Deng Liqun

Deng Liqun (November 27, 1915 – February 10, 2015) was a Chinese politician and theorist who was one of the leading figures of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the 1980s, most well known for his involvement with the party's Propaganda work.

Deng Liqun was born into a wealthy land-owning family in Guidong County, Hunan province, in 1915.

His father passed the imperial civil service examination, but never became an official, instead opening the first Western-style school in the county.

Deng's elder brother became the chairman of the Nationalist provincial government.

Deng went to Beiping (today Beijing) in 1935, enrolling first at the Peking Academy, then entered Peking University a year later, where he studied economics and became a devoted student activist.

He took part in the December 9th Movement.

He left college that year for Yan'an, Shaanxi, the wartime de facto center of the CCP, to join the party and follow Mao.

Deng was born in Guidong County, Hunan province, and joined the CCP in 1936.

He came from an intellectual family and joined the party out of intellectual commitment.

He was often referred to as "Little Deng", to be distinguished from Deng Xiaoping (no relation), the "Old Deng".

During the 1950s, Deng assisted Wang Zhen in quelling resistance to CCP rule in Xinjiang.

Deng played a major role in the suppression of local rebellions and in enacting land reforms in the vast western region.

However, officials of the CCP's Northwest Bureau became alarmed at the breakneck pace of the reforms and the extent to which violence and other means of coercion were used as a means to solidify the party's hold on power.

Seeing the situation unfold, Mao removed both Wang Zhen and Deng Liqun from their positions in Xinjiang for fear that their tactics may alienate ethnic minorities, particularly Tibetan religious leaders, who were reluctant to embrace rule by the CCP.

Later, Deng returned to Beijing to serve as secretary to President Liu Shaoqi, and the deputy chief editor of the party's theory publication Red Flag.

Deng was purged during the Cultural Revolution as a "capitalist roader" because he was Liu Shaoqi's secretary.

He went through interrogation in Shijiazhuang.

He was politically rehabilitated in 1974, serving on the State Council's political research office under Deng Xiaoping.

As the post-Mao CCP liberalized and embraced market-oriented economic reforms, Deng became one of its most outspoken critics.

While Deng Liqun was not fond of Mao-era political fanaticism and rural collectivization policies and was a supporter of Deng Xiaoping in the latter days of the Cultural Revolution, he believed that the party under Deng Xiaoping had strayed too far from orthodox Marxist–Leninist ideals and attempted to tighten control over ideology.

In 1975, Deng Liqun was assigned as a senior member of the Party Research Office, subsequently the Political Research Office (predecessor of the Central Policy Research Office) in the State Council, along with Hu Qiaomu, Yu Guangyuan, Wu Lengxi, Hu Sheng, Xiong Fu and Li Xin.

"When Deng Xiaoping returned to power in 1977, Deng Liqun joined him and drafted some of Deng Xiaoping's speeches."

Deng Liqun was vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences between 1978 and 1980.

In these roles, Deng "provided crucial resources for the founding of the Rural Development Group."

Deng later took on a series of offices which solidified his role as a leading CCP theorist of the post-Mao era, including the head of the Policy Research Office of the Central Secretariat from 1979.

Purged during the Cultural Revolution, Deng emerged in the 1980s as one of the most vocal members of the hardline wing of the party in the lead-up of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

He advocated for the orthodox Communist-style planned economy and spoke out against market-oriented economic reforms and political liberalization.

Deng mobilized internal opposition to liberal reforms in the early 1980s through his position as chief of Propaganda and ideology.

Within the circle of Deng-era intelligentsia, Deng is known to the spokesperson of the conservative Left, in a fierce rivalry with the more liberal-minded Yu Guangyuan, who drafted Deng Xiaoping's Third Plenum Speech on reform and opening-up, and a prominent ally of Hu Yaobang.

As a result of Deng Liqun's interventions, while market forces were being unleashed on the economy and the government began courting foreign investment, the ideological realm of the country continued to maintain a conservative tone, especially in its wariness to embrace Western-style ideas.

He was head of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party from 1982 to 1985.

On 4 June 1983, during a speech at the Central Party School, Deng criticized concepts increasingly popular in China such as "alienation" and "humanism", and called on Party cadres to "eliminate spiritual pollution".

He continued by saying while some people opposed the "Four Cardinal Principles" (the principles of upholding the socialist path, the people's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the CCP, and Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought) outright, others were more discrete, bringing ideas from the West and labeling them as "new".

He continued by saying "All of our comrades engaged in Propaganda work have a responsibility to adopt a Marxist–Leninist attitude, carefully analyze all kinds of erroneous trends of thought, and work hard to eliminate spiritual pollution".

With his speech, Deng Liqun effectively gave rise to the term "spiritual pollution" in Chinese politics.

In another speech, Deng denounced "spiritual pollution in all ideological fields" and asserted improvements in "material civilization" required accompanying developments in "spiritual civilization".

After Deng Xiaoping launched the campaign against spiritual pollution by calling for "spiritual civilization" to be "cleaned up" in a speech in October, Deng Liqun took a harsher line, calling for it to be "eliminated".

Deng Liqun's line quickly became dominant throughout state media, causing an intensification of the campaign in social, political and ideological fronts.

During the campaign, Deng Liqun has been described as "the conservatives' primary hatchet man", reportedly stemming from his antipathy to General Secretary Hu Yaobang, the party's leading reformist at the time.

He retreated from active politics in 1987, after failing to secure enough internal support to gain a seat on the CCP Politburo, which was partly attributed to his hardline ideological stance, but continued to agitate for the hardline line.