Kang Sheng
Encyclopedia
Kang Sheng Communist Party of China
official, oversaw the work of the People's Republic of China
's security and intelligence apparatus at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. He was a close associate of Mao Zedong
and remained at or near the pinnacle of power for decades. After his death, Kang Sheng was accused of sharing responsibility with the Gang of Four
for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution
and expelled posthumously from the Communist Party in 1980.
in Shandong
Province to a landowning family, some of whom had been Confucian scholars. Kang was born Zhang Zongke but he adopted a number of pseudonyms – most notably Zhao Rong, but also (for his painting) Li Jushi—before settling on Kang Sheng in the 1930s. Some sources give his year of birth as being as early as 1893, but it has also been variously given as 1898, 1899 and 1903.
Kang received his elementary education at the Guanhai school for boys and later at the German School in Qingdao
. As a teenager, he entered into an arranged marriage with Chen Yi, in 1915, with whom he had two children, a daughter, Zhang Yuying, and a son, Zhang Zishi. After graduating from the German School, Kang taught in a rural school in Zhujiang, Shandong in the early 1920s before leaving, possibly for a sojourn in Germany and France, and ultimately for Shanghai, where he arrived in 1924.
, a former teacher’s college that was officially funded by the Kuomintang
but had come under the control of the Communist Party and the intellectual leadership of Qu Qiubai
. After about six month at the university, he joined the Communist Party Youth League and then the Party itself, although the circumstances of his membership and sponsorship remains something of a mystery.
At the direction of the Party, Kang worked underground as a labor organizer. He helped organize the February 1925 strike against Japanese companies that culminated in the May 30th Movement, a huge Communist-led demonstration, and brought Kang into close contact with Party leaders Liu Shaoqi
, Li Lisan
and Zhang Guotao
. Kang participated in the March 1927 worker’s insurrection alongside Gu Shunzhang
and under the leadership of Zhao Shiyan
, Luo Yinong, Wang Shouhua and Zhou Enlai
. When the uprising was put down by the Kuomintang
with the crucial assistance of Du Yuesheng
’s Green Gang
in the Shanghai massacre of April 12, 1927, Kang was able to escape into hiding.
Also in 1927, Kang married a Shanghai University
student and fellow Shandong
native, Cao Yi’ou (born Cao Shuqing), who was to become a lifelong political ally. He entered the employment of Yu Qiaqing, a wealthy businessman with strong Kuomintang
sympathies, as Yu’s personal secretary. At the same time, Kang remained an active but secret Party organizer, and was named to the Party’s new Jiangsu
Provincial Committee in June 1927.
In the late 1920s, Kang worked closely with Li Lisan
, a favorite of the Comintern
, who had been made head of the Propaganda Department at the CPC’s Sixth Congress, which for security reasons and proximity to the Comintern’s congress was held outside Moscow in mid-1928. Several months after the Sixth Congress, Kang was named director of the Organization Department of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee, which controlled personnel matters.
In 1930, while in Shanghai, Kang was arrested along with several other Communists, including Ding Jishi, and later released. Ding’s uncle Ding Weifen, who was head of the Kuomintang
Central Party School in Nanjing
, where he worked with Chen Lifu, head of the Kuomintang’s secret service. Kang later denied he had ever been arrested, as the circumstances of his release suggested that he had, as Lu Futan alleged in 1933, “sold out his comrades” in order to secure his freedom. As Byron and Pack note, however, "Kang’s arrest in itself is no proof that he was turned by his captors or forced into long-term cooperation with them. KMT [Kuomintang] prisons were notoriously chaotic and corrupt."
After Li Lisan’s adventurism and the failed Changsha operation of June 1930 lost Li the support of the Party, Kang moved adroitly to align himself with the Comintern’s new favorite, Wang Ming
, and Pavel Mif
’s young students from Sun Yat-sen University
, later known as the 28 Bolsheviks
, who took control of the Party Politburo at the Fourth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee on January 13, 1931. Kang allegedly demonstrated his loyalty to Wang Ming by betraying to the Kuomintang secret police a meeting convened on January 17, 1931 by He Mengxiong, who had been strongly opposed to Li Lisan and was disgruntled by Pavel Mif
’s high-handed role in securing the ascendancy of Wang within the Chinese Communist Party. On the night of February 7, 1931, He Mengxiong and 22 others were executed by the Kuomintang police at Longhua, Shanghai. Among those murdered were five aspiring writers and poets, including Hu Yepin, lover of Ding Ling
and father of her child, later canonized as a martyr by the Party.
The April 1931 arrest and defection to the Kuomintang of Gu Shunzhang
, former Green Gang
gangster and member of the Party’s Intelligence Cell, led to serious breaches in Party security and the arrest and execution of Xiang Zhongfa
, the Party’s General Secretary. In response, Zhou Enlai created a Special Work Committee to oversee the Party’s intelligence and security operations. Chaired by Zhou personally, the committee included Chen Yun, Pan Hannian
, Guang Huian and Kang Sheng. When Zhou left Shanghai for the Communist base in Jiangxi
Province in August 1931, he left Kang in charge of the Special Work Committee, a position he held for two years. In this role, Kang was “in charge of the entire Communist security and espionage apparatus, not only in Shanghai but throughout KMT China.”
. Kang and his wife Cao Yi’ou followed two years later. Kang remained in Moscow for four years, acting as Wang’s deputy on the Comintern, returning to China in 1937. While in Moscow, Kang was elected a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, perhaps as early as 1931 but more probably in January 1934.
As Byron and Pack put it, "Kang had no cause to regret working with Wang in Moscow. His own prestige and power grew ever greater, and his cocoon of privilege insulated him from the irritations of daily life. But being in Moscow also excluded Kang and Wang Ming
from the drama that was unfolding in China at the time." That “drama” included the epic retreat of the Communists from Jiangxi Province to Yan’an, which became known to history as the Long March
, and the ever-growing power within the Chinese Communist Party of Mao Zedong
. As Jacques Guillermaz observed,
Wang Ming’s influence over the main Communist forces was minimal after Mao Zedong’s emergence from the Zunyi Conference of January 1935 as the undisputed head of the Party. From Moscow, Wang and Kang did seek to maintain control over Communist forces in Manchuria
, which were ordered by them to conserve their strength and avoid direct confrontation with the Japanese army. This directive, which Kang later denied even existed, was resisted by some Manchurian leaders and later criticized by Mao Zedong
as evidence of Wang Ming having stifled Manchuria’s revolutionary potential.
Following the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Joseph Stalin
commenced his great purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
. Following this example, and with Wang Ming’s support, Kang established in 1936 the Office for the Elimination of Counterrevolutionaries and worked closely with the Soviet secret police, the NKVD
, in purging perhaps hundreds of Chinese then in Moscow. As Byron and Pack put it:
Stalin was more tolerant of the Chinese in Moscow than he was of other foreign Communists, who were purged along with their Soviet comrades. This may have been motivated by a concern about the potential threat of a Japanese invasion of the Soviet Far East. In any case, at this time Stalin began to promote the idea of a united front of the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang against the Japanese, a policy that Wang Ming
and Kang quickly endorsed. In November 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
and the Japanese invasion of China, Stalin dispatched Wang and Kang to Yan'an
on a specially provided Soviet plane.
Kang had played a wily game in the complex and murky world of Stalin’s Moscow, earning the following comment from Josip Broz Tito
, who had met Kang in Moscow in 1935:
Tito made these comments to Hua Guofeng
on his only visit to China, in 1977 after Kang was dead, and certainly had his own agenda in doing so, but as Faligot and Kauffer remark, “[i]n any case, Tito certainly got the measure of Kang’s psychology: a multifaceted game of mirrors was certainly his style, even in the 1930s.”
to bring Chen Duxiu
back into the Party.
After assessing the situation on the ground in Yan'an, however, in 1938 Kang decided to re-align himself with Mao Zedong. Kang's motives are easy to imagine. For Mao’s part, as MacFarquhar put it,
At Yan'an, Kang was close to Jiang Qing
, who may have been Kang's mistress when he visited Shandong in 1931. In Yan’an, Jiang became the lover of Mao Zedong, who later married her. In 1938, Kang earned Mao and Jiang’s gratitude by supporting their liaison against the opposition of more socially conservative cadres, who were aware of her past and uncomfortable with it. Byron & Pack assert that
This episode is believed by many to have been key to Kang’s future success, which depended not only on his considerable talents but also on his relationship with Mao. In addition to politics, Kang and Mao also shared an interest in classical culture, including poetry, painting and calligraphy.
Mao’s relationship with Kang, in Yan'an and later, was mainly based on political calculation. Kang’s familiarity with Wang Ming enabled him to provide Mao with valuable information about Wang’s subservience to the Soviets. Although cadres such as Chen Yun, who had been in Moscow with Wang and Kang, were aware of Kang’s previous slavish support for Wang, Kang strenuously sought to change that history and obscure previous affiliations.
In addition, Mao, who in these years had not yet visited the Soviet Union
, used Kang during this period as a valuable source of information about Soviet affairs. Mao was also suspicious of the Russians and, soon after aligning himself with Mao, Kang also began to speak out against the Soviet Union and its agents in China. Pyotr Vladimirov, the Comintern
agent sent to Yan'an, recorded that Kang kept him under constant surveillance and even forced Wang Ming
to avoid meeting him. Vladimirov also believed that Kang delivered biased reports of Soviet affairs to Mao.
