Mao's Forgotten Successor: The Political Career of Hua Guofeng

Mao’s Forgotten Successor Also by Robert Weatherley THE DISCOURSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: Historical and Ideologica...

Author: Robert Weatherley

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Mao’s Forgotten Successor

Also by Robert Weatherley THE DISCOURSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: Historical and Ideological Perspectives POLITICS IN CHINA SINCE 1949: Legitimizing Authoritarian Rule

Mao’s Forgotten Successor The Political Career of Hua Guofeng Robert Weatherley Affiliated Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University and Head of the China Group at Mills & Reeve LLP

© Robert Weatherley 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–54247–1

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Helen, Alice, Matilda and Susie

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Contents List of Figures

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

List of Abbreviations

x

Introduction

1

1 The Young Revolutionary: Hua in Shanxi (1921–49)

20

2 Towards Rural Reform: Hua in Hunan (1949–57)

43

3 The Great Leap Forward and the Post-Leap Recovery Period: Hua in Hunan (1958–65)

69

4 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Hua in Hunan (1966–70)

92

5 Entering the Centre: Hua in Beijing (1971–6)

112

6 The Return of Deng Xiaoping: Hua in Decline (1977–80)

141

Conclusion

168

Notes

177

Bibliography

183

Index

192

vii

List of Figures Figure 1.1 Map of Shanxi

27

Figure 2.1 Map of Hunan

45

viii

Acknowledgements Very special thanks to Shaun Breslin ( Warwick University) for his thoughts and advice on each of the draft chapters of this book. Thanks also to Charles Aylmer, Barak Kushner and Wang Wei (each of Cambridge University), Shogo Suzuki (Manchester University), Shi Wei (Bangor University), Wu Yiching (University of Michigan), Liu Yu (Qinghua University), Josie Liao, Zheng Feifei, Fei Jia, Wendy Huang, Michael Wong and Cui Quanle. Last, but not least, thank you to my patient wife and three daughters to whom this book is dedicated.

ix

List of Abbreviations APC

Agricultural Producers’ Co-operative

CCP

Chinese Communist Party

CJZX

Chengdu Junqu Zhengzhibu Xuanchuan Bianyin (Chengdu Military District Political Department Propaganda Compilations)

CMC

Central Military Commission

CNA

China News Analysis

CR

China Reconstructs

CRSG

Cultural Revolution Small Group

DLYZ

Dang Lishi Yanjiu Zhongxin Shanxisheng Zhonggong Weiyuanhui (Party History Research Centre Shanxi CCP Provincial Committee)

DZC

Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe (Contemporary China Publishing House)

GHW

Gongqingtuan Hunansheng Weiyuanhui (Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League)

GMRB

Guangming Ribao (Guangming Daily)

HGWC

Hunansheng Geming Weiyuanhui Chengli he Qingzhu Dahui (Conference for the Celebration of the Establishment of the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee)

HJX

Hunansheng Junqu Xiezuozu (Editorial Office of the Hunan Military Region)

HNJY

Hunansheng Jiaoyuju (Hunan Education Bureau)

HLA

Hunan Liberation Army

HRCB

Hunan Renmin Chubanshe (Hunan People’s Publishing House)

HWSJ

Hunansheng Weishengju (Hunan Health Bureau)

I&S

Issues and Studies

JAJA

Joint Anti-Japanese Association x

List of Abbreviations

JFJB

Jiefangjun Bao (Liberation Army Daily)

KMT

Guomindang (Nationalist Party)

MAT

Mutual Aid Team

PLA

People’s Liberation Army

PPA

Poor Peasant Association

PRC

People’s Republic of China

PSC

Politburo Standing Committee

RMCB

Renmin Chubanshe (People’s Publishing House)

RMRB

Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily)

SEM

Socialist Education Movement

STGW

Shanxisheng Taiyuanshi Gujiaoqu Wengongtuan (Taiyuan Gujiao Art Troupe of Shanxi Province)

SXRB

Shanxi Ribao (Shanxi Daily)

TWG

Taiyuanshi Wenwu Guanlisuo (Taiyuan Cultural Relics Management Committee)

XYXB

Xiangyinxian ‘Hua Zhuxi zai Xiangyin de Gushi’ Bianxiezu (The ‘Stories about Chairman Hua in Xiangyin County’ Writing Group of Xiangyin County)

ZCW

Zhonggong Changshashi Weiyuanhui (Changsha City Central Committee)

ZGHW

Zhongguo Gongchandang Hunansheng Weiyuanhui (Hunan Province CCP Committee)

ZHSZ

Zhonggong Hunan Shengwei Zuzhibu (Organisational Division of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee)

ZHXD

Zhonggong Hunansheng Xiangtan Diqu Weiyuanhui (Xiangtan Prefecture Committee of the Hunan CCP)

ZSJW

Zhonggong Shanxisheng Jiaochengxian Weiyuanhui ( Jiaocheng County Committee of the Shanxi CCP)

xi

Heilongjiang

Xinjiang Gansu

Inner Mongolia Ningxia

Qinghai

C Tibet

H

I N

A

Guizhou

Tianjin

Shanxi Shandong Henan Hubei

Chongqing Yunnan

Hebei

Shaanxi

Sichuan

Beijing

Jiangsu Shanghai

Anhui

Zhejiang

Jiangxi Hunan Fujian

Guangxi Guangdong Hong Kong Hainan

Map of China

Jilin Liaoning

Taiwan

Introduction

The inception of economic reform in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is usually identified as the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee which took place in December 1978. It was here that Deng Xiaoping gathered the political support he needed to lay the foundations (albeit very loosely at that stage) for what is commonly referred to as the post-Mao period of economic reform, which has in recent years seen China emerge as one of the world’s most powerful economies. Yet Mao had been dead for over two years before the post-Mao economic reform era began; so what happened in the intermediate period? Who was in charge of China? During this time, it was not Deng who ran the country. Mao assiduously avoided transferring the mantle of leadership to his erstwhile ally and latterly his nemesis. Instead, he handed power to the then little known and now largely forgotten Hua Guofeng. Hua appeared at the centre of Chinese politics in the early 1970s after more than two decades as an official in Hunan, Mao’s home province. It was during his time in Hunan that Hua first became known to Mao, primarily because of his enthusiastic commitment to Mao’s 1950s rural collectivisation programme, which included the ill-fated Great Leap Forward. Hua’s support for rural collectivisation contrasted with the more critical attitude of his immediate superiors in Hunan and came at crucial times for Mao when he found himself under political pressure and in need of support. As recompense for this and other instances of loyalty, Mao smoothed the way for Hua’s steady rise through the Hunanese political ranks right up to the top post of First Secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee in December 1970. Mao continued to warm towards Hua after he entered the central political arena, and in 1975 Hua was made a Vice-Premier and Minister of Public Security. In April 1976 Hua became Premier and then in 1

2


October, following the arrest of the Gang of Four, Hua was confirmed as Chairman of the other two most powerful institutions in China: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the military in the form of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Mao is thought to have personally blessed Hua’s elevation to paramount leader during a meeting in April 1976 when Mao handed Hua a scarcely comprehensible note containing the now notorious legitimising words, ‘with you in charge, I am at ease’ (ni banshi wo fangxin). It is difficult to gauge the authenticity of the note given that the meeting itself took place in private when Mao was extremely ill and may not have been capable of writing. Moreover, Hua conveniently produced the all-important note after Mao had died which meant of course that Mao could not verify it. Despite this, there is little doubt that Mao handpicked Hua as his successor. On assuming the role of China’s paramount leader, Hua presented himself as Mao’s loyal lieutenant and a natural successor to Mao’s political legacy, as embodied in a slogan which became known as the Two Whatevers (liang ge fanshi): ‘[W]hatever policy Chairman Mao decided upon, we shall resolutely defend; whatever directives Chairman Mao issued, we shall steadfastly obey.’ However, just over two years later at the Third Plenum, Hua was eclipsed by Deng, and by 1981 he had been formally removed from each of his three leadership posts. This book explores the political career of Hua Guofeng both as a provincial official and a member of the party elite and examines how and why it was that Hua rose to power only to lose it so quickly. In assessing Hua’s rise and fall, we will consider some of the broader issues that were pertinent to Chinese politics at the time. It will be suggested that one of the key reasons Hua failed to hang on to supreme power was because he lacked the charismatic authority over his colleagues that was then so central to the legitimacy of China’s political leaders. According to the well-established Weberian concept, a leader with charismatic authority is endowed with exceptional qualities that set him or her apart from ordinary people (Weber, 1964, pp. 363–86). These qualities are most clearly in evidence according to Teiwes (1984, p. 48) at times of acute political crisis, and it is an ability to emerge triumphant under pressure that draws colleagues to the authority of the charismatic individual. In addition to his extensive credentials as a revolutionary in the 1930s and 1940s, Deng Xiaoping’s charismatic authority derived from his sheer resilience in the face of crisis (Goodman, 1994; Shambaugh, 1995; Stewart, 2002). Captured and beaten by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, Deng lived to tell the tale where so many others

Introduction 3

had perished. After six years of labouring in a tractor factory in Jiangxi Province (albeit only in a part-time capacity), Deng returned to the CCP leadership in 1973 where he managed to hold his own in an intensely hostile political environment and push forward with his own political programme during 1975. Purged again in 1976, Deng disappeared from public view but in the following year he was back at the centre, plotting Hua’s eventual downfall. By contrast, Hua, as we shall see, cut a rather ordinary figure as a man with an unspectacular revolutionary legacy in Shanxi where he began his political career and a solid but unremarkable background as a provincial official in Hunan, rising to national attention somewhat fortuitously because of gaps in personnel created by the large-scale purges of the Cultural Revolution. In light of this, it will be argued that Hua was incapable of inspiring the respect and admiration required to convince his contemporaries that he was the natural successor to Mao (who himself was drenched in charismatic authority), notwithstanding that he had received Mao’s backing as successor. We will also examine Hua’s emergence as paramount leader within the context of China’s constitutional or what Weber (1964, pp. 329–41) calls legal-rational procedures for appointing political leaders, noting how in relation to Hua’s ascent to paramount leader these procedures were categorically violated. In addition to his unofficial anointment by way of a barely legible note written by a barely conscious old man, Hua’s formal appointment as Premier in 1976 was not made by the National People’s Congress as required by the state constitution, but by an emergency session of the Politburo, a party organ. Similarly, Hua’s appointment as CCP and CMC Chairman in October 1976, again via a Politburo emergency resolution, was not properly ratified until the Eleventh National Party Congress some ten months later. Deng sought to use these procedural irregularities to full advantage during his power struggle with Hua. In particular, during 1977 he encouraged the short-lived Democracy Wall Movement to call for the institution of a clearly defined legal and constitutional system, thereby implicitly criticising Hua and his followers, many of whom had risen to power without the correct constitutional sanction. Ironically, however, Deng himself was guilty of abrogating legal-rational procedures as evidenced by the manner in which he toppled Hua from power. In direct violation of the rules of democratic centralism which require adherence to the majority party line without dissent, Deng successfully assembled support from outside the party centre to put pressure on Hua and eventually force him from office.

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Hua who? But this book is not just about Hua’s brief time as China’s paramount leader and the background to his fall from power, although that period is clearly pivotal to any comprehensive understanding of Hua. As noted, we will also examine Hua’s career as a provincial cadre in Hunan and prior to that in Shanxi. In some respects, Hua’s provincial career provides an indication as to why it was that he emerged from virtual anonymity to ultimately succeed Mao. Hua’s almost devout loyalty to Mao’s directives on agrarian reform while he was in Hunan is one such indicator, especially at certain critical junctures when Mao really needed Hua’s backing. In other respects, however, Hua’s unremarkable provincial career makes his later ascendancy all the more remarkable, most notably his time in Shanxi where he held very junior political positions and made no high-profile political contacts that may have accounted for his subsequent ascent. Hua in Shanxi So who was Hua Guofeng? Hua was born in 1921 in Jiaocheng County, Shanxi Province. Little of any substance is known about his parentage, although it has been suggested by one source (most likely erroneously) that he was born out of wedlock to a sexually promiscuous teenage mother and a former mercenary of the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan (CNA, 1977). Too young to have been a participant in the Long March (1935–6), Hua began his political career in 1938 as a low-level guerrilla fighter in China’s war of resistance against Japan (1937–45). During this time, he organised local civilians into small guerrilla units that attacked Japanese strongholds and provided support to the Eighth Route Army, the communist forces in northern China previously known as the Red Army. Hua’s success in orchestrating attacks against the Japanese saw him climb through the Shanxi political apparatus, and in 1945 he was appointed Secretary of Jiaodong County CCP (encompassing Jiaocheng). After Japan’s military defeat in August 1945, Hua fought in the civil war (1945–9) against the Guomindang (KMT) and Yan Xishan, successfully employing the methods of guerrilla warfare that he had used against the Japanese. This facilitated his promotion in 1947 to Secretary of Yangqu County CCP, a larger county than Jiaodong and geographically more important. Yet, as we shall discuss in Chapter 1, the significance of Hua’s early career in Shanxi was probably its insignificance. Shanxi was a pivotal region during the wartime period and in the eventual emergence of the

Introduction 5

CCP as China’s governing party. Many of those who were to hold senior positions after 1949 (e.g. Deng Xiaoping, Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai) led from the front line of the Eighth Route Army during the fighting in Shanxi, established their political reputations there and built up political networks that were to serve them well in their later careers. In stark contrast, Hua served in an ancillary, behind-the-scenes capacity in Shanxi, and there is no evidence to suggest that he established any contacts of any real political significance while he was there. For example, there is nothing which indicates that Mao met Hua during this period, although his name may have fleetingly crossed Mao’s desk. This makes Hua’s subsequent rise to supreme power all the more astonishing. It also explains why Hua found it so difficult to establish himself as a credible paramount leader. A revolutionary legacy based on such a lowkey, bit-part role provided a very weak basis upon which to build his charismatic legitimacy. Hua in Hunan Following the victory of the CCP in 1949, Hua was transferred south to Hunan where he quickly threw his weight behind the party’s rural collectivisation policy. Fortuitously for Hua, he was soon put in charge of Xiangtan County which encompassed Mao’s native town of Shaoshan, and it was Hua’s success in developing Mutual Aid Teams (MATs) in Shaoshan and neighbouring areas that probably first brought him to Mao’s favourable attention (Hua claimed to have first met Mao in the early 1950s).1 Hua retained his enthusiasm for collectivisation as China moved towards the next stage of rural development in the form of the lower-stage Agricultural Producers’ Co-operatives (APCs), notwithstanding that this did not always make him popular with those who ranked above him in Hunan. We will see in Chapter 2 that when Hua responded positively to Mao’s national call in July 1955 to accelerate the implementation of the APCs, he was upbraided by Hunan First Secretary Zhou Xiaozhou who opposed the call. However, when Mao’s preference for acceleration became official party policy later in the year, Zhou was forced into line in an embarrassing volte-face. The image of Hua that emerges during his first few years in Hunan is of a man loyal to Mao’s radical directives, even if such loyalty was likely to alienate his colleagues and (theoretically) jeopardise his career prospects. That said, there is also evidence to suggest that Hua’s efforts in developing the MATs and APCs went beyond blind devotion to Mao and arguably reflected an independence of mind and action. Official sources indicate, for example, that Hua began organising MATs as early

6


as in the winter of 1950, almost two years before the MATs became official party policy. Likewise, while higher-stage APCs were officially implemented in mid-1956, Hua had been experimenting with them almost two years earlier. To a certain extent, this challenges the conventional image (partly created by Hua himself via the Two Whatevers) of a man who simply waited to be told what to do by Mao, although there is no clear sign of dissent from the Maoist line. It also suggests that Hua may even have been more radical than Mao himself when it came to agrarian reform. Hua maintained his support for rural collectivisation during the Great Leap Forward (1958–60) as noted in Chapter 3. Here again, we can find evidence of a close adherence to Mao when he was facing opposition elsewhere. As the Leap began to falter during 1959, key members of the central party leadership, most notably Peng Dehuai, began to doubt the wisdom of the policy, culminating in his now infamous written critique of the Leap at the July Lushan Plenum. As Mao prepared his own devastating riposte which led to Peng’s dismissal as Minister of Defence along with, among others, Zhou Xiaozhou as Hunan First Secretary, some sources suggest that he drew on favourable reports written by Hua detailing the success of the Leap in Hunan (RMRB, 1976b, p. 1; RMRB, 1977a, p. 1). This and Hua’s earlier displays of loyalty to Mao probably accounted for his surprise appointment as a Hunan Party Secretary (not to be confused with First Secretary) in 1959. But it appears that Hua did not always act in strict accordance with Mao’s directives. In July 1958, at a time when the country was wholeheartedly behind the Leap, Hua gave a speech to the local provincial party in which he raised doubts about certain aspects of the Leap (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 24). In particular, he cautioned (prophetically) against a growing tendency among cadres to set unrealistically high output targets for grain and other foodstuffs and warned that cadres should avoid coercive measures in the implementation of the policy. Given the national mood at the time was so positive, Hua’s very public remarks were bold, to say the least. Moreover, in light of the fate that befell Peng Dehuai at Lushan a year later and the widespread purge of provincial officials that followed Lushan, Hua was probably lucky to have avoided any reprisals for his candid perspective on the Leap. What this demonstrates is that Hua was not always a slavish adherent to Mao as he is often portrayed, although this example of dissent was very much the exception rather than the rule. As China moved towards the post-Leap recovery programme in the early 1960s, Hua continued to catch Mao’s eye with his earnest

