Distribute to all comrades of the Politburo. Some opinions are good, and criticism should be
tolerated.
Mao Zedong
1973. 11. 25

[1] This famous letter from "an ordinary Communist Party member" criticized Jiang Qing for
her poor democratic style, her excessive emphasis on literature and art, and her failure to
implement the "Double Hundred" policy in her literary and artistic work. The letter criticized
the slogan "Everything makes way for the young people" and the praise of Jiang Qing as the
"heroic standard-bearer of the Cultural Revolution" as inappropriate.
[2] [1] Jiang Qing, former deputy and acting head of the Cultural Revolution Group of the
CPC Central Committee. At the time, she was a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC
Central Committee. During the Cultural Revolution, she formed the Gang of Four with Zhang
Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan, and engaged in sectarian activities to split the
Party and seize power. After Mao Zedong became seriously ill and died, she became even
more reckless and eager to engage in conspiracy activities to usurp the supreme power of
the Party and the state. On October 6, 1976, the CPC Central Committee announced that she
would be placed under isolation and investigation. In July 1977, the Third Plenary Session of
the Tenth CPC Central Committee decided to expel Jiang Qing, a bourgeois careerist,
conspirator, counter-revolutionary double-dealer, and traitor, from the Party forever and to
revoke all her posts inside and outside the Party. In 1981, the Special Tribunal of the
Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China confirmed her as the main culprit
in the Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary group case and sentenced her to death with a two-year reprieve and deprivation of political rights for life. In 1983, her sentence was commuted
to life imprisonment. She committed suicide on May 14, 1991.