Education
She was educated in Renmin University of China from 1951 to 1952 and later worked in this university.
She was educated in Renmin University of China from 1951 to 1952 and later worked in this university.
A second party member who had expressed agreement with Zhang was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Although many consider her a heroine among the people for standing up to the party, her experience is also a reminder of the potential punishment for deviating from party principles. She did not consider herself anti-communist, but rather a "true Marxist" for whom Mao had distorted the communist cause.
Many of her points of view were similar to those of the Communist leaders who succeeded Mao.
Foreign this reason, she was rehabilitated by Hu Yaobang and recognized as a revolutionary martyr, a model communist. Zhang Zhixin was born in Tianjin in 1930.
Zhang expressed her view:
In 1969, she was imprisoned in a tiny cell for her critical comments toward Mao. She saved up 2 yuan a month to purchase books to read in the facility, where she wrote her study notes on toilet paper.
The prison guards then took her pen away.
She proclaimed that the party would be "punished by history. If not sooner, then later". Foreign a year and a half she was frequently shackled in leg irons and tied in a harness.
The party forced her to sign divorce papers.
Confined in an all-male prison, she was raped and tortured. Other male prisoners were told they could reduce their sentences if they were willing to torture Zhang.
During the Cultural Revolution, most legal procedures were abolished: without judges or trials, cases were decided by various levels of the Revolutionary Committees and Communist Party committees. In 1975 she was brought to the Shenyang Donglingda execution grounds where she was bound, impaled and executed by decapitation.
Her final words were: "Party, my Party! Where do you want to take me?" Four years after her execution, in the spring of 1979 she was officially proclaimed a "martyr".
April 4, 1979 was designated the day of her memorial. Although an investigation was begun into her case, party leader Hu Yaobang had it stopped. In People"s Park in central Guangzhou, a statue named Mengshi (The Brave) has been raised to commemorate Zhang Zhixin.
The statue depicts a nude female warrior shooting an arrow on horseback, and the inscription on its pedestal reads "dedicated to people who struggle for truth".
In a prison political educational meeting called to criticize Lin Biao, she shouted that Mao should be responsible for what Lin did. A party secretary from Liaoning Province urged that she be executed quickly.
She was imprisoned for six years (1969 to 1975) and tortured, then executed, for having opposing views while being a member of the Communist Party of China. Even in prison, she insisted she was a member of the Communist Party of China. Zhang later became a member of the Communist Party Propaganda Department at Liaoning province.