Introduction 7

endeavours in Hunan. This was especially the case in Maotian District (north-east Hunan) where Hua is reported to have helped local inhabitants with famine relief and to live self-sufficiently through the Leaporiented techniques of mass mobilisation, diversification of labour and communal living. Impressed by what he witnessed during a visit to inspect the location in 1963 and in particular by Hua’s sustained adherence to the original principles of the Leap, Mao singled Hua out for praise and proposed that Maotian became Hunan’s first model agricultural unit for the rest of the province to emulate. Mao also publicly praised Hua’s supervision of the construction of the landmark irrigation plant in Mao’s native Shaoshan, built during 1965–6 well ahead of schedule. As with Maotian, Hua’s success in Shaoshan served to enhance Hua’s standing in Mao’s eyes and assist his prospects for further promotion. The Cultural Revolution (1966–9) threw Hunan into a state of chaos and in contrast to some perspectives on the subject (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 316), Hua’s political career and personal safety were very much threatened by the new campaign. In May 1967, Hua was seized by a radical Red Guard group known as the Changsha Revolutionary Rebel Workers’ United Committee (abbreviated in Chinese to Gonglian) that incarcerated him in a car factory in Changsha, Hunan’s capital city. Although Hua was released within a few weeks of his capture, he was confronted by a different group in January 1968 called the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee (abbreviated in Chinese to Shengwulian) that accused him of being a ‘red capitalist’, namely a representative of the old Hunanese bureaucratic order that they so detested. Again, however, Hua survived. We will note in Chapter 4 that Hua’s survival against these Red Guard attacks was largely down to good fortune, as was his continued career ascendancy in Hunan. With so few of his contemporaries still in office following the mass purges of the Cultural Revolution, Hua was able to step into the political void that had been created. Gaps in personnel facilitated Hua’s appointment in September 1967 to a senior position within the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee, a temporary body set up to replace the shattered organs of local authority. This, in turn, put Hua in pole position to become Vice-Chairman of the Hunan Revolutionary Committee, a more permanent and authoritative body established in April 1968. From here, there followed a number of other high-profile promotions which culminated in Hua’s appointment as Hunan First Secretary in late 1970. Within this context Hua is often described as a beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution and this is perfectly

8


accurate. However, as we will explain in greater depth, unlike his later radical counterparts, most notably the Gang of Four, Hua was very much an establishment beneficiary, someone whose power increased during the de-radicalisation of the campaign after 1967 and who was promoted through the ranks to help restore political order and return China to a semblance of administrative normality. Hua in Beijing A paucity of experienced officials also helps explain why Hua, with Mao’s blessing, was promoted to the centre of Chinese politics in February 1971 where he worked under Zhou Enlai in the State Council, specifically in areas such as agriculture, aquatics and forestry. Hua’s success there saw him elevated to the Politburo in 1973 and it was at this stage that he first came into conflict with the Gang of Four. Unlike Hua, the Gang were radical beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution who had actively participated in the implementation of the radical campaign and had swept to power because of it. Any movement away from the militant principles that underpinned the Cultural Revolution towards the restoration of the old establishment presented a danger to the Gang and they saw Hua, among others (e.g. Deng Xiaoping), as the embodiment of this danger. We will see in Chapter 5 how the Gang launched a number of initiatives aimed at destabilising Hua as he moved up the elite political hierarchy, but how none of them were successful in preventing him from succeeding Mao as paramount leader. Almost immediately on so doing, Hua authorised the Gang’s arrest.

Why Hua? So why did Mao choose Hua as his successor? Unsurprisingly, there is no single or simple answer to this question. Nothing was straightforward about the invariably tumultuous Mao period of Chinese politics (1949–76) and we have to accept that we may not have all the answers to questions such as this, not least because of the lack of transparency that characterised the period. Those answers that we do have can be summarised as follows and will be elaborated upon in this book. First, Hua got to the top because of his reputation as a competent administrator, a reputation that was largely built during his time in Hunan where he was deeply immersed in the policymaking and implementation process. Much of Hua’s work there was at the practical, often mundane end of the spectrum. We will see how during the Great Leap Forward Hua advised on techniques for increasing potato production and

Introduction 9

on the technical difficulties in pumping water from coal pits. We have already noted Hua’s management of the construction of the Shaoshan irrigation plant. Once in Beijing Hua demonstrated similar capabilities as a member of the State Council where he introduced new techniques for crop rotation and irrigation and advised on mechanisation procedures and the corresponding need to rationalise the labour force. Notwithstanding Hua’s undoubted ability, it was also very much a question of who you know, in other words your political contacts ( guanxi), and in Hua’s case he knew Mao. The long-term effect of his loyalty to Mao over the years will emerge as a key theme of this book and there is little question that it contributed considerably to his career progression in Hunan and then in Beijing. During the last few years of his life, as Mao cast around for someone to succeed him, he saw in Hua a person he could trust and who he felt would be loyal to his political legacy. He was right in both cases. Then there was the question of a general lack of credible alternatives to Hua in Mao’s mind. We will discuss in Chapter 5 how Mao contemplated a number of potential successors. These included Deng Xiaoping who took charge of state affairs during 1975 but whose genuine commitment to the Cultural Revolution was in doubt (not surprisingly given that he was vilified during the campaign), the Gang of Four who were deemed too unpopular among the general population and too divisive within the party elite and veteran revolutionaries such as Li Xiannian and Ye Jianying who were probably perceived more as guardian figures over Hua than future leaders in their own right. Ultimately, we will suggest that Hua was viewed favourably by Mao as an uncomplicated and honest man, someone who was more interested in carrying out policy than factional infighting and was thus potentially a unifying force within the party, although in practice that turned out not to be the case.

Assessing the literature Turning now to the existing literature on Hua, it is surprising to find that there is no official biography of the man who was once China’s paramount leader. This is especially perplexing when one considers that official biographies have been written about Chinese political figures who, while perhaps no less significant than Hua, were certainly never elevated to the dizzy heights that Hua achieved. Examples include Chen Yonggui (Feng, 1998), Lu Dingyi (Chen and Song, 1999), Nie Rongzhen (DZC, 1994), Xu Xiangqian (DZC, 1991) and Zhang Aiping (He, 2000).

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Hua’s brief incumbency at the very top did precipitate a plethora of hurriedly compiled edited works about him, many of which have been reviewed in writing this book, but it is possibly because Hua’s reign was so brief that no official biography was published about him when he was in power. Following his formal dismissal from all leadership posts by 1981, Hua disappeared from the public eye and his importance as a politician was largely forgotten. One might have anticipated that Hua’s death in August 2008 would have provided the impetus for the publication of an official biography, but according to one senior political scientist from Beijing University no such works are currently planned because of the apparently sensitive nature of his political legacy. This too is surprising and not entirely logical given that there are official biographies about far more controversial figures such as Kang Sheng (Lin, 1996), Lin Biao (Lin, 1988) and Gang of Four members Jiang Qing (Ye, 1993a), Wang Hongwen (Ye, 1993b), Yao Wenyuan (Ye, 1993c) and Zhang Chunqiao (Ye, 1993d). There is a non-official English-language biography of Hua written by Wang Ting titled Chairman Hua: Leader of the Chinese Communists.2 Published in 1980, Wang’s book provides a useful starting point to certain aspects of Hua’s life and career, most notably when he was based in Shanxi and Hunan. There are, however, a number of shortcomings in the book which, taken together, have made it necessary to introduce a second book on Hua to the academic market which is more comprehensive, up to date and analytical.3 The most significant shortcoming in Wang’s book is an over-reliance on narrative and a corresponding paucity of analysis. Moreover, in those places where Wang does proffer scrutiny he tends to reach conclusions that are either unconvincingly sourced or completely unsubstantiated. For example, when assessing Hua’s role in the implementation of land reform in Shanxi during the late 1940s, Wang (1980, p. 25) asserts that Hua resorted to ruthlessness and violence towards landlords in his locality. However, in drawing this assumption Hua relies on a conversation he had with some former (unnamed) Red Guards from Hunan. This leads us to ask two interrelated questions. First, how could a group of people from Hunan know what Hua was doing hundreds of miles north in Shanxi Province, unless they were living in close proximity to him? (Wang is silent on this point). Second, even if they were, would they really have known or remembered much about Hua’s activities given that they would have been very young at the time? Most Red Guards were teenagers when the Cultural Revolution began in 1966; so back in the late 1940s many of them would have been under five years old.

Introduction 11

Similar problems arise in relation to Wang’s discussion of the mid1950s party leadership debate over the pace of rural collectivisation, specifically the implementation of the APCs. As noted earlier, during this debate Hua supported Mao’s stance that the pace should be accelerated and Wang (1980, p. 50) infers from this that Hua’s motives were almost exclusively career-oriented. In other words, Hua sided with Mao because he believed it would enhance his own career prospects. The problem with this inference is that it relies on the benefit of hindsight which shows that in the end Mao’s position on collectivisation became party policy such that Hua was vindicated in his support for Mao. However, during the course of the debate itself it was far from clear that Mao’s position would prevail. Indeed, if anything, it looked like Mao might lose out to those espousing a more cautious approach (e.g. Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yun). So what career benefit would there have been to Hua in supporting Mao? Contrary to Wang’s assumption, Hua was probably taking a career risk in backing Mao because Hua’s superiors in Hunan (e.g. Zhou Xiaozhou) appeared to oppose Mao’s position. If Hua was driven purely by his own personal advancement, as Wang suggests, why did he take the risk of opposing his immediate superiors? Another weakness with Wang’s book is its failure to provide a full and accurate explanation of some of the political campaigns in which Hua was involved. The Cultural Revolution, for example, gets just a single paragraph which states that the campaign ‘engulfed every Chinese province’ (Wang, 1980, p. 65). In fact, many rural areas were largely unaffected by the Cultural Revolution (MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, 2006). Land reform is given the same cursory and inaccurate treatment: ‘[T]he Chinese Communists over-emphasized class struggle; they created “class hatred” among the peasantry, thereby turning land reform into a violent political movement’ (Wang, 1980, p. 35). In truth, there were some areas (e.g. the north-east) where the campaign turned nasty under the direction of party work teams, but in other more conservative regions land reform struggled to get off the ground as peasants clung to the old and familiar tenancy system (Hinton, 1996). A number of other sources focus on selected periods of Hua’s political career. One of the most detailed and insightful is Oksenberg and Yeung’s (1977) analysis of Hua’s career as what they describe as a ‘political generalist’ from 1949 to 1966, covering most (although significantly not all) of his Hunan period and drawing heavily on archives from the New Hunan Daily (Xin Hunan Bao). Chapters 2 and 3 of this book make close reference to some of Oksenberg and Yeung’s findings, but there are gaps in some of these findings. They include the claim that ‘no information is

12


vailable to trace Hua’s activities in 1953’ (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 11) when in fact some of the more obvious and accessible official sources such as the People’s Daily (Renmin Ribao) and the Guangming Daily (Guangming Ribao) show that Hua was very active during 1953 in setting up lower-stage APCs. We will see in Chapter 2 that in early 1953 Hua authorised the establishment of six experimental APCs in Xiangtan, the success of which led him to set up a further 75 APCs during the winter of that year. This omission by Oksenberg and Yeung highlights a wider neglect of official sources outside the New Hunan Daily (e.g. the People’s Daily and the Guangming Daily), some of which were available at the time they wrote their article. It should also be noted that the authors tend to rely too heavily on the content of Hua’s numerous speeches in Hunan rather than providing details of some of his key day-to-day activities and sometimes without the requisite analysis. This is most apparent with regard to Hua’s July 1958 speech referenced earlier where he expressed concern about cadre coercion in implementing the Great Leap Forward at a time when the public was fervently behind the policy. Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, p. 24) remain largely silent on the significance of Hua’s speech other than to say that ‘Hua was not overwhelmed by the euphoria of the moment’. While this is true, they fail to identify the considerable risk that Hua was taking in running against the tide of popular opinion and more generally in terms of how this demonstrates that Hua was not always a loyal adherent to Mao’s directives (see Chapter 3). The most recent English-language contribution on Hua is contained in a substantial volume written by Teiwes and Sun (2007). Dealing with the much wider topic of elite politics during the final few years of Mao’s life (1972–6), the book includes a useful insight into the role played by Hua during 1975–6, most notably during the Campaign to Criticise Deng Xiaoping, the Tiananmen public demonstrations against the CCP’s posthumous treatment of Zhou Enlai and the circumstances leading up to the arrest of the Gang of Four. The authors challenge several points of academic consensus, in particular that Hua and Deng were at odds during the landmark Dazhai Conference on agriculture (September and October 1975) and that the Gang actively plotted to overthrow Hua after Mao’s death. Notwithstanding the considerable merits of the Teiwes and Sun volume, it does not (and does not purport to) offer a complete analysis of Hua’s political career in its entirety, and the absence of any other such offering (given the weakness of Wang’s book) creates a need for Mao’s Forgotten Successor.

Introduction 13

Problems of historiography In addition to the English-language sources referenced above and those others cited in the bibliography, a number of Chinese-language texts have been reviewed in preparing this book. The majority of these are official publications, including articles and editorials published in the People’s Daily, the Guangming Daily and Red Flag (Hongqi), as well as edited books published by state-run publishing houses in Hunan, Shanxi, Beijing and elsewhere. The extensive use of official sources derives in the main from a paucity of non-official alternatives. Of the few that exist, two which offer useful insights into Hua’s fall from power are Ye Yonglie (1998) and former People’s Daily editor Hu Jiwei (1998) as referenced in the later chapters of this book. Shi Dongbing (1996, 1997) has written at length on Hua and although his work is entertaining, it is largely fictional and therefore of limited utility. There are a number of unofficial Internet accounts of Hua’s career, especially following his death in 2008, but most of these cannot be relied upon because invariably the source of the information (and sometimes the author) is not disclosed. One of the rare exceptions is the work of the local historian and former Changsha Red Guard Chen Yinan (2004). Chen provides an invaluable account of Hua’s activities and treatment during the Cultural Revolution and this is backed up in his authoritative book on the Cultural Revolution in Hunan (Chen, 2006). It is imperative to note that many of the official documents reviewed for this book were published during 1976 and 1977, a period when the CCP’s propaganda machine was frantically engaged in constructing a personality cult around Hua following his succession to Mao as paramount leader. Inevitably, therefore, the content of these works is often excessively flattering to Hua. Moreover, given that Hua’s legitimacy was so intrinsically bound to Mao’s political legacy, there is a notable emphasis on his adherence and loyalty to Mao’s policies and ideological principles. This overtly pro-Hua bias is evident in many of the titles of the publications on Hua. They include ‘Comrade Hua Guofeng is the Proper and Worthy Leader of Our Party’ ( JFJB, 1976), ‘Our Commander in Chief Chairman Hua Leads our Charge to Victory’ (CJZX, 1977) and ‘Comrade Hua Guofeng is an Outstanding Successor to Chairman Mao’s Revolutionary Line’ (ZGHW, 1977). In one article on the subject of Hua’s participation in the war of resistance against Japan we are told in unashamedly obsequious tones that:

14


[a]t one stage when Comrade Hua Guofeng was in poor health, his comrades urged him to take better care of himself. He thanked them for their concern and replied, ‘you know in times of war we should all the more study Chairman Mao’s works. Only this way can we acquire the ability to defeat the enemy’. (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1) In another article on the subject of Hua’s work in Hunan, the authors suggest that: [i]n his two years in Xiangyin County [north-east Hunan], Comrade Hua Guofeng worked hard all day and very often studied late into the night. Wearing a pair of straw sandals and carrying an umbrella when it rained and a hurricane lamp at night, he went from village to village diligently carrying out his work. (RMRB, 1977a, p. 1) Noting Hua’s propensity for on-the-spot inspections, the authors further claim that during a visit in 1970 to the Luoda Commune in Longshan County (Xiangxi Prefecture, north-east Hunan): Hua travelled on foot for dozens of kilometres across steep mountains. On his way, he inspected the commune’s water conservancy works and talked with local cadres and peasants. Disregarding early summer showers, he crossed one mountain after another with the help of a stick and went from village to village to acquaint himself with local conditions. (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3) Given the political context in which these and many of the other official works on Hua were written and some of the excessively flattering language contained in them, it is difficult for us to know whether what we are told about him is historically accurate, largely exaggerated or just pure fabrication. One of the challenges in writing this book has been distinguishing between fact and fiction, although it is not difficult to identify (and ignore) the type of romanticised spin contained in the three quotations cited above. Verifying some of the claims made about Hua has not been easy. Despite several enquiries through both official and unofficial channels, it proved impossible to meet Hua or members of his immediate family in person due to reasons of alleged political sensitivity and a reclusiveness

