Sentences Reflect New Legal System

The Chinese government is trying to prove the credibility of its new legal system by suspending the death sentence of Chairman Mao Tse-tung's widow, Jiang Qing, Harvard experts on China said yesterday. Jiang was given two years to reform.

In 1978, two years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, China adopted a new constitution "to eliminate or reduce the abuses from cadres making decisions," Dwight D. Perkins, professor of Modern Chinese Studies, said yesterday.

The government's first priority is to prevent "the abuses of the Cultural Revolution from happening again," Eugene Wu, librarian of the Harvard-Yenching Library, said yesterday.

Wu explained that although "many people felt Jiang deserved the death sentence ten times over," the government wants to give credibility to the 1978 constitution after "the Cultural Revolution when there was no law."

Jiang's suspended sentence is based on a clause in the new constitution.

Perkins, however, disagreed, saying there is "a long tradition" among top Chinese leaders of "avoiding executing each other."

"People suffered bitterly from the arbitrary abuses of power in the Cultural Revolution," Benjamin I. Schwartz '38, Williams Professor of History and Political Science, said yesterday. Now there is "assurance that when people fall from power, they will not be killed," he added.