Today we are going to talk about a figure in the history of the Chinese Communist Party – Deng Liqun. He was known as the “Left King” and was one of the ideological leaders of the CCP, serving prominent figures such as Wang Zhen, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yun, rising to the rank of Secretary of the Central Secretariat and Minister of the Central Propaganda Department.
In the mid to late 1980s, the “conservative faction” within the CCP planned to nominate him to succeed Hu Yaobang as General Secretary of the CCP. However, in the end, he missed the opportunity to take the position of General Secretary.
Why did Deng Liqun ultimately fail to ascend to the highest leadership position? The answer is not only related to political struggles but also entangled with a decades-old “marital grievance”! Today, let’s uncover this absurd and intriguing chapter of internal CCP history.
To understand why Deng Liqun did not become the General Secretary, we first need to look at the factional struggles within the CCP in the 1980s. It was a turbulent time, with the beginning of reform and opening up, where the CCP split into two factions:
On one side were the “reformists” led by Deng Xiaoping, advocating bold opening up, economic reforms, with key figures like Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Xi Zhongxun, and Wan Li.
On the other side were the “conservatives” led by Chen Yun, who supported reform and opening up but proceeded more cautiously, emphasizing planned economy and control over ideology, with figures including Li Xiannian, Wang Zhen, Hu Qiaomu, and our protagonist today – Deng Liqun.
At that time, Deng Liqun and Hu Qiaomu were known as the ideological leaders of the CCP. He also had a nickname – the “Left King.”
Why was Deng Liqun considered very left-wing? Let’s give two examples. In 1983, Deng Liqun focused on the publication work. He proposed: “Publications should embody the socialist spirit and communist ideals. Not only should works in social sciences strive for this, even works in natural sciences can be compiled and published from this perspective.”
When the first and second sessions of the graduate school at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences opened, Deng Liqun gave speeches at both events. At that time, he was the Party Committee Secretary of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He said, “The graduate school should be guided by Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. If you come to the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, agree with this, study on; if you disagree, raise it at any time, and leave at any time.”
In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping pushed for Hu Yaobang as General Secretary and Zhao Ziyang as Premier, forming the “Hu-Zhao system.” These two were energetic and implemented one reform after another, with rural reform flourishing, and urban reform becoming a priority. However, their progressive style irked the conservative faction led by Chen Yun.
So, the conservative faction attempted to “oust Hu” twice, pushing for the “Left King” Deng Liqun to take the General Secretary position. Next, let’s look at these two unsuccessful “coup” attempts!
The first turmoil occurred during the expanded meeting of the Politburo of the CCP in March 1983. This meeting was dubbed by some as an “unsuccessful coup” and marked the most thrilling day within the CCP since the beginning of reform and opening up.
The catalyst was a long speech by Hu Yaobang on January 20, 1983, at the National Conference on the ideological and political work of the whole country, titled “Four Modernizations Construction and Reform Issues.” Hu Yaobang proposed that reforms should be “comprehensive and systematic,” “resolute yet orderly,” covering various areas such as the economy, politics, culture, and education.
This was a bold statement! At that time, the focus of reform was mainly on rural areas, urban reform had not been fully launched, and reforms in politics and culture were even more sensitive. Hu Yaobang’s speech directly crossed the ideological red line of the conservative faction, upsetting Chen Yun in particular.
On March 17, 1983, the CCP Politburo held an enlarged meeting, where Chen Yun personally came forward with ten criticisms against Hu Yaobang’s “comprehensive reform theory.” During the meeting, Hu Qiaomu further incited tensions, proposing the immediate convening of a Central Work Conference to thoroughly address the “issue of Hu Yaobang.”
Most other Politburo members remained silent, and the meeting did not achieve consensus. However, after the meeting, Deng Liqun seized Chen Yun’s speech as a “weapon” and hastily spread the narrative to the national media, fostering public opinion for the “ousting of Hu.” Hu Qiaomu and others also coordinated privately, preparing to remove Hu Yaobang from power and elevate Deng Liqun to the General Secretary position.
However, they underestimated Hu Yaobang’s allies. Xi Zhongxun, Secretary of the Central Secretariat, was the first to detect this conspiracy. He approached Hu Qili, Wan Li, and others to discuss, and they unanimously opposed “ousting Hu.” Zhao Ziyang and senior leader Ye Jianying also explicitly expressed their non-support. The news eventually reached Deng Xiaoping.
As the mastermind of reform and opening up, Deng Xiaoping viewed Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang as indispensable. Allowing Deng Liqun to take office would inevitably lead to a major setback in reform and opening up! Deng Xiaoping decisively declared, “The Hu-Zhao framework must not change!”
This way, the first operation to “oust Hu” ended in vain, shattering Deng Liqun’s dream of becoming General Secretary for the first time.
The second opportunity arose from late 1986 to early 1987. During this period, the country experienced the first large-scale student movement since the end of the Cultural Revolution, igniting another wave of attempts to “oust Hu” within the CCP leadership.
On January 16, 1987, Hu Yaobang was forced to resign as General Secretary, temporarily replaced by Zhao Ziyang. From this moment until the convening of the Thirteenth National Congress of the CCP in October 1987, the selection of the next General Secretary became the focal point of high-level internal struggles.
