Lin Zhao (Chinese: 林昭; 23 January 1932 – 29 April 1968), born Peng Lingzhao (彭令昭), was a prominent Chinese dissident who was imprisoned and later executed by gunshot by the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution for her criticism of Mao Zedong's policies. She is widely considered to be a martyr.
Peng Lingzhao was born to a prominent family in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. By age 16, she had joined an underground Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cell and was writing articles criticizing the corruption of the Nationalist government under the pen name Lin Zhao. Three months before the CCP took power in mainland China, she ran away from home in order to attend a journalism school run by the CCP. During her tenure, she was assigned to work in a group to administer land reform in the countryside, where she witnessed the torture and violent deaths of landlords.
Lin later enrolled in the Chinese literature department at Peking University where she was an editor of the school paper Honglou (The Red Building) which met in her dorm room. During the Hundred Flowers Movement of 1956–1957, intellectuals such as herself were encouraged to criticize the CCP, but were later punished for doing so.
When Lin's friends who were part of the Red Building, Zhang Yuanxun and Shen Zeyi published a poem on a poster "This is the Time" which called for open dialogue towards reform, this opened debate at the university; the two also founded a short-lived magazine that lasted 23 days called "The Square" to talk about these ideas. During this time Lin Zhao published two poems, "It is Time" and "Party I Call out to You", which expressed faith in the Communist Party, but her disaffection with communists who had never "borne the heavy burden of discrimination, slight, and suspicion".
When Zhang Yuanxun was forced to endure a debate that was turning into a struggle session, Lin stood on top of a table and dressed down the mob saying "What kind of meeting are we having tonight? Is it a debate or a condemnation? It should not be a condemnation! We don't need to condemn anyone." Though Lin had criticized Zhang before herself, she did not feel condemning fellow communists was right.
In response to her friendship with members of The Square and defense of civil debate, Lin Zhao was branded a rightist in the Anti-Rightist Campaign which started in July 1957. She was the only rightist who refused to criticize and insisted she had done no wrong. As a result of being persecuted for this, Lin started to become a dissident. During 1958, Lin was ordered to perform menial tasks for the university, including killing mosquitoes as part of the Four Pests Campaign and cataloguing old newspapers for the reference library of the university's journalism department. There she met a fellow rightist Gan Cui, who in 1959 asked permission (as was required at the time) to marry Lin Zhao and be assigned to a job near her after his graduation. He was instead sent to Talimu Fourth Farm, Xinjiang, to a reform through labor camp for the next 20 years, to break the couple up. Gan visited Lin in Shanghai for a week, and then got on the bus to Xinjiang; they never saw each other again.
"Lanzhou University Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Clique"
In late 1959, while on medical parole in Shanghai, Lin met Zhang Chunyuan, a history student and People's Liberation Army veteran. Zhang Chunyan was a leader of the so-called "Lanzhou University Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Clique" (as it was labeled later by authorities), who had traveled from his exile in Tianshui, Gansu to invite Lin to join his group after one of the group's members obtained her work from his sister, another "Rightist" at Peking University. Zhang had previously unsuccessfully tried to contact members of the Square, but they were denounced before he could contact them. After reading "Song of the Seagull" he decided to invite Lin Zhao to his group and was greatly pleased upon receiving from her a few drafts of her works for the "Spark Fire", an underground magazine he was working on.
Zhang, along with a fellow group member Gu Yan, discussed various topics with Lin Zhao before Zhang returned to Gansu. It was during these talks that Lin Zhao discovered, from the firsthand accounts by Zhang, about starvation and cannibalism that were happening as a result of the devastation in Gansu Province, where about 1 in 3 of the villagers around Tianshui had died, and where Zhang had seen human flesh for sale. A fellow Peking University student, Lui Faqing, who had been accused of being Rightist and sent to Gansu, was on the brink of death there due to starvation. Having learned of the situation there, Lin sent him 35 Jin (about 40lb) of grain ration coupons, which saved his life.
May 1960 marked the beginning for the group's downfall: Tan Chanxue, Zhang Chenyuan's partner and a core group member, was arrested trying to escape to Hong Kong. Zhang tried to free her using a fake Public Security ID, but was captured in the process. In late September, some 30 members of the group were arrested in Wushan County along with the local deputy secretary of the Communist Party Committee and the party secretary of the Chengguan People's Commune, Du Yinghua, who was charged with having been in communication with Zhang Chenyuan and allegedly supporting the group. On 24 October, Lin Zhao was arrested in Suzhou. On 23 November 1960 her father Peng Guoyan, reportedly distressed by his daughter's fate, ingested rat poison and died.
Lin Zhao was imprisoned in Shanghai No. 2 Detention house. In August 1961, Zhang Chenyuan had been able to escape and make his way to Shanghai. As a token of respect for Lin Zhao, Zhang circled her prison twice. He was arrested again 6 September 1961. He and Party Secretary, Du Yinghua, were executed 22 March 1970 for "attempting to communicate" with each other, as well as "engaging in counter-revolutionary activities" while in prison.
After Zhang ChenYuan escaped, in August 1961 the prison tried to parole Lin Zhao due to her tuberculosis in order to use her as bait to capture Zhang. Lin Zhao refused parole and treatment.
In March 1962, she was granted and accepted parole due both her tuberculosis and to a softening of her views somewhat due to the ending of the Great Leap Forward and the 9th plenary session of the 8th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, where economic policy was being changed to prevent starvation. Mao had effectively lost control of the Party since the 8th plenary session at Lushan. Chen Yun was effectively running the economy and turning it away from Maoism. He would later be purged for being a capitalist roader for this and sent to work in a factory for 3 years.
Lin Zhao returned to Suzhou and was told about the suicide of her father. Within a few weeks, she realized she had been mistaken, her fellow writers were still in jail, and while some economic reforms had taken place, it did not live up to her expectations. At the end of March, Lin Zhao informed the neighborhood police that she had packed her clothes and was ready to return to prison.
While waiting on the legal system to come for her, Lin Zhao approached Hu Ziheng, her former teacher at the South Jiangsu Journalism Vocational School, who was working for Liberation Daily. She publicly argued with him and satirized him. She met Huang Zheng, (recently returned from a labor camp) and convinced him to help her draft a political platform for the "Battle League of Free Youths of China". Which was in her mind, a future coalition of young, intellectual rightists, democracy activists, united in a non-violent movement for a renaissance of human liberation. She attempted to smuggle some of her writings out of China, via a stateless alien named Arnold Newman, asking him to share them with the world. He was promptly arrested, as Lin was being followed by the authorities. She also sent a letter to Lu Ping, the president of Peking University to try to get him to have the 800 students who had been sent to labor camps, freed. Lin Zhou did not seem to know, that over 300 of the rightists from Peking University had starved to death in Qinghe Laogai in 1960 alone.