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...unique set of interviews, Chiang Ch'ing summed up her stormy career as both sex symbol and potentate, movie actress and commissar. The slim, pretty actress from Shanghai who became the wife of Mao Tse-tung tried to turn her marriage to a modern-day emperor into supreme power of her own. She almost succeeded, and for a decade she was one of the world's most powerful women. As the virtual ruler over the culture of 850 million people, she determined what they could see on stage or screen...
Today, at 63, Chiang Ch'ing is no longer a revolutionary heroine; she is constantly attacked as a counterrevolutionary villain. The abrupt transformation came about last October when she was arrested in Peking by the new government of Party Chairman Hua Kuo-feng. She stands charged with being one of the "Gang of Four," a coterie of top officials whose alleged goal was to seize supreme power for themselves. Together they supposedly forged the deathbed instructions of Mao, incited violence and sabotage throughout the country, and mounted campaigns of slander against anyone who opposed them. Chiang Ch'ing...
Before her fall, Chiang Ch'ing had her chance, in a long series of interviews granted in 1972 to American Sinologist Roxane Witke, to tell her story to the world. Excerpts of that story, prepared exclusively by TIME, appear below...
...invited to China in the summer of 1972 to do research on the status of Chinese women. She spent six weeks there, speaking to many women leaders, including Teng Ying-ch'ao, the wife of then Premier Chou Enlai, and K'ang K'o-ch'ing, wife of Marshal Chu Teh, China's most renowned military leader...
...afternoon in Peking, Witke was whisked to the Great Hall of the People for dinner with Chiang Ch'ing, then at the height of her power. Presumably at that meeting, Chiang Ch'ing decided that Witke would be a suitable person to transmit her story to the outside world. Some two weeks later, while Witke was touring Shanghai, she was told excitedly by one of her guides: "Comrade Chiang Ch'ing has made a secret flight to Canton, where she is reflecting on her life and the revolution." Witke was flown by special jet to that southern...