Tan Zhenlin

Early Life and Revolutionary Career

Tan Zhenlin was born on 24 April 1902 in Youxian, Hunan province. He joined the revolution in 1925 and the Chinese Communist Party in 1926. In the winter of 1927 he served as chairman of the first county-level worker-peasant-soldier government in the Jinggangshan revolutionary base, in Chaling county, and as secretary of its county Party committee, later holding posts including secretary of the Hunan-Jiangxi border area special committee and political commissar of the 2nd and 4th columns of the Fourth Red Army. In the spring of 1938, when the Red Army guerrilla forces of southern China were reorganized into the New Fourth Army, he was made deputy commander and political commissar of its Third Detachment, and in May 1940 took charge of party, government, and military affairs in the eastern Jiangnan region. After the reorganization of the East China Field Army as the Third Field Army in January 1949, he served as its First Deputy Political Commissar under Chen Yi.

Vice Premier and Agricultural Policy

After 1949, Tan Zhenlin rose within the state apparatus, becoming a Vice Premier of the State Council in April 1959 with responsibility for agricultural and forestry work, a portfolio he held through the difficult years of the Great Leap Forward famine and its aftermath.

Confrontation during the February Countercurrent

At the 16 February 1967 Huairen Hall meeting, when Zhang Chunqiao declined to commit to protecting Shanghai's deposed leaders Chen Pixian and Cao Diqiu, saying the matter required "consulting the masses," Tan Zhenlin erupted in anger, retorting that invoking "the masses" while discarding Party leadership amounted to nothing more than the sabotage of veteran cadres one by one, and declaring: "I have made three mistakes in my life: first, I should not have lived this long; second, I should not have followed Chairman Mao to make revolution; third, I should not have joined the Communist Party." He walked out of the meeting and announced he would attend no further sessions. The following day, 17 February, he wrote to Lin Biao denouncing Jiang Qing as "fiercer than Empress Wu Zetian" and accusing the Cultural Revolution Group of methods "unseen before within the Party."

Denunciation and Later Rehabilitation

On the night of 16 February, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Li compiled a transcript of the meeting and reported it to Mao Zedong, who convened a meeting on 18–19 February to sharply criticize the veteran cadres, declaring the Cultural Revolution beyond question; the Central Politburo went on to hold seven "political-life criticism meetings" against Tan Zhenlin and the others between 25 February and 18 March 1967. Tan was removed from his posts and confined, required to write daily self-criticisms. After Lin Biao's fall in 1971, Mao showed greater leniency toward the "February Countercurrent" cadres; in 1973 Tan Zhenlin's standing as a party and state leader was restored on Mao's instruction, and he was elected to the Central Committee at the Tenth Party Congress. In January 1975 he was elected Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. He died in Beijing on 30 September 1983, at age 81.