Mao Yuanxin

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Mao Yuanxin (Chinese: 毛远新; pinyin: Máo Yuǎnxīn) (February, 1941 －), was a nephew of Mao Zedong who was important in Mao Zedong's last years.

Born in 1941, Mao Yuanxin was the son of Mao Zemin, a younger brother of Mao Zedong. Mao Zemin had joined the Communist Party in 1922 and was killed by a warlord in 1943. Sheng Shicai, governor of Xinjiang, had been aligned to the Chinese Communist Party and had at first welcomed Mao Zemin, but switched allegiance after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Mao Yuanxin's mother was also arrested, and Yuanxin was born in jail. ^[1] After Mao Yuanxin's mother remarried, he was brought up as part of his uncle's family.

Mao Yuanxin studied at the Harbin Military Engingeering College and became politically important during the Cultural Revolution. In 1973 he became party secretary of Liaoning province and political commissar of Shenyang Military Region in 1974. ^[2] He became Mao Zedong's liason with the Politburo in 1975, ^[3] and contributed to the temporary fall of Deng Xiaoping in 1975.[2]

During Mao Zedong's final years, Mao Yuanxin became an ally of the 'Gang of Four'.^[4] He was arrested along with other of their supporters and was sentences to seventeen years in prison.^[5] Li Zhisui says that he trying to bring troops from the Northeast to Beijing.

Mao Yuanxin faded from public view after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Little is known about him in the West. For example, Time Magazine reported in 1995 that he "now labors in an obscure Shanghai factory"^[6]. He had been released from prison in October 1993 after serving his sentence. He changed his name to "Li Shi" (李实) and worked in the Shanghai Automobile Industry Quality Testing Institute. He retired in 2001, and receives a pension in accordance with his "senior technician" qualification. He also receives treatment as a "martyr's family member" because of his father's manner of death.

[edit] References

1. ^ Page 11 -12, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, by Li Zhisui, Arrow Books 1996
2. ^ Biographical Sketches in The Private Life of Chairman Mao
3. ^ Glossary of Names and Identities in Mao's Last Revolution, by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Harvard University Press 2006.
4. ^ Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, Han Suyin, 1994. page 413.
5. ^ Biographical Sketches in The Private Life of Chairman Mao
6. ^ Time Magazine Online [1]

[edit] External links

• Role mentioned in the obituary of Ren Zhongyi
• Role mentioned in 'Rise and Fall of Deng Xiaoping' in an on-line history of the Cultural Revolution