Introduction 15

on Hua’s part. This was a problem encountered by other researchers according to Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 537fn), although an article by Zhang Gensheng (2004) concerning the events surrounding the arrest of the Gang of Four is thought to be based on a personal exchange between Hua and the author. Hua did give a 30-minute interview to the BBC’s Felix Greene in 1977 not long after he had assumed paramount leadership, but the content of this interview is not particularly revealing and mainly comprises a rather bland summary of China’s domestic and foreign policy at the time.4 Some of the obituaries on Hua have revealed new information about Hua’s childhood and career, although most of the articles tend to replicate information contained in the earlier articles published during 1976 and 1977 but with less spin.5 It has been possible to verify some of the claims made about Hua during his Hunan career by reference to articles contained in the New Hunan Daily written in the 1950s and 1960s. Of course, the New Hunan Daily is an official source just like the People’s Daily, the Guangming Daily or any other official source in China and should therefore be treated with a degree of caution in respect of bias. However, articles written about Hua in Hunan at a time when he was actually there operating at the grass-roots level in a fairly junior political capacity are probably more reliable than those that were published during 1976–7 period when the party had a specific pro-Hua political agenda and sought to embroider Hua’s qualities. Certainly, the language in the New Hunan Daily is more moderate than in the later publications. Indeed, some of the 1976–7 articles used the New Hunan Daily as the main source of information on Hua and then added in the requisite hyperbole. Despite the more balanced, less politicised approach taken by the New Hunan Daily, the fact remains that this book must come with a caveat concerning the reliability of information about Hua from official Chinese sources. Just as pro-Hua sources come with a health warning regarding their political subjectivity, so too do those articles that were intended to discredit Hua, most notably those written by Deng Xiaoping supporters during the period of Hua’s incumbency as paramount leader as discussed in Chapter 1. This is most apparent in an article titled ‘Bombarding Hua Kuo-feng [Guofeng]’ (CNA, 1977, pp. 2–4), written by a group from Guangzhou’s Zhongshan University calling themselves the Spartacus Troops of the No. 637 Headquarters. The article makes a number of provocative claims about Hua’s childhood and parentage including the suggestion, noted earlier, that he was the product of a surreptitious relationship between a married teenage woman and a former soldier of the Yan Xishan

16


warlord army. Hua’s mother is further accused of shamelessly associating herself with deeply unpopular CCP figures such as Kang Sheng who was vilified in the official media for his alleged role in the high-level persecutions that took place during the Cultural Revolution. The article was circulated throughout China from Guangzhou and although difficult to verify, it is thought that Deng’s Guangzhou-based military allies Xu Shiyou and Wei Guoqing were behind the distribution of the article. Of course, these problems of historiography are not exclusive to the case of Hua Guofeng. The legacy of many CCP leaders has been subjected to manipulation and distortion (both positive and negative) in order to suit the political purposes of the day. Peng Dehuai is a good example and one that is pertinent to this book – given that his fall was accompanied by that of Zhou Xiaozhou, Hua’s ultimate superior in Hunan. From being lauded for his leading role in the Long March and the armed struggle against Japan and the KMT, Peng became something of a hate-figure in the official media following his ill-famed criticism of the Great Leap Forward at Lushan. Much of the literature on Hua makes derisory references to Peng. In one book Peng is described in typical fashion as a ‘right opportunist’ ( youqing jihuizhuyi fenzi) who ‘launched an attack on the party in 1959, flinging mud at the party’s general line on building socialism, the Great Leap Forward and the people’s commune movement’ (RMCB, 1977, p. 4). Liu Shaoqi suffered similarly at the hands of the official media during the 1960s and 1970s following his support for the post-Leap economic retrenchment policy, despite earlier praise for his leading role in the 1949 revolution and his landmark work on ideological and party organisational matters: [d]uring the three years [1959–61] of temporary difficulties in the national economy resulting from the Soviet revisionists’ sabotage and serious national calamities, Liu Shaoqi spread pessimism and pushed the ‘three freedoms and one guarantee’ (san zi yi bao) line in rural areas in an attempt to restore capitalism. (RMCB, 1977, p. 5) By contrast, we are told in the same book that ‘Comrade Hua Guofeng saw through the reactionary nature of this revisionist line and by firmly believing in the strength of the masses, Hua repudiated the pessimistic and despondent views of Liu Shaoqi’ (RMCB, 1977, p. 5). This type of statement simply reinforces the need to be wary of those official sources that have a wider political agenda.

Introduction 17

Chapter outline Our analysis of Hua Guofeng follows a broadly chronological pattern comprising six substantive chapters. After reviewing the available sources on Hua’s youth and parentage, Chapter 1 focuses on Hua’s guerrilla warfare activities in Shanxi, noting in particular his success at orchestrating sabotage attacks against enemy strongholds through the use of improvised hand grenades, landmines and other innovative techniques. We will also discuss Hua’s involvement in local propaganda work during the early 1940s and his participation in the land reform campaign after 1947. Despite some of Hua’s achievements during this early phase of his career, we will conclude that he remained completely anonymous on a national political scale and that as such his origins were remarkably modest, especially in comparison to others who served in Shanxi at the time and went on to become senior party leaders, such as Deng Xiaoping, Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai. Chapter 2 examines the first few years of Hua’s career in Hunan from his arrival in spring 1949 until the end of the Anti-Rightist Campaign in late 1957. The focus of this chapter is primarily on Hua’s enthusiastic embrace of rural collectivisation, and we will see how Hua invariably set the pace when it came to implementing each stage of the collectivisation process from the MATs to the lower and then higher-stage APCs. We will also note that it was Hua’s preparedness to contradict Zhou Xiaozhou in favour of Mao’s more radical position during the July 1955 debate on collectivisation that really caught the attention of Mao and resulted in Mao personally selecting some of Hua’s rural investigation reports to form part of his landmark publication ‘The Upsurge of Socialism in China’s Countryside’. Hua’s loyalty to Mao during this debate is often cited as a prime example of his close adherence to Mao’s directives. While this is a valid point, we will suggest that the significance of Hua’s pace-setting work in the rural sector was that it was often implemented well before Mao had opined on the subject, suggesting a greater independence of mind and action than that for which Hua is given credit. Ultimately, however, we will conclude that Hua still remained very much on the periphery of national politics in China, with no hint of the astronomical rise to power that was to come. Chapter 3 focuses on Hua’s work during the Great Leap Forward and the post-Leap economic recovery programme. It was during the Leap that Hua began working alongside senior officials from Hunan for the first time, assuming responsibility for a number of significant economic

18


decision-making bodies and heading provincial campaigns to increase production, albeit of a more ancillary nature such as coal and potatoes, rather than the front-line campaigns to produce steel and grain. We will also see how Hua supported Mao’s position on the Leap even when evidence of the policy’s failings began to emerge during 1959 (leading to Peng Dehuai’s infamous attack on Mao at Lushan) and how this further act of loyalty most likely accounted for Hua’s appointment as a Party Secretary in Hunan later that year. At the same time, we will note that Hua was willing to speak his mind on the possible excesses of the Leap during his critical speech of July 1958 referenced earlier, notwithstanding the weight of national support in favour of the policy. The remainder of the chapter will examine Hua’s role in the post-Leap recovery programme of the early 1960s including his famine relief work in Maotian and his supervision of the Shaoshan irrigation plant, both of which brought direct praise from Mao and most likely served to enhance Hua’s prospects for further promotion. Chapter 4 analyses Hua’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution and in particular his hostile treatment by two local Red Guard groups, the Workers’ Federation and the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee. As noted earlier, Hua survived the attacks by these groups due mainly to good fortune, and we will see how luck also played a key part in Hua’s subsequent elevation through the Hunanese political hierarchy to First Secretary in 1970. Although Hua was well-qualified as a senior administrator given his past training in Hunan, the personnel void created by the mass purges of the Cultural Revolution meant that there was little competition for high-level positions when the party-state sought to re-establish law and order over Hunan after 1967. Hua benefited from this lack of competition and this explains why he is often referred to as an establishment beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution. Chapter 5 covers the period from Hua’s arrival in Beijing in February 1971 to his emergence as paramount leader in October 1976. This chapter will track Hua’s movement through the ranks from State Council to Politburo member to Vice-Premier, Acting Premier and then full Premier in April 1976, which virtually secured his position at the helm. In addition to examining some of the detail of the work Hua carried out in areas such as science and technology and agriculture, we will assess his leading role (accorded to him by Mao) in the Campaign to Criticise Deng Xiaoping and the Tiananmen demonstrations in April 1976, as well as his ongoing battle with the Gang of Four leading up to their arrest. We will conclude that Hua rose to power through a combination

Introduction 19

of aptitude, closeness to Mao and a lack of viable alternatives to fit Mao’s vision of a post-Mao political order. The final chapter of this book examines Hua’s brief incumbency as paramount leader and identifies some of the reasons why he fell from power so quickly, notwithstanding the apparent impregnability of his position as head of party, state and military. We will suggest, for example, that Hua’s support base was weak, founded, as it turned out, on a fragile coalition of factions which pulled in completely different directions and which crumbled all too easily under the manipulative hand of Deng Xiaoping. We will note Hua’s mistake in wedding himself so closely to the legacy of the deeply unpopular Cultural Revolution, while at the same time challenging the orthodox view that as a beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution, Hua had little alternative but to do so. Other reasons given for Hua’s fall will include Deng’s success in exposing how Hua’s ascendancy (and that of many of his followers) was achieved without recourse to the correct procedural sanctions, raising doubts about the legality of his position at the helm and Hua’s inability to exercise genuine authority over his immediate colleagues given his lack of charismatic legitimacy (in contrast to Deng).

1 The Young Revolutionary: Hua in Shanxi (1921–49)

This chapter examines Hua’s childhood and early political career in Shanxi Province. Not much is known about Hua’s parentage or youth and it is only from about 1938 that we begin to get a clear picture of Hua as a young guerrilla fighter in the war of resistance against Japan. Located for the most part in the mountainous district of Luliang, Hua was responsible for organising local people into small fighting units that provided support to the CCP’s Eighth Route Army. Under Hua’s tutelage, these units became adept at gathering intelligence on Japan’s military position and capability in the locality and at launching sabotage attacks on enemy strongholds, particularly through the use of home-made hand-grenades and landmines. The efficacy of Hua’s improvised warfare techniques caught the eye of his superiors in Luliang and promotion through the political ranks quickly followed. By 1945, Hua held a number of senior local positions, including Secretary of the Jiaodong CCP, the county in which he lived and worked until 1947. After the defeat of the Japanese in August 1945, Hua fought in the war against the KMT and the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan during which time he successfully employed the same combat skills that had served him well against the Japanese. In addition to his guerrilla warfare work, we will examine Hua’s role as a propagandist following his appointment in 1942 as Director of the Jiaodong Propaganda Department. Part of his portfolio included his close association with the Village Drama Movement, an organisation comprising local people which disseminated communist propaganda through performances of politically oriented drama. Hua was particularly involved with the work of the Xiao-Mu drama troupe from the neighbouring villages of Xiaoloufeng and Mulianpo, providing sponsorship, ideas for new plays and even touring opportunities during which he 20

The Young Revolutionary 21

made political speeches. Finally, in this chapter, we will analyse Hua’s participation in the land reform campaign, first in Jiaodong and then in Yangqu County where he became CCP Secretary in 1947 and during which time he continued to make a name for himself as an innovative organiser of local people. It is well documented that Shanxi was one of the key military zones in wartime China and a highly significant area in the development and growth of the CCP. After the Japanese invaded Shanxi in July 1937, thousands of CCP troops streamed into the province to work as part of a united front with Yan Xishan. Many of those who were to hold senior leadership posts after 1949 led from the front in Shanxi. Moreover, some of these senior party figures established their reputations and built up their political contacts while in and around Shanxi, most notably, as we shall see later, Deng Xiaoping. Hua’s experience in Shanxi was altogether different. Notwithstanding Hua’s commitment and hard work, his contribution to the war effort was very much of a behind-the-scenes description. Hua was not on the front-line. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that Hua cultivated a diverse network of political contacts in Shanxi that assisted him in later political life. He certainly never met Mao there. What becomes increasingly apparent as we work through this chapter is that, in many respects, the significance of Hua’s career in Shanxi was its insignificance in that it appears to have played no part whatsoever in his subsequent rise to the pinnacle of political power in China. This in itself makes Hua’s rise all the more remarkable. One of the inherent problems in analysing Hua’s early years (and indeed much of his political career) is the nature of the available sources on the subject. As noted in the Introduction, a large amount of the information on Hua was produced by the official media during 1976–7 when the state propaganda apparatus was busy constructing a personality cult around Hua in order to enhance his legitimacy as China’s paramount leader (see Chapter 6). This makes it extremely difficult for us to know whether what we are being told by these sources is historically correct or simply made up in order to beautify Hua given what turned out to be a rather ordinary track record as a local official. The same problem confronts us when analysing unofficial sources written by Deng Xiaoping’s supporters during the period of Hua’s incumbency as China’s leader. In complete contrast to the official materials, these sources portray Hua in a negative light in an effort to besmirch his political reputation and facilitate Deng’s own rise to power. The following section on Hua’s parentage and childhood provides us with a good example of this.

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Parentage and childhood Hua was born in Jiaocheng County, located to the south-west of Shanxi’s capital city Taiyuan, although his date of birth was, until recently, something of a mystery. Ironically, it took his death to clarify precisely when Hua was born. Before that we were presented with conflicting information. According to an article titled ‘Bombarding Hua Kuo-feng [Guofeng]’ (of which more shortly), Hua was born in May 1920 (CNA, 1977, p. 3) while Palmowski (2008, p. 282) in his Dictionary of Contemporary World History lists Hua simply as born in 1920. By contrast an article published in China Reconstructs (now China Today) insists that Hua was 17 years old in autumn 1938 which puts his year of birth at 1921, although there is no reference to a specific date in this article (Wang and Wu, 1977, p. 6). The Encyclopaedia of Marxism website initially added to the confusion by stating that Hua was born in 1920, although this has since been updated to 1921.1 English-language Internet sites such as Wikipedia have consistently claimed that Hua was born on 16 February 1921,2 and this was supported by Chinese-language websites such as Baidu.3 Confirmation that 16 February 1921 was indeed Hua’s date of birth came in the many obituaries (both official and unofficial) that were published after Hua’s death in August 2008 (see Conclusion). Details of Hua’s parentage and childhood are very sketchy. One popular Internet rumour, albeit scarcely believable, claims that Hua was fathered by Mao following an alleged relationship that he had with a woman called Yao in 1920 when he was in Changsha setting up a communist underground group. The story maintains that Yao died shortly afterwards and Hua was raised by a relative of Mao’s from whom Hua took his family name. According to this source, it was not until spring 1966, during a private conversation with Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng, that Hua became aware of his parentage.4 The obituaries on Hua make virtually no reference to Hua’s parents with one source suggesting only that Hua came from a family of tanners (zhige gongren).5 Hua himself was likewise rather vague on the subject. During his 1977 interview with the BBC’s Felix Greene Hua simply stated that he was six years old when his father died, that he lived with his mother and elder brother and that they were very poor.6 The only source which goes into any real detail on Hua’s parentage is ‘Bombarding Hua Kuo-feng [Guofeng]’ (CNA, 1977, pp. 2–4). The article, which describes itself as an ‘underground circular’, is thought to have been written in early 1977 by a group of Deng Xiaoping supporters from


Guangzhou’s Zhongshan University calling themselves the Spartacus Troops of the No. 637 Headquarters. It was distributed throughout China, possibly under the auspices of Deng’s Guangzhou-based military allies Xu Shiyou and Wei Guoqing (more in Chapter 6), in an attempt to undermine Hua’s authority as China’s newly established paramount leader. The article makes a number of controversial and derogatory observations about Hua and in particular about his mother, Hua Yu. According to its authors, Hua Yu was born into a landowning family from the village of Nanbao in Jiaocheng. At the age of 15, it is claimed, Hua Yu ‘had affairs with men and lived like a prostitute’ until her father lost patience with her and sold her to a 58-year-old wealthy peasant called Liu who lived in the Luliang mountains of south-west Shanxi. Given the age gap between the two, Hua Yu’s marriage to Liu, nicknamed ‘white monkey’ (bai houzi ) because of his pale complexion, soon broke down and she embarked on a clandestine liaison with a man called Qin, one of Liu’s servants. Qin was a soldier from Suzhou who had fought for the ‘Kuomintang [Guomindang] warlord Yen Hsi-shan [Yan Xishan]’ but was forced to flee the military following ‘an affair with the concubine of his company’s commander’. Within two years, Hua Yu gave birth to a son. Believing the boy was his, Liu hosted a banquet in celebration where he named the child Liu Zhengrong. But by the time Liu Zhengrong was two years old his ‘dark and rough’ appearance made Liu ‘white monkey’ suspicious about the true identity of the boy’s natural father, a suspicion confirmed when he found Hua Yu and Qin together ‘in a flagrant act’. Enraged by this discovery, Liu had Qin incarcerated in a local prison where he later died. Hua Yu fled the Liu household taking her young son with her. After drifting in and around Jiaocheng and Taiyuan for two years, Hua Yu met Peng Zhen in 1924, at that time Secretary of the General Trade Union of Taiyuan Railways and later to become, among other things, Mayor of Beijing and one of the first high-profile victims of the Cultural Revolution. The article claims that Hua Yu, ‘a woman who could do unscrupulous things and could tell lies’, deceived Peng into believing that she originated from a poor peasant household where she had been abused by a landlord. Out of sympathy, Peng introduced her to a comrade of his named Hua who worked in Jiaocheng. The two were soon married and Hua Yu’s son took the name Hua Guofeng. The article asserts that in the winter of 1935, Hua’s stepfather wanted Hua Guofeng to join the CCP and devote himself to the cause of the communist revolution. However, Hua’s mother opposed this idea, encouraged by Hua himself who told ‘his stinky mother’ that it was

