Li Rui, aged 102, was a key figure during the Mao era. His diaries have become a testament to China’s political history, involving legal battles over the ownership of these diaries and revealing the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party’s top echelons. His reflections uncover the complex struggles within the Party and pivotal moments in the nation’s development.
Disclaimer: For ease of reading, the editors of this site have made appropriate modifications to the content without altering the original meaning. This article solely represents the author’s personal views. This site serves only as an information display platform, aiming to help readers gain a more comprehensive understanding of historical truths.
Author | Wang Ju Paan
I also hope to live a few more years. I feel that my health is still okay.
I am already 102 years old because I turned 101. I am already living my 102nd year.
At Beijing Hospital, this is unprecedented.
The elderly man you see now lying on the hospital bed being interviewed by Voice of America
is named Li Rui. The interview was conducted in 2018, and according to Chinese calculations, Li Rui was already 102 years old that year—a truly long life.
During the interview with Voice of America, Li Rui proudly said
that during a previous interview with Voice of America, he had once said two phrases: "Faults not corrected, evils become habits."
After hearing these words, every Chinese person would smile knowingly.
Voice of America broadcast some of my unguarded, harsh words.
There was one time, not long after Xi took power, when I was chatting casually with an old friend's daughter.
She said something, she said that now there's this phrase going around online:
"Faults not corrected, evils become habits."
It spread to America, and the Americans made it public, causing me a lot of trouble.
Every Chinese person understands what this phrase means.
It means that the mistakes made by Mao in those years were never corrected,
which eventually led to the current situation under Xi Jinping's rule. The phrase "Faults not corrected, evils become habits" carries this meaning.
Shortly after this interview, in February 2019, Li Rui passed away at the age of 102.
After Li Rui’s death, he left behind a 10-million-word diary. Li Rui was indeed a prolific writer.
His diary started in 1935 and continued until 2018, spanning 83 years.
The total volume is nearly 10 million words, reportedly filling 40 boxes.
Regarding his diary, three lawsuits were filed in both China and the United States.
Three legal battles were fought over the ownership of his diary.
These legal battles were very peculiar and particularly interesting.
The first to file a lawsuit was Li Rui's second wife, Zhang Yuzhen.
Shortly after Li Rui's death, she sued Li Rui's daughter, Li Nanyang, claiming that the diary belonged to her.
It turned out that Li Rui’s daughter, Li Nanyang, had secretly taken the diary to the United States and donated it to the Hoover Institution.
The Hoover Institution at Stanford University, as everyone knows, is famous for housing the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo.
It also holds many key historical documents from modern China, including many internal documents from the Cultural Revolution.
The CCP's internal documents are all there. Zhang Yuzhen claimed that the diary belonged to her,
that it was part of Li Rui's estate and should be inherited by her, so she sued Li Nanyang.
But Hoover responded, "No, in 2017, Li Nanyang, representing Li Rui, donated these diaries to us."
Ownership belongs to us, so in June 2019, the Hoover Institution countersued Zhang Yuzhen in the United States.
They sought a court ruling in the U.S. to confirm that the ownership of Li Rui's diary belonged to the Hoover Institution.
But Zhang Yuzhen was not simple; she later hired lawyers in the U.S. in 2020
and took Li Nanyang and the Hoover Institution to court again. Why were these lawsuits so peculiar?
Because Li Rui didn't leave much money after his death. It’s said that Zhang Yuzhen inherited only $30,000.
Zhang Yuzhen, now over 90 years old and not highly educated,
how could she be so focused on Li Rui's diary? And lawsuits in the U.S. are very expensive.
It was estimated that Zhang Yuzhen spent millions of yuan on lawyers for this lawsuit in the U.S.
Some say it was millions of dollars; we don’t know for sure. In any case, it was an exorbitant legal fee.
Could a 90-year-old woman like Zhang Yuzhen
spend millions of yuan to fight for Li Rui's diary, which she probably couldn't even fully understand?
So Li Rui's daughter, Li Nanyang, along with the entire American academic community, all believe
that it wasn’t Zhang Yuzhen who wanted Li Rui's diary, but rather that the CCP was behind her.
