How Did the Gang of Four Get into Power?
Q. For more than a month, China’s press has carried many articles on the crimes of the Gang of Four which brought disasters to China and her people. The disclosure of these facts is shocking, but the question I am presently concerned with is this: if the Gang of Four were so wicked and so incompetent, then why were they permitted to climb to such high positions in the first place?
A. The ten years since the Cultural Revolution have been a period of very complex and sharp struggles in China. Understanding the rise and fall of the Gang of Four and the overall march of political events isn’t easy. We have to look below the surface of things to analyze the “leftist” and rightist lines and to distinguish correct from incorrect things, because, as we know, people can “wave the red flag to oppose the red flag.” Things can be “left” in form but right in essence. One tendency can cover or hide another, judgements correct in general may be erroneous in parts, and what is wrong may appear to be right. In short, things are complicated and not easy to sort out. However, people in China have learned a lesson and improved their analytical ability over this long period of struggle. Those who have not been through these last ten years of turbulence will find it difficult to make out what is happening simply from a few reports and a superficial knowledge of the events.