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more important for him to get an education. The authors do not specify precisely where Hua got this education (possibly in Taiyuan7) but it is claimed that in August 1937 Hua had ‘sex relations’ with a girl from his middle school and was forced to leave the school and return to Jiaocheng. On arriving back, it is claimed that Hua ‘had no choice but to join the guerrillas in the [Luliang] mountains. It is in this way that Hua Kuo-feng [Guofeng] got into the revolutionary ranks’. Then in February 1938, ‘soon after Hua Yu sneaked into Yenan [Yanan]’ she met Kang Sheng, later to become head of China’s security and intelligence apparatus and who is described in the article as a ‘Trotskyite secret agent’ and a ‘headman who has killed innumerable revolutionary old comrades’. Kang and Hua Yu had a secret relationship and when rumours of the affair got back to husband Hua (presumably still in Jiaocheng), he travelled to Yanan to find out what was going on. The day after Hua arrived in Yanan (during April 1938) he disappeared and although his close friend Peng Zhen searched for him it was not until 1960 that he discovered Hua had been killed, allegedly by order of Kang Sheng. The article concludes by asserting that under the protection of Kang Sheng and Kang’s allies Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao (both members of the ill-fated Gang of Four), Hua Guofeng was able to ‘helicopter’ (zhisheng feiji ) out of nowhere in to his position as paramount leader. The extraordinary claims made by the authors of the Bombarding Hua article brings us back to the problems of historiography that we often encounter when examining Hua’s life and political career and specifically the question of whose version of the truth are we being asked to believe. As noted already, the article is thought to have been written and distributed by pro-Deng supporters in an attempt to damage Hua’s political reputation and facilitate Deng’s return to the political forefront. In this respect, it is deeply tainted by the overriding political motivations of its authors whose allegations should be treated with the utmost caution. The overtly anti-Hua bias of the article is reflected in the exaggeratedly negative portrayal not only of Hua but of just about everyone who was in some way connected to him (except his stepfather). Hua’s mother is depicted in inflammatory tones as a sexual philanderer who associated herself with men of dubious political standing such as Kang Sheng. Deeply involved in the high-level political persecutions of the Cultural Revolution, Kang became a hate-figure in the immediate post-Mao period (Byron and Pack, 1992). Another of Hua Yu’s male associates, the less wellknown Qin (allegedly Hua Guofeng’s father), was a soldier of another


communist hate-figure Yan Xishan, who fought the CCP during the 1940s for control of the province. Not only this, but Qin had the ignominy of being forced to flee Yan’s army because of his own sexual misdemeanours with his commander’s concubine. Contrast this to Hua’s stepfather who purportedly died at the hands of Kang Sheng. The unfortunate Hua senior is linked not to Kang or Yan, but to Peng Zhen a close political ally of Deng’s and someone for whom there was considerable sympathy following his public vilification and purge during the Cultural Revolution. The depiction in this article of Hua, his mother and their associates as ‘bad’ and their alleged victims as ‘good’ is so exaggerated as to be scarcely believable. Despite the problems of political bias that underpin the Bombarding Hua article, it remains all we have on Hua’s early years. Therefore, until something new is discovered or officially published we have nothing else with which to substantiate the claims made by its authors. This then requires us to ask why there is a paucity of official documentation on the early period of Hua’s life, something we might have expected to have been rectified after Hua’s death. Is it perhaps because the truth is deemed best left unsaid? It is certainly unusual for there to be so little information on the parentage and childhood of a CCP leader, especially considering the enormous effort expended by the propaganda apparatus on constructing a personality cult around Hua during his brief time at the helm. Mao’s personality cult involved a thorough documentation of his childhood and family. Was Hua’s story deemed too damaging to his own political reputation to be told? Hua’s allegedly chequered family background might also explain the delayed political rehabilitation of Peng Zhen. It was widely expected that Peng would be officially rehabilitated in the early part of 1977 following his fall during the Cultural Revolution. However, Peng had to wait until December 1978 for this to happen, apparently because Hua and his allies had continuously blocked the move. This causes Wang (1980, p. 6) to speculate that, in light of Peng’s close relationship with Deng ‘did someone try to block Peng’s rehabilitation because he knew too much about Hua’s early background?’ As a final point in this section, we should note the uncertainty surrounding Hua’s birth name and the origins of his second given name Hua Guofeng. The authors of Bombarding Hua claim that Hua was originally known as Liu Zhengrong, named by his father of the same family name. According to Wikipedia, however, Hua was originally named Su Zhu which seems more feasible given that he named each of his four children Su.8 Wikipedia also suggests that the name Hua Guofeng

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is selectively cribbed from Zhonghua Kangri Jiuguo Xianfengdui which translates as Chinese Resistance Nation-Saving Vanguard Team.9 This may not be accurate. The Chinese Resistance Nation-Saving Vanguard Teams were civilian militia units set up to fight the Japanese occupation of China. These units were established after the 1937 outbreak of war against Japan which was more than ten years after Hua was renamed Hua Guofeng, according to the timings contained in Bombarding Hua. Of course, this then depends upon whether we can rely upon what we are told in Bombarding Hua. Wikipedia is possibly the more reliable source of the two (notwithstanding the absence of any reference for its claim about the origins of Hua’s name) and ultimately this reminds us once again of the problems of being certain of the information contained in the various sources on Hua and the need to remain cautious about them.

Shanxi on the eve of war In contrast to the ambiguity that surrounds Hua’s parentage and childhood, there is considerably more clarity regarding Hua’s formative years as a young revolutionary. Setting aside one erroneous claim that Hua participated in the Long March when he clearly would have been too young (Palmowski, 2008, p. 282), it appears that from autumn 1938 to 1947 Hua worked as a guerrilla warfare tactician in the Luliang mountain district, first in the war against Japan and then in the civil war against Yan Xishan and the KMT.10 From there he went to work in Yangqu County until early 1949. We will shortly examine Hua’s involvement in the anti-Japanese resistance movement, but before doing so it is necessary to provide some background about the region in which Hua fought and some of the leading political figures who participated in Shanxi’s military struggle against Japan. During his time in Luliang, south-west Shanxi (see Figure 1.1), Hua was based in Jiaodong County. Jiaodong formed the eastern half of what was originally Jiaocheng County. In early 1940, Jiaocheng was divided into east ( Jiaodong County) and west ( Jiaoxi County), but at the end of the decade these two counties were dissolved and the county of Jiaocheng was restored (Wang, 1980, p. 15).11 Luliang District (also known as the Eighth Sub-region) was part of the Shanxi-Suiyuan (now part of Inner Mongolia) Base Area, otherwise known as Jin-Sui, which became a full border region with its own government in 1942 (DLYZ, 1989).12 Although Jin-Sui was one of the smallest and least well-known of the border regions of northern China, it played a key role in the CCP’s resistance to Japan.13 From a military perspective, Jin-Sui provided useful


protection against invading Japanese troops for the larger and strategically more significant Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region situated across the Yellow River from Jin-Sui. From a political perspective, Jin-Sui was a fertile testing ground upon which the party was able to galvanise and expand its support base to include not only the peasantry (the CCP’s natural constituency) but also local elites and patriotic intellectuals, although as Feng Chongyi (2000, p. 156) notes Jin-Sui was as much the creation of Yan Xishan and the KMT as it was the creation of the CCP. Yan Xishan was at the heart of Shanxi’s struggle against Japan (Gillin, 1967; Pye 1971). Yan had unofficially governed Shanxi as a local warlord after the 1911 republican revolution and was desperate to

Datong

S

H A

N X

I

Yangqu Luliang Loliang Mountains

Taiyuan Jiaocheng

Qingxu Wenshui Zhongyang

Shilou Taihing Base Area (Pre-1949)

Figure 1.1 Map of Shanxi

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maintain control of a province that he deemed to be his own independent kingdom. However, by autumn 1936 as a military invasion by Japan looked inevitable, Yan was obliged to form an alliance with the CCP in an effort to repel the Japanese threat. Intuitively anti-communist, Yan did not trust his new communist ‘allies’ nor did he want to remain allied with them indefinitely. Indeed, just a few months before proposing the coalition, Yan had chased the CCP out of Shanxi (with considerable military assistance from the KMT) after more than 34,000 communist troops had invaded south-west Shanxi in February 1936. According to Gillin (1967, pp. 219–20), Yan was especially wary of the growing support among the Shanxi peasantry for the CCP’s social and economic agenda, particularly the anti-landlord overtures of the party’s policy on land reform. However, Yan’s rationale for allying with the CCP was governed by a much greater fear of the Japanese army. Yan was also concerned (possibly incorrectly) that the KMT government located hundreds of miles away in Nanjing intended to let Suiyuan (which Yan also controlled) and his beloved Shanxi ‘fall to the Japanese without a struggle’ (Gillin, 1967, p. 233).14 In this sense, the CCP was deemed by Yan to be the best of a bad bunch. The formation of the Yan-CCP alliance quickly led to the establishment of a number of anti-Japanese resistance movements known as ‘patriotic mass organisations’ (aiguo yundong). One of the most active was the Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation (Shanxi Xisheng Jiuguo Tongmenghui ) also referred to as the Sacrifice League (Ximenghui ) (Wang and Ren, 1987). Set up by Yan in September 1936, the Sacrifice League organised a boycott of all Japanese goods, many of which had flooded into Shanxi after 1930 and threatened to undermine the local economy. As a sign of his commitment to the anti-Japanese alliance, Yan appointed key communist figures to assist him in running the Sacrifice League, most notably Bo Yibo, a native of Taiyuan who became a leading economic planner after 1949. Yan took the initiative in Bo’s recruitment. Bo had been arrested by the KMT in 1931 and just a few days before his release from a Beijing prison in August 1936, Yan sent one of his highest-ranking officials to meet Bo and invite him back to Shanxi to work with Yan (Feng, 2000, p. 158). Following the outbreak of war against Japan in July 1937, the focus of the Sacrifice League shifted rapidly away from the boycott of Japanese goods towards military resistance and a number of military units were set up to achieve this objective. The most high profile was the Shanxi Youth Dare-to-Die Corps of Resistance Against the Enemy, abbreviated as the Dare-to-Die Corps. This comprised radical intellectuals and students


who, as the name suggests, were prepared to die for the cause of national resistance against Japan. By November 1937 after the Japanese capture of Taiyuan, four columns of the Dare-to-Die Corps had been established containing more than 5,000 members each (Feng, 2000, p. 159). As he was with Sacrifice League, Bo Yibo was heavily involved in the activities of the Dare-to-Die Corps, although his longer-term objectives for these units often differed with Yan’s. For Bo, the Dare-to-Die Corps represented an opportunity to politically indoctrinate its members. For Yan, these units were his new ‘crack troops’, primed to defend and protect what he perceived as his own territory. As Feng (2000, p. 159) concludes, ‘it is thus no real surprise that fighting over the leadership of the New Army – as the Dare-to-Die Corps later became known – was intense right from the beginning’. Notwithstanding disagreements over the objectives of the Dare-to-Die Corps, Yan continued to give the communists access to Shanxi as the province became one of the key battlegrounds in the war against Japan involving a list of CCP personnel that reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the post-1949 party leadership. Thousands of troops from the Eighth Route Army poured into Shanxi under the leadership of Lin Biao (115th Division which headed north-east), He Long (120th Division which went north-west), Liu Bocheng (129th Division which travelled southeast) and Peng Dehuai (overall head of the Eighth Route Army) (Van Slyke, 1986, p. 639). Each of these military leaders featured prominently after 1949, most notably Peng Dehuai who became Minister of Defence in 1954 and Lin Biao who controversially replaced him in 1959. Zhu De, Vice-Chairman of both party and state after 1949, was appointed by Yan as Vice-Commander of the Second War Zone, a vast area of northern China encompassing northern Shaanxi, Suiyuan, Shanxi and Chahar (now part of Inner Mongolia) (Gillin, 1967, p. 263). In addition, Zhou Enlai (later Foreign Minister), Liu Shaoqi (later Chairman of State) and Yang Shangkun (later Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) member) arrived in Shanxi to help co-ordinate CCP activities through the North China Bureau, the party’s headquarters in northern China (Gillin, 1967, p. 263; Van Slyke, 1986, p. 638; Goodman, 2000, p. 14). Most significantly in the context of this book, Deng Xiaoping was also in Shanxi as head of the Taihang Base Area in south-east Shanxi (the CCP’s operational base at the time) and Political Commissar of the Eighth Route Army (129th Division). Deng’s experience in Taihing, which formed an integral part of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region, is thought to have been crucial to his later political success because it was here that he first established his political reputation

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and cultivated a number of political contacts that both aided his political ascension and saved him from political (and physical) annihilation. As Goodman (2000, p. xi) explains: Deng’s loyal service to Mao in the border region during the war years was the platform for his rise up the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party during the 1950s and early 1960s. His recruitment and leadership of a large number of cadres in the border region who later came to dominate the Chinese Communist Party during the decade of the Cultural Revolution provided him with considerable protection even when he was politically troubled. Moreover, this group played a central role in the emergence and implementation of the agenda for change in post-Mao China under Deng’s leadership.

Hua in the war against Japan Hua’s experience in wartime Shanxi could not have been more different. Hua was completely unheard of at a national level, playing much more of a minor, support role in the war than the high-profile communist leaders noted earlier. After joining the CCP in 1938, Hua began his political career as a guerrilla warfare fighter in the Luliang mountains and in 1940 he was made Chairman of the Joint Anti-Japanese Association (Kangri Jiuguo Lianhehui ) (SXRB, 1977, p. 5). The Joint Anti-Japanese Association ( JAJA) was a relatively low-ranking civilian body comprising workers, peasants, merchants, youths, women, soldiers and even children whom Hua organised into separate guerrilla units (minbing zuzhi ) (GMRB, 1977a, p. 1). These units were tasked with providing military assistance to the Eighth Route Army and were particularly active in resisting Japan’s campaigns to ‘mop up’ (saodang) the remainder of Shanxi Province from its base in Taiyuan. These campaigns were also referred to as the ‘three alls’ (san guang), namely ‘burn all, kill all, loot all’ (shaoguang, shaguang, qiangguang) (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). The activities of the JAJA were broad in scope. They included gathering intelligence on the enemy’s location and military capacity by spying (SXRB, 1977, p. 5). Hua was often personally involved in these missions and according to Wang (1980, p. 19) would sneak behind enemy lines by disguising himself as a local villager. Another common activity was the concealment of food and water supplies from Japanese troops in an effort to starve them out of a given area or the ambushing of groups of Japanese foot soldiers as they were transporting food and water to enemy


troops in a neighbouring village (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). Numerous acts of sabotage were employed (Lu and Bao, 1978, pp. 18–28). On one occasion, it is reported that a unit of armed workers under Hua’s command crept into the Japanese-occupied mountain village of Zhilan (comprising about 30 households) and threw the rotting carcasses of dead cats and rats into the village well which was the only source of drinking water for Japanese troops. The Japanese removed the carcasses from the well and sterilised the water, only for the unit to counter by dropping a preprepared mixture of hair clippings and human excrement into the well, thereby completely ruining the water supply (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). Hua developed a detailed knowledge of munitions while he was in Shanxi (Lu and Bao, 1978, pp. 28–36). As local guerrilla and militia units began to run out of weapons, ammunition and explosives during 1942, Hua suggested to the Jiaodong Party Central Committee that local people could be taught how to make their own and that this would have the added impact of integrating them into the war effort behind the CCP, rather than Yan Xishan or the KMT. The committee endorsed Hua’s proposal and put Hua in charge of organising Jiaodong’s first ever munitions co-operative ( junhuo hezuoshe) in the village of Lingshang. It was here that Hua taught villagers how to make their own handgrenades and how to build and lay landmines. Landmines were usually made of stone taken from the mountains or iron bells taken from abandoned Buddhist temples. Explosives were usually made of charcoal from burnt logs and timber and sulphur stolen from behind Japanese lines, all under the slogan ‘every household learn to lay mines, everybody learn how to detonate them’ ( jiajia hui mailei renren hui baozha) (GMRB, 1977a, p. 1). Hua’s experience with munitions and his capacity to pass this experience on to others led to the establishment of munitions cooperatives throughout Jiaodong and is thought to have facilitated an increase in sabotage attacks on Japanese installations as local people learnt how to blow up roads, bridges and other communication networks used by the Japanese (Wang, 1980, p. 16). Hua is thought to have been particularly inventive when it came to positioning explosives. One example provided by Wang Ko-Hung and Wu Tzu-Hai (1977, p. 8) describes how Hua instructed a local unit working covertly in a Japanese stronghold to make straw scarecrows (cao ren) and leave them at crossroads so that Japanese soldiers would come across them. Irritated by the sight of the scarecrows, passing Japanese soldiers kicked them apart. That night members of the unit made more scarecrows, this time loading them with explosives and put them back in

