Peng Zhen

Early revolutionary activities

In 1922, Fu entered the Shanxi Provincial No. 1 Middle School in Taiyuan,^: 327 where he joined a progressive youth society and took up Marxism. That winter, he became head of a school for the poor run by the society.^: 23 In the winter of 1923, on the recommendation of Gao Junyu and Li Yutang, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).^: 522 When the first CCP organisation in Shanxi was established in 1924, he became a member of the committee of the party's Taiyuan branch and later its secretary,^: 31 and he led the founding of a Taiyuan association to promote a national assembly, serving as its chief secretary.^: 28–29

In January 1925, Fu guided the founding of the Shanxi Workers' Federation,^: 28–29 and in February, he became secretary of the Taiyuan committee of the Communist Youth League.^: 31 In May, he helped lead a campaign against a property valuation tax imposed by the warlord Yan Xishan, who withdrew the tax.^: 33–34 After the May Thirtieth Incident, he organised a Shanxi association to protest the killings and served as its vice-chairman,^: 36 and in July and August, he helped to establish labour organisations in Taiyuan, including a federation of trade unions.^: 42–43 In late August 1925, the party transferred him to Shijiazhuang, where he became secretary of the Zhengtai Railway general union and helped to re-establish it. In March and April 1926, he organised a strike at Shijiazhuang's Daxing cotton mill.^: 43–45 In May 1926, he was transferred to Tianjin, where, until the summer of 1927, he served successively as secretary of several of the party's district committees, as head of the organisation department of its Tianjin committee and as a member of its labour movement committee.^: 632

In mid-August 1927, Fu became acting secretary of the CCP's Tianjin committee, and in November, its secretary; he then went to Tangshan to help prepare a workers' uprising.^: 57 In February 1928, he joined the standing committee of the party's Shunzhi provincial committee, which covered Hebei and the surrounding region, and after its secretary, Li Jida, was arrested and executed, he served as acting secretary, head of its organisation department and secretary of the Tianjin special district committee.^: 14 In February 1929, when the Tianjin special district committee was reorganised as the CCP Tianjin work office, he became its secretary.^: 62 In June 1929, after an informant betrayed the Tianjin underground party, he was arrested.^: 68 After his release from prison in 1935, he became head of the party's Tianjin working group, directed the Tianjin student union and, at the request of the CCP's Northern Bureau, rebuilt the party's Tianjin committee.^: 87

In April 1936, Liu Shaoqi arrived in Tianjin to reorganise the Northern Bureau and appointed Fu head of its organisation department. Fu set up a party committee for students in Beiping (as Beijing was then called) and reorganised the party's Beiping committee,^: 15 and he led the national headquarters of the Chinese National Liberation Vanguard.^: 15

Second Sino-Japanese War

In January 1937, Fu guided the founding of the Beiping National Salvation Federation,^: 87–88 and in February, he guided the first national congress of the Chinese National Liberation Vanguard in Beiping. In May, he attended a conference of representatives of the Communist-held areas, where he chaired the delegation from the "white areas" under Nationalist control.^: 98 In July, he became head of the Northern Bureau's organisation department, and he later moved with the bureau to Taiyuan to direct the party's underground work in north China. That year, he took the name Peng Zhen, adopting his grandmother's surname, Peng, and the given name Zhen ("truth"), which he explained as "upholding the truth and seeking the facts".

In 1938, Peng became secretary of the CCP's Jin-Cha-Ji sub-bureau and helped to direct the East Hebei uprising.^: 52 In 1939, he also became head of the party school of the newly established Northern sub-bureau.^: 29 In October 1939, he chaired the sub-bureau's conference on organisational work, and he then directed the party's response to the December Incident (also known as the Jinxi Incident) in Shanxi.^: 114 In 1940, he held a series of cadre meetings of the sub-bureau to set out policies for consolidating the party's work and its base areas during the war.^: 159 In August 1940, he oversaw the drafting of the sub-bureau's administrative programme for the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region, known as the "Double Ten Programme", under which elections and political and economic reforms were carried out in the region.^: 508

