Wei Heng

Wei Heng (; 1915 – 29 January 1967), also known as Wei Laiyu , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and politician from Shanxi province. He was the Communist Party First Secretary and top leader of Shanxi province until he was overthrown by the rebel Red Guards at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. He was tortured and committed suicide in January 1967.

Early life Wei Heng was born in 1915 to a poor peasant family in Shapochi village in Lingchuan County, Shanxi province. His father Wang Changju was a manual labourer who struggled to make ends meet, and Wei Heng was adopted by a relative surnamed Wei in a neighbouring village. Wei attended primary and secondary school and then became a primary school teacher. However, his adoptive father began to gamble and smoke opium, and the Wei family fortunes began to gradually decline.

Career After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, Wei Heng joined the Chinese Red Army in January 1938. He served as a guerrilla fighter and later political operative in his native Shanxi. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October 1938, and was selected as a delegate to the 7th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in Yan'an in 1945. He took part in the Yan'an Rectification Movement.

Wei Heng was detained by the Red Guards and held in solitary confinement on January 15. and committed suicide on January 29. He was the third provincial-level chief to choose suicide as an escape from torture, after Wan Xiaotang of Tianjin and Yan Hongyan of Yunnan. On January 25, the People's Daily published an editorial celebrating the power seizure in Shanxi, and the national government certified the Shanxi Revolutionary Committee on March 28.

Rehabilitation After the end of the Cultural Revolution, provincial party authorities posthumously rehabilitated Wei in January 1979. In June 1985, the party "completely vindicated" Wei Heng and denounced his persecution.