The CCP does not want Li Rui's diary to end up at the Hoover Institution in the United States.
Then the question arises, why is the Communist Party afraid of Li Rui's diary being sent to the United States?
What exactly is recorded in that diary? And is there any chance of winning this lawsuit?
Today, we will talk about the story behind Li Rui's diary.
Do you know? Yes, I know.
I have a book called "Li Rui's Oral History," and the last chapter is about the high-level figures I have interacted with.
How did I write it? From Mao Zedong, all the way to Xi Jinping.
There’s no way out for China. What kind of cultural tradition does it have?
In this matter, you all have considered, studied, and understood far less than I have.
The issues in China had already been resolved by the May Fourth Movement.
What was lacking? It was human rights and science.
The May Fourth Movement had already resolved these issues, but then Marxism came along.
Before discussing Li Rui's diary, let’s first briefly introduce who Li Rui was.
Li Rui was born in 1917 in Beijing, but his ancestral home was in Hunan.
His father studied in Japan in his early years, so the family was quite well-off.
It’s said that his grandfather and uncles were comrades of Huang Xing, the martyr of Huanghuagang, and they had close ties.
So Li Rui received a good education from a young age. In the 1930s and 1940s,
as everyone knows, during the War of Resistance against Japan, Yan'an was the revolutionary holy land.
Many revolutionary youth went to Yan'an to join the revolution, and Li Rui went to Yan'an and joined the Liberation Daily.
During the Liberation War, he went to the Northeast, first serving as the political secretary to Gao Gang.
Later, he became the political secretary to Chen Yun. At that time, Chen Yun was in charge of the first major city captured in the Chinese Civil War, Shenyang.
Li Rui followed Chen Yun into Shenyang. After the founding of the PRC, Li Rui followed Chen Yun to Beijing and joined the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power.
In 1958, Mao Zedong noticed Li Rui because Li Rui liked to write articles—he was skilled with the pen.
So he was called to Mao Zedong’s side to serve as his political secretary.
Mao Zedong had several political secretaries, with different ranks.
Kang Sheng was the chief secretary, and there were also Tian Jiaying and Li Rui, who also served as Mao Zedong's secretary.
According to Li Rui, his understanding of Mao Zedong can be divided into three stages: distant view, middle view, and close view.
In between, I served as his so-called secretary.
It's like looking at an oil painting—you need to view it from the right distance.
Distant view, middle view, close view. The closer you get, the more chaotic it appears.
I first encountered Mao Zedong’s work during the early years of the War of Resistance, when I read his book On Protracted War.
The middle view was in Yan'an, and in his later years, he had me as his secretary, so I got a clearer understanding of him.
In his early years, for example, he had this saying:
"Fighting with heaven is endless joy, fighting with the earth is endless joy, fighting with people is endless joy."
He also had another phrase that I included in my book. In his notes, he wrote, "I am only responsible to myself."
At that time, Yan'an was very hierarchical, with a special supply system for cadres—divided into large, small, and special stoves.
Mao once said he had four pockets,
meaning that this privilege was designed for people like him, and he was entitled to enjoy this privilege.
When I transferred to Liberation Daily in 1942, there was a meeting to discuss its revamp.
Mao Zedong was the first to speak, and I understood what he meant.
He said, "I light two sheep tallow candles, and I wear twill fabric with hanging pockets."
Why did he light two sheep tallow candles? Because at that time, we only had oil lamps.
These were vegetable oil lamps; we didn't even have kerosene lamps.
In the offices, we all used vegetable oil lamps.
But our leader, Mao Zedong, lit sheep tallow candles, which were imported, and wore twill fabric, which was also imported.
Our clothes were made of simple cloth, not twill fabric.
Hanging pockets—twill fabric had hanging pockets, while our pockets were sewn on.
His point was that they were special, and how about you? Hearing this made me very uncomfortable.
Later, when he closely observed Mao Zedong as his secretary, he developed a very clear understanding of him.
This had a profound impact on Li Rui's entire outlook on life and values.
In 1959, during the Lushan Conference, Li Rui, along with Peng Dehuai and Zhou Xiaozhou, was labeled as a counterrevolutionary.
