Jiang Qing

Where they went

5 related events

1. 1
   1937 – 1947The Yan’an Period and the Rectification Movementrelated figure

   After the Long March the Communist leadership made Yan’an in northern Shaanxi its capital for ten years from January 1937. There the Rectification Movement (1942–1945) bound the party to Mao Zedong, and the Seventh Party Congress of 1945 made “Mao Zedong Thought” its guiding ideology.

2. 1966 – 1976Cultural Revolutionkey figure

   A political movement launched by Mao Zedong in May 1966, claiming that “representatives of the bourgeoisie” had infiltrated the party. Red Guards and rebel factions attacked party organisations and fought one another, and leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were purged. Society and the economy were convulsed for ten years until the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976.

3. 2
   1966 – 1968Red Guardsrelated figure

   After Mao Zedong first received Red Guards in Tiananmen Square on 18 August 1966, the student Red Guard movement spread across China. By November eight rallies had drawn 11 to 13 million young people to Beijing, and the Red Guards turned to violence in the name of smashing the “Four Olds”.

4. 3
   1976Death of Zhou Enlai and the April Fifth Tiananmen Incidentrelated figure

   After Premier Zhou Enlai died on 8 January 1976, wreaths and poems piled up at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square at the Qingming festival on 4–5 April. When the authorities removed the wreaths crowds protested, and on the night of the 5th militia and police cleared the square. The incident was declared “counter-revolutionary” and Deng Xiaoping was purged again.

5. 4
   1976Death of Mao Zedong and Arrest of the Gang of Fourrelated figure

   Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976, and a month later, on 6 October, Hua Guofeng, with Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing, arrested the “Gang of Four” — Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. The Cultural Revolution was effectively over.

People who appear alongside

• Mao Zedong1893 – 1976

  Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party who won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949, and launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

• Deng Xiaoping1904 – 1997

  General Secretary of the Communist Party (1956–1966), twice purged during the Cultural Revolution, and from 1978 China’s paramount leader who launched “reform and opening up”

• Liu Shaoqi1898 – 1969

  Chairman of the People’s Republic (1959–1968) who led economic readjustment after the Great Leap Forward, but was branded a “capitalist roader” in the Cultural Revolution, expelled from the party and died in detention

• Lin Biao1907 – 1971

  PLA marshal who led the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns and, as defence minister, spread the “Little Red Book”; named Mao’s successor in the 1969 party constitution, he died in a plane crash in Mongolia in 1971

• Zhou Enlai1898 – 1976

  First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit

• Hua Guofeng1921 – 2008

  Mao’s chosen successor, who became premier and party chairman in 1976 and had the Gang of Four arrested, but was eased out by Deng Xiaoping after 1978

• Zhu De1886 – 1976

  Commander-in-chief of the Red Army and the People’s Liberation Army; he joined Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan in 1928 (“Zhu–Mao”) and was made a marshal in 1955

Themes this person appears in

• From the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution1927 – 1976

  From the collapse of the United Front in 1927, through rural bases, the Long March and Yan’an, to the Communists’ victory in the civil war and the founding of the People’s Republic — then land reform, the Great Leap Forward and famine, the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution, up to Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, while the Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan