Kang Sheng

Early Life and Rise in Party Security Work

Kang Sheng, born Zhang Zongke in 1898 in Zhucheng, Shandong province, joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1925 and adopted the name Kang Sheng after traveling to the Soviet Union in 1933. Returning to Yan'an in the winter of 1937, he rose to serve as a Secretary of the Central Secretariat, president of the Central Party School, and head of the Central Department of Social Affairs, the Party's security and intelligence apparatus. During the Yan'an Rectification Movement he served as deputy director of the Central General Study Committee and directed the "Rescue Campaign" against suspected infiltrators, a drive that produced large numbers of wrongful accusations.

Adviser to the Central Cultural Revolution Group

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Kang Sheng served as an adviser to the Central Cultural Revolution Group, using this position to help engineer the purge of the head of the Central Investigation Department, whose functions he effectively took over by 1968. At the Ninth National Congress in April 1969 he was elected to the Politburo Standing Committee, and at the Tenth Congress in 1973 he was elevated to Vice Chairman of the CCP Central Committee.

Death and Posthumous Disgrace

Kang Sheng died of prostate cancer in Beijing on 16 December 1975, at the time the fourth-ranked leader in the Party after Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Wang Hongwen; his official eulogy praised him as an outstanding Communist and Marxist theorist. On 16 October 1980, the Party Central Committee posthumously expelled him from the Party, rescinded his eulogy, and published an account of his offenses. In the 1980–1981 special court indictment of the "Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques," the deceased Kang Sheng was named third among the principal culprits, after Lin Biao and Jiang Qing.