In Beijing, a Communist Funeral for an Inconvenient Critic The New York Times
BEIJING — While alive, Li Rui was a decades long headache for Chinas ruling Communists — a former aide to Mao Zedong who became an obdurate, sharp tongued critic of the party. And the controversy did not stop in death, even for his funeral.
Hundreds of people gathered in Beijing on Wednesday to say goodbye to Mr. Li, four days after . But the funeral revealed tensions between the government, which wanted a brisk Communist ceremony, and mourners who celebrated Mr. Li as a renegade — one who, even as he lay dying, , the partys leader and Chinas president.
Mr. Lis daughter, Li Nanyang, stayed away from the ceremony at Babaoshan cemetery in the capitals west, where members of Chinas political elite are cremated and laid to rest. She said her father had not wanted a stiff, official funeral featuring cookie cutter eulogies or red symbolism that would suggest he had remained devoted to the party.
He wished to be remembered as Li Rui, not as a Communist Party cadre enjoying ministerial level official protocol, Ms. Li said by telephone from California, where she lives, before the funeral.
In conversations with her, Ms. Li said, her father had objected to the idea of lying in a coffin with the partys red banner on top, and to any eulogies and obituaries that praised him as a loyal Marxist.
My fathers wish about the party banner clearly was about rejecting the Communist Party, she said. The party banner symbolized the party occupying someones heart.
But in the end, Mr. Lis funeral followed party protocol.
Mourners who passed by his coffin said it was covered in the red banner of a Chinese Communist. Foreign journalists were not allowed inside the hall.
Wu Wei, a former official who knew Mr. Li, said that according to his widow and other family members, he had not objected in a will to a funeral along party lines. Therefore, he said, they would not go along with what Ms. Li said were her fathers wishes.
What I want to say now is that Li Rui, a centenarian, has departed, so let him quietly depart, his widow, Zhang Yuzhen, said in a written message distributed to mourners.
Even so, the funeral also became a rallying point for people who embraced his hope for a more democratic China.
In a reflection of Mr. Lis dual life — a former senior official who rebelled against the party he had joined in 1937 — the hundreds of mourners included aged former cadres, often stooped or in wheelchairs; graying sons and daughters of revolutionary veterans; prominent historians; dissidents; and ordinary citizens who came to know Mr. Li through his critical books about Mao.
A few paid tribute to Mr. Li by holding up handwritten signs, or by making brief speeches that praised him as a freethinker who had stood up to Mao — opposing the calamitous excesses of — and pressed Maos successors to take China in a more liberal direction. Police officers and officials kept watch, and tried to keep foreign reporters from talking to mourners throughout the morning.
He was someone who had the guts to speak up for the people, said Sheng Lianqi, a retired worker in his 70s, who said he never met Mr. Li but admired his writings.
He held up a handwritten sign that read in part: Li Ruis name will live in eternity. The ordinary people have sharp eyes and clear minds.
Mr. Li leapt into Maos inner circle in the late 1950s, serving as one of the chairmans secretaries until they had a falling out. Mr. Li was banished from office and suffered decades of imprisonment and persecution.
But like many other purged officials, he returned to work after the death of Mao and the end of his frenzied Cultural Revolution. Many officials admired Mr. Li as a reformist who tried to recruit young blood into the party and to redress the injustices of Maos era.
Even if Chinese leaders came to detest Mr. Lis constant criticisms, they discreetly paid their respects on Wednesday. Several people who passed by Mr. Lis coffin said they saw wreathes sent from Mr. Xi, as well as from Chinas premier, Li Keqiang, and other senior leaders, both retired and still in office.
But the party has mostly kept its distance and doused down talk of Mr. Li since he died on Saturday. State media have been silent about his passing, with none of the obituaries and tributes that usually accompany the death of a prominent official.
Many comments about his life and death on the Chinese internet were removed by censors. And, unusually, the party did not issue an official obituary, called a shengping in Chinese, before or at the funeral.
Party leaders had reason to be cautious. Even around the time of his 101st birthday last year, Mr. Li made sharp tongued criticisms of the party and of Mr. Xi.
Early on, Mr. Li had hoped that Mr. Xi would be a relatively moderate leader, and he was dismayed by , said Bao Tong, an ousted former official who was friends with Mr. Li.
His ideas became clearer and clearer, Mr. Bao said of Mr. Li by telephone. Originally he argued that the partys approach was wrong, but later he concluded that the whole direction of the country was wrong, not just the party, but the whole nation.
These days, the party restricts criticism of Mao. But Mr. Li seemed determined to have the last word. He donated many of his papers — including notebooks and letters from his decades in the party, and a diary he kept for more than 80 years — to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where scholars will eventually be able to study them, said his daughter, Ms. Li.
He said that we had to have a reckoning with Mao, or there would be endless trouble, Ms. Li said. Sure enough, thats the case now.
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