Tao Zhu

Tao Zhu (Chinese: 陶铸; pinyin: Táo Zhù; Wade–Giles: T'ao Chu; 16 January 1908 – 30 November 1969) was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and senior political leader who served as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. A veteran of the early Chinese Communist movement, he participated in the Nanchang and Guangzhou uprisings and held key leadership positions in various Chinese regions. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Tao held prominent roles including Vice Premier of the State Council, becoming a major figure in both party and military affairs. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution and placed under strict house arrest, dying in 1969 before being posthumously rehabilitated in 1978.

Tao Zhu was born on 16 January 1908 into a poor intellectual family in Langshu Village, Shidongyuan in Qiyang County, Hunan. In 1914, at the age of six, he followed his father Tao Tiezheng to study at a private school in Wuchang. In 1915, as Yuan Shikai intensified repression against revolutionary forces, Tao Tiezheng moved the entire family away from Wuhan and returned to their home county of Qiyang, where he and a close friend founded a modern-style school named Wenchang Pavilion Academy. Tao Zhu then continued his primary education at Wenchang, where his father served as headmaster.^[1] In 1918, Tao's father and his third paternal uncle were killed by Xiao Miaonan, a subordinate of the Beiyang warlord Wu Peifu. As a result of the family’s sudden poverty, he was forced to leave school. He was later introduced by relatives to study vocational skills for several years. In 1926, Tao entered the Fifth Class of the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou. In the same year, his classmates encouraged him to join the Chinese Communist Party.^[1]

In early April 1927, he was assigned to Wuhan to take part in the propaganda corps of the Political Department of the National Revolutionary Army. After the collapse of the First United Front between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, Tao joined the Guard Regiment of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army and subsequently participated in the Nanchang Uprising and the Guangzhou Uprising.^[1]

In 1929, Tao served concurrently as Secretary-General and Secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee, as well as Director of the Organization Department of the Fujian Provincial Committee. In May 1930, he personally led a twelve-man raid on Xiamen Prison, successfully rescuing more than forty imprisoned Communist Party members without any casualties on his own side. During the operation, more than twenty guards of the Kuomintang were killed. The incident, later known as the 'Xiamen Prison Break', caused a nationwide sensation at the time.^[1][2] Following his escape, Tao went travelled to Zhangzhou in 1930 to preside over the reconstruction of the CCP Southern Fujian Special Committee. In December of the same year, he presided over the formation of the first detachment of the Southern Fujian Red Army Guerrilla Force.^[3]

In 1933, Tao went to work at the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai, but was discovered by the Nationalist government and arrested. He was imprisoned in Nanjing by the Kuomintang government from 1933 to 1937. In 1937, following negotiations between Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying and the Kuomintang, Huang Wenjie carried out a prison rescue on 26 September, freeing seven prisoners, including Tao.^[1]

After his release from prison, Tao was immediately assigned to Hubei, where he served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee and concurrently as Head of the Propaganda Department. Following the Battle of Wuhan in October 1938, local guerrilla forces were organized in central Hubei and the Ezhong Guerrilla Base Area was established in the Dahong Mountains. From there, the forces launched a night attack on Japanese-occupied Yunmeng County. Subsequently, Tao Zhu joined the Jin–Yu–E New Fourth Army Detachment organized by Li Xiannian and served as the political commissar of the detachment. In 1940, Tao Zhu arrived in Yan’an. Shortly thereafter, he served successively as Secretary-General of the Central Military Commission, Secretary-General of the General Political Department and in 1943 as Head of the Propaganda Department.^[3] During the Rectification Campaign, as many other cadres that spent time in a KMT prison, he was suspected of being a spy and was put under investigation.^{[4]: 556–557}

In 1945, Tao Zhu attended the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The congress decided to launch guerrilla warfare in the Hunan–Guangxi–Vietnam Border Region. Tao served as deputy secretary of the party organization of the border region and as deputy political commissar of the Third Detachment of the southern Eighth Route Army.^[3] After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, Tao was ordered to proceed to Northeast China, traveling across the Taihang Mountains, Jizhong and Jidong regions to Shanhaiguan. In mid-September he arrived in Shenyang, where he was appointed Secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee and took part in the Siping Campaign, assuming responsibility for logistical organization, including the supply of ammunition and the evacuation and transport of wounded soldiers. In September 1947, he concurrently served as political commissar of the Seventh Column of the Northeast Democratic United Forces. After the Liaoshen Campaign, he was appointed Secretary of the Shenyang Municipal Party Committee and Deputy Director of the Shenyang Military Control Commission.^[3]

In January 1949, Tao left Shenyang together with the Northeast Field Army and became Deputy Director of the Political Department of the Northeast Field Army. He advanced to Shanhaiguan and participated in the Pingjin Campaign. On 21 January, in his capacity as plenipotentiary representative of the Pingjin Front Headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army, he entered Beijing to negotiate with Fu Zuoyi. The two sides announced the “Agreement on the Peaceful Settlement of the Beiping Question” the following day. Tao Zhu subsequently reorganized the surrendered Kuomintang forces in Beijing, thereby enabling the city to avoid destruction by war. In May 1949, Tao was appointed a member of the Central China Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and concurrently served as Deputy Director of the Political Department of the Central China Military Region and the Fourth Field Army, where he was responsible for taking over administration of three urban districts in Wuhan.^[3]

