In its 100 years, who has Chinas Communist Party purged? The Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) 100-year history is not just one of revolution and rejuvenation, but also ruthlessness.To get more news about CCP 100th anniversary, you can visit shine news official website. From Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution to Deng Xiaopings Tiananmen Square crackdown and Xi Jinpings anti-corruption crusade, leaders of the CCP have not hesitated to take whatever steps they deem necessary to secure and remain in power.From Peng Dehuai, the general who was tortured for opposing Maos disastrous economic policies, to Zhao Ziyang, the premier erased from history for seeking compromise with protesters when Deng favoured guns and tanks, and Zhou Yongkang, the ex-security chief who reportedly threatened Xis ascent only to get jailed for corruption political purges are a time-honoured CCP tradition. One of Chinas greatest military leaders, Peng fell from grace when he criticised Maos Great Leap Forward, an economic programme in the late 1950s that aimed to push China into the industrial age by collectivising agriculture and creating steel in backyard furnaces, but ended up with as many as 30 million people starving to death. Peng who had led Chinese forces in the Korean war and signed the armistice that ended hostilities was appointed defence minister in 1954. But he was dismissed from office after he called policies of the Great Leap Forward impractical. He was also one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution, a campaign of extreme violence launched in 1966 when fanatical Red Guards loyal to Mao set out to destroy all vestiges of Chinas feudal culture and root out the chairmans perceived enemies. Peng was arrested in 1966, imprisoned and tortured, with Red Guards beating him until his back was splintered, according to the Peoples Daily. He died in 1974 while held in solitary confinement.Once considered the heir apparent to Mao, Liu was another prominent victim of the Cultural Revolution. Liu, who replaced Mao as the Chinese head of state in 1959, was condemned by the Red Guards as a renegade, traitor, scab and a capitalist roader intent on defeating the Communist revolution. In 1968, he was stripped of his positions and expelled from the party.A founding revolutionary of the CCP, Deng was purged from the party twice during the Mao era (1949- 1976). During the Cultural Revolution, Dengs economic pragmatism and ties to Maos rivals within the Communist leadership, including Liu Shaoqi, cost him his party posts. He was then sent to work at a tractor factory. Mao brought Deng back to the leadership in 1973, appointing him vice premier and giving him day to day control of the government. But just three years later, Mao purged Deng again, this time because Mao feared Deng may reverse some of his radical policies. Following Maos death, Deng became Chinas paramount leader although he did not hold the top CCP post and remained the countrys most powerful figure until his death in 1997.But by 1971, Lin and the army had amassed more political authority than Mao thought desirable, according to Edward JM Rhoads, professor of history at the University of Texas. In a desperate move to avoid being purged, Lin plotted a coup that failed. The Chinese government later said Lin had died on September 13, 1971, in an aeroplane crash in Mongolia as he was fleeing to the Soviet Union. |