12 Peking University Professors Died after New Year, All Were Chinese Communist Party Members

Workers in protective gear handle a coffin at Dongjiao Funeral Parlor, reportedly designated to handle COVID-19 fatalities, in Beijing on Dec. 19, 2022. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Peking University has been hit hard amidst the latest COVID-19 outbreak, which began at the end of 2022.

Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 10, 2023, at least 12 professors at Peking University have died, including Zhai Zhonghe, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Chen Zhanan, former dean of the School of Marxism at Peking University. All 12 current and former professors were members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Zhai, a cell biologist and academician, died from an unnamed illness in Beijing on Feb. 10 at the age of 93. The obituary praised him for being “an outstanding member of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Zhai was admitted to the Department of Biology at Tsinghua University in 1950 and was sent to the former Soviet Union to study in 1951.

After graduating from Leningrad University in 1956, he returned to China and taught in the Department of Biology at Peking University. During his career, he served as vice-chairman of the Asian-Pacific Organization for Cell Biology, vice-chairman of the Chinese Society for Cell Biology, vice-chairman of the Chinese Electron Microscopy Society, and the organizing committee and consultant of the Asian-Pacific Organization for Cell Biology Congress.

Zhai’s eulogy stated that he was one of the founders of cell biology and bioelectron microscopy in China and one of the founders of the State Key Program of Cell Biology at Peking University and the Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Differentiation under the Ministry of Education. He had won numerous science and technology national awards.

Chen, a professor at the School of Marxism of Peking University, died on Jan. 24, 2023 in Beijing at the age of 76, after a long illness. The obituary also described him as an outstanding member of the CCP.

Chen was admitted to the Philosophy Department of Peking University in 1964 and became a teacher at the university after graduation. He had served as deputy director of the Philosophy Department, director of the Propaganda Department of the CCP Committee, and dean of the School of Marxism during his lifetime career at Peking University.

Chen had also served as the convenor of the State Council’s Evaluation Group on Marxist Theory as a Teaching Subject, the chairman of the Guiding Committee of the course “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought and the Socialist Theory System with Chinese Characteristics,” the chief expert convenor for the compilation of the textbook “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought and the Socialist Theory System with Chinese Characteristics,” and the vice president of the National Association for the Study of Mao Zedong’s Philosophical Thought.

He has been awarded national prizes by the Ministry of Propaganda, the First Prize of the National Outstanding Achievement Award in Social Science, and many other honorary titles.

On Jan. 1, Bao Zhixing, a professor of German language, died at the age of 88. From 1952 to 1956, Bao worked at the Headquarters of the Communications Forces of the PLA’s General Staff Department.

On Jan. 3, Zheng Zhongguo, a professor of statistics, died at the age of 85. Zheng had won the second prize in the Science and Technology Progress Award from the Ministry of State Security, the third prize in the Science and Technology Progress Award of the Army, and the third prize in the Science and Technology Progress Award of the Ministry of Aerospace Industry.

At the end of 2022, a new outbreak of COVID-19 swept through mainland China, resulting in numerous deaths of professors from Peking University, Tsinghua University, and other Chinese universities.

Publicly available information showed that during the 36 days from Oct. 31 to Dec. 5, 2022, 15 retired professors of Peking University had died.

Based on the obituary information posted on the official websites of Peking University and Tsinghua University, a Chinese netizen made a comparison chart of the number of obituaries for the three years from 2020 to 2022. It can be seen that before December 2022, the average number of obituaries per month at Peking University was less than 9, but in December 2022, it skyrocketed to 30 plus deaths.

Birthplace of CCP

The CCP claims that Peking University is the base for the dissemination of Marxism in China, as the earliest group of communists and Marxists in China came from Peking University.

When the CCP held its first congress, there were 53 CCP members in China, among whom 21 were working or had studied at Peking University.

Among the 13 participants of the CCP’s First National Congress, six had studied or worked at Peking University, including Mao Zedong, Zhang Guotao, Liu Renjing, Chen Gongbo, Wang Jinmei, and Bao Huiseng.

In March 2020, during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi warned in an article entitled “Stay Rational,” “Truth be told, pandemics only come when people’s morals and values have turned bad and they have come to have a massive amount of karma.”

In his article, Li advised, “What people should do, instead, is to repent to the divine with all due sincerity, admit to their faults, and pray for a chance to change their ways.”

“A pandemic like the current Chinese communist virus (or ‘Wuhan virus’) comes with a purpose behind it, and it has targets. It is here to weed out members of the party and those who have sided with it,” Li said.