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One of China's Gang of Four dies
Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Posted: 6:51 AM EDT (1051 GMT)
BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Zhang Chunqiao, a member of China's notoriousGang of Four(声名狼藉的四人帮) led by the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong, died of cancer last month, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday in the first official word on him in decades.
Zhang had been on medical parole since January 1998 and had died on April 21, Xinhua said without giving further details. He was 88.
The People's Supreme Court gave Zhang a death sentence suspended for two years in January 1981, Xinhua said. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in January 1983, and reduced again to 18 years in prison.
Members of the Gang of Four were arrested in a bloodless coup following Mao's death in 1976 in one of the most sensational moments in the power struggles in China's Communist Party ending a decade of ultra-leftist fervour whipped up by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing.(1976年毛泽东死後,在共产党内部权力斗争最激烈的时期, 四人帮成员在一场不流血的行动中被捕, 因此结束了长达10年的由江青煽动的极左狂潮)
Yao Wenyuan, the sole surviving member of the Gang of Four, was freed in 1996 after serving a 20-year term for subversive crimes.(四人帮中唯一健在的姚文元,在因颠覆国家罪坐了20年牢後,于96年被释放.) |
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