Stanford wins battle to keep personal archives of Mao's secretary

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - OAKLAND — A district court in California has ruled that Stanford University can keep the personal archives of a former secretary to Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China.

Li Rui, a top official known for his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in his later years, had meticulously kept diaries which are now deemed valuable historical records.

The Hoover Institution and Stanford University undertook more than five years of legal proceedings and invested significant resources to defend Li's right to have his collection made available for study by scholars, historians and the public.

Witnesses for both sides testified that, if returned to China, the collection and all of its history would at minimum be censored and would most likely be banned.

Li's daughter began donating his diaries to Stanford when he was still alive, saying this was per her father's wishes. But following his death, his widow sued for the documents to be returned to Beijing.

Stanford framed the case as a fight against Chinese government censorship, arguing it was the rightful owner of the diaries and that they would be banned if returned.

On Tuesday, the court ruled the donation made to the Hoover Institution at Stanford was "lawful and in accordance with Li's wishes".

It found that Li Rui had believed that "the CCP was likely to secrete, censor, redact or destroy" his papers, and he had given them to his daughter "for the purpose of removing them from China and donating them" to Hoover so that they could be made available to the public.

The court decision "ensures one of the most valuable firsthand accounts on the history of modern China will be freely available for study", said Condoleezza Rice, the former US Secretary of State who is the Hoover Institution's current director.

The papers include diaries which Li kept from 1938 to 2019 covering much of the CCP's rule, as well as correspondence, minutes from meetings, notes about his work, poetry and photographs.

Most famously, the diaries include his eyewitness account of the Tiananmen Massacre, which he saw from a balcony overlooking the square and labelled as "Black Weekend" in English in his records. It is a highly sensitive issue that is rarely discussed in China.

His account describes soldiers shooting at the demonstrators gathered at the square, armoured vehicles crushing barricades put up by the protesters, and soldiers shooting at buildings around the square including the one he was in.

A prominent CCP figure known for his reformist views, Li was both venerated as a party elder and also shunned for his unsparing, sharp-tongued criticism of leaders, including President Xi Jinping. His writings were censored and his books banned in China.

His daughter, Li Nanyang, began donating his papers to Stanford in 2014 when he was still alive.

In a 2019 interview with BBC Chinese after his death, she said this fulfilled her father's wishes.

That year Li Rui's second wife, Zhang Yuzhen, filed a lawsuit against Li Nanyang, her stepdaughter, in China.

Zhang argued that Li Rui wanted her to decide which of his documents would be made public and they were wrongfully given to Stanford.

She also said that since the publicly accessible diaries contained "deeply personal and private affairs" of her life with Li, their display caused her "personal embarrassment and emotional distress".

A Beijing court ruled in her favour and ordered the diaries to be handed over to her.

The trial that began in California in 2024 was for a separate lawsuit launched by Stanford against Zhang in the US, where the university asked to be declared as the lawful owner of Li Rui's papers.

The California court ruled that the Beijing court order could not be enforced in the US.

It also said that the Chinese lawsuit was not actually initiated by Zhang and it was launched against her will, noting that Zhang had released a statement saying she personally did not wish to sue Li Nanyang.

The court concluded that the Chinese lawsuit was likely paid for by the CCP. Zhang later died during the trial proceedings.
On Tuesday, Stanford's lawyers said that Li Rui was "very clear in his diaries and conversations that he intended for his historic documents to be preserved and maintained" by the Hoover Institution.

"We are very pleased with the court's decision, that Mr Li's wishes will be honoured and that these important materials will remain with Hoover and Stanford and accessible to all who are interested." — Agencies