While in Yan’an, Kang oversaw intelligence operations against the Party’s two principal enemies, the Japanese and the Kuomintang, as well as potential opponents of Mao within the Party. Chang and Halliday write that “Shi Zhe observed that Kang was living in a state of deep fear of Mao in this period” because of his murky past, which had been raised with Mao in many letters from cadres and by the Russians, yet "Far from being put off by Kang’s murky past, Mao positively relished it. Like Stalin, who employed ex-Mensheviks like Vyshinsky, Mao used people’s vulnerability as a way of giving himself hold over subordinates." Vladimirov believed that Kang was behind, at Mao’s behest, the attempt by Li Fuchun
and Jin Maoyao to murder Wang Ming by means of mercury poisoning, although this claim remains controversial.
Kang was deeply involved with the Yan'an Rectification Movement launched by Mao in February 1942. According to Byron and Pack, “Kang’s conduct of the Yan'an Rectification Movement introduced a new element into Chinese politics: an emphasis on eliciting false confessions.” Kang was sufficiently brutal in his methods to arouse the opposition of senior cadres, including Zhou Enlai, Nie Rongzhen
and Ye Jianying
. At the same time, Mao was not keen to have a single man in such a position of power. Accordingly, following the Seventh Party Congress in April 1945, Kang was replaced as head of both the Social Affairs Department and the Military Intelligence Department.
Byron and Pack write that "In spite of Kang’s decline, his influence on the security and intelligence system was visible for decades to come. The methods he popularized in Yan'an shaped public security work through the Cultural Revolution
and beyond." Moreover,
and Liu Shaoqi
to review the Party’s land reform project in Longdong, Gansu
Province. He returned after five weeks with the view that land reform needed to be more severe and that there could be no compromise with landlords. “Kang whipped up hatred for the landlords and their retainers. In the name of social justice, he encouraged the peasants to settle scores by killing landlords and rich peasants.”
In March 1947, Kang put his methods into practice in Lin County, Shanxi
Province. These methods included special scrutiny and persecution of landlords known to have Communist sympathies and investigation of the backgrounds of the Party’s land reform teams themselves. In April 1948, Mao singled out Kang for praise in his handling of land reform, with the result that
In November 1947, the Politburo assigned Kang to inspect land reform in his home province of Shandong
. Early in 1948, he was appointed deputy chief of the Party’s East China Bureau, under Rao Shushi
. Some commentators speculate that the private humiliation of being placed under a former subordinate may be one reason why Kang "fell ill" and largely disappeared from view until after Rao's fall in 1954. Of course, Kang may really have been ill. Mao’s personal physician, Li Zhisui
, later recorded that doctors responsible for Kang’s treatment at Beijing Hospital told him that Kang was suffering from schizophrenia
. Writing before Li's book was published, Byron and Pack offered other possible diagnoses based on symptoms Kang seems to have displayed, including manic-depressive psychosis and temporal lobe epilepsy.
Kang’s re-emergence on the political stage in the mid-1950s occurred at roughly at the same time as the Gao Gang
-Rao Shushi
Affair and the affair of Yu Bingbo. Faligot and Kauffer see these affairs as each showing signs of involvement by Kang Sheng, who they believe used them as means to return to power.
In January 1956, Kang made his first public appearance in years at a meeting of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing. As Byron and Pack write
Kang suffered a severe reversal of fortune at the Central Committee plenum that followed the first session of the Eighth Congress, when he was demoted to alternate, nonvoting membership of the Politburo. Roderick MacFarquar writes
Mao own position was weakening, as evidenced by the decision of the Eighth Congress to delete the phrase “guided by the thought of Mao Zedong” from the new Party constitution and by re-establishing the role of General Secretary, abolished in 1937. The dangers of a exalting a single leader and the desirability of collective leadership had been perhaps the most direct point of Nikita Khrushchev
’s “secret speech” to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union earlier in 1959, in which he condemned Stalin, Stalin’s methods and his cult of personality and which, according to Archie Brown, “was the beginning of the end of international Communism.”
While Kang remained a member of the Politburo, he had no concrete role and no power base, which led him to take on a series of diverse assignments and to align himself as closely as possible with Mao, who was devising his response to de-Stalinization and its effects within the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. His responses, in the Hundred Flowers and the Anti-Rightist Campaign that followed, marked a profound turning point in the history of the People’s Republic. As Maurice Meisner writes
As noted in connection with the Yan'an Rectification Movement launched 15 years earlier, Kang Sheng played an important role in bringing Stalinist methods of repression to China.
Kang was clearly a supporter of Mao during the period of the Great Leap Forward
and its aftermath and, as MacFarquar writes, “[h]e was the beneficiary of Mao’s practice of preserving and protecting those whom he trusted and relied upon, and for whom he saw a future use.” As a result, Kang received a number of important positions during the late 1950s, including in 1959 responsibility for the Central Party School.
Among Kang’s most important activities in this period were those related to the deepening split with the Soviet Union
, about which Mao and others regarded him as something of an expert. Among his assignments from the Politburo was to draft a long article that appeared in The People’s Daily on December 29, 1956 under the title “More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and which expressed the Party’s position that Stalin’s achievements overshadowed his mistakes.
Kang visited the Soviet Union and various socialist countries in Eastern Europe on several occasions between 1956 and 1964, expressing increasing disdain for the “revisionist” policies of Nikita Khrushchev
and Josip Broz Tito
. In February 1960, as the Chinese observer at the conference of the Political Consultative Conference of the Warsaw Pact
, Kang made what Jacques Guillermaz described as “a violent attack on the leaders of the United States, their feigned pacifism, their dream of ‘peaceful evolution’ of the socialist countries, and their repeated sabotage of disarmament.” Byron and Pack describe the speech as “a subtle, almost sarcastic critique of Russian foreign policy that became a milestone in deteriorating Sino-Soviet relations.”
The following year, Kang was one of the Chinese delegates to the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to leave their seats to avoid shaking hands with Khrushchev. Kang was also a member of the delegation that attended a meeting in Moscow in July 1963, which failed to bridge the growing gap between the Chinese and Soviet parties. Among the points of contention, raised in a letter issued by the Chinese Communist Party on June 14, 1963, had to do with de-Stalinization and the allegation that
As Jacques Guillermaz writes about this criticism, “[c]ould the Chinese really have been thinking of Enver Hoxha
?”
The Sino-Soviet rift and the obsession with Khruschev’s revisionism looms large in the coming of the Cultural Revolution, as Mao saw revisionism and de-Stalinization as a threat not only to his own position but also to the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party as a revolutionary force. Accordingly, an appreciation Kang’s role as a supporter of Mao’s line in this period helps explain his return to very near the pinnacle of power a few years later.
’s efforts to regain control of the Chinese Communist Party, Kang was an important enabler of and participant in the Cultural Revolution, later described by the Party Central Committee as having “lasted from May 1966 to October 1976” and as “responsible for the most severe setback and heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic.” The Central Committee resolution concluded that the Cultural Revolution “was initiated and led by Comrade Mao Zedong.” In outlining the “errors” that had been made by Mao and others in the run-up to the Cultural Revolution
, the Central Committee noted that “[c]areerists like Lin Biao
, Jiang Qing
and Kang Sheng, harbouring ulterior motives, made use of these errors and inflated them.”
Well before the start of the Cultural Revolution as such, Kang played his part in attacking rivals of Mao in the Party leadership, many of whom were unhappy with a range of policies including Mao's refusal to rehabilitate Peng Dehuai
, the former Defense Minister and outspoken critic of the Great Leap Forward
. In 1962, Kang used the publication of a novel about Liu Zhidan, a Party member killed in battle against the Kuomintang
in 1936, as the basis for reviving the Gao Gang
affair, successfully insinuating that the novels’ publication was an effort by Xi Zhongcun and others to reverse the Party's verdict on Gao. As a result of this, Kang was promoted to the secretariat of the Central Committee at the 10th Plenum in August 1962. As MacFarquar writes,
In January 1965, Mao suggested to the Party Politburo that the principal enemies of socialism in China were “those people in authority within the Party who are taking the capitalist road” and urged that the Party undertake a “cultural revolution.” The Politburo established a five-man group, chaired by Peng Zhen
, its fifth-ranking member and head of the Beijing Party Organization and mayor of the capital city. Kang Sheng was named a member of the group, which remained dormant for most of the year.
In early 1965, Mao sent his wife Jiang Qing
to Shanghai to light the first spark of what would become the Cultural Revolution, the campaign against Wu Han
, the Vice Mayor of Beijing and the author of the 1961 play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. The attack on Wu Han was an indirect attack on Beijing’s mayor, Peng Zhen
, a pillar of the establishment that Mao wanted overthrown. Kang’s role in the subsequent purge of Peng was to co-lead with Chen Boda
the prosecution of Mao’s charge that “Peng Zhen
, the Propaganda Department, and the Beijing Party Committee had shielded bad people while suppressing leftists.” Following the purge of Peng Zhen
in May 1966, the Central Committee later concluded, “Lin Biao
, Jiang Qing
, Kang Sheng, Zhang Chunqiao
and others…exploited the situation to incite people to ‘overthrow everything and wage full-scale civil war.’”
