Liu Shao-Chi

Born 1898 in Hunan Province. Chinese statesman and political figure. The son of a peasant.

Liu Shao-ch’i was trained as a teacher. In 1921 he joined the Communist Party of China (CPC). In 1921-22 he was in the USSR. In the fall of 1922, Liu Shao-ch’i directed a strike of miners in the Anyiian mines. During the Revolution of 1925-27 in China he was one of the leaders of the workers’ movement: in 1925 he was elected deputy chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and two years later he was elected to the Central Committee of the CPC. After the defeat of the revolution in 1927, he directed the trade union movement from the underground. In 1930 he was elected a member of the executive bureau of the Red International of Trade Unions. In 1931 he was elected a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPC, and in 1934 he became chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.

Liu Shao-ch’i participated in the Long March (1934-36). From 1936 to 1943 he was successively secretary of the North China bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC, secretary of the Central China bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC, and political commissar of the New Fourth Army. From 1943 to 1956 he was secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC. He was honorary chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (1948-57), deputy chairman of the Central People’s Government Council (1949-54), deputy chairman of the Popular Revolutionary Military Council of the People’s Republic of China (1949-54), vice-president of the World Federation of Trade Unions (1949-53), chairman of the Central Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Society (1949-54), and chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (1949-54).

In 1954, at the first session of the National People’s Congress, Liu Shao-ch’i delivered the address “The Project of a ConstiUtion for the People’s Republic of China.” At the Eighth Congress of the CPC (1956) he delivered the political report of the Central Committee of the CPC. In 1956 he was elected a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPC and deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the CPC. In 1959 he was elected chairman of the People’s Republic of China. In 1966, during the “cultural revolution,” Liu Shao-ch’i was accused of revisionism by the Maoists. In October 1968 the 12th plenum of the Central Committee of the CPC expelled him from the CPC and voted “to remove him from all posts inside and outside the party,” as one of the main opponents of the political line of Mao Tse-tung. The decision of the plenum was confirmed by the Ninth Congress of the CPC.