Posted on 05/10/2005 9:33:30 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Member of China’s notorious Gang of Four dies
BEIJING, May 10 (Reuters)
Zhang Chunqiao, a member of China’s notorious Gang of Four led by the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong, died of cancer last month, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday in the first official word in decades on a man previously thought by many to have been dead for years.
Zhang had been on medical parole since January 1998 and had died on April 21, Xinhua said without giving further details. He was 88.
Members of the Gang of Four were arrested in a bloodless coup one month after Mao’s death in September 1976 in one of the most sensational moments in power struggles in China’s Communist era, ending a decade of ultra-leftist fervour whipped up by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing.
Chinese official media rarely mention the Gang of Four because the issue of their guilt and close links to Mao -- who is still officially revered -- is one that embarrasses communist officialdom and has been relegated to the darkest of corners.
Many Chinese, including government and Communist Party officials, thought Zhang had died shortly after his arrest. According to the Encyclopedia of the People’s Republic of China, he died in 1991.
Zhang received a death sentence suspended for two years in January 1981, Xinhua said. He refused to utter a single word during the two-month trial.
His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in January 1983, and reduced again to 18 years in prison.
Jiang Qing, leader of the Gang of Four that wielded supreme power during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve in 1981 for the deaths of tens of thousands in the Cultural Revolution.
She never repented but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The former Shanghai starlet, dubbed a witch by state media after her downfall, hanged herself in Beijing in May 1991.
Yao Wenyuan, now the sole surviving member of the Gang of Four, was freed in 1996 after serving a 20-year term for subversive crimes.
The fourth and youngest gang member, Wang Hongwen, died of liver cancer in a Beijing hospital in 1992 while serving a life sentence.
Ping!
Three down,one to go !
Oh my, they're tied with the Beatles now...
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