Mao Yuanxin
| Mao Yuanxin | |||||||||||
Mao Yuanxin as a child with Mao Zedong; c. 1940s
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| Traditional Chinese | 毛遠新 | ||||||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | 毛远新 | ||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Máo Yuǎnxīn |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | Mou4 jyun5 san1 |
Mao Yuanxin (born 14 February 1941) was the liaison between Chinese leader Mao Zedong and the Communist Party's Central Committee in the former's ailing years, when he was no longer able to regularly attend political functions. He was Mao Zedong's nephew and considered an ally to the hardline political faction known as the Gang of Four, and was arrested soon after Mao's death after a political struggle ensued, and was sentenced to prison.
Born on 14 February 1941 in Dihua (now Urumqi), Mao Yuanxin is the son of Mao Zemin, a younger brother of Mao Zedong. Mao Zemin had joined the Communist Party in 1922 and was executed 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. After Mao Yuanxin's mother remarried, he was brought up as part of his uncle's family.
In 1960, Mao Yuanxin was admitted to Tsinghua University, then transferred to the PLA Institute of Military Engineering 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. Mao was ailing from complications of Alzheimer's Disease and was no longer able to attend Central Committee meetings on a regular basis. As a result, Mao Yuanxin became the Chairman's liaison with the Politburo in 1975, and contributed to the temporary fall of Deng Xiaoping in 1976, as well as a series of other political manuoevers of the Gang of Four. [1]
During Mao Zedong's final years, Mao Yuanxin had a close relationship with the Gang of Four. Some historians believe that Mao Yuanxin relayed news to Mao that the April 1976 "Tiananmen Incident" was planned by Deng Xiaoping, which resulted in Mao's final break with Deng before the latter's purge. He was arrested along with other of their supporters following Mao's death in October 1976, and was sentenced to seventeen years in prison by court martial.
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