The background to this was that Li Rui had always opposed the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.
The idea of building the Three Gorges Dam actually originated with Mao in the 1950s.
Mao had a famous poem that went, "High cliffs rise to a calm lake, the goddess should be fine, as the world changes."
At that time, there was already an idea to build a hydroelectric station at the Three Gorges, and discussions began in the 1950s.
There was a lot of debate, and Li Rui opposed it. Li Rui was in the opposition camp.
During the Lushan Conference, he was labeled as part of an anti-revolutionary group along with Peng Dehuai and Zhou Xiaozhou.
As a result, he was sent to the remote Northeast region of Beidahuang for labor reform, where he almost starved to death.
Later, Tian Jiaying reportedly intervened, sending him supplies and eventually bringing him back to Beijing.
The plan was to demote him and keep him in service, but Li Rui's wife, Fan Yuanzhen, reported him for making anti-Mao statements.
This was a big deal and escalated the situation, so the idea of demotion was scrapped.
Instead, he was exiled to Jiangxi for labor reform.
In the end, I'll tell you how Mao Zedong viewed me.
During the passage of the resolution draft on the anti-Party group of Peng Huang Zhang Zhou and their followers,
the very first sentence mentioned Peng Huang Zhang Zhou and their followers.
Mao deliberately asked the chair, which was Zhou Enlai, about who these followers were.
Zhou Enlai said, "Li Rui."
Mao then said, "Li Rui, are you here? It’s not that I look down on you, but you're not qualified."
Because I wasn’t a Central Committee member, he said I wasn’t qualified and could only be a follower.
You know, this resolution was passed at the Lushan Conference.
My second sister, my older sister, was an old Party member. Upon hearing this, she thought, "Li Rui is completely finished."
During the Cultural Revolution, I was arrested and brought back to Beijing on a special plane and imprisoned in Qincheng Prison.
I was held there until 1975. After being released in 1975, I was sent back to Jiangxi for more labor reform.
It wasn’t until after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee that my case was finally rehabilitated.
I returned to Beijing and was reinstated as the Deputy Minister of Water Resources. During my time as Deputy Minister,
I accompanied Vice Premier Gu Mu on inspections to the United States and Brazil, as there were still plans for the Three Gorges project.
We inspected hydroelectric projects in Brazil and the U.S. This trip had a tremendous impact on Li Rui.
Li Rui had previously traveled abroad, but only to socialist countries like the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
He had never been to a capitalist country, but his first visit to a developed capitalist country like the United States
left him deeply shocked. According to his daughter, Li Nanyang, it changed his worldview.
He began to reflect on his lifelong revolutionary career, starting with that trip to the U.S.
I once asked my father, "When did you have a major awakening?
Was it because of your time in Qincheng Prison or after you were expelled from the Party at the Lushan Conference in 1959?"
Or was it during the Cultural Revolution when you were in Qincheng Prison, that you figured things out?
He said, "No, it was after my rehabilitation in 1979 when I set foot on American soil that I fully awakened."
He saw the wealth in America, the freedom of the people.
He had only been to the Soviet Union before, so he didn’t know about the prosperity of the Western world.
At that moment, he realized that the Communist Party's path was completely wrong.
He went to an oil field and saw that the workers there commuted by helicopter.
After work, they had free buffet meals every day—truly free.
They all drove cars to and from work. This was a huge shock to him. Think about it—these were workers.
They had such good conditions that even a minister in China might not enjoy what these workers did.
And he also noticed that when he entered American supermarkets, he saw an abundance of goods.
The variety of products in the supermarkets was overwhelming.
For someone from a country that had been under a planned economy for decades, this was unimaginable.
He even went to Las Vegas to see a strip show. Li Rui himself talked about it.
He said, "I watched a strip show. Someone asked me, 'Do you dare to watch a strip show?' and I said, 'Sure, why not?'"
When the performer came closer to him as she undressed, he even noted it all down.
After returning to China, his thoughts gradually changed. However, he still opposed the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.
Later, he was transferred to the Organization Department by Chen Yun to establish the Youth Cadre Bureau.
