Tiananmen Incident and Fall of the Gang of Four

During the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing, Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan gradually joined forces and plotted to seize Party and state power; Mao Zedong called them the “Gang of Four.” On 8 January 1976 Premier Zhou Enlai died, and people across the country mourned him deeply. The Gang suppressed the mourning, which aroused intense public anger. Around the Qingming Festival, hundreds of thousands of people gathered spontaneously in Tiananmen Square in Beijing to mourn Zhou and denounce the Gang, and lines such as “I want to grieve, but hear the demons howl; I weep while wolves and jackals laugh. I shed tears to honor a hero; with brows raised, I draw my sword” were widely recited. The Gang slandered the mourning as a “counter-revolutionary incident,” suppressed it, and used the occasion to strip Deng Xiaoping of all his posts. Known as the “April Fifth Movement,” the event laid the popular foundation for the Gang’s later fall. Zhu De died on 6 July 1976; on 28 July a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Tangshan, Hebei, killing over 240,000 people; and on 9 September Mao Zedong died. The Gang stepped up its efforts to seize supreme power. At this critical moment, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, represented by Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying, took decisive action on 6 October 1976, placing Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan under isolation and investigation. In one stroke the Gang of Four was smashed, ending the ten-year Cultural Revolution. People across the country rejoiced. Their fall ushered China into a new period of historical development. In 1978 the Central Committee decided to rehabilitate the April Fifth Movement.