Lu Dingyi
Chinese politician (1906–1996)
title: "Lu Dingyi" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1906-births", "1996-deaths", "chinese-communist-party-politicians-from-jiangsu", "ministers-of-culture-and-tourism-(china)", "victims-of-the-cultural-revolution", "politicians-from-wuxi", "heads-of-the-publicity-department-of-the-chinese-communist-party", "members-of-the-7th-central-committee-of-the-chinese-communist-party", "members-of-the-8th-central-committee-of-the-chinese-communist-party", "members-of-the-secretariat-of-the-chinese-communist-party", "vice-chairpersons-of-the-national-committee-of-the-chinese-people's-political-consultative-conference", "chinese-revolutionaries"] description: "Chinese politician (1906–1996)" topic_path: "science/biology" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Dingyi" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Chinese politician (1906–1996) ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Lu Dingyi |
| native_name | |
| native_name_lang | zh-Hans |
| image | Lu Dingyi.jpg |
| caption | Lu Dingyi in 1942 |
| birth_date | |
| birth_place | Wuxi, Jiangsu, Qing Empire |
| death_date | |
| death_place | Beijing, People's Republic of China |
| alma_mater | University of Nanjing |
| office | Vice Premier of China |
| term_start | April 1959 |
| term_end | May 1966 |
| premier | Zhou Enlai |
| vicepremier | Chen Yun |
| Lin Biao | |
| office1 | Minister of Culture |
| term_start1 | February 1965 |
| term_end1 | May 1966 |
| premier1 | Zhou Enlai |
| predecessor1 | Shen Yanbing |
| successor1 | Xiao Wangdong |
| office2 | Head of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party |
| term_start2 | December 1944 |
| term_end2 | 1952 |
| leader2 | Zhang Wentian |
| Mao Zedong | |
| predecessor2 | Zhang Wentian |
| successor2 | Xi Zhongxun |
| leader3 | Mao Zedong (Chairman) |
| term_start3 | July 1954 |
| term_end3 | December 1966 |
| predecessor3 | Xi Zhongxun |
| successor3 | Tao Zhu |
| module | {{Infobox Chinese |
| s | 陆定一 |
| t | 陸定一 |
| xej | |
| p | Lù Dìngyī |
| w | Lu4 Ting4-i1 |
| :: |
| honorific-prefix = | name = Lu Dingyi | honorifix-suffix = | native_name = | native_name_lang = zh-Hans | image = Lu Dingyi.jpg | caption = Lu Dingyi in 1942 | birth_date = | birth_place = Wuxi, Jiangsu, Qing Empire | death_date = | death_place = Beijing, People's Republic of China | alma_mater = University of Nanjing | office = Vice Premier of China | term_start = April 1959 | term_end = May 1966 | premier = Zhou Enlai | vicepremier = Chen Yun Lin Biao | office1 = Minister of Culture | term_start1 = February 1965 | term_end1 = May 1966 | premier1 = Zhou Enlai | predecessor1 = Shen Yanbing | successor1 = Xiao Wangdong | office2 = Head of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party | term_start2 = December 1944 | term_end2 = 1952 | leader2 = Zhang Wentian Mao Zedong | predecessor2 = Zhang Wentian | successor2 = Xi Zhongxun | leader3 = Mao Zedong (Chairman) | term_start3 = July 1954 | term_end3 = December 1966 | predecessor3 = Xi Zhongxun | successor3 = Tao Zhu | module = {{Infobox Chinese|child=yes|order=st | s = 陆定一 | t = 陸定一 | xej = | p = Lù Dìngyī | w = Lu4 Ting4-i1 Lu Dingyi (; June 9, 1906 – May 9, 1996) was a leader of the Chinese Communist Party. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China and before the Cultural Revolution, he was credited as one of the top officials in socialist culture.
Biography
::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/FR_Lu_Dingyi.jpg" caption="6th CCP National Congress]] and the CYL Congress, both of which were held in [[Moscow]], remaining in the [[Soviet Union]] until 1930 as a junior representative of the CYL to the [[Comintern]]."] ::
Lu Dingyi then returned in China. He was a member of the CCP Propaganda Department starting from 1934. He participated in the Long March, during which he was editor of the Red Star newspaper. Also during the Long March, he was the head of the Propaganda Department of the Eighth Route Army. Later, he was the head of the Eighth Route Army's Political Department.
In 1942, Lu was promoted to chief editor of the Liberation Daily after his predecessor Yang Song fell ill. During his editorial tenure, the newspaper increased its focus on promulgating Communist Party policies. Because the party relied on grassroots cadre to communicate its messages to the masses at a time when literacy was still limited, the newspaper used simple and direct language. In an effort to give clear instruction, it typically published a piece of reporting side-by-side with an instructive editorial. Seeking to implement principles of the mass line, the newspaper dispatched reporters to collect news stories from villagers and sought contributions from local cultural workers. Circulation methods included village newspaper reading groups, community blackboards and bulletin boards, night study groups, and public meetings.
