Liu Shaoqi

The next “state chairman” was Liu Shaoqi, who died in detention during the Cultural Revolution, a year after being stripped of all his titles for alleged disloyalty to Mao.

But Yao’s true target in that instance was Liu Shaoqi, China’s head of state, who, along with Deng Xiaoping, the Party’s secretary-general, was seen as something of a reformer.

Two years later, Deng issued the “Resolution on the Rehabilitation of Comrade Liu Shaoqi” and declared him “a great Marxist and proletarian revolutionary.”

In my town, there was a Cultural Revolution activist who would almost every day be at the forefront of some demonstration or other, often being first to raise his fist and shout “Down with Liu Shaoqi!”

Liu Shaoqi, one of Mao’s designated successors, died on a prison floor in his own filth.