Former Mao Zedong secretary, party critic dies at 101

BEIJING: Mao Zedong’s former secretary Li Rui, a bold critic of China’s ruling Communist Party who spent a lifetime near the centre of elite politics, died Saturday at the age of 101, his family said. Li was admitted to a Beijing hospital for a pulmonary infection last year and died of organ failure in Beijing, his daughter said in an email to AFP. Li earned a position alongside China’s paramount leader in the mid-1950s, focusing on industrial development. But then he spoke up on the failures of Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy - which intended to boost China’s economic output but instead unleashed havoc and famine across the country. The Communist Party expelled Li.