China: Guilty Verdict: the Gang of Four

And a suspended death sentence for Mao’s widow

Shouting radical slogans from the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing was ignominiously hustled out of the courtroom by uniformed bailiffs. The normally grave panel of judges and prosecutors applauded as the disgraced widow of Mao Tse-tung was declared guilty of “counterrevolutionary crimes” and sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. The other nine defendants, each standing in turn to face the court, heard their verdicts with the same passive expressions they had worn since the trial began on Nov. 20. Thus, in a dramatic Sunday morning Peking court session, did China, after a mysterious delay of several weeks, conclude the celebrated case of the “Jiang Qing-Lin Biao counterrevolutionary clique.”

The climactic session of the trial against China’s once powerful radicals contained few surprises. As the two-hour proceeding got under way at 9 a.m., the defendants were herded into the courtroom one by one and seated behind an iron railing. Three judges took turns reading the court’s 14,000-word judgment. It declared each of the defendants guilty of one or more of 46 counts against them, ranging from slandering state and party officials to plotting to assassinate Mao.

Jiang and former Shanghai Mayor Zhang Chunqiao, 63, were named the chief culprits of the Gang of Four. They were the only defendants to receive suspended death sentences. The official reason given for their two-year grace period was to allow the condemned prisoners “to reform through labor.” In fact, while their reprieve is theoretically only two years, Jiang and Zhang will almost surely never be shot.

The next stiffest sentence—life imprisonment—went to the Gang of Four’s Wang Hongwen, 46, who had rocketed from obscurity to the No. 3 slot in the Communist Party hierarchy during the Cultural Revolution. The fourth member of the Gang, Propagandist Yao Wenyuan, 49, got 20 years. The other six defendants, including five former top military officers convicted of plotting to kill Mao in 1971, got sentences ranging from 16 to 18 years in prison.

As usual, Jiang Qing provided the proceedings with their most dramatic moments. The onetime movie actress, 67, who was handcuffed as soon as her death sentence was announced, made a final, characteristic gesture of defiance by shouting the slogans she had used so often during her heady days of power: “Revolution is no crime! To rebel is justified! Down with revisionism!” At the end of the trial, Jiang refused to leave the courtroom, seeming to want to drop limply to the floor. But she was finally grabbed by the scruff of her neck and expelled from the chamber by three bailiffs.

According to Chinese sources, the final verdict had been delayed by wrangling within Peking’s top leadership over whether or not to spare Jiang’s life. The end of the long trial caps the orchestrated purge of China’s once powerful, Mao-inspired radical faction. The trial was, in fact, largely an act of vengeance by the officials currently in power, most of whom had been purged during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Fittingly enough, the widows of several of the top leaders who did not survive the violence of that upheaval were in the audience for Sunday’s proceedings. Among them was Wang Guangmei, widow of onetime Head of State Liu Shaoqi. Wang triumphantly declared the trial a “victory for the people.” In reality, it was mainly the victory of the ruling faction of Vice Chairman Deng Xiaoping, which now enjoys almost undisputed power. But the Chinese people, who have bad memories of the Cultural Revolution, are not likely to grieve over the verdict on the radicals.