I have been reading (in an on and off fashion) a book by John Pack and Robert Byron, The Claws of the Dragon about Kang Sheng.'Kang who?' I hear you ask. Readers of this obscure blog will know that I have a deep interest in Chinese history, and Kang comes in very recently indeed in that chronology, almost in the last 5 minutes, if we think in terms of the millennia involved.

Kang is not well known because he was a behind the scenes operator, a bright, cultured but cynical opportunist who exploited his relationships with his superiors to enhance his own power. Most importantly, he made himself indispensable to Mao as both an ideologue and head of the secret police, a master of creating something out of nothing. He was ruthless in stabbing friends or colleagues in the back to enhance his own position, and that period between the the end of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and beyond was to prove very fruitful for a man of Kang's persuasion and dark talents. Kang saw substance where there was shadow and could fabricate conspiracy from whatever facts lay before him, regardless of their logic.

Two interesting pics of Kang, firstly with Mao in Yannan in the 1940's (where he cut his teeth as a key operator in the Rectification Program) and next with Jiang Qing and Zhou En-Lai during the Cultural Revolution.