The context was that after the Cultural Revolution, many old cadres were reinstated to leadership positions.
But these leaders were in their seventies and eighties, holding onto their positions, leaving no room for young people to rise.
So, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun proposed promoting young cadres.
So he went to the Organization Department to establish the Youth Cadre Bureau.
He quickly became the Executive Deputy Minister of the Organization Department and was elected as a Central Committee member.
Later, during the formation of the leadership teams for the 12th and 13th National Congresses, Li Rui played a very significant role as Executive Deputy Minister.
So he was very familiar with the appointments of many senior Communist Party officials and the inside stories behind them.
For example, when Li Peng was appointed as Deputy Minister, he said,
many other deputy ministers were opposed to Li Peng's appointment.
But the then Minister of Water Resources strongly recommended Li Peng as his successor.
Later, during the 12th National People's Congress, rumors spread that Li Peng would be elected as Vice Premier of the State Council.
Li Peng was very anxious and ran to Li Rui's home in the middle of the night.
Li Rui told him, "You are the descendant of a martyr. What are you afraid of? Just wait."
Later, Li Peng was indeed elected Vice Premier of the State Council.
Another example is Jiang Zemin. Jiang Zemin’s story is also very interesting.
He said that during the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, Jiang Zemin, while handling the situation in Shanghai, called him regarding World Economic Herald.
At the time, Jiang Zemin had just been appointed Minister of Electronics Industry.
One day, Chen Yun summoned Jiang Zemin to his home.
Chen Yuan, Chen Yun’s son, was also there. Chen Yun said Chen Yuan needed to return to the team.
Since Chen Yuan studied electromechanics at Tsinghua University, Jiang Zemin didn’t know what this meant.
That night, he went to Li Rui's home to ask for advice. He said, "What does Chen Yun mean by that?"
"Does it mean Chen Yuan is going to become the Minister of Electronics Industry?" He couldn’t figure it out. Li Rui told him, "At most, he'll be a deputy minister," and so on.
Li Rui had a deep understanding of many of these inside stories during his time as Executive Deputy Minister of the Organization Department.
Later, in 1992 and 1993, Li Rui retired.
After that, he undertook one major task: he led the restoration of a Communist Party archive.
Which archive? It was the organizational archives documenting the early history of the CCP’s establishment.
During the restoration of these organizational archives, Li Rui experienced another profound shock. What was it?
Although Li Rui was a senior cadre in the Communist Party, he hadn’t seen many of these archives before.
But as the editor of this series, he gained access to a large number of early Communist Party archives.
What were these archives? Most notably, he discovered that back in Jiangxi,
during the Jinggangshan period, Mao Zedong's anti-reactionary campaign against the AB League resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
In some counties, Red Army cadres killed thousands, leaving only a few survivors.
Why did he kill so many people? There was a background to this.
Mao Zedong, throughout his life, looked down on intellectuals.
He despised intellectuals. Did you know that?
He had a deep-seated hatred. You should find his first article, Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society.
I’ve read the original version. What does it say?
When Mao Zedong was researching the classes in Chinese society,
he worked at the Peking University Library, earning 8 yuan a month, which was basically a worker's wage.
When Hu Shi gave lectures, Mao attended, but his attire didn’t look like that of a student, so Hu Shi asked him where he was from.
Mao said he was from the library. He asked Hu Shi questions,
but Hu Shi didn’t answer and instead told him to leave.
So, in Yan'an, let me tell you,
the Rectification Movement was primarily about establishing Mao Zedong’s leadership,
by criticizing Wang Ming and Zhou Enlai.
First, overseas students. Second, university professors. Third, high-ranking officials—all were labeled as counter-revolutionaries.
Second, middle school teachers, mid-level bureaucrats—half counter-revolutionaries.
So, in Jiangxi, during the AB League suppression, the main targets were intellectuals from landlord and rich peasant families.
They were killed—ruthlessly killed. So many were killed—just think about it.
When Li Rui saw these documents, he was deeply shaken.
He said that even senior Communist Party cadre Xu Xiangqian,
who was a marshal, had his entire wife’s family killed.
This was a senior Communist Party cadre, and even Xu Xiangqian’s wife was killed.
