Jian Bozan

Like many authoritative academic figures of his generation, he was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution over a perceived divergence between his own ideas and that of dominant Maoist orthodoxy of the time. Unable to bear torture, Jian committed suicide in 1968.

Jian Bozan studied at Wuhan University, University of California, Berkeley and Changde First Middle School. The recorded working language is Chinese. The field of work recorded is history and literature. Positions recorded include member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and National People's Congress deputy.

• Name — Jian Bozan • Native Name — 翦伯赞 • Born — 14 April 1898 • Birthplace — Taoyuan County, Hunan, Qing China • Died — 18 December 1968 • Place of death — Beijing, China • Death Cause — Suicide • Occupation — Historian • Alma Mater — Beijing University of Law and Politics National Wuchang University of Commerce University of California • Discipline — History • Sub Discipline — History of Pre Qin, Qin and Han dynasties • Workplaces — Peking University • Notable Works — Outline of the History of China Jian Bozan (April 14, 1898 – December 18, 1968) was a Chinese scholar and Marxist historian of Uyghur descent. Born in Taoyuan County, Hunan Province, Jian became an early supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. From 1952 to his death, he was Vice President of Peking University. Like many authoritative academic figures of his generation, he was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution over a perceived divergence between his own ideas and that of dominant Maoist orthodoxy of the time. Unable to bear torture, Jian committed suicide in 1968.

"Jian" (翦) is very unusual surname in China. Jian Bozan traced his ancestry to Hala Bashi (哈勒八十) later Jian Bashi (翦八士) or Jian Baizhe (剪敗著) who was a Uyghur Buddhist from the Uyghur Buddhist Kingdom of Qocho who served the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in quelling the earliest of the Miao rebellions by the Miao ethnic minority. The Emperor rewarded his family with the surname "Jian" (翦). The Jian family then settled in Taoyuan County in Hunan province for generations. Some of Hala Bashi's descendants married Hui Muslims in Taoyuan, and their descendants are Muslim. However, most members of the Jian family in modern times are not Muslim.

Jian was born in 1898. In 1916, Jian entered school in Beijing, where he studied and conducted research about Chinese economic history. His graduation thesis was a 50,000-character study of the history of China's currency system. Believing that industry was China's savior, he travelled to the University of California in 1924 to research economics. During this time, he studied Anti-Dühring, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, The Communist Manifesto, and other famous Marxist works. He returned to China in 1926. Jian was a patriot, and participated in the protests leading up to the March 18 Massacre of that year. He published his first Marxist interpretation of Chinese history during the 1930s, and joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1937. In 1934, while serving as secretary to Qin Zhen, deputy head of the Judicial Yuan, Jian went on a tour of numerous countries around the world. As a close ally of the CCP, Jian became professor of history at Peking University after 1952, and later served as dean of the faculty of history and vice-president of the university. Although best known for his history writing, Jian also wrote and exchanged poetry with Communist Party intellectuals, including with Deng Tuo and Guo Moruo.

Jian became a target of struggle during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution. During the early 1960s, Jian began to advocate historical accounts that combined the methodology of class analysis and historicism. For this, Mao Zedong criticized Jian at the end of 1965. Qi Benyu, a prominent Maoist figure of the time period, also criticized Jian on four counts: opposing the theory of class struggle, denigrating peasant revolutions, praising emperors and kings, and applauding conciliatory policies. Jian also suffered from severe torture and was lynched at the hands of radicals. The ill treatment drove Jian to commit suicide. Jian, along with his wife, took an overdose of sleeping pills and died on December 18, 1968. Jian was posthumously rehabilitated in 1978, at the behest of Deng Xiaoping.