Hai Rui Dismissed From Office - Political Significance

Political Significance

After the play's initial performance, critics began to interpret it as an allegory for Peng Dehuai's criticism of Mao during the 1959 Lushan Conference, in which Peng's criticism of Mao's Great Leap Forward lead Mao to purge Peng. According to this interpretation, Hai Rui is Peng, and the Ming Emperor is Mao. Peng himself agreed with this interpretation, and stated "I want to be a Hai Rui!" in a 1962 letter to Mao requesting his return to politics.

After becoming convinced that Hai Rui was an allegory for Peng Dehuai, in 1965 Mao devised a long-term scheme to eliminate his chief rival within the Party, Chairman Liu Shaoqi, by criticizing the writer of the play, Wu Han. By criticizing and removing Wu Han from power, Mao planned to criticize and remove his superior in Beijing, Peng Zhen, who was one of Liu's closest supporters. By criticizing and removing Peng Zhen, Mao planned to eventually criticize and eliminate Liu.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, in 1966, Yao Wenyuan published an article criticizing the play based on the interpretation that the play, by portraying Peng's position sympathetically, was an attack on Chairman Mao. Liu Shaoqi became one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution and died in prison in 1969. In 1979, shortly after Mao's death, Wu was posthumously rehabilitated. After Wu was purged, radical Maoists quickly purged other "rightists" from China's cultural institutions, and the theatre became an instrument for the Gang of Four to attack their political enemies. Peng Zhen and Liu Shaoqi were successfully purged shortly after Wu Han, fulfilling Mao's political objectives.