Peng Zhen

Early Years and Underground Work in North China (1902–1937)

Peng Zhen, born Fu Maogong, was born on 12 October 1902 in Quwo, Shanxi. In 1922 he entered Shanxi Provincial No. 1 Middle School, joined a progressive youth society and took up Marxism; in 1923 he joined the Socialist Youth League and, the same year, the Chinese Communist Party, becoming one of the founders of the Party organisation in Shanxi. He went on to serve as secretary of the CCP Taiyuan branch and of the Youth League's Taiyuan committee, secretary of the Zhengding–Taiyuan Railway General Trade Union, and secretary of several district committees and head of organisation of the CCP Tianjin committee.

During the Agrarian Revolutionary War he worked underground in north China as a standing committee member, head of the workers' department and acting secretary of the CCP Shunzhi (Hebei) provincial committee, secretary of the Tangshan committee, acting secretary and then secretary of the Tianjin committee, and head of organisation of the CCP Northern Bureau.

The War against Japan and the Northeast (1937–1948)

During the war against Japan Peng was head of organisation of the Northern Bureau and secretary of the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei sub-bureau, and later in Yan'an became provost and vice-president of the Central Party School, head of the Central Organisation Department and head of the Central Urban Work Department. In August 1945 the First Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee added him to the Secretariat as an alternate member. After Japan's surrender he became secretary of the CCP Northeast Bureau and political commissar of the Northeast Democratic Allied Army, before returning to the centre as head of the Organisation Department and of the Policy Research Office.

Beijing and the Central Secretariat (1948–1966)

From December 1948 Peng was Party secretary of Beiping (Beijing), from February 1951 also mayor, and from June 1955 first secretary of the Beijing committee, leading the capital until May 1966. After 1949 he was also deputy director and Party secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of the Government Administration Council and in January 1953 became a member of the committee drafting the Electoral Law; from September 1954 to April 1959 he was vice-chairman and secretary-general of the Standing Committee of the First National People's Congress, holding the same posts in the Second NPC Standing Committee from 1959. After the Eighth Party Congress in September 1956 he joined the Central Secretariat, one of its seven members alongside Deng Xiaoping and Wang Jiaxiang.

The February Outline and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1978)

In February 1966 Peng and others drew up the "Outline Report on the Current Academic Discussion" (the February Outline). According to a Party-history entry on the CCP's official news site, his so-called "error" lay chiefly in drafting this outline and resisting the campaign against Wu Han's play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. The May 16 Notification adopted by an enlarged Politburo meeting revoked the February Outline; on 23 May the meeting suspended him as a secretary of the Secretariat and removed him as first secretary of the Beijing committee and mayor, and he, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi and Yang Shangkun were branded an "anti-Party clique".

He was subjected to years of struggle sessions and detention. On 10 April 1967, at a rally of some 300,000 people at Tsinghua University to denounce Wang Guangmei, Peng, Lu Dingyi, Bo Yibo and others were paraded alongside her. The same Party-history entry describes the "Peng, Luo, Lu and Yang" affair as the first frame-up engineered by the Lin Biao clique during the Cultural Revolution; the Central Committee formally rehabilitated Peng in February 1979.

Building the Legal System and the National People's Congress (1979–1988)

In 1979 Peng became chairman of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee. On 26 June he presented seven draft laws to the Second Session of the Fifth NPC — the Criminal Law, the Criminal Procedure Law, the Electoral Law, the Organic Law of Local People's Congresses and Governments, the organic laws of the people's courts and procuratorates, and the law on Chinese–foreign joint ventures — saying that "the people long for law" and that "to realise socialist democracy fully, the socialist legal system must be gradually perfected". In July he was elected vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Fifth NPC, adding the post of acting secretary-general in November. He went on to head the CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and in March 1980 became chairman of the central committee guiding the trials of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing cliques.

In September 1980 the Third Session of the Fifth NPC set up the Constitution Revision Committee with Peng as a vice-chairman; from mid-July 1981 he took over from Hu Qiaomu in directing its secretariat, and on 26 November 1982 he reported to the Fifth Session of the Fifth NPC on behalf of the committee, stating that "the general guiding ideology" of the revision was the Four Cardinal Principles. He was a member of the Politburo of the 11th and 12th Central Committees. On 18 June 1983 the First Session of the Sixth NPC elected him Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee; he left the Politburo after the 13th Party Congress in 1987 and was succeeded as chairman by Wan Li in April 1988.

Death

Peng Zhen died of illness in Beijing on 26 April 1997, aged 95.