Jiang Qing
江青
1914–1991
- First Deputy Director (Acting Director), Central Cultural Revolution Group (1966–1969)
- Member, CCP Politburo (1969–1976)
- Leader of the Gang of Four
Biography
Actress and Revolutionary
Jiang Qing was born in 1914 in Shandong province. She worked as an actress in Shanghai in the 1930s, appearing in several films under the name Lan Ping. She joined the Communist Party in 1933 and made her way to Yan'an, the Communist base area, in 1937. There she met Mao Zedong, and they married in 1938 — a marriage that senior Party leaders reportedly opposed on the grounds of her class background and theatrical past. As a condition of Party approval, she reportedly agreed to remain out of politics for twenty years. She remained largely in the background until the 1960s.
Cultural Revolutionary Power
From 1966, Jiang Qing became one of the most powerful figures in China as a leading member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. She directed the radical transformation of Chinese arts and culture, suppressing virtually all traditional and foreign cultural expression and replacing it with the "eight model revolutionary works" she personally curated — a set of operas and ballets with explicitly revolutionary themes. She wielded this cultural authority to persecute hundreds of artists, writers, and performers. Her personal vendettas — against old colleagues, critics, and rivals from her Shanghai acting days — were settled through the Cultural Revolution's machinery.
The Gang of Four
By the early 1970s, Jiang Qing had formed a tight political alliance with Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan — the group that Deng Xiaoping would later call the "Gang of Four." The four dominated ideological and cultural policy throughout the Cultural Revolution decade. After the death of Zhou Enlai in January 1976, the Gang moved to block Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation and consolidate their grip on power. They were widely seen as positioning themselves to succeed Mao. When Mao died on 9 September 1976, their bid for power lasted less than a month: they were arrested on 6 October 1976.
Trial and Defiance
Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four were put on trial in 1980–81 in a televised proceeding that was one of the most watched events in Chinese history. She was charged with persecuting over 700,000 people, of whom 34,375 died. Throughout the trial she was defiant, shouting at judges, refusing to accept charges, and declaring 'I was Chairman Mao's dog — whoever he told me to bite, I bit.' In January 1981, the Supreme People's Court's Special Tribunal sentenced her to death with a two-year reprieve and lifetime deprivation of political rights; in January 1983, having shown no defiance during the reprieve period, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and on 4 May 1984 she was granted medical parole. She died by suicide at her residence in Beijing in the early hours of 14 May 1991, aged 77. The official account held that she hanged herself; a former director of the Qincheng Prison supervision office later disclosed that she had instead taken an overdose of sleeping pills she had hoarded. She reportedly left a note describing herself as 'a revolutionary who died for the revolutionary cause.'
Related Events (10)
Cultural Revolution Begins
From 1966 to 1976, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, driven by a combination of genuine ideological conviction — fear of Soviet-style revisionism and capitalist restoration — and the political imperative to reassert control after the Great Leap Forward debacle, purging pragmatic rivals Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Red Guards mobilised to destroy the 'Four Olds' and attack intellectuals, officials, and perceived class enemies; the movement reached its radical peak in the January Storm of 1967. Across ten years and several distinct phases, an estimated one to two million people died from direct violence and tens of millions suffered persecution. The 1981 Party Resolution designated the Cultural Revolution a 'catastrophe' — the gravest historical error since the founding of the People's Republic.
politicalRed Guards Movement and the Destroy the Four Olds Campaign
Beginning with Nie Yuanzi's big-character poster and the founding of the first Red Guard group at Tsinghua Middle School in May 1966, the Red Guards movement became the Cultural Revolution's first mass mobilization, sanctioned by the Eleventh Plenum's "Sixteen Points" that August. Under the banner of "Destroying the Four Olds," student Red Guards ransacked homes, destroyed temples and antiques, and beat teachers and other targets — killing vice principal Bian Zhongyun on August 5 and driving novelist Lao She to suicide on August 24 — while Mao Zedong received over eleven million young people at eight mass rallies in Tiananmen Square between August and November. A 1980 account put the death toll in Beijing alone at 1,772 in three weeks that "Red August," making the campaign one of the Cultural Revolution's earliest and most violent phases.
politicalPersecution and Death of Liu Shaoqi
In August 1966, following the 11th Plenum of the 8th Central Committee, head of state Liu Shaoqi was made the Cultural Revolution's primary target, his Party rank plunging from second to eighth. Over the next two years he and his wife Wang Guangmei were subjected to home raids, struggle sessions, physical abuse, and imprisonment, as a special case group fabricated evidence through torture to brand him a "renegade, traitor, and scab." In October 1968, the 12th Plenum expelled him from the Party "forever"; in November 1969, gravely ill and denied medical care, he died alone at a secret detention site in Kaifeng, Henan. In 1980 the Party posthumously rehabilitated him, honoring him as "a great Marxist and proletarian revolutionary."
