

Prior to the exposures of the Cultural Revolution, little was known of Liu Shao-ch'i's personal life. Before 1945, he had been married and was known to have had children; one son was entrusted to the care of Jen Pi-shih during his father's absence for a period in 1947. In the late 1940's Liu Shao-ch'i married Wang Kuang-mei, a 1943 graduate of Fu-jen University in Peking and a member of a well-known north China family with business and industrial connections. Like her husband, Wang Kuang-mei became a prominent target of criticism during the Cultural Revolution.