Li Xifan

Li Xifan (; 11 December 1927 – 29 October 2018) was a Chinese Marxist literary scholar and redologist. He became nationally famous in 1954, when his critique of the revered redologist Yu Pingbo was praised by Mao Zedong, who seized the opportunity to launch a nationwide campaign to criticize the idealism of Yu Pingbo and Hu Shih. Li later served as a long-time editor of the People's Daily and Vice President of the Chinese National Academy of Arts.

Early life and education Li was born on 11 December 1927 in Tongzhou District, Beijing, with his ancestral home in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. His name was originally written as Li Xifan , and his courtesy name was Choujiu .

When he was twenty, Li moved to Qingdao, Shandong Province, where he worked as an assistant to his brother-in-law Zhao Jibin , a professor at Shandong University. Li was later admitted to the university and graduated from its Chinese Department in 1953. and while a student there, in September 1954 Li and his friend Lan Ling published a critique of an article about Dream of the Red Chamber written by the revered redologist Yu Pingbo. On October 10, their critique of Yu's book Study of the Dream of the Red Chamber was published in the major national newspaper Guangming Daily, which criticizes the book for lacking "scientific analysis" and for failing to notice the "great anti-feudal trend" represented in the classical novel.

Li and Lan's critiques caught the attention of Mao Zedong, who seized the opportunity to launch an attack against Yu, and ultimately, the idealism espoused by the liberal scholar Hu Shih.

Mao's praise elevated Li and Lan to national fame, and soon they were transferred to work at the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. However, when Li criticized young author Wang Meng's novel A New Arrival at the Organization Department in 1956, he was himself criticized by Mao and had to issue a self-criticism. Li Xifan's wife died in 2012, and when Li Meng also died three months later, his family hid the news from him for more than three years.

Li died at his Beijing home on 29 October 2018, at the age of 90.