Just imagine how horrifying it was. So, after reading these archives, Li Rui’s belief in communism was deeply shaken.
Later, in 1989, he witnessed with his own eyes from his balcony the Communist Party’s tanks rolling in to suppress the students.
So, Li Rui's thoughts underwent a significant transformation.
In 1993, he visited the United States and attended some academic conferences there.
At those academic conferences, when he went to Minnesota to participate in an academic conference,
the academic conference was attended by scholars from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to discuss China's future transformation.
At that time, Annette Lu also participated in this conference and said that Taiwan independence should be pursued.
However, they did not agree on further exchanges, and during this conference, whom did he meet?
He met Xu Jiatun, and also Lu Keng, who had once conducted an interview with Hu Yaobang.
As everyone knows, Xu Jiatun was formerly with the Xinhua News Agency's Hong Kong branch, but fled to the United States after 1989.
To the Communist Party, he was considered a rebel and traitor. Li Rui met Xu Jiatun, and the two had a long conversation.
He even tried to persuade Xu Jiatun to return to the mainland. I later found out because Li Rui wrote a book, his travel diary.
What he said at this seminar was not particularly out of line, but after he returned to China, he was still subjected to an investigation by the organization.
They repeatedly asked him why he met with Xu Jiatun, and after this, he was no longer allowed to go abroad.
So, after 1993, Li Rui never left China again.
Since then, he remained in China, but his thinking became more and more progressive and open.
He continuously started writing articles and books based on his own memories.
He became a leading figure among the liberal faction within the party.
Next, let's talk about Li Rui's diaries.
Li Rui started writing his diaries around 1935, though there were some interruptions.
After the 1940s, he began recording in greater detail without interruptions.
He continued writing until 2018, before he was hospitalized, spanning 83 years.
In total, the word count is about 10 million. Since Li Rui was involved in many important events,
his diaries are mostly devoid of personal emotions, focusing on detailed historical records.
I was relatively familiar with Zhou Enlai, so I could be a bit more casual.
I complained, "Have you not eaten yet?" I said, "Premier, I'm hungry."
Guess what he said? "I'm just like you."
He hadn't eaten either.
They often had to wait for Mao Zedong, and whenever Mao Zedong needed him, he couldn't go anywhere.
In the meantime, Li Rui's diaries have already been published, with parts up to 1979 already available.
These contents, generally speaking, have value in several areas.
First, Li Rui recorded the Rectification Movement in Yan'an during his time there.
His records of the Rectification Movement are quite detailed, especially since he himself was persecuted during the movement.
Because he was arrested and detained by the Security Office, according to his later recollections,
he was initially confined to a cave, where he was the only one, but later, seven or eight people were gradually crammed in.
The cave was small, had no windows, and only a vent on the door.
He said that when more people were confined, the air didn't circulate at night, and they would suffocate.
In the middle of the night, those who were detained would gather at the door to fan air into the cave.
Otherwise, he said, they would suffocate to death. You can imagine how crazy the Rescue Movement was at the time.
He recounted that Gao Gang went around telling students that they had to confess.
He said someone confessed to struggling with their inner thoughts.
He confessed that once the party gave him an introduction letter,
and he put the introduction letter in the pocket of his underpants.
When he went to the toilet, the introduction letter fell into the cesspit when he pulled down his pants.
He said he felt guilty about this for a long time, and Gao Gang criticized him at the meeting.
Gao Gang said, "You're talking nonsense. Which underpants have pockets? Who has underpants with pockets?"
At this point, someone came forward and said,
"Comrade Gao, the underpants in our area indeed have pockets; I've worn them."
This upset Gao Gang, and that night, the person was arrested.
It was said that during the Rescue Movement, if you confessed,
because the food in Yan'an was poor at the time, you'd be given better food.
As a result, it was said that in one county, more than 2,000 party members admitted to being spies.
They all admitted to being spies, because after admitting to being spies, they could eat better.
Of course, immediately after that, they might get arrested, and then the criticism would begin.
Li Rui said that when he was involved in the Rectification Movement in Yan'an,
he even suspected that there must be spies, otherwise, why would there be such a large-scale Rectification Movement?