In October 1950, Tao was ordered by the Central People’s Government to go to Guangxi, where he presided over campaigns to suppress banditry, leading operations to eliminate remnant Kuomintang forces and local armed groups. and rapidly restore social order. One year later, he was transferred to work in Guangzhou. On 15 December 1951, Tao was appointed as Secretary of the South China Branch of the Central Committee and concurrently as Political Commissar of the South China Military Region. In May 1953, he concurrently assumed the post of Acting Chairman of the People’s Government of Guangdong Province.^[1]

Tao was appointed as Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee and Commander of the Guangzhou Military Region in 1953.^[1] He became implicated during the Gao Gang affair but was protected from criticism by Mao Zedong. In 1958, during the initial stages of the Great Leap Forward, he participated enthusiastically in the "anti-hoarding campaign" in Guangdong, believing that reported production figures were real, and that the observed food shortage was only due to peasants' hoarding. Within a year, he realized his mistake as his campaign was not able to discover stored food supplies in villages; in fact, most peasants were starving. In the 1959 Lushan Conference, he initially sympathized with Peng Dehuai in his criticism of the Great Leap Forward. However, after a harsh reaction from Mao Zedong, Tao Zhu switched sides and joined up in Mao's attack on "right-leaning opportunists", submitting a list of his own officials that he identified as "opportunists". Nonetheless, in Guangdong, Tao's government took steps to reverse the damage of the Great Leap Forward by expanding individual peasant ownership of land and allowing emigration to Hong Kong.^[5][6][7]

He later became First Secretary of the Central-South region, and in 1965 was moved to Beijing to replace Lu Dingyi as Director of the Central Propaganda Department when Lu was purged for not adhering strongly to the Maoist line. Tao was appointed as a Vice Premier of the State Council and Secretary of the Central Secretariat of the CPC, as well as an advisor to the Cultural Revolution Group in 1965. In May 1966, he was promoted to No. 4 in the party, behind Mao Zedong, Lin Biao and Zhou Enlai.^[1] That allowed his protégé, Zhao Ziyang, to take over as head of Guangdong.^[8] Tao became a member of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Eleventh Plenum in August 1966 at the outset of the Cultural Revolution.

Tao and Zhao were among the most enthusiastic of the early pro-Red Guard CPC leaders, but quickly fell from favour because they tried to control the excesses of the radical leftists led by Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing.^[9]

From June to July 1966, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping submitted to Mao Zedong a draft notice on how to conduct the Cultural Revolution in industry, transport, and construction, emphasizing phased implementation, leadership oversight, and the principle of “grasp revolution, promote production.” Mao approved the document and ordered its rapid distribution. Tao Zhu strongly supported this approach and later authored two People’s Daily editorials reiterating the same line. However, the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) accused him of “using production to suppress revolution.” During an enlarged Politburo meeting in 1966, he was attacked by Wang Li, a junior member of the CRG, for curtailing the revolution with the excuse of protecting production.^[10]: 69 In mid-December he was again attacked by the CRG for allegedly protecting Wang Renzhong. At first, he was protected by Mao Zedong, with Mao criticising Jiang Qing's actions, but the CRG continued their attacks. He defended treating the cases of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping as contradictions among the people; this caused Mao's displeasure and, despite the encouragement of Zhou Enlai and Lin Biao to adopt a more passive attitude, the attacks by the CRG persisted.^{[10]: 70–71} He was labelled "the proxy leader of Liu-and-Deng-roaders" and a "Khrushchev-style ambitionist" by leading radical leftists ^[4]: 557 and placed under house arrest in early 1967. Oddly enough, Mao continued criticising Chen Boda and Jiang Qing for excesses on handling his case, but nothing was done to protect him. From late 1966 into early 1967, Tao Zhu’s conflict with Jiang Qing and the CCRG intensified. He was publicly labeled the “largest conservative royalist” and an executor of the “bourgeois reactionary line.” In January 1967, following mass denunciations and demonstrations in Beijing, Tao lost his personal freedom and was placed under house arrest in Zhongnanhai. Zhou Enlai later stated publicly that there was no basis for distrusting Tao. Throughout 1967–1968, Tao was repeatedly subjected to struggle sessions and public criticism, including denunciations at a large-scale rally in Tiananmen Square in August 1968.^{[11][12][13][14]}

During a period of strict house arrest, Tao was diagnosed by doctors with gallbladder cancer, but was initially denied medical treatment. Zhou Enlai eventually intervened to arrange an operation, but by that time Tao's cancer had progressed to an incurable stage. On 15 October 1969, he was ordered to leave Beijing and relocate to Hefei, Anhui, where he had to fend for himself while suffering from severe illness and extreme mental distress, which left him bedridden. Tao died in hospital on 30 November 1969 at the age of 61.^[1] His family was not permitted to visit him during his final illness or after his death.^[15] He was posthumously exonerated in 1978, after Deng Xiaoping rose to power. He was remembered as a man of great integrity.^[16]

In 1932, while in Fujian, Tao married Zeng Zhi.^[17] The couple had a daughter, Tao Siliang, who was born in 1941 in Yan'an. Tao Siliang became a Chinese politician in the late 1980s, leading several government initiatives in public health and the import of Western medical technology.^[18]

Tao's former residence at his birthplace in Qiyang, Hunan, is currently a memorial hall honoring him. It is classified as a key national priority protected and a red tourism site in Hunan.^[19]