In 1941, Peng went to Yan'an, where he worked at the Central Party School,^: 128 becoming its director of education in September. In 1942, the Politburo placed the school directly under the Secretariat, with Mao Zedong responsible for its political direction and Peng remaining director of education.^: 18 In 1943, Mao became president of the school, and Peng became its vice-president. On 5 March 1944, Peng became acting head of the Organization Department, and he took part in drafting the 1945 resolution on questions in the party's history. On 5 June 1944, he became head of the party's urban work committee,^: 137 and on 1 September, head of its urban work department. During the Yan'an Rectification Movement, he gave a concluding report on "questions of the method of thought".^: 135

In 1945, Peng attended the Seventh Party Congress, where he chaired the credentials committee and was elected to the Central Committee. On 19 June, at the first plenary session of the Seventh Central Committee, he was elected to the Politburo, and in August, he was made an alternate secretary of the Secretariat.

Chinese Civil War

After the war with Japan ended, Manchuria was occupied by the Soviet Red Army, and both the Communists and the Nationalists sought to take control of the region once Soviet forces withdrew. The CCP leadership appointed Peng secretary of its Northeast Bureau and moved troops from Shandong to the northeast, with Lin Biao in command at the front. To facilitate negotiations with the Soviet army, the party's Central Military Commission gave Peng the temporary rank of lieutenant general.^: 125 In September 1945, Peng, Chen Yun, Ye Jizhuang, Wu Xiuquan and others flew towards Shenyang on a Soviet aircraft; during a refuelling stop at Shanhaiguan, the plane overran the runway into a wheat field, and Peng suffered a blow to the head.^: 122 The group continued by train and reached Shenyang on 18 September.^: 125 On 31 October, Peng became first political commissar of the Northeast People's Autonomous Army, which was renamed the Northeast Democratic United Army in January 1946.

In March 1946, the Northeast Bureau under Peng decided to occupy Changchun, Harbin and Qiqihar to secure northern Manchuria. After Communist forces took the three cities in April, the Nationalists sent elite units of Sun Li-jen's New 1st Army, Liao Yaoxiang's New 6th Army and Chen Mingren's 71st Army, under the command of Bai Chongxi and Du Yuming, to north. Although Lin Biao and Chen Yun proposed withdrawing from Changchun, the Northeast Bureau, at the insistence of the party leadership, decided to hold the city; Lin's forces were defeated at Siping and withdrew north of the Songhua River. According to Weng Yanqing, the defeat brought the disagreements between Lin and Peng into the open.^{: 111–112} On 16 June, the party leadership reorganised the Northeast Bureau, making Lin its secretary and the commander and political commissar of the Northeast Democratic United Army, with Peng as deputy secretary and deputy political commissar.

In July 1947, Peng left the northeast to attend the National Land Conference at Xibaipo, Pingshan County, Hebei. He then remained in Hebei as a member of the standing committee of the party's Central Working Committee, directing its work in the Jin-Cha-Ji region. In 1948, he again became head of the Organization Department and also head of the party's policy research office, and on 13 December, he was appointed secretary of the CCP's Beiping committee to prepare for the takeover of the city.^: 177

After the peaceful handover of Beiping in January 1949, Peng took charge of the city as party secretary.^: 182 He oversaw the rebuilding of its political institutions, the protection and restoration of its industry, the development of culture and education, and the training of cadres for other parts of the country.^{: 183–186} In September, he attended the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and was elected a member of its national committee and of the Central People's Government Council.^: 193

Early People's Republic

Peng attended the founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.^{: 179 : 115} On 19 October, he became vice-chairman of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of the Government Administration Council.^: 80 In November, he was elected chairman of the Beijing People's Consultative Council, and he later headed the party's central political and legal affairs group, assisting the leadership with legal work.^: 340

