Chu Anping
储安平
1909–1966
- Journalist
- Editor
- Editor-in-Chief of Guangming Daily
Biography
Chu Anping (1909–?), from Yixing, Jiangsu, was one of modern China's most prominent liberal journalists. He graduated from Fudan University in the 1930s and subsequently studied at the London School of Economics, receiving systematic training in liberal political thought. In 1945 he founded the weekly Objective (客观), earning a reputation in the Republican-era press for editorial independence and objectivity.
In 1957 he was appointed editor-in-chief of Guangming Daily. In May of the same year, at a CPPCC symposium, he delivered his celebrated "Party-all-under-heaven" (党天下) speech, arguing that the political reality of the People's Republic was a "party world" rather than a "people's world" and criticising the CCP's monopoly across every field of life. The speech became the most prominent target of the Anti-Rightist Campaign; Chu was immediately labelled a "major rightist" and stripped of all positions.
He disappeared after the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, is believed to have died under persecution, and has never been rehabilitated.
Related Events (2)
Hundred Flowers Campaign
Mao Zedong invited open criticism of the Party with the slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom," but swiftly reversed course, using the expressed criticisms to identify and purge intellectuals in the subsequent Anti-Rightist Campaign.
politicalAnti-Rightist Campaign
Following the Hundred Flowers Campaign that encouraged criticism of the Party, Mao launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, labelling an estimated 550,000 to 700,000 intellectuals and officials as "rightists," the majority of whom were sent to labour camps or dispatched to the countryside.
political