Fate of an angry young man

A new book has just appeared in Hong Kong on an outstanding Chinese intellectual who was executed by firing squad in 1970 in front of 100,000 people at the Workers Stadium, Beijing at the age of 27.

Yu Luoke is a symbol of the thousands of intellectuals killed during the Cultural Revolution. His crime was publicly to oppose the class system introduced by the communist government that barred millions of people with the 'wrong' background from higher education and good jobs.

The author of Yu Luoke: China's Human Rights Pioneer is Jin Zhong , editor of Kaifeng magazine. 'Mao's theory of class struggle made an enemy of tens of millions of people and decided their fate for their whole life. This had nothing to do with the basic theory of Marxism and enabled a small privileged elite to enrich themselves at the expense of the people,' he said.

He also intends the book to fill one of the many lacunae in the mainland's history, especially the ones taught to schoolchildren there. The book will be certainly not be on sale in mainland stores.

Yu came from a talented family. Born on May 1, 1942, in Nanjing , he moved with his family to Beijing when he was seven. His father, Yu Chongji , a native of what was then Japanese-ruled Manchukuo, went on a state scholarship to Waseda University in Tokyo; his mother, from a wealthy family in Beijing, studied business at Tokyo Girls High School.

On their return to China, both his parents went into business and set up factories. Yu was an outstanding student and a model for his three brothers and sisters, as a writer and player of Chinese chess, for which he won a Beijing city award in 1956.