Lu established the requirement that the paper's content had to be approved by Party Central. During Lu's tenure, the paper became more aligned with those who supported Mao's leadership, and less with the Soviet-leaning members of party leadership.
During the Yan'an Rectification Movement, Lu Dingyi wrote Our basic view for journalism, which was considered the basis for Chinese communist journalism. In 1943 he was appointed head of the CCP Central Propaganda Department, a post he held until 1952 and then again from 1954. He was elected CCP Central Committee member in 1945.
The Communist Party's first mass campaign against superstition occurred in Yan'an in 1944 and 1945. The campaign sought to eliminate shamanic ritual practices, reform shamans into productive workers, and to promote public health and hygiene. During this campaign, Lu dispatched Liberation Daily journalists to cover the trials of shamans and called on doctors of traditional Chinese medicine, doctors of Western medicine, schoolteachers, and other educated individuals to help promote modern medicine among the people and to encourage them to avoid shamanic practices.
A political commissar in the PLA, Lu Dingyi gave important contributions to the revolutionary struggle in Shaanxi along with other top leaders like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Ren Bishi, according to his official biography.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Lu Dingyi was deputy chairman of the Culture and Education Committee of the Central People's Government from 1949 and member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1954. At the 8th Party Congress in 1956, he was re-elected a CCP Central Committee member and promoted to Politburo alternate member, concurrently serving as secretary of the CCP Secretariat from 1962. In 1957 and 1960, he accompanied major Party leaders Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to international meetings of communist parties held in Moscow. His main political activity was in the cultural front, as he directed cultural criticism campaigns.
In June 1958, Mao changed the party and government structure by establishing groups in charge of finance, legal matters, foreign affairs, science, and culture and education which bypassed the State Council. Lu was made the head of the culture and education group.
In 1959 he was appointed a Vice Premier of the State Council, and Minister of Culture in 1965. Lu was criticised and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Shortly after the Cultural Revolution broke out, Lu was accused of being a promoter of the reactionary line in culture, since he did not adhere to Mao Zedong's idea that culture should extensively serve proletarian politics. In April 1966 he was accused of being part of the "Peng-Luo-Lu-Yang anti-Party clique" (the others being Peng Dehuai, Luo Ruiqing and Yang Shangkun) and dismissed. He was also criticised for his activity in the Five Man Group, a Central Committee agency in charge of leading the first stages of the Cultural Revolution led by Peng Zhen, another purged official. He was detained for nearly 13 years.
Lu Dingyi was rehabilitated by the new leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping. His case was among the 445 cases reviewed directly by the Organizational Department over 1979-1980. In 1979 he was co-opted in the Fifth CPPCC National Committee as its vice-chairman; in the same year, he was co-opted in the CCP Central Committee as a consultant to the Propaganda Department. He was later a member of the Central Advisory Commission.
Lu opposed the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, contending that the students were "arrogant" and that it was necessary to think about the "negative side effects." In 1990, he contended that the turmoil in Eastern Europe demonstrated that had the protestors in Tiananmen Square not been suppressed, they would have implemented "another Cultural Revolution."
Lu Dingyi died in Beijing in 1996, several years after his retirement. He was hailed as an outstanding Party member and promoter of socialist culture.
Lu's knowledge of the English language also allowed him to translate the conversations between Mao Zedong and Anna Louise Strong. He is often credited with helping to coin the English phrase "paper tiger". While translating for Mao, Lu initially translated "paper tiger" as "scarecrow" in an attempt to use a cultural reference point an American would understand. Mao realized something had been lost in translation, and asked if Strong knew what a paper tiger was; her reply was that it was an object used to scare birds in a field. Mao, switching to his heavily accented English, clarified that it was a "paper tiger". Though Anna Louise Strong identifies the translator as Lu Dingyi in her 1948 memoir Tomorrow's China,, some other sources instead identify as the translator.
References
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References
- Lin, Chunfeng. (2023). "Red Tourism in China: Commodification of Propaganda". [[Routledge]].
- Kang, Xiaofei. (2023). "Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda, 1942-1953". [[Oxford University Press]].
- Chen, Jian. (2024). "Zhou Enlai: A Life". [[Harvard University Press]].
- Wu, Guoyou. (2020). "An Ideological History of the Communist Party of China". Royal Collins Publishing.
- Torigian, Joseph. (2025). "The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping". [[Stanford University Press]].
- Wu, Jingjian. (April 19, 2021). "When Diplomacy Is Lost in Translation".
- (March 29, 2021). "1946: Jiěfàng zhànzhēng qiú jiěfàng——zhōngguó gòngchǎndǎng xiānmíng tíchū “yīqiè fǎndòngpài dōu shì zhǐlǎohǔ”".
- Zhang, Qingmin. (2011). "Yǐnyù, wèntí biǎozhēng yǔ máozédōng de duìwài zhèngcè". China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House.
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