Posted on 05/10/2005 7:32:53 AM PDT by Borges
BEIJING -- State-run media said Thursday Zhang Chunqiao, a member of the Gang of Four which terrorized China during the Cultural Revolution, died. He was 88.
Xinhua reported Zhang died of cancer on April 21. The news item did not mention where his death took place or why the announcement was delayed. Western academic sources had believed Zhang died in 1991.
The Chinese agency inaccurately described him as "one of the culprits of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary clique."
Lin Biao died in 1971 in a plane crash under mysterious circumstances, possibly after a failed coup.
The Gang of Four was comprised of Mao's last wife, Jiang Qing, who died in 1991; Wang Hongwen, who died in 1992, Yao Wenyuan and Zhang. They formed an ultra-leftist clique, which attempted to rule China with Mao Zedong's acquiescence in the mid-1970s.
After Mao's death in 1976, the group was arrested and a show trial was held in from December 1980 through January 1981. Xinhua said Zhang's death sentence was commuted twice to 18 years in prison with political rights deprived for 10 years. Zhang had been on medical parole since January 1998.
What design patterns did he come up with? (Little IT joke there.)
"I Love a Man in a Uniform"
("Songs of the Free" - an intersting name for an album by a commie rock group).
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