Last member of China’s Gang of 4 dies

BEIJING – Yao Wenyuan, the final surviving member of the Gang of Four that terrorised China during the violent 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, persecuting thousands of people, has died at age 74, the government said on Friday.

Yao, who was the group’s propagandist, later dubbed the killer with a pen by state media, died of diabetes on December 23, according to the official Xinhua news agency. It didn’t say where he died or explain the delay in reporting his death.The Gang of Four, reportedly given its name by then-Chinese leader Mao Zedong, directed the purge of moderate party officials and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.Led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, the Gang of Four and its allies inflicted physical and emotional damage that still reverberates in Chinese society, despite economic reforms that have raised living standards and loosened social controls.Nearly every Chinese city dweller who was alive at the time can tell of a relative or friend who was beaten, harassed or driven to suicide, often by tormenters who took advantage of the unrest to avenge grudges.The violence pitted neighbour against neighbour, wrecked the economy and forced a generation of intellectuals to work in the countryside.One month after Mao’s death in 1976, the Gang of Four members were arrested, marking the end of the Cultural Revolution.Yao was convicted of trying to gain power by persecuting officials and members of the public and spent 20 years in prison before being released in 1996.Jiang died in 1991 in captivity, reportedly a suicide.Another member, Wang Hongwen, died in 1992.The third member, Zhang Chunqiao, died last May.Born in 1931, Yao was a Shanghai journalist who fired the first salvo of the Cultural Revolution when, on Jiang’s orders, he wrote a review condemning a popular Beijing play as an attack on Mao.He was rewarded with a seat on the party’s ruling Politburo.Yao later confessed to falsifying evidence against Deng Xiaoping, who was purged during the Cultural Revolution but emerged as China’s supreme leader in 1978.”His weapon to kill people was the pen,” a government magazine said in 1981 after his conviction.Evidence at Yao’s televised trial included a diary entry in which he asked: “Why can’t we shoot a few counterrevolutionary elements? After all, dictatorship is not like embroidering flowers.”The Gang of Four received most of the official blame for the political violence as the government tried to shift attention away from the role played by others, including thousands of officials.Yao served his sentence in Qincheng jail outside of Beijing, where the Gang of Four once held victims in solitary confinement.- Nampa-APIt didn’t say where he died or explain the delay in reporting his death.The Gang of Four, reportedly given its name by then-Chinese leader Mao Zedong, directed the purge of moderate party officials and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.Led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, the Gang of Four and its allies inflicted physical and emotional damage that still reverberates in Chinese society, despite economic reforms that have raised living standards and loosened social controls.Nearly every Chinese city dweller who was alive at the time can tell of a relative or friend who was beaten, harassed or driven to suicide, often by tormenters who took advantage of the unrest to avenge grudges.The violence pitted neighbour against neighbour, wrecked the economy and forced a generation of intellectuals to work in the countryside.One month after Mao’s death in 1976, the Gang of Four members were arrested, marking the end of the Cultural Revolution.Yao was convicted of trying to gain power by persecuting officials and members of the public and spent 20 years in prison before being released in 1996.Jiang died in 1991 in captivity, reportedly a suicide.Another member, Wang Hongwen, died in 1992.The third member, Zhang Chunqiao, died last May.Born in 1931, Yao was a Shanghai journalist who fired the first salvo of the Cultural Revolution when, on Jiang’s orders, he wrote a review condemning a popular Beijing play as an attack on Mao.He was rewarded with a seat on the party’s ruling Politburo.Yao later confessed to falsifying evidence against Deng Xiaoping, who was purged during the Cultural Revolution but emerged as China’s supreme leader in 1978.”His weapon to kill people was the pen,” a government magazine said in 1981 after his conviction.Evidence at Yao’s televised trial included a diary entry in which he asked: “Why can’t we shoot a few counterrevolutionary elements? After all, dictatorship is not like embroidering flowers.”The Gang of Four received most of the official blame for the political violence as the government tried to shift attention away from the role played by others, including thousands of officials.Yao served his sentence in Qincheng jail outside of Beijing, where the Gang of Four once held victims in solitary confinement.- Nampa-AP