Update 10/18/06: Richard Spencer has a great post on his foreign correspondent’s blog for the Telegraph on press coverage of Wang’s death in Beijing as well as some more details and photos from Liu and Wang’s struggles during the GPCR.
Via CDT: Wang Guangmei, widow of former Chinese president Liu Shaoqi, passed away last week at her home in Beijing. Wang and her husband were two of the more tragic figures in the Cultural Revolution.
As the leader of the ‘pragmatists’ as well as the head of the government, Liu made an excellent lightning rod for the wrath of Mao. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and the other grown-ups in the CCP suggested sweetly that Mao ‘retire’ and work on his memoirs. The new leadership then set about strengthening China’s economy and proposed a series of policies not unlike those Deng Xiaoping would put forward 25 years later. The Chairman actually did step aside (sort of) but as he found himself and his ideas increasingly irrelevant, Mao became agitated, claiming that if he was sidelined for too long he would do what he did best: raise up a peasant army and take to