China still fears ‘Gang of Four’

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 18

China still fears ‘Gang of Four’

From

JONATHAN MIRSKY

in Peking

China's man-in-the-street will have read much into the simultaneous decisions to reprieve Mao Tse-tung's widow, Jiang Qing. and to execute two Cantonese embezzlers.

It appears .the authorities decided it would be politically too disruptive to shoot the late Chairmans wife, although as one of the Gang of Four she had personally commanded the murder and torture of tens of thousands of Chinese. There was political advantage. however, in condemning to death, with maximum publicity, a local party official and an accountant in the sub-branch of a county bank for offences which would have received only prison sentences in most parts of the world. Two years to the day after Jiang Qing was condemned to death together with the rest of the Gang, the Supreme People’s Court reduced the penalty to life imprisonment and the permanent deprivation of her political rights. Chinese criminal law permits a two-year stay of execution to allow the prisoner time to display remorse. It had not been expected that the belligerent Jiang Qing was likely to exhibit contrition. The best the court could say in its judgment last month was that she. and Zhang Chunqiao, the other Gang member awaiting execution, “had not resisted reform in a flagrant way." Although millions of Chinese would have been gratified by her death, the Dengists may not have felt confident enough to withstand the outrage of her supporters throughout the party, the Army, and the bureaucracy. But why shoot Wang Zhong on January 17 and Li Jingfang the next day? Wang was executed in an open field before thousands of spectators and with millions more watching on television. His death was “good and gratifying news for the people," said the “People's Daily." Wang, the former secretary of a county party

branch in Guangdong province. had extracted for his own use roughly $30,000 from the smuggling he was supposed to suppress, and had solicited bribes from people seeking to escape to nearby Hong Kong. A party circular noted that the first lesson to be learnt from Wangs execution was that "capitalist ideology" lingered in Guangdong, doubtless because of its proximity to Hong Kong. The other executed criminal. Li Jingfang. obtained about $150,000 by misusing his position in a bank. There have been much bigger swindlers than Wang and Li. As late as last November two Guangdong officials were caught smuggling more than $lO million of goods; they had fiddled an additional $l5 million in foreign currency — but they were not executed. Since the latest anti-cor-ruption drive began in March last year, the authorities claim to have solved more than 136.000 cases. 51.000 of them smuggling offences in Guangdong alone. In one factory. the party committee ran a $l2 million smuggling ring. Yet until the shootings of Wang and Li. penalties for such crimes were not heavy. Party members who stole were expelled — a painful deprivation of prestige and privilege — and jailed for varying periods. Non-party crooks were also imprisoned, often with well-broadcast exemplary sentences. In a sense, the executions are a warning to certain people in high places. Rumours of substantial “economic crime" in their families have lapped about the feet of some of China's most exalted leaders. The Peking hierarchy must be hoping that shooting Wang Zhong and Li Jingfang before vast audiences will arouse sufficient anxiety among the corrupt elite to prevent embarrassing exposes in a partydesperate to retrieve its reputation for revolutionary purity. — Copyright - London Observer Service.