Mao’s Son Dies
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BEIJING (AP) – Mao Anqing, the only known surviving son of Mao Zedong, the late founder of China’s communist government, has died, a government news agency reported Saturday. He was 84.
Mao Anqing died Friday, the China News Service said, without citing a cause of death. He had no role in government, suffered from psychiatric problems and is believed to have spent much of his adult life in mental hospitals.
Born in 1923, Mao Anqing was the second son of Mao and his first wife, Yang Kaihui, while they were activists. Yang was executed in 1930 by the then-ruling Nationalist government.
In 1936, Mao Anqing and his older brother, Anying, were sent first to Paris and then to Moscow. They returned in 1947 before the communists’ 1949 victory in a civil war that overthrew the Nationalists.
Mao Zedong also had two daughters, Li Na and Li Min. Some say Mao might have had other children while on the run from Nationalist forces in the 1930s and left them with peasant families. But none of those children has been found.
Mao Anying was killed fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. Mao Zedong died in 1976.
