Li Rui’s Diary｜PDF｜Read Online

The “Li Rui Diaries” are recognized by the academic community as an “invaluable treasure” for the study of modern Chinese history, and their uniqueness lies in the fact that they provide an extremely rare perspective on major historical events from the inside of the CCP’s high-level leadership.

Detailed introduction:

• Recording time: Spanning over 80 years (1938 – Li Rui’s death in 2019).
• Content form: Mainly Li Rui’s handwritten diaries, but also including letters, meeting minutes, work notes, poems, and photos.
• Current location: The Hoover Institution at Stanford University, USA.

Core value:

Li Rui served as Mao Zedong’s part-time secretary and later as the Executive Vice Minister of the Organization Department of the Central Committee, and this identity of “high-level party member” + “historical witness” gives his diaries extremely high historical value:

• “Living fossils” of high-level operations: Records the discussion process of many major decisions within the CCP, the interactions, suspicions, and power shifts among high-level figures.
• On-site records of key historical events:
  • The Great Leap Forward and the Lushan Conference: Records Mao Zedong’s role in policy-making, and the details of Li Rui’s dismissal at the 1959 Lushan Conference for supporting Peng Dehuai.
  • The Tiananmen Square Incident: This is one of the most famous parts of the diary. In the early morning of June 4, 1989, Li Rui witnessed the process of the army entering the city from the balcony of his home in Muxidi. He called it a “black weekend” in his diary and detailed the scenes of soldiers firing at civilians and armored vehicles crashing into obstacles.
  • Criticism of the system in his later years: Records his thoughts on constitutional democracy and his sharp evaluations of subsequent leadership (including the Xi Jinping era).