Wang Shiwei was arrested, and in the end, neither alive nor dead, he was never seen again.
Later, he said that after the founding of the People's Republic, he saw a diary of a mid-level Kuomintang spy named Tang.
It was confiscated by our side in Hunan. After it was confiscated, he went there to read the handwritten copy.
After reading it, he realized that the secret agent from the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics mentioned that things had been turbulent in Yan'an recently, with rumors of a movement happening.
But unfortunately, they had no insiders in Yan'an. It was then that Li Rui realized the whole Rectification Movement was purely nonsense.
The nonsense was because Mao Zedong was displeased with Wang Ming and others and wanted to use the Rectification Movement to deal with them.
So, the part about the Rectification Movement recorded in his diary is quite valuable.
The second valuable content is a crucial issue throughout the first half of Li Rui's life.
It is about the rise and fall of the Three Gorges project.
As we mentioned earlier, Mao Zedong wanted to build the Three Gorges Dam in the 1950s.
But the first round of assessments did not pass, and Li Rui and others opposed it.
Later, after the Reform and Opening-Up, there was a second round of assessments, this time supported mainly by Li Peng.
Deng Xiaoping also supported it. At that time, Deng Xiaoping even considered establishing a Three Gorges Province to handle the relocation.
However, Li Rui and others opposed it. There were fierce debates, and it is said that Zhao Ziyang wasn't particularly in favor either.
Both sides argued for many years about the existence of the Three Gorges project, and Li Rui was a very important participant.
His diary contains many records on this matter, which is the second aspect.
The third aspect is that Li Rui's diary includes many dark secrets about the interactions between high-ranking party officials.
Since he was a high-ranking official within the party and once served as Mao's secretary,
he knew many of the party's unspeakable secrets.
For example, he mentioned that Ye Jianying was known as the 'flower marshal' and was a romantic general, which was well known.
He married six times in his life, and his cohabiting female partners were countless.
In his diary, he wrote about Ye Jianying's sixth wife, named Li Gang.
Li Gang married him in 1948, and after giving birth to a son and a daughter,
she couldn't tolerate Ye Jianying's constant affairs with nurses and other women, so in 1955,
she followed her brother Li Pu's advice and ultimately demanded a divorce from Ye Jianying.
So they divorced, but their relationship did not completely end.
Later, Li Gang gave birth to another daughter with Ye Jianying.
After divorcing his sixth wife, Ye Jianying never remarried.
He simply slept with whoever he wanted, and the number of cohabiting women increased.
In 1956, it was recorded that while vacationing in Beidaihe, he wanted to marry a nurse.
This nurse already had some status.
But when Ye Jianying slept with other nurses, the nurse got so angry that she attempted to drown herself in the sea at Beidaihe.
But a guard pulled her back, and it is said that the nurse later developed a mental illness.
In 1961, when Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated,
many of the old marshals were relocated across the country. Ye Jianying was sent to Hunan.
While in Hunan, Ye Jianying wrote to Qiu Huizuo, saying that no one was taking care of his life,
so he asked Qiu Huizuo to quickly send female nurses to take care of him. Ye Jianying was something else.
After Ye Jianying's death, Li Gang constantly requested the Central Committee to restore her status as Ye Jianying's wife.
Because the Communist Party's regulations stated that a wife was entitled to the same treatment as her deceased husband,
but since she was not his original wife, she didn't receive those benefits.
But because Li Gang and Ye Jianying had divorced, she couldn't enjoy those benefits.
So Li Gang asked Li Rui, "Look, even He Long's wife has a special car, but I don't."
She requested a car and asked Li Rui to report to the Central Committee to restore her various benefits.
She approached Li Rui several times, and Li Rui reported the situation, but the Central Committee didn't pay much attention to Li Gang.
All these factual details can be found in Li Rui's diary.
Imagine what would happen if this information were disclosed.
Alright, we'll stop here for today. Tomorrow, we'll continue with the stories behind Li Rui's diary.
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To be continued(Part 2):State of Play in China:Why the CCP Desperately Wants to Reclaim Li Rui's Diary Rights? (Part 2)
