Legacy of ‘rightist’ editor Chu Anping remains controversial five decades after his disappearance

The memorial service of prominent “rightist” intellectual, Chu Anping, nearly five decades after his disappearance during the Cultural Revolution, showed his legacy remains a sensitive issue for the authorities, according to scions of Chu’s contemporaries.

Chu, former chief editor of the Guangming Daily, then a liberal newspaper, became one of the earliest victims of Mao Zedong’s anti-rightist movement in 1957. He was persecuted again during the Cultural Revolution and disappeared without trace in September, 1966. The only clue to his fate was a note he left behind saying “I have gone”.

As his body was never found, speculation about his whereabouts ran rife for years – some believed he was beaten to death by Red Guards, who regularly dragged him out to be tortured, but his son, Chu Wanghua, believes he committed suicide.

On Monday, at Chu’s home county in Yixing county, Jiangsu province, several of his personal effects – some photographs and a book – were placed in an urn and buried in a symbolic grave by his three sons, the Jiangnan Evening News reported.

“Today is not a sad day. Today is a day of commemoration and remembrance,” Chu Wanghua, a composer and pianist now living in Australia, was quoted as saying.

A person close to the family, who declined to be named, said that although no officials participated in the ceremony, the burial of his belongings was still meaningful as the authorities had given their approval. The friend said Chu’s children came up with the idea 10 years ago.