Kang Sheng
康生
1898–1975
- Head, Central Department of Social Affairs (from 1939)
- Adviser, Central Cultural Revolution Group (1966–1969)
- Member, Politburo Standing Committee (1969–1975)
- Vice Chairman of the CCP Central Committee (1973–1975)
Biography
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 On 16 October 1980, the Party Central Committee posthumously expelled him from the Party, rescinded his eulogy, and published an account of his offenses.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.
Related Events (2)
Persecution and Death of Liu Shaoqi
In August 1966, following the 11th Plenum of the 8th Central Committee, head of state Liu Shaoqi was made the Cultural Revolution's primary target, his Party rank plunging from second to eighth. Over the next two years he and his wife Wang Guangmei were subjected to home raids, struggle sessions, physical abuse, and imprisonment, as a special case group fabricated evidence through torture to brand him a "renegade, traitor, and scab." In October 1968, the 12th Plenum expelled him from the Party "forever"; in November 1969, gravely ill and denied medical care, he died alone at a secret detention site in Kaifeng, Henan. In 1980 the Party posthumously rehabilitated him, honoring him as "a great Marxist and proletarian revolutionary."
politicalThe Ninth National Congress of the CCP
Held in Beijing from 1 to 24 April 1969, the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party formally endorsed the Cultural Revolution and wrote Lin Biao into the Party constitution as Mao Zedong's designated successor. The new Central Committee elected on 28 April was dominated by Cultural Revolution Group members and military figures aligned with Lin Biao, with fewer than a fifth of its 279 members and alternates carried over from the previous Central Committee.
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