A trial to determine ownership of a diary written by Li Rui, a former secretary to China’s communist state founder Mao Zedong and a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, began this week in Oakland, California.
The trial will determine whether Stanford University should keep the diary, donated by Lee’s daughter, or whether it should be handed over to Lee’s widow, Chang Yu-chen’s second wife, who is suing to have the documents returned.
The university’s lawyers and U.S.-based China scholars suspect Zhang’s case is being funded by Chinese authorities seeking to control the sensitive historical narrative about Mao and the Communist party.
“Li Rui is a living encyclopedia of the 80-year history of the Chinese Communist Party,” Cai Xia, a U.S.-based former professor at Beijing’s Central Party School, said in an emailed response to VOA Mandarin. “The Chinese Communist Party knows that the diary is full of history that should never see the light of day. Beijing will fight to get it back at all costs.”
10 million words
Throughout his life, Li wrote about 10 million words in diaries, letters and memos, including criticism of Mao, the Communist Party and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
On June 4, 1989, when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the military to clear pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, if not thousands, Li wrote, “I was restless all day and always wanted to cry.”
On January 9, 2010, he wrote that “Mao’s actions are completely contrary to the universal values of freedom, democracy, scientific progress and the rule of law.”
Li also criticized China’s current leader, President Xi Jinping.
In 2018, as China began to remove term limits for President Xi Jinping, he cited foreign media reports in his diary that “democracy is dead.”
Interviewed by VOA Mandarin from his hospital bed that year, Li expressed disappointment in Xi’s “low educational standard.”
Li’s daughter, Li Nanyang, a U.S. citizen, said she donated about 40 boxes of documents to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and became a visiting scholar there before his death in 2019, in accordance with his will.
Lee’s widow, Zhang, has alleged that Lee Nanyang exercised “undue influence” over her father and denies any plot to conceal anything other than “personal” information in the documents. She also said Stanford University could make copies of the documents, but researchers at the Hoover Institution argue that copies are not as reliable as the originals.
Zhang sued Stanford University and Li Nanyang in Beijing’s Xicheng District Court in 2019, and the court awarded Zhang ownership of the documents and ordered him to return them to the university within 30 days. Li Nanyang did not attend the trial.
Stanford University filed a “quiet ownership claim” against Zhang in the United States that same year, asking a federal court to intervene and recognize the university’s rights to Li Rui’s archives.
Zhang hired an American lawyer and filed a countersuit against Stanford University and Li Nanyang in 2020, alleging that Li Nanyang had “stole” personal information and “national treasures.” Zhang accused Li Rui’s daughter and the university of “copyright infringement,” “publication of private facts,” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Zhang’s lawyers denied in 2021 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had ever supported Zhang, despite the remaining allegations.
“That’s what I’ve believed all along,” Perry Link, a distinguished China scholar and distinguished professor at the University of California, Riverside, told reporters outside the courtroom the day before he was due to testify. “I will also be making the case in my testimony that the Chinese Communist Party is behind this.”
Link added that the party’s role “is now very clear, so I don’t think there’s any need to make such an allegation. That said, (Zhang) himself has said he has neither the funds nor the will to sue.”
Suspicion
On the second day of the trial, Li Nanyang reiterated her claim that her father had handed the diary over to Stanford University of his own volition.
Li Nanyang initially expressed her doubts about the incident in a group email to friends, but her comments were later picked up by several Chinese media outlets in May. She said she believed the Chinese Communist Party and its government were only interested in “covering up the truth” to “ensure that the image of the Communist Party is always ‘great, glorious and correct’ and that it is always capable of governing.”
VOA Mandarin reached out to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco for a response but had not received one at the time of publication.
Kicked out of the party
Born in 1917, Li Rui was an enthusiastic activist in the revolution that led to the Communist Party of China taking power in 1949. In the mid-1950s, he briefly served as secretary to Mao Zedong, but was expelled from the party for disagreements and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Released in 1979, three years after Mao’s death, Li Rui rejoined the party and was promoted to executive deputy director of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, responsible for selecting Communist Party cadres.
In his later years, he was an open critic of the Chinese Communist Party, calling for political reform and democratic constitutionalism, and was perceived within the party as a liberal figure despite his often harsh criticisms.
The trial in Auckland continues until the end of the month.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
