Jiang Qing,Wade-Giles Chiang Ch’ing, stage name Lan Ping, original name Luan Shumeng  ( born 1914? , Chu-ch’eng, Shantung province, China—died May 14, 1991 )  third wife of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong and the most influential woman in the People’s Republic of China until her downfall in 1976, after Mao’s death. As a member of the Gang of Four (q.v.) she was convicted in 1981 of “counter-revolutionary crimes” and imprisoned.

Reared by her grandfather, Jiang became a member of a theatrical troupe in 1929. Her activity in a communist-front organization in 1933 led to her arrest and imprisonment. Upon her release she went to Shanghai, where she played minor roles for the left-wing Tien Tung Motion Pictures Company.

When the Japanese attacked Shanghai in 1937, Jiang fled to the Chinese Nationalist wartime capital at Chungking, where she worked for the government-controlled Central Movie Studio until she crossed the Nationalist lines to join the Communist forces in Yen-an. As a drama instructor at the Lu Hsün Art Academy, she met Mao for the first time when he gave a talk at the school. Their subsequent marriage They were married in 1939 (technically, she was Mao’s fourth wife; he had an arranged marriage in his youth but never acknowledged it). The marriage was criticized by many party members, especially since the woman whom Mao divorced (one of the few women to survive the Communists’ Long March of 1934–35) was then hospitalized in Moscow. Party leaders agreed to the marriage on condition that Jiang stay out of politics for the next 30 years.


Jiang reached the height of her power and influence in 1966, winning renown for her fiery speeches to mass gatherings and her involvement with the radical young Red Guard groups of the Revolution. One of the few people whom Mao trusted, she became the first deputy head of the Cultural Revolution and acquired far-reaching powers over China’s cultural life. She oversaw the total suppression of a wide variety of traditional cultural activities during the Revolution. As the Revolution waned in the late 1960s, however, so did Jiang’s prominence. She reemerged in 1974 as a cultural leader and spokeswoman for Mao’s new policy of “settling down.”
