Yao Wenyuan was born in
Zhuji,
Zhejiang, to an intellectual family. His father, Yao Pengzi () was a writer, translator and art critic. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. == References ==