Rao Shushi

Early Years and Underground Work (1903–1939)

Rao Shushi, who also used the names Liang Pu and Zhao Jiansheng, was born in Linchuan, Jiangxi, in 1903. He entered Shanghai University in the autumn of 1922 and took part in the labour movement; according to the Biographies of Figures in CCP History, he joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1925. After the defeat of the Great Revolution he did underground work in the northeast, where he worked alongside Liu Shaoqi in the Manchurian provincial committee; according to an article in the online edition of Twenty-First Century in 2004, he was held by the Nationalist authorities for a year in 1930–31 and then did trade-union work in Shanghai. In the autumn of 1935 he went to the Soviet Union as the All-China Federation of Trade Unions' representative to the Red International of Labour Unions.

The Southeast Bureau, the New Fourth Army and Central China (1939–1945)

During the war against Japan Rao returned to China as deputy secretary of the CCP Southeast Bureau, working at the New Fourth Army headquarters in southern Anhui. During the Southern Anhui Incident of January 1941, when the army's political commissar Xiang Ying briefly left his post, Rao and the army commander Ye Ting cabled the Centre in the bureau's name; on 12 January Mao Zedong told the New Fourth Army that "all military and political actions are to be the joint responsibility of Commander Ye and Rao Shushi". Captured by Nationalist troops on 16 January, he managed to escape; according to an article by Wen Xiang in 2010, a 1955 public-security investigation established that after his capture he "did not turn traitor or betray comrades".

After the CCP Central China Bureau was formed in May 1941 he became its deputy secretary, and when Liu Shaoqi returned to Yan'an in September 1942 he became acting secretary of the bureau and acting political commissar of the New Fourth Army. In 1943 the "Huanghuatang incident" between him and the army's acting commander Chen Yi led to Chen's departure for Yan'an. At the Seventh Party Congress in 1945 he was elected to the Central Committee.

East China (1945–1952)

After Japan's surrender Rao became secretary of the CCP East China Bureau, also serving from 1946 as political commissar of the Shandong Military Region; after the founding of the People's Republic he was a member of the Central People's Government, first secretary of the East China Bureau and political commissar of the East China Military Region. On 2 December 1949 the Central People's Government Council appointed him chairman of the East China Military and Administrative Committee. According to the Twenty-First Century article, Mao had intended Chen Yi for the post, and Rao later admitted in a self-criticism that on this matter he "did not wait for the Centre's decision, but had the East China Bureau propose that I take it".

The Organisation Department and the Gao–Rao Affair (1953–1955)

In early 1953 Rao became head of the CCP Central Organisation Department. At the second national conference on organisational work in September–October 1953, he and Zhang Xiushan of the Northeast Bureau and others levelled accusations against the department's deputy head An Ziwen. After the Fourth Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee in February 1954, the Secretariat held separate meetings on the questions of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi. On 31 March 1955 the National Conference of the CCP adopted a resolution on the "anti-Party alliance" of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi, expelling Rao from the Party and calling him "the principal ally of Gao Gang's anti-Party conspiracy", who "while working in East China pursued a rightist policy of capitulation to capitalists, landlords and rich peasants in town and country" and, after moving to the Centre, "formed an anti-Party alliance with Gao Gang and used his post as head of the Central Organisation Department to launch a struggle aimed against leading comrades of the Centre".

Explaining to the conference why an "alliance" existed, Mao cited among other things Rao's remark that "from now on the Central Organisation Department should take Guo Feng as its core". The historian Lin Yunhui, drawing on Zhang Xiushan's memoir and Guo Feng's 1954 statement, argues that Zhang's speech at the conference "was not pre-arranged between Gao Gang and Rao Shushi", that the claim about making Guo Feng the department's "core" was "fabricated out of nothing", and that the notion of a Gao–Rao "alliance" therefore "deserves re-examination".

Arrest, Detention and Afterwards (1955–1975)

On 1 April 1955 Rao was further arrested by the Ministry of Public Security on counter-revolutionary charges in connection with the Yang Fan case; Pan Hannian was arrested soon afterwards, in what became the so-called "Rao–Pan–Yang counter-revolutionary clique" case. In 1956 Mao said in "On the Ten Major Relationships" that "people like Hu Feng, Pan Hannian and Rao Shushi will not be executed". According to the Twenty-First Century article, in 1965 Rao developed schizophrenia in prison and was released on parole to a farm. He died of illness in Beijing on 2 March 1975, aged 72.

The Gao–Rao case was not among those reversed after the Cultural Revolution. In 2002 the Biographies of Figures in CCP History, edited by the Research Society for Figures in CCP History, included an entry on Rao whose preface stated: "Rao Shushi joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1925, long engaged in secret work, and made contributions to the development of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army and to China's liberation and construction."