Wang Ming - Mao's Betrayal (1974)

Wang Ming (May 23, 1904 - March 27, 1974) was a senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and member of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group.Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing what he saw as Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism lines.From November 1931 to November 1937, Wang worked and lived in Moscow as Director of the CCP's delegation to the Comintern. During that period, he was elected as Executive Commissioner, member of the Presidium, and Alternate General of the Comintern. This indicated his prominence and popularity in the Comintern.When Wang returned to Yan'an, he was admired by most of the CCP members as a talent of Marxism for his erudition and deep insights into Marxism and Leninism. Some senior CCP leaders, including Zhou Enlai and Peng Dehuai, showed their respect for Wang, which reportedly made Mao jealous and irritated.Wang was Secretariat for the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CCP which was in charge of the daily operation of CCP headquarters and General Secretary of the Yangtze Division of CCP.After the dissolution of the Comintern in 1941, in 1942 Mao launched the zhengfeng or "Rectification" Movement against dogmatism and empiricism. Wang became Mao's main target as representative of dogmatism and Zhou as representative of empiricism.In the later stages of the Zhengfeng campaign, Wang had to announce his confession and apology in a public meeting. It was only after Mao received a telegram from Georgi Dimitrov that he stopped the persecution. As a show of leniency and a sign of appeasement to Dimitrov (and the Soviet Union standing behind him), Mao placed Wang on the CCP's Central Committee in the 7th National Congress.after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he was elected as Director of the Central Legal Committee of the CCP and the Central People's Government. Before he was elected as Commissioner of Central Committee of CCP in the 8th National Congress of CPC in 1956, Wang went to Moscow for medical treatment and would never return.Wang wrote many articles denouncing the CCP during the conflict between the CCP and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. His memoirs did provide some useful information about CCP history. Above all, Wang was lucky to escape the persecution of the Cultural Revolution, and lived in peace till his death in 1974 in Moscow.unlike Mao, who was a pragmatist and politician who learned all his tactics from the Chinese history rather than from the Marxism and Leninism classics, Wang was a zealot of Marxism and Leninism. He might have longed for power, but his ultimate goal was the realization of communism.(From wikipedia)