Zhang Chunqiao, 88; One of China’s Gang of Four Blamed for Cultural Revolution’s Evil
LA Times
BEIJING — Zhang Chunqiao, a member of the Gang of Four blamed for many of the excesses of China’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution — a period that saw the economy derailed, thousands of moderate party officials and intellectuals purged and the nation traumatized — has died. He was 88.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported the news Tuesday, nearly three weeks after his April 21 death from cancer. China’s ruling Communist Party often underplays potentially embarrassing news, and the four-sentence obituary gave few details or any explanation for why the announcement was delayed.
Zhang was the most intellectually rigorous member of the Gang of Four, the group that directed much of the Cultural Revolution. Led by Jiang Qing, the wife of Communist Party founder Mao Zedong, the Gang of Four were arrested a month after Mao’s death in 1976 and charged with “counterrevolutionary activities.”