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the same place as the previous scarecrows had been positioned. The following morning when Japanese troops kicked the scarecrows apart, they exploded in their faces. Another report explains how guerrilla volunteers under Hua’s direction painted anti-Japanese slogans such as ‘overthrow the Japanese aggressors’ (dadao riben guizi ) and hung them around the necks of scarecrows filled with explosives. According to one source, angry Japanese soldiers on tearing them apart were often killed or maimed by the resultant explosions (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). Hua also taught his units how to make self-activating mines (zifa lei ). On one occasion, it is claimed, as Japanese troops ventured into a CCP stronghold to steal grain from the local peasants, they ran into a heavily mined area and were forced to retreat. The Japanese then sent in their own Chinese ‘puppet troops’ (wei jun) to detonate the mines and clear the way so that the Japanese soldiers could return to the area. On encountering the mines, the ‘puppet troops’ thought that they had found fakes because the mines did not explode. However, when they took the mines back to camp for further inspection in front of the Japanese troops, the mines duly exploded (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). Another example of Hua’s dexterity with mine-laying came in June 1943 when Hua was tasked with recovering over 500 livestock that had been seized by the Japanese. Hua instructed a local militia unit to completely surround the Japanese stronghold with landmines once night had fallen. The militia then rushed into the area and removed the animals leaving the Japanese troops stranded, too frightened of the mines to pursue the militia (ZSJW, 1977, p. 4.). Official sources on this period of Hua’s career depict Hua as a staunch Maoist. In carrying out his work in Luliang, Hua is reported to have made constant and close reference to, among other things, Mao’s landmark text ‘On Protracted War’. According to one source, in order ‘to win victory in the revolutionary war’ Hua carried a copy of the text in his knapsack at all times which he shared with others (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). The article further claims that Hua went to great efforts to study Mao’s works, insisting that ‘he often studied late into the night and sometimes the soot from the [pine] torches darkened his face. When comrades teased him about this, Comrade Hua merely smiled’ (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). Wang and Wu (1977, p. 6) make a similar observation: ‘after a 50-kilometer march during the day, Hua would often read [Mao’s writings] while the others were asleep. Sometimes the peasants in whose homes he stayed would quietly go out and stand guard while he studied’. It is easy to be sceptical about these excessively laudatory remarks, and it should be remembered that the sources cited on Hua’s wartime


activities were all published in the early post-Mao period with the intention of embroidering Hua’s political standing as paramount leader. By the same token, Hua’s apparent dedication to Mao’s works during the war years and his willingness to apply these works in practice is consistent with his devout approach during his later political career. As we shall see throughout this book, Hua remained pretty much loyal to the very letter of Mao’s directives even if it meant contradicting the instructions of his immediate superiors. This was most apparent when he sided against Hunan First Secretary Zhou Xiaozhou in support of Mao during the 1955 national debate over the appropriate pace of rural collectivisation (see Chapter 2). Scepticism aside, it appears that Hua’s success as Chairman of the JAJA earned him promotion in 1942 to a high-ranking cadre position within the Jiaodong Party Central Committee (ZSJW, 1977, p. 1). This meant that Hua’s role in co-ordinating the local war effort against Japan encompassed not only civilian bodies but also party, government and military bodies. In addition to this, Hua was given responsibility for the entire county of Jiaodong rather than just discrete areas within it. This expanded role resulted in further increases in intelligence work and sabotage attacks on Japanese strongholds which were thought to be instrumental in driving the Japanese out of Jiaodong during 1943–4 (Wang, 1980, p. 19). The resourcefulness and diversity of Hua’s methods for dealing with the Japanese were detailed in a 1943 report submitted by the Jin-Sui Border Region authorities to the CCP Central Committee in Yanan. It has been suggested that on receiving this report, Mao immediately cabled back to Jin-Sui declaring that the Jiaodong experience should be propagated throughout the province in an effort to defeat Japan and expand CCP forces (Wang and Wu, 1977, p. 8). If this claim is accurate, this was probably the first time that the name Hua Guofeng came to Mao’s attention, although it is unlikely to have remained there for very long given the numerous provincial reports and names of local officials that would have passed over Mao’s desk at this time.

Propaganda work In 1942 Hua was appointed as Director of the Propaganda Department of the Jiaodong Party Central Committee. In this capacity, he soon became involved in the activities of the Village Drama Movement (Nongcun Xiju Yundong), specifically the combined theatre troupe from the neighbouring villages of Xiaoloufeng and Mulianpo, known together as Xiao-Mu. The Village Drama Movement was launched by the CCP in the base

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areas of northern and central China not long after Mao’s landmark instruction at the 1942 Yanan Conference on Art and Literature that all forms of art and literature should be devoted exclusively to the cause of Chinese communism (MacDougall, 1980). Within months of its introduction the movement had attracted thousands of rural participants who, in keeping with Mao’s Yanan directives, wrote and performed plays on subjects of a political nature, usually drawn from their own first-hand experiences. Themes invariably centred on peasant suffering, such as the exploitation inflicted by the Japanese and local landlords. In ‘acting out’ this suffering the performances provided a useful form of catharsis for local participants. The Village Drama Movement was a particularly useful tool for enhancing CCP legitimacy because it encouraged closer integration between participants and party cadres in accordance with Mao’s mass line principles. The movement also served as an important tool of mass political indoctrination since participants were encouraged to understand and absorb the political works of Mao and the CCP in the form of small study groups, a method that was applied for some years after the establishment of the PRC (Lynch, 1999, p. 21). It has even been argued that the movement was instrumental in the CCP’s victory over the KMT since it propagated the communist cause to the millions of ordinary people who attended its performances. Holm suggests (1980, p. 669) that: As the base areas expanded during the Civil War of 1946–49, the propaganda, news and education it [the Village Drama Movement] dispensed may well have contributed significantly to the co-ordination and mobilization of social forces necessary for eventual military victory over the Guomindang. The Village Drama Movement became active in Jin-Sui during early 1944, just a few months after the November 1943 Resolution on the Implementation of Party Policy on Art and Literature required every CCP cadre to implement Mao’s Yanan line. According to articles in People’s Drama (Renmin Xiju) (STGW, 1977) and Revolutionary Cultural Relics (Geming Wenwu) ( TWG, 1978) Hua became interested in the work of the Xiao-Mu troupe on hearing music drifting over to Nantou village (where he was living) from nearby Xiaoloufeng. Hua decided to visit the village, and on arriving he discovered that the troupe was rehearsing the performance of a play about the struggle between poor peasants and landlords in the neighbouring village of Dongta. Hua noticed that


the instruments used by the troupe were entirely improvised. The gong was a copper washbasin, the cymbals comprising a pair of circular door brasses and the fiddle was strung with ox sinews. Impressed by this level of commitment Hua arranged for the troupe to be allocated its own section of land and enough millet and buckwheat for it to cultivate and then sell so that it could purchase costumes and proper instruments (Holm, 1980, p. 677). Moreover, in keeping with the dictate of the 1943 Resolution, Hua disseminated copies of Mao’s Talks at the Yanan Conference (published in October 1943) and encouraged troupe members to embrace the new party line when writing new plays. As well as providing sponsorship to the Xiao-Mu troupe, Hua assisted in writing some of its plays. One example of this was a play titled ‘Jin Wu Sells Firewood’ ( Jin Wu Mai Chai ) (Holm, 1980, pp. 688–9). The play was based on the true story of Jin Wu from Xiazhuang village in Jiaodong who was forbidden from selling firewood by the son of Yue Fengxiang (Yue was head of a local pro-Japanese association from nearby Caozhuangtou). Following this, Jin was forced to flee Xiazhuang to the liberated area of Liuzhuang, which is where he first came to Hua’s attention. Hua took a special interest in Jin, persuading him to become involved in the armed struggle against Japan. Jin was then posted to Caozhuangtou to work undercover as a secret agent and is believed to have played an important role in liberating the town from Japanese occupation. During the spring of 1944, Hua co-ordinated a mass struggle campaign against Yue Fengxiang and other local families from the area who had collaborated with the Japanese, known as the ‘eighteen big families of traitors’ (shiba panguozei ) and Jin was invited to participate in the struggle. Under Hua’s instruction, members of the Xiao-Mu troupe also attended the struggle campaign so that they could write a new play based on the true life experiences of Jin Wu. Hua then reviewed the play and edited the final draft himself (TWG, 1978, p. 11). The play ‘Jin Wu Sells Firewood’ provides an excellent example of the legitimising effect of the Village Drama Movement for the CCP not only among those who participated in the movement, but also among members of the audience who watched its shows. Performances of Jin Wu were extremely well attended, partly because of Hua’s close association with the play, but also because of the emotive story that it told which many of the audience could relate to from their own bitter experiences at the hands of the Japanese and local Chinese collaborators. After the performance of Jin Wu in Xiazhuang, Jin himself took the stage to denounce the treachery of ‘local traitors’. Encouraged by troupe and party members to do likewise, many of the audience stood up and

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joined Jin in the denunciation, often expressing themselves in angry tones (TWG, 1978, p. 11). By writing plays based on familiar issues relating to the Japanese occupation and encouraging members of the audience to articulate their feelings and emotions after the plays had been performed, the Village Drama Movement brought local audiences much closer to the cause of the CCP. Hua often took the Xiao-Mu troupe on tour with him, covering over 20 villages on one particular tour (Holm, 1980, p. 678). Hua did not actually perform on stage with the troupe. Instead he worked in tandem with it, using each performance to full political effect by giving speeches on CCP policy during the interval, thereby further propagating the party’s message. By early 1945 the Xiao-Mu troupe had become so renowned locally that it was made a model troupe for the entire Luliang District (STGW, 1977, p. 10). Given the success of the Xiao-Mu troupe, a number of other troupes began to emerge in the area. By the spring of 1945, 108 had been organised in Luliang. The surrender of Japan in August 1945 did not diminish the activities of the Xiao-Mu troupe, and it was not long before Hua’s superiors deemed it necessary to give the troupe its own armed guard (STGW, 1977, p. 10). Holm (1980, p. 678) concludes that ‘Hua Guofeng was deeply involved in the village drama activities he reported, and it may not be going too far to talk in terms of a patron-client relationship between Hua and the Xiao-Mu troupe’.

Fighting the Guomindang The end of China’s war against Japan in August 1945 was quickly followed by the Chinese civil war. Fighting in Shanxi was particularly fierce. One of the key battles in Shanxi was the Luliang Campaign (also known as the South-Western Shanxi Campaign) which took place from November 1946 to January 1947. CCP forces were organised under the joint command of Wang Zhen, Chen Geng and Xie Fuzhi and came up against the combined forces of the KMT led by Hu Zongnan and those of Yan Xishan who intermittently allied himself with the nationalists. The battle was initiated by the CCP after a sizeable redeployment of KMT troops to Shaanxi (from where they planned to launch an attack on Yanan) left the nationalists undermanned. Estimates suggest that over 10,000 nationalist troops were killed (and 5,000 captured alive) in this campaign as the CCP successfully employed the guerrilla warfare technique of luring the enemy deep into hostile terrain and ambushing them from within (Wei, 1999, pp. 26–8).


Hua played a key support role in the Luliang Campaign. Appointed as both Secretary of the Jiaodong CCP and Political Commissar of the Wen-Jiao Guerrilla Detachment in 1945 (GMRB, 1977a, p. 1), (WenJiao comprised the neighbouring counties of Wenshui and Jiaodong) Hua organised and led a number of civilian guerrilla units in providing essential back up to front-line communist forces. Relevant information on this period is sparse, but what there is suggests that Hua employed many of the methods he had used in the war against Japan (Lu and Bao, 1978, p. 148). In Wenshui and Jiaodong, Hua’s units helped to destroy KMT fortifications with handmade grenades and blow up transportation routes with land mines. Spies were sent behind enemy lines to gauge the KMT military position and acts of sabotage on food and water supplies were carried out under Hua’s instruction. Hua’s involvement in the Luliang Campaign went beyond the Wen-Jiao border to counties such as Zhongyang and Shilou. According to one report, units in these areas clashed with small bands of Yan Xishan’s troops who were in the process of transporting essential supplies of arms and ammunition (GMRB, 1977a, p. 1). This source also suggests that Hua orchestrated a campaign to foil Yan Xishan’s attempts to seize large amounts of grain by blocking the entrances to major highways and transferring the grain safely to designated locations (GMRB, 1977a, p. 1). Following its victory in Luliang, the CCP pushed on in an attempt to take complete control of Shanxi. This objective was greatly advanced with the capture of Taiyuan from Yan Xishan after a battle lasting more than six months from October 1948 to April 1949. With the departure south of forces led by Deng Xiaoping and Liu Bocheng (part of the Central Plains Campaign), the task of seizing Taiyuan was left to Xu Xiangqian and Peng Dehuai who had already succeeded in defeating KMT forces in much of central Shanxi. Notwithstanding their numerical and technical inferiority, Xu and Peng’s forces systematically picked off neighbouring areas until Taiyuan city was completely surrounded. From there they launched an all-out attack on the city in a campaign that accounted for over 135,000 nationalist and 15,000 communist troops. Defeat in Taiyuan convinced the nationalists that their cause was hopeless and they surrendered control of their garrison at Datong without a fight. This brought an end to Yan Xishan’s 38-year reign of Shanxi (Wei, 1999, pp. 44–8). In the months leading up to and including the Taiyuan Campaign, Hua was based in Yangqu County (now under the jurisdiction of Taiyuan) where he was appointed Secretary of the Yangqu CCP and Political Commissar of the Yangqu Guerrilla Detachment in autumn 1947 (RMRB,

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1976a, p. 2). Both appointments represented an advance in Hua’s political career to a larger and more strategically significant area. As he had done previously, Hua was responsible for organising small guerrilla units as back up to the main CCP forces, carrying out covert intelligence work and acts of sabotage in Yangqu and other local areas such as Xiaodian and Yingze. A People’s Daily report suggests, albeit in somewhat dewy tones, that in carrying out his work, Hua was careful to engender good feeling towards his units. For example, while passing through the grape growing village of Mayu in Qingxu County en route to assist in a battle referred to as the Puzhong Campaign, Hua instructed his troops not to pick and eat the grapes and to unfix their bayonets so as not to damage the grapes (RMRB, 1976a, p. 2). As well as his intelligence and sabotage work at this time, Hua was involved in preparing and disseminating war-related propaganda. Official sources suggest that Hua edited the text for and organised the distribution of leaflets which set out the detail of CCP policy and ‘exposed the truth about Chiang Kai-shek launching the civil war’ (ZSJW, 1977, p. 4). In addition to this, Hua arranged for families living in newly liberated areas who had relatives fighting for the KMT to write letters to their relatives explaining how life had improved since the CCP had arrived. This, it is claimed, led to the defection of hundreds of enemy forces to the CCP side (ZSJW, 1977, p. 4).

Implementing land reform It remains in this chapter for us to examine Hua’s participation in the implementation of land reform in Shanxi. Although the CCP’s land reform policy was not officially launched until the National Land Conference of September 1947, the policy was informally carried out from May 1946 in those parts of northern China where the CCP was strong. Prior to this date, the CCP’s position on land reform was that landlords should be required to reduce their land rents, the amount they charged for hiring out farming equipment and their interest rates on loans. After May 1946 the party moved in a much more radical direction towards the complete destruction of the old landlord tenancy system and the redistribution of privately owned land to poor peasants, in unequal shares prior to October 1947 and then equally on a family or household basis thereafter (Chen, 1948, p. 41). The first stage of land reform comprised setting up Poor Peasant Associations (PPAs) in the relevant locality. Official policy stipulated that the PPAs should be led by the disenfranchised of the poor and


landless peasant classes with vociferous anti-landlord sentiments and an ability to articulate their grievances and persuade others to unite with them against the landlords. However, in some cases it was deemed necessary to recruit from the peasant middle classes if the appointees were already active in village affairs and well respected by local villagers (Yang, 1959, pp. 134–6). Under the tutelage of CCP work teams sent down from the nearest town or city, the PPAs organised large public meetings that all inhabitants of the village were required to attend. During these meetings, poor peasants participated in class struggle ( jieji douzheng) in which they were encouraged to identify their landlord oppressors and ‘spit out stories of bitterness’ (tuku) against them, exposing the extent of their exploitation and ‘getting others to do likewise’ (chuanlian) (Yang, 1959, pp. 137–8). The ‘spitting bitterness’ meetings formed part of a wider and more complicated process of class categorisation implemented by the CCP. Wong (1973, pp. 112–14) identifies five such categories: landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants and landless peasants. These can be summarised (in simplified form) as follows. A landlord was someone who owned land but did not work it. Instead, he hired others to work it for him and/or rented out land. A rich peasant was similar to a landlord in that he owned land and hired land and labour. What distinguished a rich peasant from a landlord was that a rich peasant worked his own land for more than four months in a year and received less than 30 per cent of his total family income from money acquired through hiring land and/or labour. The middle peasant category comprised some people who owned land and hired others to help them farm it and some who hired land and hired others to help them farm it. But as a rule, a middle peasant received less than 15 per cent of his total family income from money acquired through hiring land and/or labour. The middle peasant was deemed to be an ally of the CCP, although not a natural ally. A poor peasant owned little, if any land. That which he owned he farmed, otherwise he was forced to sell his labour. This forced sale of his labour distinguished him from the middle peasant. Poor peasants were thought to be supporters of the CCP. The landless peasant (as the term suggests) owned no land at all and had to sell his labour to survive. Like the poor peasant, the landless peasant was a natural ally of the CCP. The final stage of land reform involved the confiscation of landlord holdings that were redistributed along broadly egalitarian lines. Yang (1959, p. 149) explains that in apportioning the land, the objective was to ensure that every family would get a farm of roughly equal fertility.

