Diaries of Mao's secretary at the center of a legal battle over the history of modern China

HONG KONG — The diaries of a top Chinese official and prominent critic of Beijing are at the center of a U.S. legal battle, raising questions about who will write the history of modern China.

HONG KONG — The diaries of a top Chinese official and prominent critic of Beijing are at the center of a U.S. legal battle, raising questions about who will write the history of modern China.

Li Rui, who died in 2019 at the age of 101, held a number of important positions within the ruling Chinese Communist Party, including personal secretary to longtime leader Mao Zedong. In detailed handwritten diaries he kept from 1946 to 2018, Li recorded his experiences and observations during seven tumultuous decades of Communist Party rule — a version of events that might conflict with the official party line.

As a high-ranking official, Li was an authoritative witness to parts of history that the party would rather not highlight — from internal disputes and policy missteps to the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown — because they challenge its narrative of uninterrupted prosperity and political unity as China rose from a poor and isolated nation to become the world’s second-largest economy.

A trial that began in California on Monday will decide whether Li’s diaries should remain at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where his daughter donated them, or be returned to his elderly widow, who has been accused of acting as a front for Chinese authorities who would most likely censor them.

“We’ve never had something like this before,” said Joseph Torigian, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-china-legal-battle-mao-secretary-diaries-rcna167726

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