politicalThe Ninth National Congress of the CCP
Held in Beijing from 1 to 24 April 1969, the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party formally endorsed the Cultural Revolution and wrote Lin Biao into the Party constitution as Mao Zedong's designated successor. The new Central Committee elected on 28 April was dominated by Cultural Revolution Group members and military figures aligned with Lin Biao, with fewer than a fifth of its 279 members and alternates carried over from the previous Central Committee.
politicalLin Biao Incident
On 13 September 1971, Lin Biao — Defence Minister and Mao Zedong's designated successor enshrined in the Party constitution — died when his aircraft crashed near Öndörkhaan in Mongolia after fleeing China with his wife Ye Qun; all nine on board were killed. The official account holds that Lin's son Lin Liguo had plotted to assassinate Mao under the codename 'Project 571,' and that Lin fled after the conspiracy was exposed. Western scholars widely contest this narrative, arguing that Lin more likely fled as Mao's purge was closing in on him. The incident fundamentally undermined the Cultural Revolution's ideological legitimacy and marked a decisive turning point in the movement's decline from its radical peak.
politicalCriticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius Campaign
In January 1974, with Mao's approval, the Central Committee circulated "Lin Biao and the Way of Confucius and Mencius," launching the "Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius" campaign nationwide. Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Hongwen, and others used this politically charged campaign, framed around a supposed historical struggle between Legalists and Confucians, to obliquely attack Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying, and other central leaders — dubbed "criticizing the 'Duke of Zhou.'" The campaign spread from central organs to grassroots units; the "Liang Xiao" writing group at Tsinghua and Peking universities published a stream of polemical articles, and Jiang Qing personally promoted Xiaojinzhuang in Tianjin as a model village. The philosopher Liang Shuming publicly refused to criticize Confucius at a CPPCC study session, leaving behind his famous response, "the will of a common man cannot be taken from him." In July 1974 Mao openly criticized Jiang Qing and her allies for forming a "Gang of Four," and the campaign's momentum faltered; in January 1975 Deng Xiaoping was appointed First Vice-Premier, effectively bringing the campaign to a close.
politicalCriticize Deng, Counter the Right-Deviationist Reversal of Verdicts
In 1975, while Zhou Enlai lay gravely ill, Deng Xiaoping oversaw a "comprehensive rectification" of the country under Mao's "three directives," bringing marked improvement to Party and state work. When Deng declined to chair a resolution affirming a "seventy-thirty" assessment of the Cultural Revolution, Mao's nephew and Politburo liaison Mao Yuanxin reported his refusal to Mao, who approved a "greeting meeting" on 24 November 1975 that formally launched the "Criticize Deng, Counter the Right-Deviationist Reversal of Verdicts" campaign. After Zhou Enlai's death in January 1976, Hua Guofeng was named acting Premier, and the movement to attack Deng spread nationwide. Public mourning for Zhou at Tiananmen Square in April 1976 was suppressed as the "Tiananmen Incident," after which Deng was stripped of all his posts. The campaign effectively ended with the arrest of the "Gang of Four" in October 1976, and in July 1977 the 3rd Plenum of the 10th Central Committee restored Deng to all his positions.
politicalDeath of Zhou Enlai and April Fifth Movement
Premier Zhou Enlai, who had served as head of the State Council for twenty-seven years, died on 8 January 1976. The Gang of Four's restrictions on public mourning provoked widespread public anger. Around the Qingming Festival on 4 April 1976, millions of citizens gathered spontaneously at Tiananmen Square to lay wreaths in memory of Zhou Enlai, implicitly protesting the Gang of Four's influence. When the Gang ordered the wreaths removed, large-scale protests erupted the following day and were suppressed — the April Fifth Movement. It was the first spontaneous mass political protest in the history of the PRC not organised by the Party; Deng Xiaoping was labelled the behind-the-scenes instigator and purged for a second time. The movement was officially rehabilitated in 1978 and became an important precursor to the political transition of the post-Mao era.
politicalDeath of Mao Zedong
On 9 September 1976, Mao Zedong — Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and founding leader of the People's Republic of China — died of heart failure in Beijing at the age of eighty-two. He had held paramount power since 1949, leading China through a succession of transformative campaigns including land reform, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. His death ended twenty-seven years of Maoist rule and triggered an intense succession struggle: within less than a month, the pragmatist faction led by Marshal Ye Jianying moved against the radical Gang of Four led by Mao's widow Jiang Qing, resulting in their arrest on 6 October 1976. The fall of the Gang of Four cleared the path for Deng Xiaoping's final rehabilitation and the beginning of the reform and opening-up era.
politicalArrest of the Gang of Four
Less than a month after Mao's death, Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying orchestrated the arrest of Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, ending the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution.
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