Word: wenyuan
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...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...
...three others: former Politburo members Zhang Chunqiao, 63; Yao Wenyuan, 49; and Wang Hongwen...
Some speculation inevitably focused on the radical Gang of Four. Gang Leader Jiang Qing, Mao Tse-tung's onetime companion, and her accomplices from Shanghai (municipal Party Official Zhang Chunqiao, Literary Critic Yao Wenyuan and cotton-mill Party Functionary Wang Hongwen) assumed power in the mid-1960s and instituted a reign of terror in which thousands of writers, artists and scientists were so relentlessly persecuted that many died or committed suicide. Though the gang members were arrested and dis graced four years ago, the announcement that they would go on trial for then-crimes came only last month...
Jiang Qing assumed power with the assistance of her three fellow gang members: Yao Wenyuan, 56, a literary critic whose extremist articles in the Shanghai daily Wen Hui inaugurated the Cultural Revolution; Wang Hongwen, 43, a party secretary in a Shanghai cotton mill, who in 1973 was elevated by Mao to the third highest post in the Communist hierarchy; and Zhang Chunqiao, 69, who helped Jiang Qing purge almost the entire cultural establishment of China. The four instituted a reign of terror during which thousands of writers, artists and scientists were so relentlessly persecuted that many died or committed suicide...
...allegations in the unfolding tale of Chiang Ch'ing's evildoing. After an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Premier Chou En-lai in 1971, Mao's fiercely ambitious wife joined with radical Politburo Members Wang Hung-wen, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao and Yao Wenyuan to organize a second parallel government competing with the existing administration, while they plotted to usurp power. The gang is said to have tried to persuade China's armed militia to take over the army...