Xie Jingyi
谢静宜
1935–2017
- Confidential clerk to Mao Zedong (from 1959)
- Deputy Party Secretary, Tsinghua University (from 1968)
- Beijing Municipal Party Secretary (from 1973)
- Central Committee member, 10th CCP Congress (elected 1973)
Biography
From Confidential Clerk to the Worker Propaganda Team
Xie Jingyi was born in 1935 in Henan. She joined the People's Liberation Army in 1952 and, after graduating from the Central Military Commission's Confidential Affairs School in 1953, worked in the General Office's Confidential Bureau; from 1959 she served as a confidential clerk to Mao Zedong, working closely with him for years. In 1968 she entered Tsinghua University together with Chi Qun as part of the worker propaganda team drawn partly from Unit 8341, the Central Garrison Corps, becoming deputy Party secretary and deputy director of the Revolutionary Committee, while also serving as a standing committee member of Peking University's Party committee.
Beijing Party Secretary and the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius Campaign
From 1970, Xie served as a standing committee member of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee; in 1973 she was promoted to Beijing Party secretary and deputy director of the Beijing Revolutionary Committee, and was elected a Central Committee member at the 10th Party Congress, becoming an important figure in Beijing's actual power structure in the Cultural Revolution's later years. On 25 January 1974, she and Chi Qun delivered inflammatory speeches at the Capital Stadium mobilization rally for central Party organs and State Council departments, directing criticism to obliquely target Zhou Enlai and other central leaders, making her one of the campaign's main organizers in Beijing.
Arrest and Later Years
On 6 October 1976, the day the "Gang of Four" was arrested, Xie Jingyi was also taken into custody for investigation. In October 1977, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee expelled her from the Party. In January 1981, the Supreme People's Procuratorate decided not to prosecute her. She largely withdrew from public life afterward, saying in her later years, "I will always be a daughter of the Party." She died in Beijing on 25 March 2017, aged 81.
Related Events (2)
Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius Campaign
In January 1974, with Mao's approval, the Central Committee circulated "Lin Biao and the Way of Confucius and Mencius," launching the "Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius" campaign nationwide. Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Hongwen, and others used this politically charged campaign, framed around a supposed historical struggle between Legalists and Confucians, to obliquely attack Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying, and other central leaders — dubbed "criticizing the 'Duke of Zhou.'" The campaign spread from central organs to grassroots units; the "Liang Xiao" writing group at Tsinghua and Peking universities published a stream of polemical articles, and Jiang Qing personally promoted Xiaojinzhuang in Tianjin as a model village. The philosopher Liang Shuming publicly refused to criticize Confucius at a CPPCC study session, leaving behind his famous response, "the will of a common man cannot be taken from him." In July 1974 Mao openly criticized Jiang Qing and her allies for forming a "Gang of Four," and the campaign's momentum faltered; in January 1975 Deng Xiaoping was appointed First Vice-Premier, effectively bringing the campaign to a close.
politicalCriticize Deng, Counter the Right-Deviationist Reversal of Verdicts
In 1975, while Zhou Enlai lay gravely ill, Deng Xiaoping oversaw a "comprehensive rectification" of the country under Mao's "three directives," bringing marked improvement to Party and state work. When Deng declined to chair a resolution affirming a "seventy-thirty" assessment of the Cultural Revolution, Mao's nephew and Politburo liaison Mao Yuanxin reported his refusal to Mao, who approved a "greeting meeting" on 24 November 1975 that formally launched the "Criticize Deng, Counter the Right-Deviationist Reversal of Verdicts" campaign. After Zhou Enlai's death in January 1976, Hua Guofeng was named acting Premier, and the movement to attack Deng spread nationwide. Public mourning for Zhou at Tiananmen Square in April 1976 was suppressed as the "Tiananmen Incident," after which Deng was stripped of all his posts. The campaign effectively ended with the arrest of the "Gang of Four" in October 1976, and in July 1977 the 3rd Plenum of the 10th Central Committee restored Deng to all his positions.
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