In May 1966, Kang Sheng sent his wife, Cao Yi'ou, to Beijing University as part of a team designed to rally leftists against the university president, Lu Ping, and other officials aligned with Peng Zhen. Cao sought out Nie Yuanzi
, a Party branch secretary in the Philosophy Department with whom Kang and Cao had become acquainted years earlier in Yan’an. With information from Cao Yi'ou that Lu Ping had lost high-level Party protection, Nie Yuanzi
and her leftist allies launched a movement that over the next three months threw Beijing University into chaos. As Yue Daiyun wrote:
During the Cultural Revolution, Kang Sheng was actively involved in controlling the CPC propaganda apparatus, being appointed head of the "Central Organization and Propaganda Leading Group
", while Yao Wenyuan
as head of another "Propaganda Leading Group". In November
1970, Kang was elevated to head of the Propaganda Department.
In 1968, Mao and other leaders finally began to rein in the Red Guards
, with Kang Sheng playing a leading role. In January Kang denounced the Hunan
shengwulian coalition of Red Guards as “anarchists” and “Trotskyists,” launching a campaign of brutal suppression over the following months by the army and secret police. By July, when Mao joked that with a group of Red Guard leaders that he himself was the “black hand” suppressing campus revolutionaries, the glory days of the movement were ending.
In the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution, Kang remained close to the pinnacle of power and, as the “evil genius” within the Central Case Examination Group (the “CCEG”) established by the Politburo on May 24, 1966, was instrumental in Mao’s efforts to purge many senior Party officials, including his most senior rival within the Party, Liu Shaoqi
. In the subsequent trial of the so-called “Gang of Four
,” one of the accusations leveled against Jiang Qing
was that she conspired “with Kang Sheng, Chen Boda
, and others to take it upon themselves to convene the big meeting [on July 18, 1967] to apply struggle-and-criticism to Liu Shaoqi, and to carry out a search of his house, physically persecuting the Head of State of the People’s Republic of China.” Xiao Meng testified at the trial that “the slander and persecution of [Liu Shaoqi’s wife] Wang Guangmei
was plotted by Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng in person.”
Kang’s position on the CCEG gave him enormous, if invisible power. The very existence of the CCEG remained a secret, “[y]et,” as MacFarquar and Schoenhals write,
During the Cultural Revolution, Kang abused his position to personal advantage. A gifted painter and calligrapher, he used his power to indulge his penchant for collecting antiques and works of art, notably inkstones. According to Byron & Pack, many of the Cultural Revolution
leaders also used the lawlessness of the period to acquire for themselves objects seized from the homes of persons attacked by Red Guards. But Kang, in a series of visits to the Cultural Relics Bureau, “helped himself to 12,080 volumes of rare books – more than were taken by any other radical leader, and 34 percent of all the rare books removed – and 1,102 antiques, 20 percent of the total. Only Lin Biao
, who, as Mao’s designated heir, ranked second in the land, appropriated more antiques than Kang.”
Kang Sheng was instrumental in supervising the drafting of the new Party Constitution, adopted at the Ninth Congress in April 1969, which reinstated “Mao Zedong Thought” alongside Marxism-Leninism
as the theoretical basis for the Party. The Congress elected Kang as one of the five members of the Politburo Standing Committee, along with Mao, Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai and Chen Boda
. At the Ninth Congress, Kang Sheng’s wife, Cao Yi'ou, was herself elected to the Central Committee.
The Constitution drafted under Kang’s supervision and adopted at the Nnth Congress stipulated that “Comrade Lin Biao is Comrade Mao Zedong’s close comrade-in-arms and successor.” Kang Sheng and Lin Biao were not close allies, although Kang had earlier assisted Lin in his successful efforts to remove Marshal He Long
, a formidable rival to Lin’s wish to control the People’s Liberation Army. In the wake of Lin Biao’s aborted coup attempt and death in September 1971, Kang was careful to distance himself from Mao’s disgraced former heir and from Chen Boda
, who had been closely aligned with Lin at the Central Committee meeting in Lushan in August 1970 and who was denounced after Lin’s fall at “China’s Trotsky.” Efforts to link Kang to Lin Biao’s plotting were unsuccessful and unsubstantiated.
Ill with the cancer that would eventually kill him, Kang last appeared in public at the Tenth Party Congress, in August 1973. The Tenth Congress adopted a new Constitution that removed the embarrassing reference to Lin Biao as Mao Zedong’s successor, but as a sign that his position had not been adversely affected, Kang Sheng was named one of five vice chairmen of the Party. In his final years, Kang became involved in the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign that was created by the beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution to oppose Zhou Enlai
and other veteran officials in the struggle over who would succeed Mao Zedong
. Kang was initially active in supporting Jiang Qing
, perhaps seeing her as a successor through whom he would exercise power. Kang subsequently shifted tack when it became apparent that Jiang was out of favor with Mao, even going so far as to denounce her as having betrayed the Party to the Kuomintang
during the mid-1930s, notwithstanding his support for her when the same charge had been leveled 30 years earlier in Yan’an. Kang’s final political act came only two months before his death, when he warned Mao Zedong that Deng Xiaoping
opposed the Cultural Revolution and should be purged again, advice that Mao ignored.
about de-Stalinization has been described above in connection with the his efforts to insinutate himself with Mao and developing the ideological origins of the Cultural Revolution.
Perhaps Kang’s most important influence over Chinese foreign policy came during the Cultural Revolution itself, when he was instrumental in developing Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge
regime in Cambodia
. While the mainstream of the Chinese Communist Party leadership supported Prince Norodom Sihanouk
as Cambodia's anti-Western and anti-imperialist leader, Kang argued that Khmer Rouge guerrilla leader Pol Pot
was the real revolutionary leader in the Southeast Asian nation.
Kang's backing of Pol Pot was an effort to back his own cause within the Chinese Communist Party, as his touting of Pol Pot as the true voice of the Cambodian revolution was in large part an attack on the Chinese Foreign Ministry, whose pragmatic support for Prince Sihanouk's regime was thereby presented as reactionary. As a result of his success in this, the Pol Pot regime came to power and the Khmer Rouge became the recipient of Chinese aid for years to come, prolonging the life of that movement with tragic consequences for Cambodia.
and Zhu De
, who were too weak to attend. Marshal Ye Jianying
delivered a eulogy in which he praised Kang as “a proletarian revolutionary, a Marxist theoretician, and a glorious fighter against revisionism.”
In November 1978, Hu Yaobang
voiced the first formal criticism of Kang in a speech to the Central Party School. Ruan Ming reports Hu as telling four of Kang’s “anti-revisionist scribblers” that
As fear of Kang subsided following the arrest of the Gang of Four
and the return to power of Deng Xiaoping
, criticisms of Kang Sheng grew and a special case group was established to investigate Kang’s career. In late summer 1980, the special case group reported to the Central Committee. In October 1980, just in advance of commencing the trial of the Gang of Four, Kang Sheng was posthumously expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and the Central Committee formally rescinded Marshal Ye Jianying
’s eulogy.
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
official, oversaw the work of the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
's security and intelligence apparatus at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. He was a close associate of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and remained at or near the pinnacle of power for decades. After his death, Kang Sheng was accused of sharing responsibility with the Gang of Four
Gang of Four
The Gang of Four was the name given to a political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and were subsequently charged with a series of treasonous crimes...
for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
and expelled posthumously from the Communist Party in 1980.
Origins
Kang Sheng (康生) was born in Dataizhuang, Jiao County to the northwest of QingdaoQingdao
' also known in the West by its postal map spelling Tsingtao, is a major city with a population of over 8.715 million in eastern Shandong province, Eastern China. Its built up area, made of 7 urban districts plus Jimo city, is home to about 4,346,000 inhabitants in 2010.It borders Yantai to the...
in Shandong
Shandong
' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...
Province to a landowning family, some of whom had been Confucian scholars. Kang was born Zhang Zongke but he adopted a number of pseudonyms – most notably Zhao Rong, but also (for his painting) Li Jushi—before settling on Kang Sheng in the 1930s. Some sources give his year of birth as being as early as 1893, but it has also been variously given as 1898, 1899 and 1903.
Kang received his elementary education at the Guanhai school for boys and later at the German School in Qingdao
Qingdao
' also known in the West by its postal map spelling Tsingtao, is a major city with a population of over 8.715 million in eastern Shandong province, Eastern China. Its built up area, made of 7 urban districts plus Jimo city, is home to about 4,346,000 inhabitants in 2010.It borders Yantai to the...
. As a teenager, he entered into an arranged marriage with Chen Yi, in 1915, with whom he had two children, a daughter, Zhang Yuying, and a son, Zhang Zishi. After graduating from the German School, Kang taught in a rural school in Zhujiang, Shandong in the early 1920s before leaving, possibly for a sojourn in Germany and France, and ultimately for Shanghai, where he arrived in 1924.
Kang in Shanghai
After arriving in Shanghai, Kang enrolled in Shanghai UniversityShanghai University
Shanghai University is a public, comprehensive university located in Shanghai, China. The university has the longest serving President; Chien Wei-zang since 1982 until he died in 2010. He was a well known scientist in China...
, a former teacher’s college that was officially funded by the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
but had come under the control of the Communist Party and the intellectual leadership of Qu Qiubai
Qu Qiubai
Qu Qiubai was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu, China. He was a leader of the Communist Party of China in the late 1920s.-Early life:...
. After about six month at the university, he joined the Communist Party Youth League and then the Party itself, although the circumstances of his membership and sponsorship remains something of a mystery.
At the direction of the Party, Kang worked underground as a labor organizer. He helped organize the February 1925 strike against Japanese companies that culminated in the May 30th Movement, a huge Communist-led demonstration, and brought Kang into close contact with Party leaders Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi was a Chinese revolutionary, statesman, and theorist. He was Chairman of the People's Republic of China, China's head of state, from 27 April 1959 to 31 October 1968, during which he implemented policies of economic reconstruction in China...
