CHINA: Yao Wenyuan, the last surviving member of China's notorious Gang of Four and a propagandist whose incendiary writings helped spark the Cultural Revolution in 1965, has died in Shanghai, state media reported yesterday.
The death of the ideological hardliner was announced in a terse, two-line statement on the official Xinhua news website.
Mr Yao (74), was described by Xinhua as a "key criminal of the counter-revolutionary group". He died of diabetes on December 23rd and the news agency gave no reason for the delay in announcing his death.
The Gang of Four was led by Chairman Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, a former Shanghai starlet. The group, which also included Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hongwen, sparked the Cultural Revolution, a period of ultra-communist fervour which destroyed millions of lives over the decade between 1965 and 1975.
Mr Yao was the arch scribe of the Cultural Revolution and its chief propagandist. One article which flowed from his fearsome poisonous pen, "The destitution of Hai Rui", which he wrote on Jiang Qing's prompting, has been credited as being a crucial factor in starting the clampdown on "backstage abettors", to use a phrase beloved of Mr Yao.
He was instrumental in promoting the armies of youthful and ideologically charged Red Guards, who turned China upside down looking for "capitalist roaders" and "bourgeois running dogs". Children were encouraged to inform on their parents and intellectuals were harassed and beaten.
"His weapon to kill people was the pen," was how one government magazine described his actions in 1981.
The Gang of Four was arrested in a bloodless coup in 1976 after Chairman Mao's death and sentenced to long jail terms, with Ms Jiang and Mr Zhang sentenced to life in prison.
Ms Jiang, Chairman Mao's third wife, never repented her actions and hanged herself in 1991. Mr Zhang died of cancer in April, while Wang Hongwen died in a Beijing hospital in 1992 while serving a life sentence.
The Cultural Revolution is rarely mentioned in China and the Gang of Four remains a problematic subject for the Communist Party, particularly as Chairman Mao is still officially revered.
A huge portrait of the "Great Helmsman" looks down from the gates of the Forbidden City on to Tiananmen Square.
Mr Yao began his career in Shanghai as a literary critic but after he met Zhang Chunqiao, he soon devoted himself to critical campaigns against writers and other propaganda tracts. In April 1969 he joined the central committee of the Communist Party of China, working on official propaganda.
He was released on October 5th, 1996. He had been writing a book and studying Chinese history since his release on medical parole in 1994, but always said his most fervent desire was to be reinstated by the Communist Party. He attempted to have his memoirs published in 2001 and there was a battle among publishers to print the book, but its publication was vetoed by former leader Jiang Zemin.
Some the phrases attributed to the propaganda master during the Cultural Revolution still have the power to chill: "Why can't we shoot a few counter-revolutionary elements? After all, dictatorship is not like embroidering flowers."