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‘A family owning fertile land would be given a lower grade of land, and a family already in possession of poor land would be given a better plot.’ However, the distribution process was not always straightforward. Disputes often centred around whether PPA activists should get more or better quality land than non-activists by virtue of their leading role in organising land reform. Open conflict also arose when corrupt party cadres sought to help themselves to available land or when there was simply not enough confiscated land to go round (Hinton, 1996). As with the civil war period, there is a paucity of information on Hua’s involvement in land reform while he was in Shanxi. What information there is suggests that Hua played an active role in implementing land reform in both Jiaodong and Yangqu, displaying a level of commitment that was to characterise his subsequent attitude to land reform in Hunan (see Chapter 2). Hua was particularly adroit at identifying appropriate individuals to lead the PPAs. Following discussions with local cadres, Hua invariably appointed those who had suffered the most under the tenancy system and who were respected in the community. This ensured that the PPAs were led by people who were familiar with the local peasantry and could be trusted. Hua also attended many of the ‘spitting bitterness’ public meetings that took place in his locality and often played a supervisory role in the subsequent redistribution of land (GMRB, 1977a, p. 3). Perhaps predictably, official sources portray Hua as a moderate figure in the Shanxi land reform process and make no reference to any coercion that he may have been involved in or authorised. Indeed, the People’s Daily suggests in rather embellished tones that Hua was altruistic and considerate, taking the time to collect firewood, herd livestock and carry water for village elders in an effort to win local support for the CCP’s cause (RMRB, 1976a, p. 2). In complete contrast to this, Wang (1980, p. 25) insists that Hua was coercive during the implementation of land reform, becoming ‘notorious for being brutal and relentless’. According to Wang, ‘while supervising the “land reform” in the countryside, “he also beat and killed people at random”’ and ‘indiscriminately arrested and killed a number of peasants whom he called “landlords” while he was in Shansi [Shanxi]’. However, as discussed briefly in the Introduction, Wang’s source for this claim is fragile: a conversation between him and a group of former (unnamed) Red Guards from Hunan who had escaped to Hong Kong (presumably where they met Wang). Word of mouth is never a reliable scholarly source and we must also ask how a group of people from Hunan knew for certain what Hua was doing hundreds of miles north


in Shanxi. It is feasible, although unlikely, that they were in Shanxi with Hua during the period under discussion, but even if they were, they would surely have been too young to remember very much about the late 1940s. After all most Red Guards were teenagers when the Cultural Revolution began in 1966. At best, Wang’s claims might be considered as hearsay. This is not to deny the violence of the land reform era which claimed the lives of anything up to 800,000 landlords according to Stavis (1978, pp. 25–30). Nor is it to deny that this violence was often instigated by over zealous party cadres who were keen to impress their superiors with their level of commitment. Hua himself may well have been one of these over zealous cadres, but in the absence of any convincing evidence we cannot be certain. This is a point we will return to in the next chapter when we examine Hua’s participation in land reform in Hunan and his authorisation of the execution of Yang Delun.

Shanxi in context This chapter has explored Hua’s formative years as a young revolutionary in Shanxi Province during which almost his entire experience was dominated by war: the war of resistance against Japan and then the civil war against the KMT and Yan Xishan. As we have seen, the bulk of Hua’s work comprised organising groups of civilians into small units to carry out spying missions and sabotage attacks on enemy forces, with Hua developing something of a speciality in improvised munitions. Hua was also an active propagandist, particularly as part of the Village Drama Movement and was closely involved in the implementation of land reform towards the end of the 1940s. As Hua rose through the political ranks in Jiaodong and then Yangqu, the impression that emerges is of a well-organised, committed and capable CCP cadre. Yet, for all his earnest endeavours during this period, there is no ignoring the fact that Hua was not a major political figure in Shanxi, playing more of a supplementary, support role to the main military forces and not locating himself in the front-line. Many of those who were at the forefront of the fighting in Shanxi were promoted to high political office after 1949, including Lin Biao, Peng Dehuai and most notably Deng Xiaoping. In Deng’s case, his grounding in Shanxi was pivotal to his later political success and survival by virtue of the political contacts that he cultivated and the reputation that he established when he was there. Although Hua, it appears, developed a good reputation locally, it was only a local reputation. He remained more or less

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anonymous on a national political scale, making his subsequent rise to supreme power all the more unlikely and remarkable. In an indirect, perhaps even accidental way, Hua’s relative insignificance and anonymity is acknowledged by the official sources on Hua’s Shanxi period that were published during the immediate post-Mao period when Hua was in power. Although, as we have seen, there is no shortage of hyperbole in the official media’s portrayal of Hua’s revolutionary years, it seems that the media was unable or maybe simply unwilling to portray him as anything other than what he was: a hard working local official. For example, there is no attempt to fabricate the extent of Hua’s involvement in the revolution by claiming that he fought on the front-line against Japan and the KMT or that he participated in the Long March. Hua’s comparatively modest start in Shanxi made it more difficult for him to establish himself as a credible political figure in his later political life, especially among his immediate colleagues. We will suggest in Chapter 6 that one of the principal reasons for the brevity of Hua’s incumbency as paramount leader derived from a complete absence of charismatic legitimacy at a time when charisma was such an important personal characteristic for any Chinese political leader. In contrast to Deng’s leadership of the Taihang Base Area which greatly contributed to his intra-party kudos as a revered revolutionary veteran, Hua had no comparable legacy to draw upon. Subsequent chapters will show that his solid but ultimately unspectacular career in Hunan did nothing to rectify this shortcoming. We have also seen in this chapter that Hua was not particularly well connected when he was in Shanxi in a way that might have accounted for his monumental and rapid ascendancy during the 1970s. While Mao may have been told in passing about Hua’s successful anti-Japanese campaigns in Jiaodong or seen a report issued by the Jin-Sui Border Region on his war-time achievements, the names of hundreds of commendable party cadres would have passed Mao’s ears during this time. As far as we can tell, Hua had no direct contact with Mao during his Shanxi period. That changed, however, after 1949 when Hua was transferred to Mao’s native province of Hunan. This is the focus of the next chapter.

2 Towards Rural Reform: Hua in Hunan (1949–57)

This chapter focuses on the early period of Hua’s career as a provincial official in Hunan prior to the implementation of the Great Leap Forward in 1958. Here, we will see how Hua’s arrival in Hunan in 1949 marked a new and significant chapter in his political career, partly because of the greater exposure he received to local politics and his increased seniority within the party apparatus, but also because it was in Hunan that Hua began to attract the favourable attention of senior CCP leaders, most notably Mao who, luckily for Hua, was from Hunan. Hua started out quietly enough as Party Secretary of the small county of Xiangyin where he assisted with the consolidation of local party rule in the face of a rising crime wave and other instances of social instability. But it was through his enthusiastic support of agricultural reform, the cornerstone of CCP policy in the early post-revolutionary period, that Hua really started to distinguish himself, particularly in front of Mao who was at the very forefront of the rural reform process. Following his leading role in the rapid implementation of land reform in Xiangyin almost three years before the process had been completed in the rest of Hunan, Hua pushed quickly towards the first phase of rural collectivisation with the formation of the MATs. Hua maintained this momentum after his transfer to an equivalent post in nearby Xiangtan County which, crucially for him, contained Mao’s native Shaoshan. Following the first major promotion of his political career as party and government head of Xiangtan Prefecture in 1952, Hua forged ahead with the second stage of the collectivisation process, the formation of the lower-stage APCs, and by spring 1955, under Hua’s stewardship, Xiangtan had become the pace-setter for agrarian collectivisation in Hunan. There is also evidence to suggest that Hua experimented with higherstage APCs in as early as spring 1954, some two years before this phase 43

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of collectivisation became official party policy. Although there is no clear evidence to support this, it seems highly likely that Mao got to hear about Hua’s work at this time given Mao’s innate interest in his home province. Hua’s seemingly insatiable appetite for rural collectivisation was all the more noticeable to Mao in light of the distinct lack of appetite for the policy among many of Hua’s superiors in Hunan, most notably the provincial party head Zhou Xiaozhou. We will see in this chapter that while Zhou reacted passively to Mao’s landmark call in July 1955 to accelerate the pace of collectivisation, Hua had already set out plans that were commensurate with Mao’s position, bringing a direct rebuke from Zhou. However, once Mao’s approach became official party policy later in the year Zhou was forced into line, leaving Hua to push forward with the ambitious targets he had already set. This act of loyalty from Hua was not forgotten by Mao and would serve to benefit him in both his short and long-term political career. This chapter will also examine some of the other projects in which Hua became involved during his early Hunan period, including his brief spell in 1956 as head of the Culture and Education Office in Changsha which saw him assume responsibility for eradicating the high levels of illiteracy that existed across the province. We will also assess Hua’s activities during the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the subsequent Anti-Rightist Campaign, noting in particular that although Hua was closely involved in the identification of ‘rightists’ during the AntiRightist Campaign, the impression of Hua that emerges from this often violent and retributive period is someone who was firm without being unduly coercive. As with the previous chapter, it is noticeable that many of the sources on this period of Hua’s career were published in the state-controlled media during 1976–7 and as such have a familiar hyperbolic tone to them. Consequently, the state-bias “health warning” applies to much of what is written below.

Consolidating power in Xiangyin County Hua left his native Shanxi in early 1949 as part of a Southbound Work Group (Nanxia Gongzuotuan) (ZHSZ, 1977, p. 1). Southbound Work Groups comprised party cadres drawn from the CCP strongholds of northern China who followed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces southwards as they sought to eradicate the KMT from the remainder of China and establish control in a part of the country where the CCP’s

Towards Rural Reform

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support base was not particularly strong. Once PLA units had seized a given area, the Southbound Work Groups stepped in to set up party and government organisations, although the PLA invariably played a leading role in administrative affairs through the temporarily established Military Control Commissions (Teiwes, 1997, p. 29). It is not entirely clear whether Hua was destined for Hunan when he departed from Shanxi, but it appears that he travelled first to Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, where he trained for several months in preparation for his new administrative role further south (ZHSZ, 1977, p. 1). En route to Xiangyin County where Hua was based for almost two years (XYXB, 1977), Hua travelled through Yueyang Prefecture in northeast Hunan (see Figure 2.1) which was captured by the PLA in July 1949.

Yueyang Prefecture Yueyang County

Changde

Pingjiang Xiangyin Changsha Shaoshan

H

U N

A N

Xiangtan Prefecture Xiangtan County

Shaoyang Hengyang

Dao

Figure 2.1 Map of Hunan

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At that time, Xiangyin formed part of Changsha Prefecture, immediately to the south of Yueyang; it is now a part of Yueyang. According to Kang Zhuo (1978, p. 4), a writer who was living in Xiangyin at the time, Hua arrived by boat on 2 August 1949 accompanied by over 100 Southbound Work Group cadres as the PLA pushed through Hunan towards Guangdong. On his arrival, Hua gave a keynote speech to members of the local underground communist movement in the ruins of a Buddhist temple in preparation for the establishment of the new organs of the local party-state. Kang Zhou (1978, p. 4) paints a rather romantic picture (symptomatic of the time of writing) of Hua’s arrival in Xiangyin, with the Southbound Work Group and the PLA leading the way, suggesting that they were warmly embraced by excited locals lining the streets. While this may have been true in part, not everyone was pleased to see these new entrants, not least the incumbent Hunanese political elite. A considerable number of the Southbound Work Group that set up in Hunan came from Shanxi and clustered together as part of a political grouping referred to in Chinese as a banzi. Unger (1991, p. 7) points out that, like Hua, most of the Shanxi banzi were peasant villagers who were less educated than their native Hunanese counterparts. As a consequence, the Hunan political elite were contemptuous of the Shanxi banzi, ‘feeling among other things that they had scant understanding of how to manage the economy, especially in the cities’ (Unger, 1991, p. 7). They probably also perceived the Shanxi banzi as intruders, potential rivals to their power base. This proved to be accurate in Hua’s case given that Hua was to become provincial party First Secretary some 20 years later.1 Unger (1991, p. 23) also identifies a hostility between the incoming PLA and the Shanxi banzi and the Hunan Liberation Army (HLA), again in contrast to the rather dewy tones contained in Kang Zhou’s article. The HLA was a home-grown guerrilla warfare movement that had fought in the wars against Japan and the KMT. The expectation was that its members would be rewarded with a role in the new political order that emerged in summer 1949. However, any such hopes were quickly dashed. Unger (1991, p. 23) notes that on arriving in Hunan, ‘the PLA commanders were determined to squeeze the local guerrillas out of any share in local power and ordered that they disarm and disband’. Those who resisted were arrested as ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and sentenced to long prison sentences. Many, it would seem, subsequently held a longstanding grudge against the Hunan political authorities for the treatment they received as evidenced during the Cultural Revolution when they joined forces with a radical Red Guard group known in Chinese as the


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Shengwulian in attempting to oust Hua and other local leaders from power (see Chapter 4). Hua, now married to Han Zhijun, was made Xiangyin Party Secretary and Political Commissar of the Xiangyin Military Unit (GMRB, 1976, p. 1). His principal task on assuming these posts was to consolidate party control, although this was easier said than done. Like many other parts of Hunan, some of which were not captured by the PLA until as late as October 1949, Xiangyin was suffering from social instability when the PLA arrived. Major flooding from the vast Dongting Lake left thousands of people homeless (figures vary between 100,000 and 140,000 people) and decimated vast tracts of arable farmland. The floods also led to an outbreak of disease including schistosomiasis (otherwise known as bilharziosis or ‘snail fever’), a parasitic illness caused by contaminated water. These factors, together with significant pockets of resistance from KMT and other anti-communist groups (totalling an estimated 5,000 men in Xiangyin alone) triggered a sharp rise in local crime, especially the theft of grain and other essential foodstuffs (HJX, 1976, p. 1). This volatile situation was exacerbated by a marked fall in crop production. Statistics presented by Shue (1980, p. 21) show that Hunan’s rice, wheat, sweet potato and cotton yields in 1949 were all lower than the pre-war figures achieved in 1936. One reason for this was the deleterious impact of war. Another was the daunting prospect of land reform. Although it was widely anticipated that land reform was coming to Hunan, no one really knew what to expect, and speculation was rife. Rumours of a rigorous classification according to class background meant that many villagers attempted to conceal or reduce their personal income or production capacity in order to avoid an adverse and potentially ruinous categorisation. Landlords began refusing requests for credit from poorer peasants who had, over the years, come to depend on the loans for production purposes, claiming that they no longer had any money to lend out. Wealthy peasants who usually hired labour during busy seasons suddenly stopped, leading to a reduction in output and an increase in rural under-employment. Some farmers stopped fertilising their fields in the expectation that they were soon to lose their land altogether (Shue, 1980, pp. 19–20). In an effort to combat the rising crime wave in Xiangyin, we are told that Hua helped to carry out a campaign, implemented in many other parts of southern China, known as the Wipe Out Bandits, Oppose Local Bullies Movement (Qingfei Fanba Yundong) (RMRB, 1977a, p. 1), although the definition of ‘bandits’ and ‘local bullies’ encompassed not only criminal opponents of the new regime, but also political opponents.

