Peng Zhen (1902–1997)

Chinese communist politician, mayor of Beijing 1951–66, who was purged at the start of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69). As mayor of the capital, Beijing, from 1951, Peng became an influential figure in the new People's Republic and, during the early 1960s, was singled out as one of Mao's ‘close comrades-in-arms’. However, the two fell out at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and by mid-1966, following criticisms of his ‘rightist’ leanings by the ultra-leftist Red Guards (he was accused by Mao Zedong of protecting party intellectuals who had been critical of the policies of his Great Leap Forward), Peng became the first Politburo member to be purged.

In December 1966 he was placed on public trial. He did not reappear in public again until January 1979, following the rise to power of the reformist Deng Xiaoping. Peng was fully rehabilitated, being restored to the Politburo (where he remained until 1987) and to his old post in Beijing, where he became known as a hardliner opposed to Deng Xiaoping's free-market reforms. In 1979 he helped draft China's first legal code. He served as chairman of the National People's Congress (parliament) standing committee until 1987 and, thereafter, until his death retained behind-the-scenes influence as a ‘party elder’.

Born in Shanxi province, into a poor peasant family, Peng joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1923, soon after its founding, and was imprisoned between 1929–35 by the Kuomintang (Guomindang, nationalist) regime. He then served as a political commissar during the 1937–45 war against Japan and first entered the CCP Politburo in 1945.

In November 1965, Peng tried to prevent the release of a critical article by Yao Wenyuan, ‘Hai Jui dismissed from office’, which marked the opening of the Cultural Revolution.