Zhang Guotao - End of CPC Career and Exile

End of CPC Career and Exile

When Zhang reached the new CPC base at Yan'an, he had fallen from power and became an easy target for Mao. Zhang kept the now figurehead position of Chairman of Yan'an Frontier Area and was frequently subjected to humiliation by Mao and his allies. Zhang was too proud to ally with Wang Ming, who had recently come back from Moscow and was acting as the Comintern's representative in China. Zhang's popularity in the Comintern might have given him another chance of returning to power if he had allied with Wang. Another reason why Zhang did not ally with Wang was that Wang boasted that it was under his order that five senior CPC leaders (Yu Xiusong, Huang Chao, Li Te and two others—all opponents of Wang) had been arrested, and now worked for warlord Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang under the direction of the CPC. All five were tortured and executed in a prison under the control of Sheng Shicai, having been labeled as Trotskyists. However, Sheng Shicai was acting under direction from the CPC under Wang Ming. After that incident, Zhang despised Wang and would never consider supporting him.

Without any supporters, Zhang was purged in 1937 at the Extended Meeting of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, after which he defected to the Kuomintang in 1938. But without any power, resources, and support, Zhang never held any important positions afterwards and only did research on the CPC for Dai Li. After the defeat of the Kuomintang in 1949 he went into exile in Hong Kong. He emigrated to Canada with his wife Tzi Li Young in 1968 to join their two sons who were already living in Toronto. He gave his only interview in 1974, when he told a Canadian Press reporter, "I have washed my hands of politics". After suffering several strokes, he died in a Scarborough, Ontario, nursing home on Dec 3, 1979 at the age of 82, having converted to Christianity the year before. He is buried in Pine Hills Cemetery in Scarborough. Mao Zedong once referred to him, in a conversation with Anastas Mikoyan, as a "traitor, defector, and renegade."

Zhang was highly critical of the proceedings of the first PRC Police leader Luo Ruiqing during the Chinese Civil War.