Senior conservative figures like Chen Yun and Wang Zhen wholeheartedly supported Deng Liqun to succeed as General Secretary. They lobbied and campaigned extensively. Wang Zhen approached Zhao Ziyang, bluntly saying, “You are more suitable as Prime Minister.” He even visited the residence of Li Rui, a member of the Central Advisory Committee, trying to persuade him to support Deng Liqun.
However, they targeted the wrong person! Not only did Li Rui not support Deng Liqun, but he also wrote a significant letter to Zhao Ziyang and Deng Xiaoping, listing Deng Liqun’s “three major wrongdoings.”
In the letter, Li Rui bluntly criticized Deng Liqun:
Firstly, Deng Liqun resisted reform and opening up. He never advocated for reforms directly but criticized reforms and created obstacles from an ideological standpoint.
Secondly, Deng Liqun severely violated organizational discipline. He secretly spread the criticism of Hu Yaobang from the Politburo meeting to three different places, tried to package “opposition to bourgeois liberalization” as “a second rectification movement,” breaching the regulations of central documents.
Thirdly, Deng Liqun held rigid, “left”-leaning dogmatic views, enjoyed tormenting people, had a poor reputation within and outside the Party, especially failing to win support among intellectuals. If put in charge of ideology, reform and opening up would face grave obstacles.
Li Rui also suggested that Deng Liqun should leave the central leadership positions after the Thirteenth National Congress.
But what likely struck Deng Xiaoping the most were the personal grievances between Deng Liqun and Li Rui mentioned in the letter – a “marital enmity” from their shared past in Yan’an.
This feud dates back to the Yan’an rectification era in the 1940s. At that time, Li Rui was the director of the propaganda department of the CCP Central Youth League and the head of the Commentary Department of the Liberation Daily. Both Li Rui and his wife, Fan Yuanzhen, were investigated during the rectification movement.
Li Rui was taken away from home by the Yan’an Security Office and detained for over a year. The person in charge of examining Fan Yuanzhen was none other than Deng Liqun, who was the Director of the Education Department at the Marxist-Leninist Academy and a member of the CCP Central Political Research Office.
Fan Yuanzhen was one of the “Four Beauties of Yan’an,” in her prime. Meanwhile, Deng Liqun was married and already had two children with his wife.
Shockingly, during the investigation of Fan Yuanzhen, Deng Liqun developed an improper relationship with her, which was discovered by Deng Liqun’s wife and became widely known in Yan’an.
When the matter was exposed, Deng Liqun claimed their relationship was “romantic,” repeatedly assured the leadership that he would not repeat it, yet he continued to do so, even proposing to marry Fan Yuanzhen. Despite severe rebukes from the leadership, he cheekily claimed to be “naughty in front of the ‘parents,’ in other words, the Party.”
In June 1944, after Li Rui was released, Fan Yuanzhen confessed everything to him and divorced Deng Liqun. In January 1945, the CCP held a criticism meeting, harshly denouncing Deng Liqun as “hypocritical, full of righteousness, yet deeply involved in immoral conduct.”
Fan Yuanzhen was sent to the countryside to work as a clerk. However, even in such circumstances, Deng Liqun secretly went to the countryside and lived with Fan under the guise of being her “husband” for a week.
Although Fan Yuanzhen later remarried Li Rui and had a daughter, this scandal created an unreconcilable enmity between Li Rui and Deng Liqun.
This past incident also stirred Deng Xiaoping’s painful memories, as he had gone through a similar “emotional trauma.”
Back in 1933, during internal struggles within the CCP, Deng Xiaoping was investigated. His second wife, Jin Weiyin, left him during the investigation and remarried Li Weihan, Minister of the Organization Department, later giving birth to Li Tieying. This incident became a perpetual pain in Deng Xiaoping’s heart, to the extent that he forbade anyone from mentioning the three words “Jin Weiyin” to him.
The past events detailed in Li Rui’s letter undoubtedly struck a chord with the deepest hidden feelings in Deng Xiaoping.
According to Li Rui’s recollection, after receiving his letter, Deng Xiaoping made three directives: first, remove Deng Liqun from all positions; second, let bygones be bygones; third, retain his qualifications as an alternate member of the Politburo.
Because of Li Rui’s letter and Deng Xiaoping’s directive, Deng Liqun’s last chance to become the General Secretary at the Thirteenth National Congress of the CCP was shattered.
During the Thirteenth National Congress of the CCP, Zhao Ziyang was elected as the General Secretary. Many years later, Zhao Ziyang told his friend, “Li Rui made a great contribution to the Party.” He was referring to Li Rui writing the letter to Deng and Zhao to prevent Deng Liqun from becoming the General Secretary.
To further humiliate Deng Liqun, he faced consecutive setbacks in the 1987 Thirteenth Congress elections. Surprisingly, with the introduction of the Central Committee members’ differential elections for the first time, Deng Liqun failed to be elected as a Central Committee member.
Subsequently, in the equal elections for the Central Advisory Committee, while he was elected a member, he was again left out in the differential elections for the Standing Committee of the Advisory Committee.
Analysis indicates that Deng Liqun’s failure to be elected was mainly due to his role in the “oust Hu” event and his strong opposition to reform and opening up, resulting in a very negative reputation within the Party, especially with virtually no support among the intellectual groups.
– Production Team of “The Truth of a Century”