Learn from Lei Feng Day in China

Lei Feng (18 December 1940 – 15 August 1962) was allegedly a soldier in the People's Liberation Army who was the object of several major propaganda campaigns in China. The most well known of these campaigns in 1963 promoted the slogan, "Follow the examples of Comrade Lei Feng."

Lei Feng is reported to have died in a freak accident in 1962—struck by a falling telephone pole. But, according to an article by Cheng Shigang in the state-run magazine General Review of the Communist Party of China, excerpts of Lei’s diary had already appeared in the newspaper Progress between August, 1959, and November, 1960. From there, the diary was funnelled up the propaganda chain to other Party leaders and eventually to Chairman Mao, whose blessing was the signal to make Lei Feng a national icon. The China scholar Michel Bonnin told, “I had always harbored doubts about the reality of the existence of a soldier called Lei Feng, but I have now changed my mind.”