About the Book
Mr. Zhu Zheng once said: Li Rui authored numerous works throughout his life, with Lushan Meeting Record being his most enduring contribution. This book has had five editions to date. The first edition was co-published by the Central Party School's Chunqiu Publishing House and Hunan Education Publishing House, with a print run of 10,000 copies distributed under internal control. Printed in May 1989, the author received 150 sample copies on May 8. By some divine protection, the book was published before the June 4 Tiananmen suppression; otherwise, it might have been delayed indefinitely. Subsequently, Hong Kong's Tiandi Books published it in Traditional Chinese vertical edition in 1993. Henan People's Publishing House released a revised second edition in January 1995 and a third revised edition in June 1999. In May 2005, during Hu Jintao's tenure, Li Rui was listed as a "sensitive writer" by the General Administration of Press and Publication, and Lushan Meeting Record was banned in mainland China. In May 2018, Hong Kong's Tiandi Books published the latest revised Traditional Chinese vertical edition.
Recently, there is no paper copies available after Tiandi Books avoided response on purchase requests. Consequently, Li Nanyang decided to have the book republished in the United States by Fellows Press of America, Inc ( visit its website for more detail in Chinese) to make it available to readers.
The first edition of this book was completed at the end of 1988, with an "Author's Publication Note" as follows: "The Lushan Meeting, held in July and August 1959, is a profoundly significant chapter in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. The author, Comrade Li Rui, participated in the entire meeting and was later criticized as a follower of the 'Peng Dehuai Anti-Party Group' in its final stages. In 1980, while discussing the draft of the 'Resolution on Certain Historical Issues of the Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, ' the central leadership comrade overseeing the drafting, upon reviewing the author's lengthy speech on the Lushan Meeting, suggested in a letter dated November 19: 'Could you take responsibility for writing a detailed historical account of the Lushan meeting? After completion, it can be supplemented and reviewed by relevant comrades. This is an important task, worth investing great effort in. If our generation passes away (as life is unpredictable), who will write this crucial historical record, and what might it become?' Based on personal notes and relevant original materials, the author completed this book in the summer of the year. Given that several publications about the Lushan Meeting are already in wide circulation, some of which are either too brief or contain inaccuracies, this book is printed in a limited quantity for internal distribution, intended for Party history research and reference by relevant comrades. Readers are kindly requested to provide criticism and corrections for any inaccuracies to aid the author in making revisions for a definitive edition in the future."
Subsequently, revised editions were publicly published in China in 1994 and 1999, with approximately 100,000 additional words of more detailed records and articles written later by the author commemorating Peng Dehuai, Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian, and Zhou Xiaozhou. Notably, the postscript to the revised edition mentions: "The initiator of this book, Hu Qiaomu, has passed away. After receiving my gift copy, he once told me in person: 'I suggested writing this book, and I take full responsibility for it.' He also expressed that future editions should be publicly distributed."
About the Author :
Li Rui (April 13, 1917 - February 16, 2019), male, from Pingjiang, Hunan, China. A historian of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he served as Mao Zedong's part-time industrial secretary and held multiple positions in CCP. During the 1959 Lushan meeting, he was labeled a member of the "Peng Dehuai Anti-Party Group" and branded a "right-wing opportunist," resulting in the revocation of all his positions. In March 1960, he was expelled from the Party and sent to Beidahuang for labor. During the Cultural Revolution, he offended Central Political Bureau Standing Committee member Chen Boda and was imprisoned in solitary confinement at Qincheng Prison and was released in May 1975. In 1979, he was rehabilitated and appointed Vice Minister of the Ministry of Electric Power Industry. From 1982 to 1984, he served as Executive Deputy Minister of the CCP Central Organization Department and Director of the Youth Cadre Bureau. In 1988, he began writing Lushan Meeting Record. Li Rui authored numerous works, including a self-published ten-volume Li Rui Collected Works. Before his death, he arranged for his diaries, notes, letters, and other original documents to be donated to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where the collection was made public in June 2025. Li Nanyang (August 1950-), writer and mechanical engineer, daughter of Mao Zedong's former part-time industrial secretary, Li Rui. She left China in 1990 and worked at various research institutions in the United States. After retiring, she became a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She authored books including I Have Such a Mother, My Step-mother: Wife and Political Commissar, and My Stories Living Overseas. Entrusted by her father, Li Rui, Li Nanyang digitized over ten million words of his diaries, letters, and notes, and assisted him in donating these original documents and their digital copies to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This led to lawsuits in both China and the United States following Li Rui's death. In 2013, Li Nanyang sued Beijing Customs after they seized more than fifty copies of Li Rui's Oral History. The case has seen no progress, and she has written over one hundred articles in her Follow-Up series regarding this matter.
Review :
From A British admirer：
Few, if any, meetings in history have resulted in as many deaths as the Lushan Conference of the summer of 1959. It took place in the midst of the Great Leap Forward, and already millions of Chinese in the countryside had died from party's policy-induced famine.
Yet, initially, the tragedy of Lushan, was that a meeting designed to correct radical policy but ended in Mao determining to double down on the Leap.
Its author, Li Rui, is now a legendary figure. His diaries of 80 years, from Yan-an in the 1930s to his dissident years in Beijing before his death in February 2019 aged 101, provide unique, first-hand documentation of the crucial periods of CCP era.
But it seems to me that the record of the 45 or so days of the Lushan conference are Li's crowning contribution. Reading them for the first time I was hooked.
There are, of course, brilliant, incredibly well researched academic works on the Leap. But Li's Lushan Record brings vivid scene inside of a CCP, which was unknown before this book.
