http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/06/news/gang.php
Obituary: Yao Wenyuan, 74, last of Gang of Four
The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 2006
BEIJING Yao Wenyuan, the final surviving member of the Gang of Four that
terrorized China during the violent 1966-76 Cultural Revolution by persecuting
thousands of people, has died, the government said Friday. He was 74.
Yao's death on Dec. 23 was blamed on diabetes, the official Xinhua press
agency reported. It did not say where he had died or explain the delay in
reporting his death.
The Gang of Four, reportedly given its name by the Chinese leader at the
time, Mao Zedong, directed the purge of moderate party officials and
intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.
Yao was the group's propagandist, later dubbed the killer with a pen by
state media.
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 loosened social controls and economic reforms that have raised living
standards.
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 neighbor against neighbor, wrecked the economy,
pushed the country to the brink of famine and forced a generation of
intellectuals to work in the countryside.
The members of the Gang of Four were arrested one month after Mao's death
in September 1976.
Yao, a Shanghai journalist, was convicted of trying to gain power by
persecuting officials and members of the public. He spent 20 years in prison
before his release in 1996. It was not known what he had done since his
release.
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."
On Jiang's orders, Yao fired the first salvo of the Cultural Revolution,
writing 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 Yao's conviction.
Jiang died in 1991 in custody, reportedly by suicide. Another member of
the Gang of Four, Wang Hongwen, died in 1992. The third member, Zhang Chunqiao,
died last May.
The Cultural Revolution was one of the most sensational events in the
power struggles that wracked the Communist Party in the decades after it won
power in 1949. 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.
David Zweig, an expert on China at the Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology, said Yao's significance in the Gang of Four came through his
writing skills.
"He was a very political writer," Zweig said. "He used the pen very
effectively for political battles. That was his hallmark."
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