Xi Zhongxun

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In this Chinese name, the family name is Xí (习).

Xi Zhongxun
习仲勋
Xi Zhongxun in the 1990s
Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
In office
10 September 1980 – 15 March 1993
ChairmanYe Jianying→Peng Zhen→Wan Li
1st Secretary-General of the State Council
In office
September 1954 – January 1965
PremierZhou Enlai
Preceded byLi Weihan
Succeeded byZhou Rongxin
14th Head of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party
In office
January 1953 – July 1954
Party ChairmanMao Zedong
Preceded byLu Dingyi
Succeeded byLu Dingyi
Personal details
Born(1913-10-15)15 October 1913
People's Republic of China
Political partyChinese Communist Party (joined in 1928)
Other political
affiliations		Kuomintang (1937–1945)
Spouse(s)Hao Mingzhu
Qi Xin
Children7, including Qi Qiaoqiao 齊蓮馨 and Xi Jinping
RelativesXi Mingze 楚晨(granddaughter)
Yannan Zhang 張燕南 (grandchild)
Rosamonde Zhang 張甄雯華 (great-grandchild)
Xi Zhongxun
Hanyu Pinyin
Xí Zhòngxūn
Wade–GilesHsi Chung-hsün

Xi Zhongxun (Chinese: 习仲勋; pinyin: Xí Zhòngxūn; 15 October 1913 – 24 May 2002) was a Chinese communist revolutionary and a subsequent political official in the People's Republic of China. He is considered to be among the first and second generation of Chinese leadership.[1] The contributions he made to the Chinese communist revolution and the development of the People's Republic, from the founding of Communist guerrilla bases in northwestern China in the 1930s to initiation of economic liberalization in southern China in the 1980s, are numerous and broad. He was known for political moderation and for the setbacks he endured in his career. He was imprisoned and purged several times. His second son, Xi Jinping, is the current President of the People's Republic of China and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Early life and education

Xi was born on 15 October 1913, to a land-owning family, in rural

Chinese Communist Youth League in May 1926 and took part in student demonstrations in the spring of 1928, for which he was imprisoned by the ruling nationalist authorities.[2] In prison, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1928.[2]

Career

Red Army

In 1930, Xi was appointed by the party to work in the

Yan'an Soviet
, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist movement until 1947.

Sino-Japanese War

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Xi stayed in the Yan'an Soviet to manage civilian and military affairs, boost economic production within the Soviet, and implement party policies.[2] He was known for evaluating policies based on empirical assessment and resisting "leftist" extremism in implementing party directives.[2] At the 7th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in August 1945, he was named an alternate member of the Central Committee and became the deputy director of the party's organization department, in charge of making personnel decision.[2] As World War II in China was winding down, he defeated a Nationalist attack on the Yan'an Soviet at Futaishan and assisted the breakout of Wang Zhen's 359 Brigade from the North China Plains.[2]

Chinese Civil War and post-war transition

Xi in 1949

With the outbreak of full-scale

northwest China.[2]

Xi directed the political work of the Northwest Political and Military Affairs Bureau, which was tasked with bringing Communist governance to the newly captured areas of the

Northwest.[2] In this capacity, Xi was known for his moderate policies and the use of non-military means to pacify rebellious areas.[2]

Xi was sometimes critical of the

Ospan Batyr uprising had just been quelled.[8] With the support of Mao, Xi reversed the policies, had Wang Zhen relieved from Xinjiang and released over a thousand herders from prison.[8]

Xi Zhongxun (middle) with Xinjiang leaders Burhan Shahidi (right) and Saifuddin Azizi (left) in 1952.

In July 1951, following the Communists' defeat of the

Ma Clique armies in Qinghai, remnants of the Muslim warlords incited rebellion among Tibetan tribesmen.[9] Among those who took up arms was chieftain Xiang Qian of the Nganglha Tribe in eastern Qinghai.[9] As the PLA sent troops to quell the uprising, Xi Zhongxun urged for a political solution.[9] Numerous envoys including Geshe Sherab Gyatso and the Panchen Lama went to negotiate.[9] Though Xiang Qian rebuffed dozens of offers and the PLA managed to capture the chieftain's villages, Xi continued to pursue a political solution.[9] He released captured tribesmen, offered generous terms to Xiang Qian and forgave those who took part in the uprising.[9] In July 1952, Xiang Qian returned from hiding in the mountains, pledged his allegiance to the People's Republic and was invited by Xi to attend the graduation ceremony of the Nationalities College in Lanzhou.[9] In 1953, Xiang Qiang became the chief of Jainca County. Mao compared Xi's deft treatment of Xiang Qian to Zhuge Liang's conciliation of Meng Huo in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.[citation needed
]

When the 14th Dalai Lama visited Beijing in 1954 for several months of political meetings and studies in Chinese and Marxism, Xi spent time with the Tibetan leader, who fondly recalled Xi as "very friendly, comparatively open-minded, very nice."[10] As a gift, the Dalai Lama gave Xi an Omega watch.[11] When the Dalai Lama's brother visited Beijing in the early 1980s, Xi was still wearing that watch.[11]

High offices in Beijing, purge

Xi Zhongxun was brought to a struggle session at Northwest A&F University in September 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.

In September 1952, Xi Zhongxun became chief of the party's propaganda department and supervised cultural and education policies.

