Former Central Party School professor Cai Xia summed it up: “Inside Li Rui’s mind is a living database of 80 years of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP knows there are things that must never see the light of day.”

Dutch historian Feng Ke called the diaries “priceless treasures,” noting the astonishing level of detail—down to how many laps the leaders swam or how many times they used the restroom at night.

What exactly is the CCP afraid of? Social media commentator Yaoyao Jiang, host of China-US Benchmarking, offered her unique analysis: opening this monumental historical chronicle reveals three layers of fear that reportedly keep the CCP and Xi Jinping on edge—each layer darker, and more lethal than the last.

First layer of fear: the ‘great leader’ myth exposed and the human cost of the Great Leap Forward

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long relied on propaganda and cover-ups to shape its official narrative. Regarding the summer of 1959’s Lushan Conference, the official account claims: “Correctly resisted the attacks of rightist opportunism and safeguarded the achievements of the Great Leap Forward.” Yet, Li Rui’s diary, written by an insider, reveals a chillingly different reality.

Behind the daytime mountain outings and nighttime dances of the so-called “immortal gathering” lay the harsh reality of mass starvation across the country. Regions including Shandong, Anhui, Hubei, Gansu, and Yunnan had become virtual hellscapes, while desperate peasants on Guangdong’s borders even crossed into Hunan to steal grain. When Defense Minister Peng Dehuai wrote to Mao Zedong, pointing out these failures, the political atmosphere shifted abruptly.

The diary captures the sycophancy and cold-bloodedness within the power hierarchy. At a Politburo Standing Committee meeting, Lin Biao declared forcefully: “Only Chairman Mao is the great hero; no one else should aspire to be a hero.” Even the mild-mannered Zhu De had his comments dismissed by Mao as “scratching the itch through the boot,” leaving him blushing and silent for the rest of the meeting.

Most chilling of all is Mao Zedong’s blatant disregard for human life. Faced with the massive death toll caused by the Great Leap Forward, he casually remarked at the meeting: “Ninety million people in steel production is better than sixty million. A small loss doesn’t trouble me at all; we simply lacked experience.”

On the night of July 23, Li Rui, Huang Kecheng, and others exchanged a fatal prediction: “Mao’s trajectory resembles Stalin in his later years,” and “this will ultimately lead to the Party’s split.” These words would later serve as a pretext for their political downfall.

The outcome of the Lushan Conference: 3.65 million Party cadres were labeled as “rightists,” while the Great Leap Forward continued to wreak havoc across China, leaving tens of millions dead even in years of supposedly favorable weather.

The CCP fears Li Rui’s diary because it strips away the myth of Mao Zedong as a “great savior”, exposing the brutal reality of internal purges and the Party’s systematic distortion of truth in stark detail.

Second layer of fear: the blood on Chang’an Avenue and the indelible ‘black weekend’

If the turbulence of the Lushan Conference feels somewhat distant today, the second layer of fear recorded in Li Rui’s diary strikes at a forbidden zone the CCP continues to suppress—the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

On that fateful day, Li Rui was stationed at Muxidi, the very thoroughfare through which the military entered Beijing. For over three decades, the CCP deployed the full machinery of the state to erase the massacre from public memory, attempting to make it vanish from history. Yet Li Rui’s diary acts like a keel holding truth steady, nailing the reality of that atrocity to history’s column of shame.

From the night of June 3 to the early hours of June 4, 1989, Li Rui—a senior ministerial-level official—stood in a building at Muxidi alongside young people, shouting “Fascists!” throughout the night. In his diary, he wrote in English: “Black weekend.”

“All day restless, wanting to weep… the deed is done, how to repay the world?” This is the piercing anguish Li Rui recorded.

“Criminals for eternity, their infamy everlasting,” lamented PLA General Xiao Ke, expressing the rage and sorrow of those witnessing the tragedy.

“How can this serve the Party?” questioned Deputy Director An Zhiwen of the State Commission for Restructuring, highlighting the desperate moral reckoning faced by officials who saw the massacre unfold.

Li Rui’s meticulous records ensure that the truth of that bloodied weekend remains unextinguished, a stark counterpoint to decades of official obfuscation.

This is not a retrospective memoir, nor a denunciation by overseas dissidents. It is the firsthand account of a participant from within the CCP’s inner ranks, written word by word amidst gunfire and bloodshed. The evidence exists as it was recorded—undeniable and indelible. What terrifies the CCP most is precisely this kind of unalterable, on-the-scene testimony.

Third layer of fear: seeing through the ‘elementary education’ nature and the cycle of dictatorship

The first two layers of fear concern the CCP’s historical legitimacy. The third layer, however, strikes directly at the current ruler on the dragon throne.