, Li Lisan
Li Lisan
Lǐ Lìsān was an early leader of the Chinese communists, and the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1928 to 1930, member of Polit Bureau, and later member of Central Committee.-Early years:...
and Zhang Guotao
Zhang Guotao
Zhang Guotao was a founding member and important leader of the Chinese Communist Party and bitter rival to Mao Zedong. During the 1920s he studied in the Soviet Union and became a key contact with the Comintern and organized the CCP labor movement in the United Front with the Guomindang...
. Kang participated in the March 1927 worker’s insurrection alongside Gu Shunzhang
Gu Shunzhang
Gu Shunzhang , also known as Gu Fengming , born in Baoshan, Shanghai, was a Chinese Communist Party leader.In his earlier life worked at Nanyang Tobacco Factory, where he became an active participant of workers' movement, then of the Shanghai Trade Union and finally of the CCP...
and under the leadership of Zhao Shiyan
Zhao Shiyan
Zhao Shiyan was a Chinese Communist martyr and former Chinese premier Li Peng's uncle.In 1915, Zhao went to Beijing to study at the High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University, majored in English. In 1919, he participated in the May Fourth Movement, China Youth Association. The following...
, Luo Yinong, Wang Shouhua and Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
. When the uprising was put down by the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
with the crucial assistance of Du Yuesheng
Du Yuesheng
Du Yuesheng , commonly known as "Big-Eared Du", was a Chinese gangster who spent much of his life in Shanghai. He was a key supporter of the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek in their battle against the Communists during the 1920s, and was a figure of some importance during the Second Sino-Japanese...
’s Green Gang
Green Gang
The Green Gang was a Chinese criminal organization that operated in Shanghai in the early 20th century.-Origins:It was a secret society established originally by Fong Toh-tak of Shaolin Monastery to protect the Han Chinese who were oppressed by the Manchu rulers of the Qing Dynasty, and to restore...
in the Shanghai massacre of April 12, 1927, Kang was able to escape into hiding.
Also in 1927, Kang married a Shanghai University
Shanghai University
Shanghai University is a public, comprehensive university located in Shanghai, China. The university has the longest serving President; Chien Wei-zang since 1982 until he died in 2010. He was a well known scientist in China...
student and fellow Shandong
Shandong
' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...
native, Cao Yi’ou (born Cao Shuqing), who was to become a lifelong political ally. He entered the employment of Yu Qiaqing, a wealthy businessman with strong Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
sympathies, as Yu’s personal secretary. At the same time, Kang remained an active but secret Party organizer, and was named to the Party’s new Jiangsu
Jiangsu
' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "苏" , the second character of its name...
Provincial Committee in June 1927.
In the late 1920s, Kang worked closely with Li Lisan
Li Lisan
Lǐ Lìsān was an early leader of the Chinese communists, and the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1928 to 1930, member of Polit Bureau, and later member of Central Committee.-Early years:...
, a favorite of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, who had been made head of the Propaganda Department at the CPC’s Sixth Congress, which for security reasons and proximity to the Comintern’s congress was held outside Moscow in mid-1928. Several months after the Sixth Congress, Kang was named director of the Organization Department of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee, which controlled personnel matters.
In 1930, while in Shanghai, Kang was arrested along with several other Communists, including Ding Jishi, and later released. Ding’s uncle Ding Weifen, who was head of the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
Central Party School in Nanjing
Nanjing
' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...
, where he worked with Chen Lifu, head of the Kuomintang’s secret service. Kang later denied he had ever been arrested, as the circumstances of his release suggested that he had, as Lu Futan alleged in 1933, “sold out his comrades” in order to secure his freedom. As Byron and Pack note, however, "Kang’s arrest in itself is no proof that he was turned by his captors or forced into long-term cooperation with them. KMT [Kuomintang] prisons were notoriously chaotic and corrupt."
After Li Lisan’s adventurism and the failed Changsha operation of June 1930 lost Li the support of the Party, Kang moved adroitly to align himself with the Comintern’s new favorite, Wang Ming
Wang Ming
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party and the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism lines...
, and Pavel Mif
Pavel Mif
Pavel Mif was the pseudonym of Mikhail Alexandrovich Fortus , Russian Bolshevik Party member from May 1917, historian with a Doctor's degree in economics , participant of Russian civil war , a student at Yakov Sverdlov Communist University , did communist party work in Ukraine...
’s young students from Sun Yat-sen University
Sun Yat-sen University
Sun Yat-sen University, also unofficially referred to as Zhongshan University , is a prominent university located mainly in Guangzhou, China. The University is named after Dr...
, later known as the 28 Bolsheviks
28 Bolsheviks
The 28 Bolsheviks were a group of Chinese students who studied at the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University from the late 1920s until early 1935, also known as the "Returned Students". The university was founded in 1925 as a result of Kuomintang's founder Sun Yat-Sen's policy of alliance with the Soviet...
, who took control of the Party Politburo at the Fourth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee on January 13, 1931. Kang allegedly demonstrated his loyalty to Wang Ming by betraying to the Kuomintang secret police a meeting convened on January 17, 1931 by He Mengxiong, who had been strongly opposed to Li Lisan and was disgruntled by Pavel Mif
Pavel Mif
Pavel Mif was the pseudonym of Mikhail Alexandrovich Fortus , Russian Bolshevik Party member from May 1917, historian with a Doctor's degree in economics , participant of Russian civil war , a student at Yakov Sverdlov Communist University , did communist party work in Ukraine...
’s high-handed role in securing the ascendancy of Wang within the Chinese Communist Party. On the night of February 7, 1931, He Mengxiong and 22 others were executed by the Kuomintang police at Longhua, Shanghai. Among those murdered were five aspiring writers and poets, including Hu Yepin, lover of Ding Ling
Ding Ling
Dīng Líng was the pseudonym of Jiǎng Bīngzhī , also known as Bīn Zhǐ , a Chinese woman author from Linli in Hunan province. She was awarded the Soviet Union's Stalin second prize for Literature in 1951....
and father of her child, later canonized as a martyr by the Party.
The April 1931 arrest and defection to the Kuomintang of Gu Shunzhang
Gu Shunzhang
Gu Shunzhang , also known as Gu Fengming , born in Baoshan, Shanghai, was a Chinese Communist Party leader.In his earlier life worked at Nanyang Tobacco Factory, where he became an active participant of workers' movement, then of the Shanghai Trade Union and finally of the CCP...
, former Green Gang
Green Gang
The Green Gang was a Chinese criminal organization that operated in Shanghai in the early 20th century.-Origins:It was a secret society established originally by Fong Toh-tak of Shaolin Monastery to protect the Han Chinese who were oppressed by the Manchu rulers of the Qing Dynasty, and to restore...
gangster and member of the Party’s Intelligence Cell, led to serious breaches in Party security and the arrest and execution of Xiang Zhongfa
Xiang Zhongfa
Xiang Zhongfa was one of the early senior leaders of the Communist Party of China .-Early life:Xiang was born in 1880 to a poor family living in Shanghai. He dropped out of elementary school to move with his parents to their ancestral home in Hubei...
, the Party’s General Secretary. In response, Zhou Enlai created a Special Work Committee to oversee the Party’s intelligence and security operations. Chaired by Zhou personally, the committee included Chen Yun, Pan Hannian
Pan Hannian
Pan Hannian was a major figure in the Chinese Communist intelligence by the early 1930s and until 1955. He began his work with the Chinese Communist Party in 1926 as a propagandist with the editorial department of the magazine "Oazo" and later with "Crossroads"...
, Guang Huian and Kang Sheng. When Zhou left Shanghai for the Communist base in Jiangxi
Jiangxi
' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...
Province in August 1931, he left Kang in charge of the Special Work Committee, a position he held for two years. In this role, Kang was “in charge of the entire Communist security and espionage apparatus, not only in Shanghai but throughout KMT China.”
Kang in Moscow
In July 1931, Wang Ming removed himself to Moscow and assumed the position of chief Chinese representative on the CominternComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
. Kang and his wife Cao Yi’ou followed two years later. Kang remained in Moscow for four years, acting as Wang’s deputy on the Comintern, returning to China in 1937. While in Moscow, Kang was elected a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, perhaps as early as 1931 but more probably in January 1934.
As Byron and Pack put it, "Kang had no cause to regret working with Wang in Moscow. His own prestige and power grew ever greater, and his cocoon of privilege insulated him from the irritations of daily life. But being in Moscow also excluded Kang and Wang Ming
Wang Ming
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party and the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism lines...
from the drama that was unfolding in China at the time." That “drama” included the epic retreat of the Communists from Jiangxi Province to Yan’an, which became known to history as the Long March
Long March
The Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south...
, and the ever-growing power within the Chinese Communist Party of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. As Jacques Guillermaz observed,
[T]he Long MarchLong MarchThe Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south...
helped the Chinese Communist Party to achieve a greater independence of Moscow. Everything tended in the same direction – Mao Zedong’s appointment as Chairman of the Party, happening as it did in unusual conditions, practical difficulties in maintaining contact, the CominternCominternThe Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
’s tendency to remain in the background to help the creation of popular fronts, under cover of patriotism or ant-fascism. In fact, after the Zunyi ConferenceZunyi ConferenceThe Zunyi Conference was a meeting of the Communist Party of China in January of 1935 during the Long March. This meeting involved a power struggle between the leadership of Bo Gu and Otto Braun and the opposition led by Mao Zedong. The result was that Mao left the meeting in position to take...
