Chen Boda

Early Life and Rise as Party Theorist

Chen Boda, born Chen Jianxiang on 29 July 1904 in Hui'an county, Fujian province, joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1927. From 1958 he served as editor-in-chief of Red Flag (红旗), the Party's theoretical journal, becoming a leading interpreter of Mao Zedong Thought and one of Mao's principal ideological spokesmen through the late 1950s and 1960s.

Head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group

At the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee in August 1966, Chen Boda was elected to the Politburo and its Standing Committee, and Mao personally appointed him head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, the body that directed the movement's day-to-day escalation. At the Ninth National Congress in April 1969 he was confirmed as a member of the new Politburo Standing Committee, ranking immediately behind Mao Zedong and Lin Biao and ahead of Zhou Enlai.

Downfall at the Lushan Plenum

At the Second Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee, held at Lushan in August–September 1970, Chen Boda aligned with Lin Biao's faction in pushing to revive the state chairmanship and in circulating material praising Mao as a "genius," provoking sharp criticism from Mao and Zhou Enlai. On 6 September 1970 the plenum closed with a decision to form a special group to investigate him, and on 18 October 1970 he was taken into custody by the Central Garrison Corps. He was expelled from the Party in August 1973 and, in the 1980–1981 special court proceedings against the "Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques," was sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment. Released on account of age and health before completing his term, he died in Beijing on 20 September 1989 at the age of 85.