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Drawing on his Shanxi wartime experience, Hua assisted PLA officers in organising local people into armed militia units and provided training on how to resist any further attacks by grain thieves. These units were known as ‘self-defence corps’ (ziwei dui) (Kang, 1978, p. 4).2 In tandem with this campaign, Hua was involved in launching the Grain Redistribution Movement (Fenliang Yundong) comprising party cadres and local volunteers who collected grain and other crops from areas with a more plentiful supply and delivered them to designated drop off points for the purposes of re-distribution. The Grain Redistribution Movement was disbanded in autumn 1950, by which time Hua had orchestrated the collection of more than 10 million jin (1 jin = 604.79 grams) of grain in Xiangyin and for which, according to Wang (1980, p. 33), ‘he was commended to higher authorities’, although we are not told who these higher authorities were. It seems highly likely that there was a degree of officially sanctioned coercion in Xiangyin during the early post-revolutionary consolidation period. Any campaign to ‘wipe out’ certain elements of society would inevitably involve violence and yield casualties. Certainly, western Hunan saw its fair share of bloodshed. According to Shue (1980, p. 16), an expeditionary force of the Fourth Field Army killed or captured over 12,000 bandits during a month-long surge into the mountains, and by the end of 1950 up to 210,000 had been killed or captured in the Central South Region (which included Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong). The extent to which members of the Grain Distribution Movement forcibly seized rather than simply collected grain is also a moot point. It is hard to imagine Xiangyin’s impoverished and hungry peasants voluntarily giving up a proportion of their own hard-grown grain for the sake of the greater good. In the event that there was widespread violence in Xiangyin at this time, what was Hua’s role in it? As we might expect, pro-Hua official sources make no reference to any heavy-handed tactics that Hua may have employed or authorised those under him to employ. Instead, these sources focus exclusively on Hua’s success in restoring social order, relieving poverty and illness, facilitating economic recovery and establishing local party and government institutions (ZHSZ, 1977, p. 1). By contrast, Wang insists that Hua was directly involved in bloodshed. In a similar vein to the rather sweeping statements that he makes about Hua’s implementation of land reform in Shanxi (see Chapter 1), Wang (1980, p. 33) claims that in tackling the theft of grain ‘Hua immediately took counter-measures, killing a number of people and sending some peasants to jail to prevent such incidents from spreading any further’. Likewise, in organising the redistribution of grain, Hua ensured that


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‘landlords were brutally repressed so as to create an atmosphere of terror in society which would pave the way for the “land reform” which was to be carried out later’ (Wang, 1980, p. 34). As with some of his previous statements, Wang’s assertions are not adequately sourced so we cannot be certain of their accuracy. We might also question whether Hua was personally responsible for ‘killing a number of people’ as Wang suggests, almost as though it was Hua himself who pulled the trigger. That said, it is likely that Hua played at least some kind of role in the coercion that took place. As Xiangyin Party Secretary, he would presumably have issued the directives that involved the use of force (to the extent that he had much decision-making autonomy from the PLA units stationed in the area). Yet, Hua would not have been unusual in this respect. Unpalatable as it may seem, violence and loss of life were inevitable at a time when the CCP was looking to forcibly wrest control from the KMT, local warlords and common criminals. As such, perhaps the better question to ask is to what extent, if any, did Hua act outside the boundaries of his authority in authorising the use of force. In other words, were his actions in any way arbitrary or illegal? The forthcoming discussion of land reform goes some way towards answering this question. Before we turn to this discussion, we should note that Hua’s activities in Xiangyin were not confined exclusively to the fortification of local power. An article written by the Hunan Communist Youth League (GHW, 1977, p. 1) claims that Hua was an enthusiastic supporter of local youth organisations during his time in Xiangyin and was keen to politicise the young by integrating them into the party and the party’s socio-economic and political activities. During a local party meeting in November 1949, Hua proposed setting up an intra-party Youth Work Committee (Qingnian Gongzuo Weiyuanhui) ‘in order to strengthen the leadership of the party over the youth movement’ (GHW, 1977, p. 1). The article suggests that Hua wrote several internal party reports emphasising the important contribution to post-revolutionary society that could be made by China’s youth, particularly in relation to land reform where Hua envisaged that young people could usefully work with landreform work teams. As a general point, Hua urged cadres to seek out every opportunity to recruit new party members from the working, peasant and intellectual classes (GHW, 1977, p. 1).

Land reform and the case of Yang Delun Land reform in Xiangyin started in early 1950, about three years later than in Hua’s native Jiaocheng County. The process began in the tiny

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village of Hefeng with a survey of landholdings. Hua was instrumental in the completion of the survey which found that landlords comprised only three per cent of households but owned over sixty per cent of the land (Wang, 1980, p. 35). After the survey, and in keeping with national party policy, land reform was carried out as an investigative exercise with a small number of villages specifically designated as ‘experimental zones’ (shiyan qu). Hua took the lead in determining which villages were categorised as such (GMRB, 1977b, p. 2). According to one report, Hua identified the village of Yongle as an ‘experimental zone’ and dispatched a party work team of land-reform cadres to the village to assist with the determination of individual class status among its inhabitants. Hua then took personal charge of land reform in this village by attending ‘spitting bitterness’ meetings and supervising the confiscation and re-distribution of land according to class status (Kang, 1978, p. 4). The success of the Yongle experiment meant that it was repeated throughout Xiangyin and it is likely that Hua’s role in Yongle was well received by senior party leaders in Hunan (Kang, 1978, p. 4). Hua and the MATs Hua also helped to set up MATs while he was in Xiangyin, notwithstanding the findings of Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, pp. 5–7) which suggest that he did not become involved with the MATs until after he had moved to Xiangtan County in June 1951. By way of background, although land reform succeeded in distributing about 44 per cent of all cultivated land in China to approximately 60 per cent of the poor peasant population (Lippit, 1974, pp. 3 and 25) while at the same time eliminating the most uncompromising source of opposition to the CCP in the form of the landlord class, a number of socio-economic trends emerged that caused considerable discomfort to the CCP leadership. The most startling trend (although it should not really have come as a surprise) was the persistence of a rural class system. Although the landlord class had been eliminated by land reform, middle-class peasants (and even some from the rich peasant class) were deliberately left untouched by the policy as the party pursued a broad-based ‘united front’ approach in the countryside as a means of consolidating its recently acquired political power. This meant that, in many cases, poor and landless peasants remained poorer and with less land than their middle-class counterparts which, in turn, provided the foundations for a system of class exploitation not dissimilar to that which land reform had sought to abolish. The key difference was that middle peasants


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now assumed the role of the ‘exploiting class’. As Blecher (1986, p. 59) explains: Poor peasants whose holdings were too small to get by were forced to borrow money or rent land from [middle and] rich peasants, sell their labour to them, and in some cases – for example, when loans could not be repaid – even sell their land to them. In response to this alarming development, the party moved towards a system of rural collectivisation and the MATs were the first stage in this process. Comprising anything between six to about twenty peasant households, members of the MATs exchanged their labour, tools, animals and farming acumen for mutual benefit, although ownership of tools, animals and land was not transferred to the MAT and remained with the respective household. This new collective model facilitated a notable increase in production as households with more land than they could farm were able to join forces effectively with those who had too much labour but not enough land. The MAT system also diminished the ‘exploitative’ role of the middle peasant classes by providing impoverished peasants with a means of resolving their financial problems without having to turn to middle peasants for assistance (Blecher, 1986, p. 59). While each household was permitted to sell some of its produce on the open market, the MATs differed from the land reform structure in that a small percentage of output (which differed from one area to another) was compulsorily procured by the state for the purposes of wider distribution. Some of the MATs were ‘seasonal’ ( jijie), disbanding after the relevant season was over and reverting to the family unit. Those that continued ‘year round’ (changnian) performed supplementary activities off-season, such as handicrafts and fishing (Yang, 1959, pp. 204–5). The MATs were implemented at different times in China. In the CCP strongholds of northern China, some MATs were established prior to nationwide liberation and by 1952 over 70 per cent of all peasant families in northern China belonged to MATs with about 20 per cent of the teams as the year-round type. In many parts of the south, however, where the CCP arrived much later, MATs were not set up until after 1952 (Yang, 1959, p. 205), although, as we will now discuss, Hua was something of a pace-setter in this regard. According to one official source (GMRB, 1977b, p. 2), Hua began establishing MATs in Xiangyin as early as winter 1950, well before the completion of land reform in Hunan which was finally achieved in

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April 1953. Building on the success of the Yongle land reform campaign, Hua supervised the establishment of an MAT there called the Liu Zhengquan MAT, named (as was traditional) after the team head.3 In spring 1951, during one of his several investigatory visits to the MAT, Hua convened an informal forum where he canvassed the opinions of its members and spoke to them about the revolutionary and production situation in Hunan. Shortly afterwards, the Liu Zhengquan MAT was heralded as a model MAT for the purposes of emulation throughout the province, although we need to remain cautious about these claims given the rather adulatory tones of the article. The Yang Delun incident Questions about the legality of Hua’s decision-making arose following an incident that took place in the village of Yujie in February 1951 as highlighted by Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, pp. 5–7) and summarised below. In December 1950, a party work team arrived in Yujie to oversee land reform. But instead of establishing close links with poor peasants in the town as they were required to do, members of the work team allied themselves with Yujie’s landlords and rich peasants, allocating housing for them and in some cases deliberately misclassifying them as poor peasants in order to safeguard the livelihoods and physical welfare of their new associates. A poor peasant named Yang Delun, who had been keen to help the work team when it arrived, was shocked by the inappropriate activities of its members and openly criticised the team and its leader Hu Yanwen. The bitter recriminations against Yang that followed resulted in an official request for his execution on a charge of ‘disrupting land reform and slandering land reform cadres’. To obtain authorisation for this, the request went vertically through various levels of bureaucracy until it arrived on the desk of the relevant district official. Hua, who as Xiangyin Party Secretary had the unenviable task of co-ordinating death penalty requests, received a phone call from the district official requesting approval of Yang’s execution. Land reform regulations at the time stipulated that executions could only be performed with the prior sanction of yet another higher authority, the Prefectural Party Committee. It is not entirely clear who sought approval from this authority (Hua or someone else), but the approval was given within hours of its request following which Hua immediately communicated the instruction to the relevant bodies to proceed with Yang’s execution. In so doing, however, Hua made a fundamental administrative mistake. A provision in the land reform regulations required that the written document authorising Yang’s death


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sentence should have been sent to the local court in Yujie (from where the request originated) before the execution was carried out, allowing Yang to exercise his legal right to enter a final statement prior to his death which would then have been recorded on the court’s files. Crucially, the document did not arrive at the court until the day after Yang was put to death, an oversight which precipitated a wave of peasant unrest in Yujie. The fall-out from the Yang Delun incident was handled internally in July 1952 during the Three Antis Campaign (anti-corruption, waste and bureaucracy). It later came to public attention during the 1953 Campaign Against Bureaucratism, Commandism and Violations of Laws and Discipline. A party work team was sent down to Yujie to deal with continued peasant demands for the punishment of those responsible for the error leading to Yang’s premature execution. In response, several members of the Xiangyin party apparatus were either sacked or demoted. However, Hua was not one of them because he had already left Xiangyin to take up his post in Xiangtan (see below). Instead, Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, p. 7) conclude that Hua was probably required ‘to confess a minor error of “bureaucratism” for the excessive dispatch with which he handled the case and for totally accepting without independent verification the report from below’. By way of mitigation, Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, p. 7) suggest that Hua was probably inundated with requests for execution during a land reform campaign that was frequently chaotic and bloody, such that the pressure brought to bear on Hua made administrative mistakes of this kind almost inevitable. This does not seem an unreasonable point. Moreover, put in context, Hua’s error was relatively minor in that Yang’s fate had already been sealed by the Prefectural Party Committee. Yang’s right to enter a last statement (of which he was deprived) would not have saved him from the firing squad, but simply delayed his execution for a day or two. Certainly, there is nothing to suggest from this incident that Hua was directly responsible for killing people during land reform as Wang (1980, p. 34) has suggested (noted above). A final point made by Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, p. 7) is that Hua probably learnt from his mistake of failing to investigate the Yang Delun matter personally before authorising the death penalty. In his subsequent professional career, they note, Hua became renowned for his attention to detail and in particular his willingness to carry out personal, on-the-spot investigations to determine for himself the physical conditions of a given situation. This characteristic was apparent both while he was in Hunan and after he was elevated to the Beijing party apparatus in 1971, as we will see in later chapters.

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The MATs in Xiangtan County Fortunately for Hua, the Yang Delun incident came to light after Hua had left his post in Xiangyin because in June 1951 Hua was transferred to Xiangtan County as Party Secretary (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). For the sake of clarity, we should note that before November 1952 Xiangtan County (like Xiangyin County) was part of Changsha Prefecture. However, after 1952 Xiangtan became (and remains) part of the newly formed Xiangtan Prefecture which is situated to the south-west of Changsha. Hua’s move to Xiangtan cannot really be described as a promotion because he did not assume a more senior position than that which he held in Xiangyin. It did, however, provide him with new opportunities to strengthen his career prospects. Geographically, Xiangtan is considerably larger than Xiangyin which meant that the scope of Hua’s authority most likely increased. Likewise, the opportunity to meet well-connected and high-ranking officials from within and outside the locality also increased (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, pp. 7–8). More important than this, however, was the fact that Xiangtan contained the town of Shaoshan, Mao’s birthplace. Although Hua could not have planned it this way, this provided him with an ideal opportunity to attract Mao’s attention. During his interview with the BBC’s Felix Greene, Hua mentions meeting Mao for the first time ‘in the early 1950s’ and it was most likely during his incumbency as Xiangtan Party Secretary that this first meeting took place.4 On moving to Xiangtan Hua continued to concentrate on the formation of MATs. According to the journal Red Flag (ZGHW, 1977, p. 20), the then official organ of the CCP, Hua was closely involved in organising a number of MATs in Shaoshan, paying several visits there to familiarise himself with local conditions and peasant opinions and advising on working methods and ideological matters. One of the MATs that Hua helped to establish was known as the Liu Xinhua MAT comprising three poor peasant families. According to Red Flag, the Liu Xinhua MAT was the first MAT to be set up in Xiangtan County and Hua’s role in this process was apparently well received by Mao, although we are not given any more information than this Hua also worked in the village of Ma’ao, assisting with the establishment of the He Jianchang MAT which comprised eight poor peasant households. As with Shaoshan, Hua is reported to have kept a close eye on developments in Ma’ao and on hearing rumours that the MAT had been derailed by local opponents of the system, he travelled to the village to convene a meeting of its members in an effort to restore productivity. Then in 1952, Hua wrote an article for the provincial paper


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New Hunan Daily on the lessons to be learnt from He Jianchang MAT titled ‘Continuously Consolidating and Improving the He Jianchang MAT’ (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). This was the first of several articles that Hua wrote on the MATs during 1952. His others articles, each of which was published in the New Hunan Daily, were on ‘How Xiangtan Should Popularise the Mutual Aid and Cooperation Movement’; ‘Steadily Building and Improving the Year Round MATs’; and ‘How to Rectify, Consolidate and Improve Existing Year Round MATs’ (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). As the titles suggest, the first article sought to propagate the virtues of the MATs throughout Hunan while in the latter two Hua focused specifically on measures deemed necessary for strengthening the fledgling teams as well as the party cadre’s role in organising them. Through Hua’s endeavours, it is claimed, more than 890 year round MATs were established in Xiangtan County by the end of 1952, far in excess of those set up in any other county within Xiangtan Prefecture (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). Whether it is right to give Hua all the credit for the numerical superiority of Xiangtan’s MATs is questionable. We have already seen the propensity of the official press during 1976–7 to hyperbolise Hua’s achievements as a provincial official in an effort to adorn his public persona as China’s paramount leader. That said, there is little doubting Hua’s commitment to the MATs and his industriousness in setting them up as demonstrated by the fact that under Hua’s direction, MATs in both Xiangyin and Xiangtan were set up well before the completion of land reform in Hunan, although here again we need to be wary of the official sources of this information. In addition to his work with the MATs, Hua dealt with other matters while he was Xiangtan Party Secretary. For example, in response to an invasion of locusts during May 1952, Hua launched a county-wide mass campaign for the introduction of new spray machines and pesticides. Hua was also involved in a campaign to raise the work standards of local party cadres. This saw him addressing party meetings and writing articles which identified two common mistakes made by cadres: being over-theoretical in their approach to local issues in some cases, while in other cases relying too heavily on practical experience and overlooking prescriptive theoretical solutions (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, pp. 8–9). Finally, according to Wang (1980, pp. 39–40), having on several occasions visited Mao’s childhood house in Shaoshan, Hua prepared a proposal to renovate it which he submitted to the CCP Central Committee in Beijing via the Hunan Central Party Committee. Hua was later involved in the implementation of the approved renovation plans.

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The APCs in Xiangtan Prefecture Hua’s conscientiousness as Party Secretary of Xiangtan County led to the first major promotion of his political career when in autumn 1952 he was appointed as Chairman of the Xiangtan Prefecture Government, his first significant government post. Hua also became Deputy Party Secretary of Xiangtan Prefecture and was promoted to full Party Secretary in 1953 (Kang, 1978, p. 4). This meant that Hua rose from the ranks of a middle-level cadre (zhongji ganbu) to a high-level cadre ( gaoji ganbu) with all the perks that this brought with it, including a small chauffeur-driven sedan and an allowance for food, clothing, toothbrushes, toothpaste and even haircuts (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, pp. 9–10; Wang, 1980, pp. 38–9). More importantly, Hua was now being noticed by senior personnel within the higher echelons of the CCP. In order to obtain approval for a promotion of this kind, Hua’s name would have come before the Central South Regional Party Committee (a temporary administrative body set up during the early post-revolutionary period) which was at this time located in Wuhan. Significantly for Hua, the committee was staffed by, among others, Li Xiannian who was to become an important ally for Hua when he rose to paramount leader in 1976 (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 9). Lower-stage APCs Soon after assuming his new positions of authority, Hua became immersed in the next phase of rural collectivisation, the establishment of the APCs. At their inception, the APCs comprised about 30 households. These are often referred to as lower-stage (diji) APCs. In contrast to the MATs, ownership of tools and labour was transferred to the collective unit for which the donor was appropriately compensated. Land was now shared and farmed collectively, although each household member retained ownership of its land. Remuneration was calculated partly in accordance with the amount of labour contributed by each member and partly in accordance with the amount of land that each member put in (Yang, 1959, pp. 204–5). For a while, sale of produce on the open market was still permitted, although it decreased as a percentage of total output in order to allow for an increase in compulsory state procurement for the purposes of distribution. However, by November 1953 the private trading of grain had been virtually eliminated as state supervised grain markets replaced the open market system, with similar policies extended to the trading of vegetable oil and raw cotton during 1954 (Sui, 1989, p. 150).