In February 1950, Peng was elected chairman of the Beijing Federation of Trade Unions, and at the third plenary session of the Seventh Central Committee, he joined the central committee on land reform. In 1951, he became mayor of Beijing, a post to which he was repeatedly re-elected until 1966. As mayor, he oversaw the early campaigns of the People's Republic in the city, including the Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns, the socialist transformation of industry and commerce, and agricultural collectivisation.^: 175 In March 1953, as secretary of the party group of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, he oversaw a report on political and legal work that proposed building a socialist legal system.^: 75–80 In December 1953, he oversaw a draft plan for the reconstruction and expansion of Beijing and began work on the capital's construction, the widening of its streets and public security;^{: 166 : 177–180} the planning process involved consultation with experts, including the architect Liang Sicheng.^: 49–50 The period saw substantial changes in Beijing's industry and municipal infrastructure.^: 354

In 1954, Peng was elected a deputy to the First National People's Congress (NPC), and in September, he spoke at its first session during the debate on the draft constitution.^: 657 In December 1954, he became a vice-chairman of the CPPCC, and in 1955, he became first secretary of the CCP's Beijing committee, in charge of both the party and the government of the capital.^: 367

Peng was also responsible for much of the legislative work of the early People's Republic. In July 1956, he chaired the first meeting of the CCP's central legal committee, which discussed the drafting of a criminal law and a criminal procedure law.^: 408 At the Eighth Party Congress in September 1956, he was re-elected to the Central Committee,^: 345 and at its first plenary session, he was elected to the Politburo and the Secretariat, where he assisted Deng Xiaoping, the general secretary, and was responsible for united front work, legal affairs, and Hong Kong and Macau.^: 131 From November 1956 to February 1957, he led an NPC delegation to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia.^: 257 In June 1958, he became head of the central political and legal affairs group, which reported directly to the Politburo and the Secretariat, and from September to November, he worked on the planning of Tiananmen Square and the design of the Great Hall of the People.^: 340 In April 1959, he was elected vice-chairman and secretary-general of the NPC Standing Committee and a vice-chairman of the CPPCC.^: 182 In June 1960, while leading the CCP delegation to a conference of communist and workers' parties in Bucharest, he clashed with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.^{[citation needed]}

In 1961, Peng and Deng Xiaoping organised five investigation teams to examine the effects of the Three Red Banners and the famine in the rural counties of Shunyi and Huairou, near Beijing.^: 233 At the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in January 1962, which reviewed the failures of the Great Leap Forward, Peng said that "Chairman Mao is not free from mistakes either".^: 71–72 According to the writer Ding Kaiwen, Mao made a self-criticism at the conference but became wary of Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Peng.^: 28–29

From 6 to 20 July 1963, Peng was deputy head of a CCP delegation, led by Deng Xiaoping and including Kang Sheng, that held nine rounds of talks in Moscow with a Soviet delegation led by Mikhail Suslov and including Boris Ponomarev and Yuri Andropov on disputes in the international communist movement. On 14 July, the Soviet side published an open letter to its party members over the CCP's objections, and relations between the two parties deteriorated further.

In July 1964, the Secretariat set up the Five-Person Group on the Cultural Revolution, with Peng, nominated by Mao, as its head, to implement the party's directives on literature, art, philosophy and the social sciences.^: 275 He was re-elected vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee and of the CPPCC at sessions held from December 1964 to January 1965. According to Weng Yanqing, at a central work conference in Beijing during this period, Mao remarked that there were two "independent kingdoms" in Beijing.^: 100

Cultural Revolution

In November 1965, the Shanghai newspaper Wenhui Bao published Yao Wenyuan's article criticising the historical play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, an attack on its author, the deputy mayor of Beijing Wu Han. The article was instigated by Jiang Qing (or, according to some accounts, by Mao himself^: 110), and Peng opposed it.^: 30–31 On 3 February 1966, he convened an enlarged meeting of the Five-Person Group,^: 44–47 which drew up the "Outline Report on the Current Academic Discussion", known as the February Outline. The outline held that academic questions should be kept separate from political ones and opposed linking Wu Han to the Lushan Conference of 1959.^: 50–51 On 5 February, the Politburo Standing Committee, chaired by Liu Shaoqi, approved the outline,^: 70 and Peng, Lu Dingyi and others flew to Wuhan to report on it to Mao. Peng then drafted, on behalf of the Central Committee, a note forwarding the outline, which was circulated to the whole party as a central document after the members of the Standing Committee in Beijing approved it.^: 110