In 2010, after a lifetime spent understanding Mao Zedong, Li Rui wrote in his diary: “Mao’s actions completely violated the universal values of freedom, democracy, science, progress, and the rule of law.” Yet the tragedy of history, he realized, is its repetition. Li was shocked to recognize the same familiar scent of dictatorship in another person—Xi Jinping, whom he had once personally promoted.

In 1983, Li, then director of the CCP Organization Department’s Youth Cadre Bureau, trusted his friend Xi Zhongxun enough to place Xi Jinping, then Party Secretary of Zhengding County, on the list of “third-tier” reserve cadres. But as Xi rose through the ranks, the spiritual distance between the two men grew.

In 2004, Li had a final meal with Xi, now Zhejiang Party Secretary. Li advised: “You are in a different position now; you can offer advice upwards.” Xi politely declined: “How could I dare? You may skirt the edges, but I cannot.” That was their last meeting.

After Xi reached the pinnacle of power, Li’s disappointment turned to complete despair. In 2013, when Li petitioned on behalf of military doctor Jiang Yanyong, who had exposed the SARS outbreak, he was met with Xi’s cold directive: “Li Rui, stay out of other people’s business from now on.”

By the 19th Party Congress in 2017, seeing Xi’s oversized portraits everywhere, Li exclaimed in his diary: “Even in Mao’s era it never reached this level.” In 2018, when the CCP amended the constitution to remove presidential term limits, Li cited a foreign media headline in despair: “Democracy is dead.”

That same year, at age 101, Li gave an ultimately scathing verdict in an interview to foreign media regarding the political star he had once championed: “At that time, I didn’t realize his culture was so low—elementary school level.”

A man who once helped usher Xi into the halls of power left this judgment at life’s end. For Xi Jinping, who craves historical significance and constantly proclaims himself “great,” these words strike at the deepest core of his ego. As Li’s daughter, Li Nanyang, stated in court: “For the sake of historical truth, do not place hope in Xi Jinping.”

The transnational clash between party rule and the rule of law: why Beijing lost so spectacularly

Understanding the three layers of fear helps explain why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was willing to go to extreme lengths—even staging an international spectacle—to reclaim the 40 boxes of Li Rui’s archives.

In 2019, the CCP orchestrated a lawsuit through Li Rui’s nearly 90-year-old widow, Zhang Yuzhen, in a Beijing Xicheng District court against Li Nanyang. At the same time, the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco applied repeated pressure, and the Party even mobilized Li’s relatives at home and abroad to write articles and send emails. Li Nanyang, familiar with CCP operations, surmises that the highest decision-making level behind this move likely involved Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning, who oversees ideology.

Yet the lawsuit was absurd from the start. On the day of the closed hearing, plaintiff Zhang Yuzhen publicly stated: “Filing a lawsuit against Li Nanyang is not my personal wish… I hope people stop asking me about this case.” Later, she inadvertently revealed to the media the truth: “The organization thought it was inappropriate, and wanted it back.”

Those three words—“the organization”—stripped away the pretense of a mere inheritance dispute. This was not a family matter; it was a state-level grab orchestrated by an authoritarian government determined to suppress historical truth.

When the Beijing court’s ruling demanding the Hoover Institution return the archives was ignored, the CCP moved the battle to the United States. There, however, the Party encountered the rule of law. The CCP’s domestic coercive tactics proved entirely ineffective in U.S. federal courts. In 2024, the U.S. judge ruled decisively: Li Nanyang’s donation was fully legal, and Beijing’s judgment, clearly influenced by CCP interference, would not be enforced.

After seven years of cross-border legal entanglement—two nations’ courts, countless threats, and pressures—the CCP was decisively defeated. The materials, carrying the truths and sufferings of the Chinese people, remain permanently in California, now accessible to the world.

Exposed not just Li Rui, but the CCP itself

Although this battle to protect history was won, it leaves a heavy question: How many “Li Ruis” still exist in China?

How many insiders with conscience have spent a lifetime documenting the truth, yet had no courageous daughter like Li Nanyang? No boxes safely reaching foreign shores? No independent U.S. court to uphold the law? Their studies were cleared immediately after death, manuscripts burned, and the ashes of history vanished in the CCP’s censorship machinery. All of Li Rui’s books and writings in his Beijing home were seized by the authorities. Were it not for the timely transfer of his millions of words overseas, the world would have lost a vital scalpel for dissecting CCP history forever.

Li Nanyang said of her father’s diaries: “There’s no padding, no rumors.” Li Rui himself once reflected: “If all my diaries were published, my entire life would be laid bare, fully exposed to the public.”

This centenarian achieved precisely that. With 40 boxes, he handed himself, unflinchingly, to history. Yet he likely did not anticipate that the millions of words he left behind would do more than bare his own life—they would fully expose the Chinese Communist Party itself, the very entity that sought to rule for millennia through lies.

(This article represents the personal views and opinions of the author.)