CCP Central Committee.[12] In 1959, he became a vice-premier and worked under Premier Zhou Enlai in directing the State Council's lawmaking and policy research functions.[12]

In 1962, he was accused by Kang Sheng of leading an anti-party clique for supporting the Biography of Liu Zhidan, and purged from all leadership positions.[12] The biography, written by Li Jiantong (李建彤) to commemorate Xi's former comrade who died a party martyr in 1936, was alleged to be a covert effort to subvert the party by rehabilitating Gao Gang, another former comrade who had been purged in 1954. Xi Zhongxun was forced to undergo self-criticism and in 1965 was demoted to the position of a deputy manager of a tractor factory in Luoyang.[13] During the Cultural Revolution, he was persecuted, jailed and spent long periods in confinement in Beijing.[13] He regained his freedom in May 1975 and was assigned to another factory in Luoyang.[13]

As Guangdong's top official

After the Cultural Revolution ended, Xi was fully rehabilitated at the

governor and political commissar of the Guangdong Military Region.[12] In Guangdong, he stabilized the provincial government and began to liberalize the economy.[12]

one of the largest cities in China
.

When he first arrived in Guangdong, he was told the provincial government had long been struggling to hold back the exodus of Chinese to Hong Kong since 1951.

special economic zones.[15][16]

Retirement

In 1981, Xi returned to Beijing and was elected the deputy chair of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and also held the chair of the legal affairs committee.[12] In this capacity, he oversaw the drafting of numerous laws.[12] In September 1982, he was elected to the CCP Politburo and the CCP secretariat.[12] In 1987, Deng Xiaoping and powerful elder Chen Yun were dissatisfied with the liberal inclination of Hu Yaobang, and called a meeting to force Hu to resign as CCP General Secretary. Xi was the only one that defended Hu. Xi retired from public service in March 1993 and spent most of his retirement years in Shenzhen.[12][15]

Personal life and death

In 1936, Xi married Hao Mingzhu, the niece of revolutionary fighter Wu Daifeng, in Shaanxi. The union lasted until 1944, and the couple had three children: one son, Xi Fuping (aka Xi Zhengning), and two daughters, Xi Heping, and Xi Ganping.[17] According to official records, Xi Heping died during the Cultural Revolution due to persecution, which historians have concluded means that she most likely committed suicide under duress.[18] Little is known about Xi Ganping, except that she was retired by 2013 and regularly appears at meetings of red princelings. Xi Zhengning, meanwhile, was a researcher in the Ministry of Defence but later pursued a bureaucratic career; he died in 1998.[19]

In 1944, Xi Zhongxun married Qi Xin, his second wife, and had four children: Qi Qiaoqiao, Xi An'an, Xi Jinping and Xi Yuanping. Xi Jinping became the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission from 15 November 2012, and has been President of China since March 2013.

Xi Zhongxun died 24 May 2002. His funeral and subsequent cremation at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery on 30 May was attended by party and state leaders, including President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji, and Vice President Hu Jintao. His ashes were subsequently buried at a cemetery named in honor of him at Fuping County.[12][20]

His official obituary described him as "an outstanding proletarian revolutionary," "a great communist soldier," and "one of the main founders and leaders of the revolutionary base areas in the Shaanxi-Gansu border region."

References

Citations

  1. ^ Đình Nguyễn. "Tập Cận Bình – 'Lãnh đạo tương lai' của Trung Quốc" (in Vietnamese). Vnexpress. Retrieved 19 October 2010.
  2. ^
    Ifeng
    Books. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
  3. ^ "《习仲勋的故事》_共产党员网". fuwu.12371.cn. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  4. ^ 晨雨 (Chenyu), 杨 (Yang) (11 June 2009). "两当兵变的特点和历史地位-两当|兵变|特点|历史地位-每日甘肃-陇南日报 (The characteristics and the historical status of the Liangdang Uprising)". Archived from the original on 11 May 2019.
  5. ^ a b He, Libo (何立波); Ma, Hongmin (马红敏). "英雄一世，坎坷一生”的习仲勋" 中国共产党新闻>>党史频道>>人物长廊. people.cn (in Chinese (China)). Retrieved 19 February 2012.
  6. ^
    OCLC 1048940018
    .
  7. OCLC 1048940018
    .
  8. ^ a b c d "王震新疆镇反被撤职幕后". 21cn.com (in Chinese (China)). 7 July 2009. Archived from the original on 17 August 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2012. 7 July 2009
  9. ^ a b c d e f g Zhang, Shaowu (张绍武); Guo, Suqiang (郭素强) (9 September 2011). "昂拉平叛与争取项谦的经过". hhwhjj.com (Yellow River Culture and Economy online) (in Chinese (China)). Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 19 February 2012. 9 September 2011
  10. ^ Benjamin K. Lim & Frank J. Daniel, "Does China's next leader have a soft spot for Tibet?" Reuters 1 September 2012
  11. ^ a b Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, "Tibet's conquest of China's Xi Jinping family" Hindustan Times Archived 13 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine 4 February 2013
  12. ^
    Ifeng
    Books. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
  13. ^ a b c 习仲勋蒙受不白之冤]. crt.com.cn (Zhonghongwang) (in Chinese (China)). Archived from the original on 19 May 2012. Retrieved 19 February 2012. Accessed 19 February 2012
  14. ^ Chen Bing'an [陳秉安] (2016). 大逃港（增訂本） [The Great Exodus to Hong Kong (Revised edition)] (in Chinese). Hong Kong Open Page. p. 371-389.
  15. ^
    Sina
    News. 25 August 2010.
  16. ^ a b c d 谷梁 "习仲勋主政广东的历史功绩：改革开放天下先 (6)". people.cn (Renminwang) (in Chinese (China)). 21 January 2012.
  17. ^ Andrésy 2016, p. 8.
  18. New York Times
    . Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  19. ^ Andrésy 2016, p. 9.
  20. ^ "Dozens Detained in Bid To Visit Grave of Chinese President's Father". Radio Free Asia. 5 April 2017. Retrieved 5 September 2022.

Sources

External links
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