The February Outline's opposition to turning academic questions into political ones ran counter to Mao's intentions and to the direction the Cultural Revolution later took.^: 96 In late March 1966, in conversations with Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing and others, Mao criticised the outline for blurring class lines, ordered it to be withdrawn and said that the Beijing municipal committee was so closed that "not even a needle can be stuck in, not even water can be splashed in" and should be dissolved.^: 110 The May 16 Notification, drafted by Chen Boda and others, revised by Mao several times and adopted by an enlarged meeting of the Politburo on 16 May, accused Peng of having presented his own views as those of the group without consulting Kang Sheng and its other members. It revoked the February Outline, dissolved the Five-Person Group and replaced it with the Central Cultural Revolution Group.^: 192 On 18 May, Lin Biao gave a speech warning of the danger of a coup, and Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi and Yang Shangkun, who were connected with Liu Shaoqi and Peng, were removed from their posts.^: 102

At the enlarged Politburo meeting held from 4 to 26 May 1966, Peng was criticised, suspended as a secretary of the Secretariat and removed as first secretary of the Beijing committee and as mayor.^: 164 On 24 May, the Politburo Standing Committee set up a special committee to investigate the "anti-party clique of Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi and Yang Shangkun", and Peng was accused of being a spy.^{: 140–144} In December 1966, he was seized by Red Guards, including Ye Xiangzhen and Liu Shikun, and detained.^: 26 On 19 May 1975, he was sent from Beijing to Shang County, Shaanxi, where his movements remained restricted.^: 300 During his detention, his family home in Dieshang was also targeted: his 85-year-old mother and his younger brother died after being subjected to struggle sessions, and his nephew Fu Ruzheng killed himself.^{: 267–269}

Reform era

Peng returned to Beijing after the third plenary session of the Eleventh Central Committee ended on 28 December 1978. On 17 February 1979, the Central Committee issued a notice rehabilitating him, which declared that "all the charges imposed on Comrade Peng Zhen and all slanderous and untrue statements" made during the Cultural Revolution were overturned.^: 1139 His experiences during the Cultural Revolution, and the movement's consequences for Chinese politics and society, led him to emphasise the importance of building a legal system.^: 4–8 At a session of the NPC Standing Committee held from 17 to 23 February 1979, he was appointed head of its newly established Legislative Affairs Commission. From March to June, he oversaw the revision of the Electoral Law, the Organic Law of Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments, the Organic Law of the People's Courts and the Organic Law of the People's Procuratorates, and the drafting of the Criminal Law, the Criminal Procedure Law and the Law on Sino-Foreign Equity Joint Ventures.^: 31–35

At the second session of the Fifth NPC in June and July 1979, Peng was elected a vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and at the fourth plenary session of the Eleventh Central Committee in September, he was restored to the Central Committee and the Politburo. In November, he also became acting secretary-general of the NPC Standing Committee. On 24 January 1980, he became secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission.^: 340 On 17 March 1980, he was appointed head of the committee that directed the trial of the "Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques".^{: 111–113 : 155}

At the third session of the Fifth NPC in August and September 1980, Peng was appointed vice-chairman of the committee for revising the constitution, and from February to November 1982, he oversaw the drafting of the revised constitution. He was re-elected to the Central Committee at the Twelfth Party Congress in September 1982 and to the Politburo at its first plenary session. On 26 November 1982, he presented the report on the draft constitution, and on 4 December, the NPC adopted the new constitution, which, according to the journalist Zeng Jianhui, restored the constitution as the foundation of social order and the legal system.^: 31–35 At the first session of the Sixth NPC in June 1983, Peng succeeded Ye Jianying as Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.^{: 66 : 114–115}

According to The New York Times, Peng played a leading role in the criticism of the general secretary, Hu Yaobang, at a party "democratic life meeting" in January 1987 that led to Hu's resignation.

