Hungry Ghosts

by Jasper Becker

  Wu Zhifu (1906-67): born in Henan in Qi Xian county, Wu joined the CCP in 1925 and became a pupil of Mao’s at the Peasant Movement Training Institute. During the civil war he ran a guerrilla branch of the New Fourth Army and orchestrated a campaign of terror against landlords. During the Great Leap Forward he was Party Secretary of Henan and was responsible for up to 8 million deaths. He died in October 1967 in Guangzhou.

  Zeng Xisheng (1904-68): born in Hunan not far from Mao’s home county, Zeng attended the Whampoa Military Academy, met Mao in 1923 and joined the Party in 1927. He was Mao’s bodyguard during the Long March and then was in charge of military intelligence. He later became the political commissar of the Fourth Route Army. After 1949, he was appointed Party Secretary of northern Anhui before taking charge of the whole province. As Party Secretary of the whole of Anhui during the Great Leap Forward, he was responsible for the deaths of up to 8 million people, as well as a similar number in Shandong. He introduced agricultural reforms in 1961 but Mao dismissed him in 1962. He was tortured and killed during the Cultural Revolution.

  Zhang Wentian (1900-76): born in Jiangsu, Zhang joined the CCP in 1925 and studied at Moscow’s Sun Yat-sen University. After 1949, he was posted as ambassador to the Soviet Union and then returned to serve as deputy foreign minister. He opposed Mao at the Lushan summit and was demoted to the level of researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences where he studied ‘the theory of socialist economic construction’. He survived persecution during the Cultural Revolution and was rehabilitated in 1979.

  Zhang Zhongliang (1907-83): born in Shaanxi, Zhang joined the CCP in 1931 and led a peasant uprising in 1933. After 1949, he was initially Party Secretary of Qinghai before moving to Gansu. There he was responsible for over a million deaths during the famine. He was dismissed in 1961 and sent to Jiangsu as chief secretary of the provincial Party secretariat. Though persecuted during the Cultural Revolution he died peacefully in retirement in Nanjing.

  Zhao Ziyang (1919–): in charge of agriculture in Guangdong and a keen promoter of the Great Leap Forward under the provincial leader Tao Zhu. Zhao’s report triggered off the first round of forced grain seizures. However, he was attacked during the Cultural Revolution for advocating private farming. In the late 1970s, he was brought back and, as Party Secretary in Sichuan, initiated rural reforms and ordered the first dismantling of a commune. Deng made him Premier after 1979 and later General Secretary. He was dismissed in 1989 for supporting democracy protests and is still under house arrest.

  Zhou Enlai (1899-1976): born in Jiangsu, Zhou studied in France and then joined the CCP in 1922. Though he opposed collectivization in 1956 he later made a self-criticism and thereafter supported the Great Leap Forward. He did not challenge Mao after 1962 and served him throughout the Cultural Revolution.

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