, the Russians seem to have had less and less influence in the Chinese Communist Party’s internal affairs. In light of more recent history, this was perhaps one of the major consequences of the Long March.
Wang Ming’s influence over the main Communist forces was minimal after Mao Zedong’s emergence from the Zunyi Conference of January 1935 as the undisputed head of the Party. From Moscow, Wang and Kang did seek to maintain control over Communist forces in Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
, which were ordered by them to conserve their strength and avoid direct confrontation with the Japanese army. This directive, which Kang later denied even existed, was resisted by some Manchurian leaders and later criticized by Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
as evidence of Wang Ming having stifled Manchuria’s revolutionary potential.
Following the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
commenced his great purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
. Following this example, and with Wang Ming’s support, Kang established in 1936 the Office for the Elimination of Counterrevolutionaries and worked closely with the Soviet secret police, the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, in purging perhaps hundreds of Chinese then in Moscow. As Byron and Pack put it:
Kang gained great power from the Elimination Office, which he used to silence opponents and witnesses to any embarrassing episodes in his past, especially his arrest in Shanghai. … This was not the first time the Chinese in Moscow had fallen victim to purges. Soviet authorities had made numerous arrests at Moscow Sun Yat-sen UniversityMoscow Sun Yat-sen UniversityMoscow Sun Yat-sen University, officially the Sun Yat-sen Communist University of the Toilers of China, was a Comintern school, which operated from 1925-1930. It was a training camp for Chinese revolutionaries from both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China .-Origins:In 1923, Dr...
during the late 1920s; students disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. But Kang worked his own variation: in the past, the Chinese had been purged by the Soviets; now, under Kang, they were liquidated by their fellow Chinese.
Stalin was more tolerant of the Chinese in Moscow than he was of other foreign Communists, who were purged along with their Soviet comrades. This may have been motivated by a concern about the potential threat of a Japanese invasion of the Soviet Far East. In any case, at this time Stalin began to promote the idea of a united front of the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang against the Japanese, a policy that Wang Ming
Wang Ming
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party and the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism lines...
and Kang quickly endorsed. In November 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
Marco Polo Bridge Incident
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a battle between the Republic of China's National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army, often used as the marker for the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War .The eleven-arch granite bridge, Lugouqiao, is an architecturally significant structure,...
and the Japanese invasion of China, Stalin dispatched Wang and Kang to Yan'an
Yan'an
Yan'an , is a prefecture-level city in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China, administering several counties, including Zhidan County , which served as the Chinese communist capital before the city of Yan'an proper took that role....
on a specially provided Soviet plane.
Kang had played a wily game in the complex and murky world of Stalin’s Moscow, earning the following comment from Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
, who had met Kang in Moscow in 1935:
It can be said without any shadow of a doubt that at that time Kang Sheng was playing a multiple game. On the one hand he was humoring Stalin, but at the same time he was betraying his confidence. Similarly, he had made contact with the Trotskyists, and had considered joining their movement, but he had also taken steps to infiltrate and sabotage their Fourth International….
Tito made these comments to Hua Guofeng
Hua Guofeng
Su Zhu, better known by the nom de guerre Hua Guofeng , was Mao Zedong's designated successor as the Paramount Leader of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China. Upon Zhou Enlai's death in 1976, he succeeded Zhou as the second Premier of the People's Republic of China...
on his only visit to China, in 1977 after Kang was dead, and certainly had his own agenda in doing so, but as Faligot and Kauffer remark, “[i]n any case, Tito certainly got the measure of Kang’s psychology: a multifaceted game of mirrors was certainly his style, even in the 1930s.”
Kang in Yan'an
When Kang Sheng arrived in the Party's redoubt at Yan'an in late November 1937 as part of Wang Ming's entourage, he may have already realized that Wang Ming was falling out of favor, but he initially supported Wang and the Comintern’s efforts to guide the Chinese Communists back into line with Soviet policy, especially the need to align with the Kuomintang against the Japanese. Kang also brought Stalin’s obsession with Trotskyism to play in helping Wang defeat the efforts of Zhou Enlai and Dong BiwuDong Biwu
Dong Biwu was a Chinese communist political leader during the regime of Mao Zedong.-Biography:Dong Biwu was born in Huanggang, Hubei. He was the President of China from 1948 to 1949 and Acting President from 1968 until 17 January 1975 when Zhu De became the succeeding Chairman of the Standing...
to bring Chen Duxiu
Chen Duxiu
Chen Duxiu played many different roles in Chinese history. He was a leading figure in the anti-imperial Xinhai Revolution and the May Fourth Movement for Science and Democracy. Along with Li Dazhao, Chen was a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. He was its first General Secretary....
back into the Party.
After assessing the situation on the ground in Yan'an, however, in 1938 Kang decided to re-align himself with Mao Zedong. Kang's motives are easy to imagine. For Mao’s part, as MacFarquhar put it,
Kang Sheng was a valuable catch for Mao as he strove to consolidate the power he had won at the Zunyi Conference in January 1935. Kang could betray all the secrets of Wang Ming and his supporters. He was au fait with Moscow politics and police methods, and sufficiently fluent in Russian to act as a major contact with Soviet visitors. He had absorbed sufficient Marxism-LeninismMarxism-LeninismMarxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
and Stalinist polemicizing to affect the patina of a theorist, and he was a fluent writer.
At Yan'an, Kang was close to Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing was the pseudonym that was used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life...
, who may have been Kang's mistress when he visited Shandong in 1931. In Yan’an, Jiang became the lover of Mao Zedong, who later married her. In 1938, Kang earned Mao and Jiang’s gratitude by supporting their liaison against the opposition of more socially conservative cadres, who were aware of her past and uncomfortable with it. Byron & Pack assert that
Kang acted decisively to protect Mao and rebut the charges against Jiang Qing. Invoking his background as head of the Organization Department and as an expert on security and espionage matters, Kang vouched for Jiang Qing. She was a Party member in good standing, he declared, and had no affiliations that would bar marriage to Mao. Kang’s personal knowledge of Jiang Qing’s past was fragmentary and certainly insufficient to allow him to prove that she was not a KMT agent, but he doctored her record, destroyed adverse material, discouraged hostile witnesses, and coached her on how to answer the probing questions of high-level interrogators who hoped to discredit Mao.
This episode is believed by many to have been key to Kang’s future success, which depended not only on his considerable talents but also on his relationship with Mao. In addition to politics, Kang and Mao also shared an interest in classical culture, including poetry, painting and calligraphy.
Mao’s relationship with Kang, in Yan'an and later, was mainly based on political calculation. Kang’s familiarity with Wang Ming enabled him to provide Mao with valuable information about Wang’s subservience to the Soviets. Although cadres such as Chen Yun, who had been in Moscow with Wang and Kang, were aware of Kang’s previous slavish support for Wang, Kang strenuously sought to change that history and obscure previous affiliations.
In addition, Mao, who in these years had not yet visited the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, used Kang during this period as a valuable source of information about Soviet affairs. Mao was also suspicious of the Russians and, soon after aligning himself with Mao, Kang also began to speak out against the Soviet Union and its agents in China. Pyotr Vladimirov, the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
agent sent to Yan'an, recorded that Kang kept him under constant surveillance and even forced Wang Ming
Wang Ming
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party and the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism lines...
to avoid meeting him. Vladimirov also believed that Kang delivered biased reports of Soviet affairs to Mao.
While in Yan’an, Kang oversaw intelligence operations against the Party’s two principal enemies, the Japanese and the Kuomintang, as well as potential opponents of Mao within the Party. Chang and Halliday write that “Shi Zhe observed that Kang was living in a state of deep fear of Mao in this period” because of his murky past, which had been raised with Mao in many letters from cadres and by the Russians, yet "Far from being put off by Kang’s murky past, Mao positively relished it. Like Stalin, who employed ex-Mensheviks like Vyshinsky, Mao used people’s vulnerability as a way of giving himself hold over subordinates." Vladimirov believed that Kang was behind, at Mao’s behest, the attempt by Li Fuchun
Li Fuchun
Li Fuchun was a politician of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China.-Biography:Li Fuchun was born in Changsha, Hunan Province. After completing middle school in his home province, in 1919 he traveled to France to attend a work-study program and here he started his...
and Jin Maoyao to murder Wang Ming by means of mercury poisoning, although this claim remains controversial.
Kang was deeply involved with the Yan'an Rectification Movement launched by Mao in February 1942. According to Byron and Pack, “Kang’s conduct of the Yan'an Rectification Movement introduced a new element into Chinese politics: an emphasis on eliciting false confessions.” Kang was sufficiently brutal in his methods to arouse the opposition of senior cadres, including Zhou Enlai, Nie Rongzhen
Nie Rongzhen
Nie Rongzhen was a prominent Chinese Communist military leader, and one of ten Marshals in the People's Liberation Army of China. He was the last surviving PLA officer with the rank of Marshal.-Biography:...
and Ye Jianying
Ye Jianying
Ye Jianying was a Chinese communist general and the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1978 to 1983.-Biography:...
. At the same time, Mao was not keen to have a single man in such a position of power. Accordingly, following the Seventh Party Congress in April 1945, Kang was replaced as head of both the Social Affairs Department and the Military Intelligence Department.
