Li Zuopeng

From Cipher Clerk to Army Commander (1914–1949)

Li Zuopeng was born in Ji'an, Jiangxi, in 1914. According to the People's Daily directory of the PLA's founding marshals and generals, he joined the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in 1930, the Communist Youth League in 1931 and the Communist Party in 1933; he worked as a cipher clerk in the confidential section of the Central Military Commission and as a staff officer and section chief in its Second Bureau, and fought in all five campaigns against the Nationalist "encirclements" of the Central Soviet and on the Long March. In 1938 he studied at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University; from 1939 he headed the reconnaissance and then the operations section of the Eighth Route Army 115th Division headquarters, and later the staff office of the Shandong Military Region.

After Japan's surrender he went to the Northeast, serving as head of the staff office of the Northeast Democratic United Army's general headquarters, deputy commander and chief of staff of its 1st Column, and deputy commander of the 6th Column and commander of the 16th Division; he took part in the summer, autumn and winter offensives of 1947 in the Northeast and in the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns. In 1949 he commanded the Fourth Field Army's 43rd Army in its advance into central-south China.

Military Schools and the Navy (1949–1968)

After 1949 he was chief of staff of the 15th Army Group, deputy president of the Central-South Military and Political University, and commandant of the 4th and then the 1st Senior Infantry School; in 1955 he was made a lieutenant general (zhongjiang) and entered the Military Academy. From 1957 he served successively as head of the Army Training Department of the General Training Supervision Department, head of the Military Training Department of the General Staff, and deputy commander and first political commissar of the Navy. In 1968 he became deputy chief of the General Staff while remaining political commissar of the Navy, and that March joined the reorganised CMC Administrative Group.

The 1981 judgment of the Special Court found that in April 1968 Li falsely accused He Long and others of "usurping the army and opposing the Party", and that he named, falsely accused and persecuted 120 cadres in the Navy.

The Ninth Congress, Lushan and 13 September (1969–1971)

At the First Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee in April 1969 Li was elected to the Politburo. According to the Central Committee's 1972 document "The Struggle to Smash the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique's Counter-Revolutionary Coup (Material No. 3)", on 24 August 1970, during the Second Plenum at Lushan, he told the Central-South group that "some people oppose mentioning Vice-Chairman Lin in the constitution" and that "there is a wind blowing in the Party"; that evening he wrote to Ye Qun proposing that the written texts of their two speeches be kept "off the record in the bulletin, held in reserve". The document also reproduces a letter of 13 May 1970 from Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng and Qiu Huizuo to Ye Qun pledging to "forever remember" her "profound kindness in educating us".

On the night of 12 September 1971 the Centre, investigating why Trident aircraft No. 256 had been sent to Shanhaiguan airfield, ordered that it could take off only on the joint instruction of four people: Zhou Enlai, Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian and Li Zuopeng. The judgment found that when Li passed the order to the naval aviation station at Shanhaiguan at 11.35 p.m. and again at 12.06 a.m. on the 13th, he twice altered it to "take-off is permitted on the instruction of any one of the four leaders"; that when the station commander Pan Hao asked him at 12.20 a.m. "what should we do if the plane takes off by force?", he "took no measures whatsoever to prevent the take-off"; and that afterwards he had the record of the telephone reports altered. The duty officer's statement reproduced in the same Central Committee document records that after the incident Li's secretary telephoned to ask for a correction, saying that Li had ordered take-off only "on the joint instruction of the four leaders", and that the duty officer stood by the original record.

Trial and Later Years (1971–2009)

In 1973 Li was expelled from the Party and removed from all posts inside and outside it. From November 1980 he was tried by the Second Tribunal of the Special Court of the Supreme People's Court, defended by the lawyers Zhang Sizhi and Su Huiyu. In January 1981 the Special Court convicted him of organising and leading a counter-revolutionary clique, conspiring to overthrow the government, and false accusation, sentencing him to seventeen years' imprisonment and five years' deprivation of political rights. The court's findings on his individual responsibility were confined to three matters: the false accusations against He Long, the persecution of Navy cadres, and altering the order and allowing the aircraft to take off. In a 2006 interview with Radio Free Asia, Zhang Sizhi said that the defence had "refuted" the allegations that Li went south to Guangzhou to set up a so-called second Central Committee and that he plotted to murder Mao Zedong.

According to an article in Dangshi zongheng (no. 10, 2010; reprinted in People's Digest), Li was later released on medical parole; asked by the authorities to change his name, he agreed only after repeated persuasion to use the alias "Li Ming". In his later years he wrote memoirs totalling about a million characters, including a book on Lin Biao, a volume of battlefield recollections and two volumes on the Cultural Revolution; when it was suggested that he publish under another name or abroad, he replied: "I, Li Zuopeng, am Li Zuopeng — I will not change my name", and "I am Chinese; I will never publish abroad." Li Zuopeng died on 3 January 2009; the article gives his age as 95.

Official Verdict and Scholarship

The People's Daily directory of founding generals states that during the Cultural Revolution he "took part in Lin Biao's conspiracy to usurp the supreme power of the Party and the state".

In The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996), Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun argue that the extreme sensitivity of the case produced a distorted official account and that the testimony of leading figures at the 1980–81 trial is "of questionable validity".