Yao Wenyuan
Born	(1931-01-12)January 12, 1931 Zhuji, Zhejiang, Republic of China
Died	December 23, 2005(2005-12-23) (aged 74) Shanghai, People's Republic of China
Occupation	Politician
Known for	Gang of Four
Political party	Chinese Communist Party

Part of a series on
Maoism
Concepts Agrarian socialism Antagonistic contradiction Anti-imperialism Anti-revisionism Capitalist roader Comprador Continuous revolution theory Cultural Revolution Four Olds Marxism–Leninism Mass line Newborn socialist things New Democracy One Divides into Two People's war Probable defeat Proletarian nation Revolutionary base area Seek truth from facts Self-criticism Social imperialism Three Worlds Theory
Variants Maoism–Third Worldism Mao-spontex Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Gonzalo Thought Prachanda Path
People Mao Zedong Faiz Ahmad Louis Althusser Samir Amin Bob Avakian Alain Badiou Mohan Baidya Afzal Bangash Charles Bettelheim Biplav Bo Xilai Chen Boda Chin Peng Pushpa Kamal Dahal Saroj Dutta Norm Gallagher Abimael Guzmán Harry Haywood Ted Hill George Jackson İbrahim Kaypakkaya Jiang Qing Kang Sheng Li Minqi Lin Biao Charu Majumdar Pierre Mulele Huey P. Newton Nie Yuanzi Qi Benyu Muppala Lakshmana Rao Narayan Sanyal Siraj Sikder Jose Maria Sison Wang Hongwen Yao Wenyuan Akram Yari Zhang Chunqiao
Theoretical works Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927) On Contradiction (1937) On Practice (1937) On Guerrilla Warfare (1937) On Protracted War (1938) On the Ten Major Relationships (1956) On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (1957) A Critique of Soviet Economics (1960) Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (1964) Historic Eight Documents (1965—1966) Bombard the Headquarters (1966) Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat (1983)
History Chinese Soviet Republic Jiangxi Soviet Long March Chinese Communist Revolution People's Republic of China 1949–1976 1976–1989 1989–2002 2002–present Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries Korean War Sino-Soviet split Great Leap Forward Black Power movement Cultural Revolution 16 May Notification Red August January Storm Down to the Countryside Movement New Communist movement Cambodian Civil War Naxalite–Maoist insurgency Naxalbari uprising New People's Army rebellion Sino-Albanian split Maoist insurgency in Turkey Death and funeral of Mao Cambodian–Vietnamese War Two Whatevers Internal conflict in Peru Nepalese Civil War Chongqing model
Organizations Chinese Communist Party Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path National Democratic Front of the Philippines Communist Party of the Philippines New People's Army Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) Communist Party of India (Maoist) Purba Banglar Sarbahara Party Communist Party of Burma Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun Serve the People – Communist League Black Panther Party Revolutionary Internationalist Movement Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations International Communist League
Related topics Anarchism in China Big-character poster Feudal fascism Hoxhaism Guevarism Juche Left communism in China Mao's cult of personality Nanjie National communism National Democracy Movement Naxalite Nazi-Maoism New Left Chinese Japanese Red Guards Red Star Over China Socialist ideology of the Kuomintang Thought reform in China
China portal Communism portal Socialism portal Politics portal

Yao Wenyuan (January 12, 1931 – December 23, 2005) was a Chinese literary critic, politician, and member of the Gang of Four during China's Cultural Revolution.

Yao Wenyuan was born in Zhuji, Zhejiang, to an intellectual family. His father, Yao Pengzi (姚蓬子) was a writer, translator and art critic.^[1]

He began his career in Shanghai as a literary critic, where he became known for his sharp attacks against colleagues, such as in June 1957 against the newspaper Wenhuibao. Since that time, he began to closely collaborate with leftist Shanghai politicians, including the head of the city's Propaganda Department, Zhang Chunqiao. His article "On the New Historical Beijing Opera 'Hai Rui Dismissed from Office'", published in Wenhuibao on November 10, 1965, launched the Cultural Revolution.^{[citation needed]}

The article was about a popular opera by Wu Han, who was deputy mayor of Beijing. Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing feared the play could be counter-revolutionary because parallels could be drawn between the characters in the play and officials in the communist government. In the play, Hai Rui, a government official, speaks for the peasants against the imperial government, criticizing officials for hypocritically oppressing the masses while pretending to be virtuous men. Hai Rui is dismissed because of this. Yao claimed it was a coded attack on Mao for dismissing in 1959 then-minister of defense Peng Dehuai, a critic of Mao's Great Leap Forward.^{[citation needed]}

Confused by this unexpected attack, Beijing's party leadership tried to protect Wu Han, providing Mao the pretext for a full-scale "struggle" against them in the following year. Yao was soon promoted to the Cultural Revolution Group.^{[citation needed]}

Yao Wenyuan was an ideal candidate for the criticism for such an opera because of his consistent socialist background. In April 1969 he joined the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, working on official propaganda. A member of "Proletarian writers for purity" he was the editor of Liberation Daily, one of Shanghai's main newspapers. He joined the state's efforts to rid China's writers union of the famous writer Hu Feng.^{[citation needed]}

On October 6, 1976, he was arrested for his participation in the Cultural Revolution and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in 1981. He was released on October 5, 1996, and spent the remainder of his life writing a book and studying Chinese history. He lived in Huzhou and Shanghai and became the last surviving member of the Gang of Four after Zhang Chunqiao died in April 2005. According to China's official Xinhua news agency, he died of diabetes on December 23, 2005, aged 74.^[2][3]

• Yao Wen-yuan: On the Social Basis Of The Lin Piao Antiparty Clique. Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1975.

• The Yao Wenyuan Archive at the Marxist Internet Archive.