Madame mao biography video

Chinese political figure and wife of Mao Zedong (1914–1991)

For other uses, see Jiang Qing (disambiguation).

In this Chinese name, the family name is Jiang.

Jiang Qing (March 1914 – 14 May 1991), also known as Madame Mao, was a Chinese communistrevolutionary, actress, and political figure. She was the fourth wife of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party and Paramount leader of China. Jiang was best known for playing a major role in the Cultural Revolution as the leader of the radical Gang of Four.

Born into a declining family with an abusive father and a mother who worked as a domestic servant and sometimes a prostitute, Jiang Qing became a renowned actress in Shanghai, and later the wife of Mao Zedong in Yan'an, in the 1930s. In the 1940s, she worked as Mao Zedong's personal secretary, and during the 1950s, she headed the Film Section of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group in 1966, Jiang played a pivotal role as Mao’s emissary during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution. Collaborating with Lin Biao, she advanced Mao’s ideology and promoted his cult of personality. Jiang wielded considerable influence over state affairs, particularly in culture and the arts. Propaganda posters idolised her as the "Great Flagbearer of the Proletarian Revolution." In 1969, she secured a seat on the Politburo, cementing her power.

Following Mao's death, she was soon arrested by Hua Guofeng and his allies in 1976. State media portrayed her as the "White-Boned Demon," and she was widely blamed for instigating the Cultural Revolution, a period of upheaval that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese people. Initially sentenced to death in a televised trial, Jiang's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1983. Released for medical treatment in the early 1990s, she committed suicide i

Jiang Qing, the widow of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, is sentenced to death for her “counter-revolutionary crimes” during the Cultural Revolution.

Originally an actress in Communist theater and film, her marriage to Mao in 1939 was widely criticized, as his third wife, Ho Zizhen, was a celebrated veteran of the Long March who Mao had divorced while she lay languishing in a Moscow hospital. His second wife, Yang Kaihui, was killed by the Nationalists during the Chinese Civil War. Mao's first wife, Luo Yixiu, died of dysentery in 1910. 

Jiang Qing was ordered to stay out of politics, and she did so until the 1960s when she openly criticized traditional Chinese opera and the bourgeois influences in Chinese arts and literature. In 1966, Mao made her first deputy head of the Cultural Revolution and gave her far-reaching powers over China’s intellectual and cultural life. The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s attempt to revolutionize Chinese society, and Jiang proved adept at manipulating the media and the young radicals known as the Red Guards. The movement was characterized by terror and purges in which hundreds of thousands were killed and millions suffered.

In the late 1960s, the Cultural Revolution waned, and Jiang faded from the public eye. However, after her husband’s death in 1976, she and three other radicals who had come to power in the revolution were singled out as the “Gang of Four.” Jiang was arrested and in 1977 expelled from the Communist Party. Three years later, the Gang of Four were put on trial. Jiang was held responsible for provoking the turmoil and bloodshed of the revolution, but she denied the charges and denounced China’s leaders. She was found guilty and sentenced to die. On January 25, 1983, exactly two years after she was condemned, the Chinese government commuted her sentence to life imprisonment. In 1991, she died in prison of an apparent suicide.