Byron and Pack write that "In spite of Kang’s decline, his influence on the security and intelligence system was visible for decades to come. The methods he popularized in Yan'an shaped public security work through the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
and beyond." Moreover,
[f]or many victims of Rectification, release and rehabilitation in 1945 after the Seventh Party Congress did not protect them permanently against Kang. During the Cultural RevolutionCultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
, he searched many of them out, arrested them and charged them again with being traitors or renegades. A standard item of evidence used against them was a record of their arrest in Yan'an during the Rectification Movement – phony charges from the 1940s appeared twenty years later as “proof” of an individual’s disloyalty.
From Yan'an to the Cultural Revolution
After his fall from the security posts, in December 1946 Kang was assigned by Mao, Zhu DeZhu De
Zhu De was a Chinese militarist, politician, revolutionary, and one of the pioneers of the Chinese Communist Party. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in 1955 Zhu became one of the Ten Marshals of the People's Liberation Army, of which he is regarded as the founder.-Early...
and Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi was a Chinese revolutionary, statesman, and theorist. He was Chairman of the People's Republic of China, China's head of state, from 27 April 1959 to 31 October 1968, during which he implemented policies of economic reconstruction in China...
to review the Party’s land reform project in Longdong, Gansu
Gansu
' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east...
Province. He returned after five weeks with the view that land reform needed to be more severe and that there could be no compromise with landlords. “Kang whipped up hatred for the landlords and their retainers. In the name of social justice, he encouraged the peasants to settle scores by killing landlords and rich peasants.”
In March 1947, Kang put his methods into practice in Lin County, Shanxi
Shanxi
' is a province in Northern China. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋" , after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
Province. These methods included special scrutiny and persecution of landlords known to have Communist sympathies and investigation of the backgrounds of the Party’s land reform teams themselves. In April 1948, Mao singled out Kang for praise in his handling of land reform, with the result that
[A]grarian reform cut a bloody swath through much of rural China. Squads of Communist enforcers were sent to the most remote villages to organize the local petty thieves and bandits into so-called land reform teams, which inflamed the poor peasants and hired laborers against the rich. When resentment reached fever pitch, peasants at staged “grievance meetings” were encouraged to relate the injustices and insults they had suffered, both real and imagined, at the hands of “the landlord bullies.” Often these meetings would end with the masses, led by the land reform teams, shouting “Shoot him! Shoot him!” or “Kill! Kill! Kill!” The cadre in charge of proceedings would rule that the landlords had committed serious crimes, sentence them to death, and order that they be taken away and eliminated immediately.
In November 1947, the Politburo assigned Kang to inspect land reform in his home province of Shandong
Shandong
' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...
. Early in 1948, he was appointed deputy chief of the Party’s East China Bureau, under Rao Shushi
Rao Shushi
Rao Shushi like his confederate Gao Gang, was a senior leader of the Communist Party of China , who once enjoyed great power and fame that then quickly evaporated, leaving behind many mysteries about his rise and fall.-Early years:...
. Some commentators speculate that the private humiliation of being placed under a former subordinate may be one reason why Kang "fell ill" and largely disappeared from view until after Rao's fall in 1954. Of course, Kang may really have been ill. Mao’s personal physician, Li Zhisui
Li Zhisui
Li Zhisui was Mao Zedong's personal physician and confidante. After immigrating to the United States, he wrote a biography of his experiences with Mao entitled The Private Life of Chairman Mao .Weeks after he announced on a TV interview that he was going to write another memoir, Li died of a...
, later recorded that doctors responsible for Kang’s treatment at Beijing Hospital told him that Kang was suffering from schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. Writing before Li's book was published, Byron and Pack offered other possible diagnoses based on symptoms Kang seems to have displayed, including manic-depressive psychosis and temporal lobe epilepsy.
Kang’s re-emergence on the political stage in the mid-1950s occurred at roughly at the same time as the Gao Gang
Gao Gang
Gao Gang was a Chinese Communist Party leader during the Chinese Civil War and the early years of the People's Republic of China , before becoming the victim of the first major purge within the CCP since before 1949...
-Rao Shushi
Rao Shushi
Rao Shushi like his confederate Gao Gang, was a senior leader of the Communist Party of China , who once enjoyed great power and fame that then quickly evaporated, leaving behind many mysteries about his rise and fall.-Early years:...
Affair and the affair of Yu Bingbo. Faligot and Kauffer see these affairs as each showing signs of involvement by Kang Sheng, who they believe used them as means to return to power.
In January 1956, Kang made his first public appearance in years at a meeting of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing. As Byron and Pack write
The challenges that Kang faced during the early months of 1956 underscored the dangers he would have risked by continuing his retreat. As soon as he reappeared, Kang encountered serious problems that caused his position in the hierarchy to fluctuate dramatically. After the purge of Gao GangGao GangGao Gang was a Chinese Communist Party leader during the Chinese Civil War and the early years of the People's Republic of China , before becoming the victim of the first major purge within the CCP since before 1949...
and Rao ShushiRao ShushiRao Shushi like his confederate Gao Gang, was a senior leader of the Communist Party of China , who once enjoyed great power and fame that then quickly evaporated, leaving behind many mysteries about his rise and fall.-Early years:...
in 1954, he had ranked sixth, below Chairman Mao, Liu ShaoqiLiu ShaoqiLiu Shaoqi was a Chinese revolutionary, statesman, and theorist. He was Chairman of the People's Republic of China, China's head of state, from 27 April 1959 to 31 October 1968, during which he implemented policies of economic reconstruction in China...
, Zhou EnlaiZhou EnlaiZhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
, Zhu DeZhu DeZhu De was a Chinese militarist, politician, revolutionary, and one of the pioneers of the Chinese Communist Party. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in 1955 Zhu became one of the Ten Marshals of the People's Liberation Army, of which he is regarded as the founder.-Early...
and Chen YunChen YunChen Yun was one of the most influential leaders of the People's Republic of China during the 1980s and 90s, and one of the top leaders of the Communist Party of China for almost its entire history. He was also known as Liao Chengyun ; it's unclear whether this was his original name or a pseudonym...
. But in February 1956, just weeks after his return to public life, he was listed below Peng ZhenPeng ZhenPeng Zhen was a leading member of the Communist Party of China.-Biography:Born in Houma , Peng was originally named Fu Maogong....
. By the end of April he was reported in tenth place, even below Luo Fu, the only member of the 28 Bolsheviks28 BolsheviksThe 28 Bolsheviks were a group of Chinese students who studied at the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University from the late 1920s until early 1935, also known as the "Returned Students". The university was founded in 1925 as a result of Kuomintang's founder Sun Yat-Sen's policy of alliance with the Soviet...
who still held a Politburo seat. Yet on May DayMay DayMay Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
of 1956 – the international socialist celebration – Kang was suddenly back in sixth place. His position, at least going by public reports and official bulletins, remained unchanged from then until the Eighth Congress four months later.
Kang suffered a severe reversal of fortune at the Central Committee plenum that followed the first session of the Eighth Congress, when he was demoted to alternate, nonvoting membership of the Politburo. Roderick MacFarquar writes
The reasons for Kang Sheng’s reduction to alternate membership of the Politburo are not clear. …[T]he immediate reason for his demotion may have been the general revulsion against secret police within the communist bloc after Khrushchev’s secret speech. Kang Sheng’s emergence during the cultural revolution as one of the most important Maoist stalwarts suggests that…it is not unlikely that at the 8th Congress Mao save Kang from even greater humiliation.
Mao own position was weakening, as evidenced by the decision of the Eighth Congress to delete the phrase “guided by the thought of Mao Zedong” from the new Party constitution and by re-establishing the role of General Secretary, abolished in 1937. The dangers of a exalting a single leader and the desirability of collective leadership had been perhaps the most direct point of Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
’s “secret speech” to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union earlier in 1959, in which he condemned Stalin, Stalin’s methods and his cult of personality and which, according to Archie Brown, “was the beginning of the end of international Communism.”
While Kang remained a member of the Politburo, he had no concrete role and no power base, which led him to take on a series of diverse assignments and to align himself as closely as possible with Mao, who was devising his response to de-Stalinization and its effects within the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. His responses, in the Hundred Flowers and the Anti-Rightist Campaign that followed, marked a profound turning point in the history of the People’s Republic. As Maurice Meisner writes
The period of the Hundred Flowers was the time when the Chinese abandoned the Soviet model of development and embarked on a distinctively Chinese road to socialism. It was the time that China announced its ideological and social autonomy from the Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and its Stalinist heritage. It is a cruel and tragic irony that the break with the Stalinist pattern of socioeconomic development was not accompanied by a break with Stalinist methods in political and intellectual life. The latter was precluded by the suppression of the critics who had briefly “bloomed and contended” in May and June of 1957.
As noted in connection with the Yan'an Rectification Movement launched 15 years earlier, Kang Sheng played an important role in bringing Stalinist methods of repression to China.
Kang was clearly a supporter of Mao during the period of the Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
and its aftermath and, as MacFarquar writes, “[h]e was the beneficiary of Mao’s practice of preserving and protecting those whom he trusted and relied upon, and for whom he saw a future use.” As a result, Kang received a number of important positions during the late 1950s, including in 1959 responsibility for the Central Party School.
Among Kang’s most important activities in this period were those related to the deepening split with the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, about which Mao and others regarded him as something of an expert. Among his assignments from the Politburo was to draft a long article that appeared in The People’s Daily on December 29, 1956 under the title “More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and which expressed the Party’s position that Stalin’s achievements overshadowed his mistakes.