Retirement and death

At the Thirteenth Party Congress in October and November 1987, at which he was a member of the standing committee of the presidium, Peng, then aged 85, retired from the Politburo and the Central Committee along with other veteran leaders.^: 606 In April 1988, after the first session of the Seventh NPC, he retired as Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee and was succeeded by Wan Li. During the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he supported the imposition of martial law and the removal of Zhao Ziyang as general secretary.

Peng died at Beijing Hospital on 26 April 1997, at the age of 94. The obituary issued by the Central Committee, the NPC Standing Committee, the State Council, the CPPCC and the Central Military Commission described him as "a great proletarian revolutionary and statesman" and "a principal founder of China's socialist legal system". After his cremation, his ashes were placed in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

Equality before the truth

As director of education at the Central Party School, Peng argued in a report on the conduct of the school's discussions that "everyone is equal before the truth", and that comrades should treat their own and others' thoughts and conduct objectively, "judging right as right and wrong as wrong".^: 434 He held that people should uphold the truth and correct their mistakes regardless of their rank or power.^: 60 In 1965, at a national conference of provincial culture officials, he criticised attacks in the ideological field and objected to Yao Wenyuan's accusations against Wu Han. Although Mao had suggested that the "crux" of Hai Rui Dismissed from Office was its theme of dismissal from office, linking it to the dismissal of Peng Dehuai, Peng told Mao, "We have investigated and found no organisational connection between Wu Han and Peng Dehuai."^{: 339–340} According to Liu Zheng, this stance, expressed in the February Outline, made Peng one of the first leaders to be purged in the Cultural Revolution.

Equality before the law

According to Liu Zheng, Peng was the first CCP leader to set out systematically the principle that all citizens are equal before the law. In a speech at the first session of the First NPC on 17 September 1954, he argued that no one should be allowed to place themselves above the law, a principle that was written into the 1954 constitution and the organic laws of the courts and procuratorates. During the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the principle was condemned as a "bourgeois legal viewpoint", and it was omitted from the constitutions of 1975 and 1978. As head of the NPC's Legislative Affairs Commission from 1979, Peng had it restored in the 1982 constitution and other basic laws, adding a provision that no privileges were to be permitted.

David M. Lampton, then president of the National Committee on United States–China Relations, argued that Peng saw law as an instrument of authoritarian rule, a means of creating predictability while preserving the rule of the Communist Party elite, rather than as something that also constrained that elite.

Foreign honours

• Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Sowathara (Cambodia, 18 February 1956)
• First Class of Order of the National Flag (North Korea, 2 May 1962)

Other honors

In October 2002, to mark the centenary of his birth, China Central Television broadcast the 20-episode television series Peng Zhen, produced by the General Office of the NPC Standing Committee and the CCP Beijing Municipal Committee and made by the Beijing Television Art Centre and the August First Film Studio. Directed by Wang Limin and Lin Bing, it starred Wu Weidong and Zhang Yushan as the younger and the older Peng. On 11 October 2002, the Central Committee held a symposium to commemorate the centenary, chaired by the NPC Standing Committee chairman, Li Peng, at which Jiang Zemin spoke. At the same time, a bronze statue of Peng was unveiled at his former home in Dieshang village, Houma, and the memorial hall at the former site of the CCP Taiyuan branch, on the southern shore of Wenying Lake in Taiyuan, was renamed the Memorial Hall of Peng Zhen's Life and the Former Site of the CCP Taiyuan Branch, in recognition of the role of Gao Junyu, Peng and others in establishing the party in Shanxi.

A collection of Peng's articles, telegrams and speeches, Selected Works of Peng Zhen, covering the war against Japan, the civil war, the early People's Republic and the reform era, was published in June 1991. A memorial volume, Remembering Peng Zhen, and a pictorial album, Peng Zhen, were published in April 1998.