Court rules in favor of preserving an invaluable historic record from CCP censorship.

By Tessa Wong, published by the BBC

In Brief

Go to the publisher’s website here to read the original version of this article.

A California court has ruled that Stanford University’s Hoover Institution can retain the diaries and papers of Li Rui, a former secretary to Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China.

A prominent Chinese Communist Party official who later became a sharp critic of the party, Mr. Li meticulously documented his experiences from 1938 to 2019 covering much of the CCP’s rule, creating one of the most valuable firsthand historical records of modern China. His daughter, Li Nanyang, began donating the materials to Stanford in 2014 while he was still alive, stating it fulfilled her father’s explicit wishes to preserve them outside China and make them publicly accessible.

Following Mr. Li’s death, his widow, Zhang Yuzhen, sued in China to have the documents returned to Beijing. Stanford framed the U.S. case as a defense against Chinese government censorship, arguing that the diaries would likely be censored, redacted, or destroyed if returned.

The California court sided with Stanford, determining the donation was lawful and aligned with Mr. Li’s intentions. It found that Mr. Li had given the papers to his daughter specifically to remove them from China and donate them to Hoover, believing the CCP would suppress them. The court also ruled that the Beijing judgment could not be enforced in the U.S. and suggested the Chinese lawsuit was likely funded by the CCP, noting Ms. Zhang had reportedly stated she did not wish to sue. Ms. Zhang died during the proceedings.

The ruling ensures that Mr. Li’s extensive archives—including diaries, correspondence, meeting minutes, poetry, and photographs—will remain freely available for study. Particularly notable is his eyewitness account of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, which he observed from a balcony and labeled “Black Weekend,” detailing soldiers shooting demonstrators and armored vehicles crushing barricades.

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