Kang visited the Soviet Union and various socialist countries in Eastern Europe on several occasions between 1956 and 1964, expressing increasing disdain for the “revisionist” policies of Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
and Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
. In February 1960, as the Chinese observer at the conference of the Political Consultative Conference of the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
, Kang made what Jacques Guillermaz described as “a violent attack on the leaders of the United States, their feigned pacifism, their dream of ‘peaceful evolution’ of the socialist countries, and their repeated sabotage of disarmament.” Byron and Pack describe the speech as “a subtle, almost sarcastic critique of Russian foreign policy that became a milestone in deteriorating Sino-Soviet relations.”
The following year, Kang was one of the Chinese delegates to the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to leave their seats to avoid shaking hands with Khrushchev. Kang was also a member of the delegation that attended a meeting in Moscow in July 1963, which failed to bridge the growing gap between the Chinese and Soviet parties. Among the points of contention, raised in a letter issued by the Chinese Communist Party on June 14, 1963, had to do with de-Stalinization and the allegation that
[u]nder the pretext of “combating the cult of the individual,” certain persons are crudely interfering in the internal affairs of other fraternal parties and fraternal countries and forcing other fraternal parties to change their leadership in order to impose their own wrong line on those parties.
As Jacques Guillermaz writes about this criticism, “[c]ould the Chinese really have been thinking of Enver Hoxha
Enver Hoxha
Enver Halil Hoxha was a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary andthe leader of Albania from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania...
?”
The Sino-Soviet rift and the obsession with Khruschev’s revisionism looms large in the coming of the Cultural Revolution, as Mao saw revisionism and de-Stalinization as a threat not only to his own position but also to the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party as a revolutionary force. Accordingly, an appreciation Kang’s role as a supporter of Mao’s line in this period helps explain his return to very near the pinnacle of power a few years later.
Kang Sheng and the Cultural Revolution
As an important ally of Mao ZedongMao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
’s efforts to regain control of the Chinese Communist Party, Kang was an important enabler of and participant in the Cultural Revolution, later described by the Party Central Committee as having “lasted from May 1966 to October 1976” and as “responsible for the most severe setback and heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic.” The Central Committee resolution concluded that the Cultural Revolution “was initiated and led by Comrade Mao Zedong.” In outlining the “errors” that had been made by Mao and others in the run-up to the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
, the Central Committee noted that “[c]areerists like Lin Biao
Lin Biao
Lin Biao was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China...
, Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing was the pseudonym that was used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life...
and Kang Sheng, harbouring ulterior motives, made use of these errors and inflated them.”
Well before the start of the Cultural Revolution as such, Kang played his part in attacking rivals of Mao in the Party leadership, many of whom were unhappy with a range of policies including Mao's refusal to rehabilitate Peng Dehuai
Peng Dehuai
Peng Dehuai was a prominent military leader of the Communist Party of China, and China's Defence Minister from 1954 to 1959. Peng was an important commander during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese civil war and was also the commander-in-chief of People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War...
, the former Defense Minister and outspoken critic of the Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
. In 1962, Kang used the publication of a novel about Liu Zhidan, a Party member killed in battle against the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
in 1936, as the basis for reviving the Gao Gang
Gao Gang
Gao Gang was a Chinese Communist Party leader during the Chinese Civil War and the early years of the People's Republic of China , before becoming the victim of the first major purge within the CCP since before 1949...
affair, successfully insinuating that the novels’ publication was an effort by Xi Zhongcun and others to reverse the Party's verdict on Gao. As a result of this, Kang was promoted to the secretariat of the Central Committee at the 10th Plenum in August 1962. As MacFarquar writes,
Two months later, [Kang] moved to the Diaoyutai guest complex in the capital to mastermind a team of ideologues for the campaign against Soviet revisionism. The most cynical hit-man of Mao’s Cultural Revolution swat team was now an agent in place, helping to initiate the domestic and foreign policies that were the prelude to that cataclysm.
In January 1965, Mao suggested to the Party Politburo that the principal enemies of socialism in China were “those people in authority within the Party who are taking the capitalist road” and urged that the Party undertake a “cultural revolution.” The Politburo established a five-man group, chaired by Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen was a leading member of the Communist Party of China.-Biography:Born in Houma , Peng was originally named Fu Maogong....
, its fifth-ranking member and head of the Beijing Party Organization and mayor of the capital city. Kang Sheng was named a member of the group, which remained dormant for most of the year.
In early 1965, Mao sent his wife Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing was the pseudonym that was used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life...
to Shanghai to light the first spark of what would become the Cultural Revolution, the campaign against Wu Han
Wu Han
Wu Han was a famous Eastern Han Dynasty general who made great contributions to Emperor Guangwu 's reestablishment of the Han Dynasty and who is commonly regarded as Emperor Guangwu's best general, but who was also known for cruelty against civilians.-Biography:Wu Han was initially a deputy to...
, the Vice Mayor of Beijing and the author of the 1961 play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. The attack on Wu Han was an indirect attack on Beijing’s mayor, Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen was a leading member of the Communist Party of China.-Biography:Born in Houma , Peng was originally named Fu Maogong....
, a pillar of the establishment that Mao wanted overthrown. Kang’s role in the subsequent purge of Peng was to co-lead with Chen Boda
Chen Boda
Chen Boda was born in 1904 in Hui'an and died on 20 September 1989 in Beijing.He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a secretary to Mao Zedong and a prominent member of the leadership during the Cultural Revolution, chairing the Cultural Revolution Group.-Early life:Chen Boda was born...
the prosecution of Mao’s charge that “Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen was a leading member of the Communist Party of China.-Biography:Born in Houma , Peng was originally named Fu Maogong....
, the Propaganda Department, and the Beijing Party Committee had shielded bad people while suppressing leftists.” Following the purge of Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen
Peng Zhen was a leading member of the Communist Party of China.-Biography:Born in Houma , Peng was originally named Fu Maogong....
in May 1966, the Central Committee later concluded, “Lin Biao
Lin Biao
Lin Biao was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China...
, Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing was the pseudonym that was used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life...
, Kang Sheng, Zhang Chunqiao
Zhang Chunqiao
Zhang Chunqiao was a prominent Chinese political theorist, writer, and politician...
and others…exploited the situation to incite people to ‘overthrow everything and wage full-scale civil war.’”
In May 1966, Kang Sheng sent his wife, Cao Yi'ou, to Beijing University as part of a team designed to rally leftists against the university president, Lu Ping, and other officials aligned with Peng Zhen. Cao sought out Nie Yuanzi
Nie Yuanzi
Nie Yuanzi 聂元梓 is a Chinese academic who taught philosophy at Peking University. She is primarily known for her May 25, 1966 "Big-character poster" criticizing Peking University for being controlled by the "bourgeoise." This was a factor in the Cultural Revolution...
, a Party branch secretary in the Philosophy Department with whom Kang and Cao had become acquainted years earlier in Yan’an. With information from Cao Yi'ou that Lu Ping had lost high-level Party protection, Nie Yuanzi
Nie Yuanzi
Nie Yuanzi 聂元梓 is a Chinese academic who taught philosophy at Peking University. She is primarily known for her May 25, 1966 "Big-character poster" criticizing Peking University for being controlled by the "bourgeoise." This was a factor in the Cultural Revolution...
and her leftist allies launched a movement that over the next three months threw Beijing University into chaos. As Yue Daiyun wrote:
With no limits imposed, no guidance offered, no one assuming responsibility for what occurred, and the Red GuardsRed Guards (China)Red Guards were a mass movement of civilians, mostly students and other young people in the People's Republic of China , who were mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.-Origins:...
merely following their impulses, the assault upon their elders and the destruction of property grew completely out of control.
During the Cultural Revolution, Kang Sheng was actively involved in controlling the CPC propaganda apparatus, being appointed head of the "Central Organization and Propaganda Leading Group
Central Organization and Propaganda Leading Group
The Central Organization and Propaganda Leading Group was an agency under the Politburo of the Communist Party of China that existed during the Cultural Revolution....
", while Yao Wenyuan
Yao Wenyuan
Yao Wenyuan was a Chinese literary critic, a politician, and a member of the "Gang of Four" during China's Cultural Revolution.-Biography:...
as head of another "Propaganda Leading Group". In November
November
November is the 11th month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of four months with the length of 30 days. November was the ninth month of the ancient Roman calendar...
1970, Kang was elevated to head of the Propaganda Department.
In 1968, Mao and other leaders finally began to rein in the Red Guards
Red Guards (China)
Red Guards were a mass movement of civilians, mostly students and other young people in the People's Republic of China , who were mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.-Origins:...
, with Kang Sheng playing a leading role. In January Kang denounced the Hunan
Hunan
' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
shengwulian coalition of Red Guards as “anarchists” and “Trotskyists,” launching a campaign of brutal suppression over the following months by the army and secret police. By July, when Mao joked that with a group of Red Guard leaders that he himself was the “black hand” suppressing campus revolutionaries, the glory days of the movement were ending.
In the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution, Kang remained close to the pinnacle of power and, as the “evil genius” within the Central Case Examination Group (the “CCEG”) established by the Politburo on May 24, 1966, was instrumental in Mao’s efforts to purge many senior Party officials, including his most senior rival within the Party, Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi was a Chinese revolutionary, statesman, and theorist. He was Chairman of the People's Republic of China, China's head of state, from 27 April 1959 to 31 October 1968, during which he implemented policies of economic reconstruction in China...
. In the subsequent trial of the so-called “Gang of Four
Gang of Four
The Gang of Four was the name given to a political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and were subsequently charged with a series of treasonous crimes...
