Deng Xiaoping was one of the most politically astute leaders within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After Mao Zedong’s death, he returned to power and became a symbol of China’s modernization through “correcting past mistakes” and “reform and opening up.” Yet Deng’s life was full of contradictions: he dared to rehabilitate Liu Shaoqi, who had been persecuted to death under Mao, but he never publicly condemned Mao himself. This paradox reflected Deng’s deeper calculation to safeguard power — to consolidate his rule, he had to strike a delicate balance between historical truth and political survival.
The most brutal party struggle: Mao ordered that Liu Shaoqi must not die in Beijing
Liu Shaoqi’s fate epitomized the ruthless nature of the CCP’s internal power struggles. Once Mao’s most trusted successor, Liu served as President of the People’s Republic of China and played a pivotal role in drafting the national constitution and directing economic recovery.
After the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s triggered nationwide famine, Liu boldly declared that the disaster was “30 percent natural, 70 percent man-made.” He called for policy corrections, the restoration of production, and an end to falsified reporting — all of which Mao perceived as a direct challenge to his authority.
By 1966, as the Cultural Revolution erupted, Mao sought to reclaim his dominance by systematically destroying Liu Shaoqi. He secretly instructed the Party leadership: “Strike down the biggest capitalist-roader, Liu Shaoqi!” Almost immediately, the Red Guard movement exploded across the country. Liu and his wife, Wang Guangmei, were publicly humiliated and tortured during countless struggle sessions. Beijing’s streets were plastered with slogans screaming, “Down with Liu Shaoqi!” The People’s Daily and Red Flag magazine ran long denunciations branding him a “traitor, spy, and enemy of the working class.”
Liu was stripped of all positions, placed under house arrest, and subjected to relentless interrogation and abuse. In 1968, a central Party meeting formally declared: “Expel Liu Shaoqi from the Party permanently and revoke all his posts.” The sitting President of China was thus destroyed by his own Party through fabricated charges and orchestrated violence.
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It remains one of the darkest scandals in CCP history and one of the most absurd political episodes in the modern world. While imprisoned, Liu developed pneumonia and diabetes but was denied medical care. According to later accounts, Mao ordered: “He must not die in Beijing.” On Nov. 12, 1971, Liu was secretly transferred to Kaifeng, where he died alone in custody. His body was cremated, his ashes stored anonymously, and official reports falsely claimed that “Liu Shaoqi died while betraying the Party.”
A founding father of the People’s Republic was erased by the very regime he helped build. This political purge laid bare the hypocrisy of the CCP’s revolutionary rhetoric — a system that called itself the “people’s government” could arbitrarily destroy its own head of state.
Deng Xiaoping’s rehabilitation of Liu Shaoqi: A ‘safe’ political move
When Deng Xiaoping returned to power in 1978, he faced a country shattered by the Cultural Revolution. Millions of officials and intellectuals had been persecuted, public confidence was broken, and the Party’s legitimacy lay in ruins. To rebuild both, Deng had to confront the mistakes of the Mao era.
Rehabilitating Liu Shaoqi became the most symbolic of these acts. Once Vice Chairman of the CCP and President of China, Liu had been personally chosen by Mao as his successor — only to die under false charges of being a “traitor and spy.” Restoring Liu’s reputation not only reassured the old guard but also sent a message that the new leadership had the courage to face its own past.
But Deng’s motives were not purely moral. He knew that many senior cadres had once been Liu’s allies. By rehabilitating Liu, Deng could reintegrate those political networks, turning them into a new base of support. In essence, Liu Shaoqi’s rehabilitation was both a correction of history and a calculated act of power consolidation.
Despite his private resentment toward Mao, Deng understood that openly condemning Mao would mean condemning the Party itself. The CCP’s legitimacy depended on the narrative that Mao had led the revolution and founded New China.
To acknowledge Mao as a tyrant would unravel the Party’s revolutionary myth and call its right to rule into question — an act of political suicide. Deng therefore adopted a middle path: separating Mao from the Cultural Revolution. He criticized Mao’s “errors in his later years” while preserving the myth of Mao as the nation’s founding leader. This compromise allowed Deng to promote reform while inheriting the revolutionary legitimacy that sustained the regime.
Acting against Mao — in Mao’s name
When Deng regained power, Mao’s influence still permeated the Party and the military. Though Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao were purged, Maoist ideology remained deeply entrenched. Openly denouncing Mao risked fracturing the Party; some factions could even rebel in the name of “defending Chairman Mao’s legacy.”
Deng’s response was gradual and symbolic. He abolished lifelong leadership, rebuilt legal and economic institutions, yet preserved Mao’s portrait, his statues, and his image in propaganda. It was a classic CCP balancing act — outwardly honoring a predecessor while quietly dismantling his system.
Deng understood the Party’s violent and self-preserving nature but allowed the myth to endure as a political instrument. A society traumatized by the Cultural Revolution, he believed, could not be rebuilt without a unifying symbol. The illusion of Mao as a “national hero” became a psychological anchor for a nation in recovery.
Thus, under “reform and opening up,” Mao’s face remained on Tiananmen Gate, and “Mao Zedong Thought” stayed enshrined in the Party constitution — not out of reverence, but as a shield for political stability. Deng turned Mao into a “harmless founding ancestor,” allowing his image to live on even as his doctrines were quietly dismantled.
Deng Xiaoping’s orchestration of the June Fourth Massacre revealed his ultimate priority: preserving the CCP — the “Red Demon” — at any cost. His rehabilitation of Liu Shaoqi served to rebuild support; his refusal to denounce Mao protected the Party’s legitimacy; his criticism of the Cultural Revolution cleared the path for reform; and his praise of Mao’s “achievements” kept the public from questioning the revolution itself.
In the ruthless arena of CCP politics, truth was expendable as long as it served the twin goals of “stability” and “development.” Through Liu Shaoqi’s rehabilitation, Deng showed the courage to correct past mistakes — yet his unwillingness to confront Mao’s legacy exposed his political fragility as a statesman.
Deng Xiaoping rebuilt China’s economy but did not restore the nation’s conscience. He led the people out of famine, yet sealed away historical truth — perhaps forever.
