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| | Zhang Chunqiao | Obituaries | Guardian Unlimited |
 | | Zhang Chunqiao, who has died aged 88, was an unknown cultural apparatchik in the Chinese Communist party who rose to play a leading role in Mao Zedong's last political battle. |
 | | Zhang was born into a fairly wealthy landlord family in the eastern province of Shandong - intriguingly in Juye, which was also the home county of Jiang Qing. |
 | | Zhang then employed his protege Yao Wenyuan, an ambitious literary polemicist (and future fellow member of the gang of four), to work secretly at Jiang's behest on a critique of a play written by the deputy mayor of Beijing, Wu Han. |
| www.guardian.co.uk /obituaries/story/0,,1482850,00.html (1191 words) |
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