A few thoughts on Chiang Ching/ 江青- It was right to rebel!

By Steve Otto

Some people I know consider Chiang Ching/ 江青 to have been mean and a tyrant. She was mean at times. As she went through life a lot of people didn’t take her seriously. To them she was just some women (at times just a girl) who they didn’t have to take seriously. She started out her career as an actress. Some producers and directors did not take her seriously at all. As a communist there were many leaders and activist who dismissed her as someone they didn’t really need to have around. When she came to power, everyone who dismissed her regretted it. As a child she was not always popular with other children or the adults around her. She didn’t really become politically active until years after she married Mao Zedong/毛泽东. When she did become active, she was probably the most important woman to rise into a communist system. The only other examples of such women were Rosa Luxemburg and Louise Michel.

Not many women have risen up in a communist system and Chiang Ching had a very hard time making her way through that of China’s. Like it or not, the communist government, underneath Mao, was much like a ‘good ‘ol boy’ network of men. Despite all the talk of ‘women holding up half the sky’ the reality of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was that it was made up of comrades that were more interested in promoting men than women. Many did not like Chiang Ching. But there were some who did like her and they appreciated her politics and leadership. The highest leaders who supported her became known as the Gang of Four. When Mao was alive, he protected her and no one in the party dared to cross him or his wife. But when he died, the rightist in the party staged a coup and Chiang Ching and her followers were immediately the target of their revenge. There was a power struggle and the military backed Deng Xiaoping/ 邓小平 and his right-wing followers. Deng and his followers formed the right-wing of the party and they really didn’t like Mao. They took all of their dislike out on Chiang Ching.

Chiang Ching built a powerful faction within the CPC. She was a major player in the Cultural Revolution. There have been other wives of communist leaders, who wanted to become leaders after their husbands died, such as Elena Ceaușescu, wife of Nicolae Ceaușescu, of Romania. Ceaușescu was a communist, as her husband, but Chiang Ching was probably a more dynamic leader. Chiang Ching was more than just a communist. She was a feminist and a rebel. She supported the poorest of China’s people as well as the country’s university students. Culture was a major interest to her and she was a major impression on culture during the Cultural Revolution. Her politics were different from Mao’s despite her claim that she was mostly subservient to Mao.

 

“I was Chairman Mao’s dog. What he said to bite, I bit.”
Jiang Qing on her role in the Cultural Revolution

 

Her show trial was designed to discredit her. Deng and his faction figured that she would cower before them and ask for forgiveness. They expected to make a fool out of her. They were mistaken. She fought back and at times made fools of Deng and his cohorts. They accused her of crimes against various party members and other people. She pointed out that those who put her on trial never made any efforts to stop these crimes while Mao was alive. Chiang Ching exposed them as cowards. She turned the tables on them and they came out looking like fools. Unlike a lot of her cohorts, she never gave into to her accusers. Her famous line “It is right to rebel” became a powerful slogan to those who supported the left-wing of China’s Communist Party. Even some right-wing authors who have written biographies of her admired her for standing up to the communist government.

Chiang Ching has been a big influence on my politics.  

-Some of this information came from Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, by Roxane Witke, 1977.