,” one of the accusations leveled against Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing was the pseudonym that was used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life...
was that she conspired “with Kang Sheng, Chen Boda
Chen Boda
Chen Boda was born in 1904 in Hui'an and died on 20 September 1989 in Beijing.He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a secretary to Mao Zedong and a prominent member of the leadership during the Cultural Revolution, chairing the Cultural Revolution Group.-Early life:Chen Boda was born...
, and others to take it upon themselves to convene the big meeting [on July 18, 1967] to apply struggle-and-criticism to Liu Shaoqi, and to carry out a search of his house, physically persecuting the Head of State of the People’s Republic of China.” Xiao Meng testified at the trial that “the slander and persecution of [Liu Shaoqi’s wife] Wang Guangmei
Wang Guangmei
Wang Guangmei was a respected Chinese politician, philanthropist, and First Lady, the wife of Liu Shaoqi, who served as the Chairman of the People's Republic of China from 1959-1968.-Earlier Years:...
was plotted by Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng in person.”
Kang’s position on the CCEG gave him enormous, if invisible power. The very existence of the CCEG remained a secret, “[y]et,” as MacFarquar and Schoenhals write,
During its thirteen-year existence, the CCEG had powers far exceeding not only those once exercised by the Party’s Discipline Inspection Commission and Organization Department, but even those of the central public security and procuratorial organs and the courts. The CCEG made the decision to “ferret out,” persecute, arrest, imprison and torture “revisionist” [Central Committee] members and many lesser political enemies. Its privileged employees were the Cultural Revolution equivalent of Vladimir LeninVladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
’s ChekaChekaCheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
and Adolf HitlerAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
’s GestapoGestapoThe Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. Whereas the [Central Cultural Revolution Group] at least nominally dealt in “culture,” the CCEG dealt exclusively in violence. The CCEG was established as an ad hoc body but soon became a permanent institution with a staff of thousands that, at one point, was investing no fewer than 88 members and alternate members of the Party Central Committee for suspected “treachery,” “spying,” and/or “collusion with the enemy.”
During the Cultural Revolution, Kang abused his position to personal advantage. A gifted painter and calligrapher, he used his power to indulge his penchant for collecting antiques and works of art, notably inkstones. According to Byron & Pack, many of the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
leaders also used the lawlessness of the period to acquire for themselves objects seized from the homes of persons attacked by Red Guards. But Kang, in a series of visits to the Cultural Relics Bureau, “helped himself to 12,080 volumes of rare books – more than were taken by any other radical leader, and 34 percent of all the rare books removed – and 1,102 antiques, 20 percent of the total. Only Lin Biao
Lin Biao
Lin Biao was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China...
, who, as Mao’s designated heir, ranked second in the land, appropriated more antiques than Kang.”
Kang Sheng was instrumental in supervising the drafting of the new Party Constitution, adopted at the Ninth Congress in April 1969, which reinstated “Mao Zedong Thought” alongside Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
as the theoretical basis for the Party. The Congress elected Kang as one of the five members of the Politburo Standing Committee, along with Mao, Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai and Chen Boda
Chen Boda
Chen Boda was born in 1904 in Hui'an and died on 20 September 1989 in Beijing.He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a secretary to Mao Zedong and a prominent member of the leadership during the Cultural Revolution, chairing the Cultural Revolution Group.-Early life:Chen Boda was born...
. At the Ninth Congress, Kang Sheng’s wife, Cao Yi'ou, was herself elected to the Central Committee.
The Constitution drafted under Kang’s supervision and adopted at the Nnth Congress stipulated that “Comrade Lin Biao is Comrade Mao Zedong’s close comrade-in-arms and successor.” Kang Sheng and Lin Biao were not close allies, although Kang had earlier assisted Lin in his successful efforts to remove Marshal He Long
He Long
He Long was a Chinese military leader. He rose to the rank of Marshal and Vice Premier after the founding of the People's Republic of China.-Early life:He Long was a member of the Tujia ethnic group...
, a formidable rival to Lin’s wish to control the People’s Liberation Army. In the wake of Lin Biao’s aborted coup attempt and death in September 1971, Kang was careful to distance himself from Mao’s disgraced former heir and from Chen Boda
Chen Boda
Chen Boda was born in 1904 in Hui'an and died on 20 September 1989 in Beijing.He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a secretary to Mao Zedong and a prominent member of the leadership during the Cultural Revolution, chairing the Cultural Revolution Group.-Early life:Chen Boda was born...
, who had been closely aligned with Lin at the Central Committee meeting in Lushan in August 1970 and who was denounced after Lin’s fall at “China’s Trotsky.” Efforts to link Kang to Lin Biao’s plotting were unsuccessful and unsubstantiated.
Ill with the cancer that would eventually kill him, Kang last appeared in public at the Tenth Party Congress, in August 1973. The Tenth Congress adopted a new Constitution that removed the embarrassing reference to Lin Biao as Mao Zedong’s successor, but as a sign that his position had not been adversely affected, Kang Sheng was named one of five vice chairmen of the Party. In his final years, Kang became involved in the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign that was created by the beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution to oppose Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
and other veteran officials in the struggle over who would succeed Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. Kang was initially active in supporting Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing was the pseudonym that was used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life...
, perhaps seeing her as a successor through whom he would exercise power. Kang subsequently shifted tack when it became apparent that Jiang was out of favor with Mao, even going so far as to denounce her as having betrayed the Party to the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
during the mid-1930s, notwithstanding his support for her when the same charge had been leveled 30 years earlier in Yan’an. Kang’s final political act came only two months before his death, when he warned Mao Zedong that Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
opposed the Cultural Revolution and should be purged again, advice that Mao ignored.
Support for the Khmer Rouge
Kang also left a lasting imprint on China's foreign policy. As MacFarquhar writes, "[t]he dual role of Kang Sheng in Mao's campaign against revisionism at home and abroad symbolized the close relationship between Chinese domestic and foreign policy." Kang’s contribution to the dispute with the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
about de-Stalinization has been described above in connection with the his efforts to insinutate himself with Mao and developing the ideological origins of the Cultural Revolution.
Perhaps Kang’s most important influence over Chinese foreign policy came during the Cultural Revolution itself, when he was instrumental in developing Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
regime in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. While the mainstream of the Chinese Communist Party leadership supported Prince Norodom Sihanouk
Norodom Sihanouk
Norodom Sihanouk regular script was the King of Cambodia from 1941 to 1955 and again from 1993 until his semi-retirement and voluntary abdication on 7 October 2004 in favor of his son, the current King Norodom Sihamoni...
as Cambodia's anti-Western and anti-imperialist leader, Kang argued that Khmer Rouge guerrilla leader Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
was the real revolutionary leader in the Southeast Asian nation.
Kang's backing of Pol Pot was an effort to back his own cause within the Chinese Communist Party, as his touting of Pol Pot as the true voice of the Cambodian revolution was in large part an attack on the Chinese Foreign Ministry, whose pragmatic support for Prince Sihanouk's regime was thereby presented as reactionary. As a result of his success in this, the Pol Pot regime came to power and the Khmer Rouge became the recipient of Chinese aid for years to come, prolonging the life of that movement with tragic consequences for Cambodia.
Death and disgrace
Kang Sheng died of bladder cancer on December 16, 1975. He was given a formal funeral, attended by every member of the Politiburo except Mao, who did not attend funerals at this stage, Zhou EnlaiZhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
and Zhu De
Zhu De
Zhu De was a Chinese militarist, politician, revolutionary, and one of the pioneers of the Chinese Communist Party. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in 1955 Zhu became one of the Ten Marshals of the People's Liberation Army, of which he is regarded as the founder.-Early...
, who were too weak to attend. Marshal Ye Jianying
Ye Jianying
Ye Jianying was a Chinese communist general and the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1978 to 1983.-Biography:...
delivered a eulogy in which he praised Kang as “a proletarian revolutionary, a Marxist theoretician, and a glorious fighter against revisionism.”
In November 1978, Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang was a leader of the People's Republic of China who served as both Chairman and Party General Secretary. Hu joined the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s, and rose to prominence as a comrade of Deng Xiaoping...
voiced the first formal criticism of Kang in a speech to the Central Party School. Ruan Ming reports Hu as telling four of Kang’s “anti-revisionist scribblers” that
you four people have played an extremely negative role in the liberation of thought, the role of a brake. As far as I’m concerned, this is because you have come too much under the influence of people like Kang Sheng. … Kang Sheng passed his time reading between the lines looking for “allusions” without taking account of the real subject of articles and the general idea. He made a sort of talent of looking for a particular point he could attack. He had learned this from Stalin, from ZhdanovZhdanovZhdanov or Zhdanova is a surname and may refer to:People* Andrei Zhdanov , Stalinist politician, developer of the Zhdanov Doctrine that governed Soviet cultural activities for a number of years...
and the KGBKGBThe KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
, and acted thus from the time of the Yan'an era.
As fear of Kang subsided following the arrest of the Gang of Four
Gang of Four
The Gang of Four was the name given to a political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and were subsequently charged with a series of treasonous crimes...
and the return to power of Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
, criticisms of Kang Sheng grew and a special case group was established to investigate Kang’s career. In late summer 1980, the special case group reported to the Central Committee. In October 1980, just in advance of commencing the trial of the Gang of Four, Kang Sheng was posthumously expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and the Central Committee formally rescinded Marshal Ye Jianying
Ye Jianying
Ye Jianying was a Chinese communist general and the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1978 to 1983.-Biography:...
’s eulogy.