The World - News from Dec. 29, 1988

Chinese authorities denied a report in a Chinese newspaper, the China Daily, that Jiang Qing, widow of Mao Tse-tung, is critically ill. “Jiang Qing is suffering from ordinary diseases of old age. She is not in danger,” a Ministry of Justice spokesman said. The spokesman also denied a Chinese publication’s report earlier that Jiang, 74, was no longer in custody and was being treated in a Beijing hospital for throat cancer. Jiang and three of her radical allies, known as the Gang of Four, were arrested in 1976 for excesses during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. She was tried and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.