Peng Dehuai - Posthumous Rehabilitation

Posthumous Rehabilitation

The leadership of the CCP successfully concealed Peng's death for several years, and successfully convinced the only civilian witness, Peng Meikui, not to tell anyone of Peng's death. Peng's former bodyguards did not learn of Peng's death until 1976. Peng's wife, Pu Anxiu, had also been arrested by Red Guards and "sentenced" to a "labour reform camp", where she remained until 1975, when she was released to settle as a farmer in North China. She did not find out about Peng's death until she was allowed to return to Beijing, in 1978, when the news was first publicly disclosed.

Mao died in 1976; and, following a brief power struggle, Peng's former ally, Deng Xiaoping, emerged as the paramount leader of China. One of Deng's first political goals was to rehabilitate Party members who had been condemned and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. By 1978, many people, led by General Huang Kecheng (who had been a comrade of Peng's since Peng rebelled against the Kuomintang in 1928) were agitating for Peng's posthumous rehabilitation. The Chinese government formally reversed the "erroneous" verdict of Peng during the Third Plenum of the Eleventh CCP Central Committee, held from December 18–22, 1978. Deng gave a speech announcing Peng's rehabilitation, stating:

"He was courageous in battle, open and straightforward, incorruptible and impeccable, and strict towards himself. He cared about the masses, and was never concerned about his own advantage. He was never afraid of difficulties, neither of carrying heavy loads. In his revolutionary work, he was dilligent, honest, and he had an utmost sense of responsibility."

Deng's speech also stated that Mao's decision in 1959, which vilified Peng as the leader of an "anti-Party clique", had been "entirely wrong", and that it had "undermined intra-Party democracy". From January 1979, the Party encouraged historians and those who had known Peng to produce many memoirs, historical stories, and articles praising and remembering Peng. In 1980 the Intermediate Court of Justice in Wuhan sentenced Wang Dabin, the Red Guard who had directed Peng's arrest in 1966, to nine years in prison for "the persecution and torture of Comrade Peng Dehuai". In 1986, an "autobiography", Memoirs of a Chinese Marshal, was compiled from various documents that Peng had written about his life. Much of the material for Memoirs was drawn from the "confessions" that Peng had written during the Cultural Revolution, and the book focused on Peng's early life, before the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1988, China released a set of stamps to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of Peng's birth. In modern China, Peng is considered one of the greatest military leaders of the twentieth century.