Wang Guangmei (; 26 September 1921 – 13 October 2006) was a Chinese politician, philanthropist and the wife of Liu Shaoqi, who served as the President of the People's Republic of China from 1959 to 1968. Life Early years Wang Guangmei was born in 1921, and grew up in a distinguished and prominent Chinese family. Her father was a government minister and a diplomat; her mother was an educator. She studied French, Russian and English, learning to speak all three, and earned a degree in physics from the Catholic University of Peking in Beijing. She also studied at an American missionary university, and was described as a sophisticated woman. She intended to go to the United States to continue her Ph.D. degree and obtain a full scholarship from the Department of Atomic Physics at Stanford University and the University of Chicago. In the Spring Festival of 1946, the Peking Underground Party of the Chinese Communist Party invited her to serve as an English translator for the CCP delegation of the Peking Military Mediation Office. Since she was in contact with the Peking Underground Party of the Chinese Communist Party on the eve of victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War, she became acquainted with the leaders of the Working Committee of Fu Jen Catholic University of the Chinese Communist Party. In the mid-1940s, Wang Guangmei traveled to the Communist Party headquarters in Yan'an and served as an interpreter during efforts by the American statesman George Marshall to negotiate a truce between the Nationalist government and the Communist rebels. During this time she gained the admiration of many Americans, which would later play a role in charges that she was an American spy. There, at the age of 24, she met Liu Shaoqi, who was nearly twice her age and had previously been married on five occasions. For years she served as his secretary, and he was named a key deputy to Chairman Mao Zedong after the Communists took power in 1949. In 1959, Liu was named Chinese President, making him the second-most powerful man in the country. First lady After Liu became president in 1959, Wang became a very visible diplomatic companion to him. Wang Guangmei became once widely known in China as its beautiful, articulate, sophisticated first lady. In the early 1960s, the couple traveled abroad on state visits to Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan and Indonesia. In 1963, she joined a