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As he had done with the implementation of land reform and the MATs, Hua embraced the new rural system with considerable alacrity. During spring 1953, Hua authorised the establishment of six experimental APCs in Xiangtan, of which one, the Helongjia APC, was an expansion of the Liu Zhengquan MAT that Hua had set up in Xiangyin County. Helongjia was the first APC to be established in Xiangyin County and was converted into a higher-stage (gaoji) APC (more details shortly) in early 1955 (Wang, 1980, p. 44). After a progress review by Hua and senior colleagues in Xiangtan determined that the six APCs were a success, a decision was taken to increase the number of APCs in the region. Hua took personal responsibility for carrying out this policy and sought to galvanise local peasant support under the slogan ‘always be ready to prepare, develop and consolidate the APCs’ (changnian zhunbei, zhunbei yipi, fazhan yipi, gonggu yipi ). Following this, 75 APCs (still on a trial basis) were set up in Xiangtan between winter 1953 and spring 1954, of which 90 per cent experienced an increase in production (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). This convinced Hua of the need to accelerate the implementation of the APCs, and between winter 1954 and spring 1955 some 4,933 APCs were established in Xiangtan. This comprised approximately 40 per cent of the APCs set up in the whole of Hunan as Xiangtan developed a reputation as a pacesetter in the Hunan rural collectivisation process (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). Such a reputation was further justified by the fact that 5.2 per cent of peasant households in Xiangtan had joined APCs in spring 1955, compared with only 3.3 per cent of peasant households in the entire province. This meant that the rate of co-operativisation in Xiangtan was almost double that of the remainder of Hunan (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). Higher-stage APCs It appears that Hua experimented with higher-stage APCs in as early as spring 1954, some two years before this phase of collectivisation became official party policy, again demonstrating his considerable enthusiasm for rural reform. The higher-stage APCs comprised anything between 100–300 households in which private ownership of land was abolished and each household member was remunerated in accordance with the quality and quantity of the labour contributed (Yang, 1959, p. 205). According to official sources, Hua authorised the establishment of the Dongtingwei APC located around the Dongting Lake in Xiangyin which was the first of its kind to be set up in Hunan. There is, however, a discrepancy about its precise composition. According to an article in the Guangming Daily (GMRB, 1977b, p. 2) Dongtingwei merged

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18 MATs totalling 127 peasant households, whereas a People’s Daily article (RMRB, 1977a, p. 1) claims that it comprised more than 10 lowerstage APCs which would represent a considerably larger collective unit. In any event, when the higher-stage APCs were introduced nationally in spring 1956, Dongtingwei was held up as a model for the entire province to emulate thereby enhancing Hua’s reputation at the local level as an innovator when it came to rural reform. Wang (1980, p. 44) notes that there was considerable disquiet about the formation of the Dongtingwei APC from within the Hunan provincial CCP, even though it had earlier approved Hua’s actions in setting it up (a move which Wang (1980, p. 44) condemns as ‘adventuristic and reckless’). These doubts were confirmed following a visit to the APC by a party work team towards the end of 1954. Much to the concern of Hunan First Secretary Zhou Xiaozhou, the work team reported back that some of the household members had pulled out of the APC altogether and taken their animals with them, although this did not lead to the dissolution of the APC. The debate over rural collectivisation The uneasiness expressed by the Hunan authorities over the Dongtingwei APC was part of a much wider national uneasiness and uncertainty about the appropriate pace of rural collectivisation. This was crystallised by an intense debate on the subject within the CCP leadership which took place during 1955. As with many of the intra-party debates of the Mao era, we cannot easily divide this debate into two discrete sides or ‘lines’, primarily because some of the key participants in it changed their minds, most notably Mao. Initially, Mao agreed with Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun that a degree of caution was required in pushing ahead with the APCs (something for which the latter three were vilified during the Cultural Revolution). During 1954 and early 1955 many parts of China had seen a rapid increase in the number of APCs, but this had been accompanied by instances of over-ambitious target setting, cadre coercion in seeking to achieve these targets and the disillusionment of many APC members as a result. In response, it was felt that a period of measured consolidation was needed under the slogan ‘halt, shrink, develop’ (ting suo zheng). This would require the dissolution of about 20,000 malfunctioning APCs across China to be followed by a modest goal of one million APCs to be set up by autumn 1956 (Teiwes, 1997, p. 60). In mid-May, however, Mao abruptly changed his stance to one in support of a more rapid advance in the number of APCs with a target of


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1.3 million set for autumn 1956. Mao and colleagues such as Chen Boda argued that, notwithstanding some of the setbacks identified by Liu, Deng and Chen (and previously Mao himself), the APCs had the potential to significantly increase production while at the same time reduce the possibility of class cleavages in the countryside. Moreover, they claimed that the vigour with which the peasantry had thus far participated in rural reform demonstrated an insatiable popular enthusiasm for socialist transformation and one which should be exploited rather than neglected. Mao then re-asserted this position in his now-famous speech of 31 July 1955 when he accused his more cautious colleagues of ‘tottering along like a woman with bound feet’ (Teiwes, 1997, pp. 60–1). Crucially, this was combined with an extensive tour of the countryside in which Mao appealed directly (and by so doing illegitimately) to local party leaders and junior officials, triggering a dramatic upsurge in APCs that exceeded even Mao’s aspirations with 1.9 million APCs established by the end of 1955 (Blecher, 1986, p. 61).5 In effect, Mao used the provinces to enforce his will on the centre, a tactic that Hua categorically failed to learn from during his power struggle with Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, as we will see in Chapter 6. Notwithstanding Mao’s decisive intervention in the debate over the pace of rural collectivisation, the Hunan party leadership remained lukewarm in its approach to this issue, as reflected by the statistic showing Hunan as the lowest ranked of all 27 provinces in the rate of forming lower-stage APCs by summer 1955 (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 13). This meant that local APC enthusiasts such as Hua were very much in a minority and were likely to attract the unwanted attention of their superiors. According to Wang (1980, p. 45), this is precisely what happened in early July 1955. Hua had been invited to speak at a provincial party meeting but was pulled from the schedule at the very last minute. He was then summoned to a meeting with Zhou Xiaozhou at Zhou’s home where he was admonished for his ‘left adventurist tendencies’ and ordered to reduce the number of APCs planned for Xiangtan Prefecture by autumn 1955 to 6,402. However, after Mao’s watershed speech in July, Hua was able to revert to his original programme and by the end of 1955 he had helped to set up over 20,000 lower-stage APCs in Xiangtan, accounting for 75 per cent of all peasant households in Xiangtan (ZHXD, 1977, p. 2). Mao’s rewards for Hua In the short term, Hua’s loyalty to Mao over the APCs earned him, among other things, an invitation to attend the Sixth Plenum of the

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Seventh Central Committee in October 1955 where he was invited to speak about his experiences in setting up APCs in Xiangtan (ZGHW, 1977, p. 21). It was during this ‘expanded’ (kuoda) plenum (conveniently expanded by Mao himself in order to secure a majority) that Mao’s policy on the APCs was officially sanctioned, although Hua is only likely to have attended in a non-voting capacity.6 In the longer term, as we will see in Chapter 3, Hua’s act of loyalty may well have earned him a surprise promotion as a Party Secretary of the Hunan CCP in 1959 coinciding with Zhou’s dismissal as First Secretary, probably for his disloyalty. Mao met with Hua at some point in 1955, most likely during Mao’s tour of the countryside noted above. A book written by Ye Yonglie (1998) contains a photograph of Mao and Hua (with others) sitting together on what the caption suggests is a meeting taking place on a train in 1955. As well as meeting Hua and no doubt learning about his dedication to rural collectivisation on the Hunanese political grapevine, Mao would have also discovered Hua’s supportive stance from three articles that Hua wrote on the APCs during 1955 and which were published in the New Hunan Daily. The first article titled ‘We Must Resolutely Rely on the Poor Peasants in the Co-operativisation Movement’ stressed the importance of adopting a class analysis when establishing the APCs and of allowing the poor peasant class to play a leading role in the movement at the expense of the more ideologically ambivalent middle-class peasants. The second article titled ‘Eliminate Right Deviationist Thought, Actively Welcome the Arrival of an Upsurge in the Co-operativisation Movement’ adopted a much more critical perspective, admonishing certain unnamed cadres in the region for failing to implement the APCs with more enthusiasm while insisting that only an acceleration in the APCs would lead to an increase in production (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 15). But Hua’s most significant article was his third titled ‘Thoroughly Research the Development of Various Strata in the Countryside’ (Hua, 1955, pp. 29–31). The content of the article drew on the themes which Hua had developed in his earlier two articles, so in this sense it was nothing new. What made the article significant was that it was republished in the November edition of Study (Xuexi), the official theoretical journal of the CCP (prior to Red Flag). Not only this, but the edition in which it appeared also contained the transcript of Mao’s landmark July speech which by this time was official party policy. Having an article in the same edition of the same journal as Mao was clearly a considerable


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achievement for someone as junior as Hua and it is quite possible that Mao himself would have requested the inclusion of Hua’s article in that edition or at least approved it when it was brought to him by the editing committee. From this, it does not seem illogical to conclude that Mao made this request or gave this approval in direct appreciation of Hua’s loyalty during the APC debate earlier in the year. Hua is also thought to have made a contribution to Mao’s celebrated works The Upsurge of Socialism in China’s Countryside published in 1955. The book comprises a collection of investigation reports on the progress of the APCs that were written by cadres from all over China. Mao was involved in selecting which of the reports should feature in the book and in writing editorial comments about those he found of interest. Six of the investigation reports came from Hunan and according to the People’s Daily (RMRB, 1976b, p. 1), Hua edited three of these, although it is not clear which three. The inclusion of three reports written by one man was unusual in the context of the whole book. Again, one cannot but conclude that this was recompense for Hua’s early loyalty over the APCs. Wang suggests that Hua’s eagerness to drive forward with rural collectivisation was motivated by an almost single-minded longing for promotion. As Wang (1980, p. 50) puts it, Hua ‘became ever more feverish in supporting and implementing Mao’s rural policy, and did his best to cater to Mao’s craving for greatness and success’ because he ultimately ‘cherished a desire for advancement in his career’. But is this entirely accurate or fair? While it would be difficult to believe that Hua was completely disinterested in improving his career prospects at this time, Wang over-states the case. If Hua was driven purely by his own personal advancement then why did he take the risk of opposing his immediate superiors in Hunan who were at best ambivalent towards Mao’s ambitious plans for accelerating the establishment of the APCs? Surely the more logical career option for Hua would have been to toe the Hunan party line and keep in favour with those closest to him, not least because it was far from clear at the time whether or not Mao’s position on the APCs would become party policy or that Hua might somehow benefit from allying himself to Mao’s position. In fact, if anything, Hua acted independently of Mao’s directives on agricultural policy. For example, his experiment with the Dongtingwei higher-stage APC in spring 1954 was carried out sometime before Mao began to express an interest in pushing forward more rapidly with the collectivisation process. It is therefore more likely that the willingness with which Hua

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embraced rural reform was motivated by a genuine commitment to the policy, so much so that he was prepared to incur the displeasure of his bosses in Hunan.

Culture, education and health work in Changsha Hua’s next career move came in spring 1956 when he was transferred from Xiangtan to Changsha and appointed head of the Culture and Education Office (ZGHW, 1977, p. 21). This was primarily a government position in which Hua was accorded a much more defined role than that which he had performed in Xiangtan. The post was not really a promotion because Hua’s rank in the CCP’s organisational tables did not rise. But the new job did bring with it a notable increase in responsibility in that Hua was now responsible for the entire province (albeit only in one capacity) rather than only a single prefecture. It also required Hua to work closely with culture and education leaders in other provinces and in Beijing, hence expanding his network of political contacts and raising his political profile (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 16). Hua’s principal objective in his new role was to increase literacy rates among the overwhelmingly uneducated rural Hunanese. This formed part of a national 12-year plan to eliminate illiteracy across the whole of China and was implemented in 1956. According to official statistics, 78 per cent of the Chinese population were illiterate in 1956 and in Hunan the figure was even higher at 83 per cent (HNJY, 1977, p. 1). In tackling this issue, Hua implemented a variety of different central government initiatives, the most important of which was to encourage the use of a new standard form of Chinese. The new standard form was a simplified version of the more complex, traditional form of Chinese character in an attempt to make it easier for people to learn to read and write. This was followed in 1958 with the introduction of pinyin as a form of romanisation (Seybolt and Chiang, 1979). In Hunan, special literacy study groups were set up in villages and towns throughout the province to help teach the adult population to read and write the new standard form. Official reports suggest that Hua frequently visited such groups in order to assess levels of literacy and even assist with the teaching (HNJY, 1977, p. 3). Another aspect of Hua’s work focused on educating the young. Hua was instrumental in establishing a number of new schools across the province in an effort to accommodate millions of children seeking an education, especially those from rural areas. These included extension schools at the middle and secondary school levels which were affiliated


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to pre-existing primary schools enabling pupils from a given primary school to feed into the relevant middle and then secondary school and hence continue their education (HNJY, 1977, p. 3). Sometimes, however, it was simply not possible to accommodate every child, leaving Hua with the unenviable task of placating parents whose children were not able to move beyond the primary level of education. The majority of new schools in Hunan were state funded, although Hua was also keen on promoting commune schools (gongshe xuexiao), set up and run by higher-stage APCs, industrial enterprises and neighbourhood committees (HNJY, 1977, p. 3). In addition to schools, Hua was influential in setting up vocational colleges during this period, most notably new medical colleges in Xiangtan, Changde, Hengyang and Shaoyang (HWSJ, 1977, p. 1). Hua’s position as head of the Culture and Education Office also extended to work in the health sector in the form of health education. One example of this was Hua’s leadership in Hunan of the programme to eliminate schistosomiasis, part of a seven-year national campaign introduced in late 1955 with the objective of combating a disease that affected about one-sixth of the Chinese population. Hua’s role was to popularise the various methods devised for tackling the disease across the province, and in May 1956 he chaired a provincial work conference on the subject. Later in the year Hua was invited to a national conference on eradicating the illness chaired by Ke Jingshi, First Secretary of the Shanghai CCP (HWSJ, 1977, p. 1). Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, p. 18–19) suggest that Hua developed a number of professional traits during his time at the Culture and Education Office which remained with him for the rest of his career in Hunan. First, they identify a self-effacing tendency as evidenced by his refusal to have his name associated with official provincial documents on education reform, even though he had often taken the lead in preparing and issuing these documents. This runs counter to Wang’s claim noted earlier that Hua’s hard work in the agrarian sector was motivated by an egotistical yearning for career advancement. Second, they suggest that Hua was thorough and reliable in performing his duties, albeit he was more of a ‘pragmatic problem-solver’ than an innovator: ‘one can trace the initiative to a directive in Peking [Beijing]. But Hua responded effectively, placed the problem in its Hunan context, and sought to develop an appropriate remedy by drawing upon the talents of his staff’ (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 18). Third, they identify in Hua an ability to organise and co-ordinate activities across a number of different units: ‘investigating and remedying deficiencies in the elementary schools,

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for example, involved no less than six bureaux, while placing middle school graduates involved working across several functional systems’ (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 18). In fact, Hua’s organisational skills were evident some time before his educational work in Changsha, as we saw in the previous chapter when he was responsible for organising a number of civilian warfare units in Shanxi. That said, the scale of the task in Changsha was almost certainly more demanding than in Shanxi given that it was on a much broader scale.

The Hundred Flowers and the Anti-Rightist Campaign It remains in this chapter for us to examine Hua’s role in the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Anti-Rightist Campaign that succeeded it. The Hundred Flowers, officially launched in May 1957, gave Chinese intellectuals a rare opportunity to express themselves publicly (MacFarquhar, 1974). Previously, intellectuals had been tightly restrained, both by the directives of the 1942 Yanan Conference on Art and Literature and by the Thought Reform Campaign of 1951–2 which attempted to force intellectuals into a Marxist straightjacket (MacDougall, 1980). During the Hundred Flowers under Mao’s instruction, scholars from all academic disciplines were invited to articulate their views openly on the policies and work-style of the CCP during officially organised conferences and large public fora. The emphasis, it appeared, was on constructive criticism of the party, although the precise meaning of ‘constructive’ was not initially clear. In addition, as part of a wider and renewed emphasis on the mass line, party cadres were encouraged to work more closely with local members of their constituency in order to establish closer ties. Many of the opinions that were expressed during the early part of the Hundred Flowers were not directly critical of the party. These included demands for greater clarification over the role of intellectuals within the communist system and proposals for institutional reform such as the establishment of an independent upper chamber of the National People’s Congress. As the campaign progressed, however, some intellectuals became bolder and calls were made for the complete abandonment of the socialist system. Yet, of perhaps greater concern to the party was the more widely held assertion that local party cadres were inept and obstructive in their day-to-day dealings with intellectuals since ‘by focusing on the shortcomings of Party cadres in the everyday affairs of their work units, intellectuals were in effect raising the issue of the


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Party’s competence to guide China in the new period of socialist construction’ (Teiwes, 1997, p. 80). After just five weeks a decision was taken to abandon the campaign. The party backlash in the form of the Anti-Rightist Campaign was formidable. Just about anyone who had spoken out against the party, including over 500,000 intellectuals, was branded a ‘rightist’. As part of the subsequent rectification, some intellectuals were required to undergo a process of self-criticism in which they were obliged to acknowledge their alleged mistakes in public and then in writing. Others were not so fortunate and were subjected to an intensive programme of ‘re-education’ through manual labour. According to the official line, this helped to break down the barrier between mental and manual work, especially for many urban-based intellectuals who had never even been to the countryside. In reality, it was a way of meting out punishment to those who had earlier dared to voice their opinions. Intellectuals who were also party members were dealt with particularly harshly. This was because they were expected to demonstrate a greater degree of loyalty to the party than intellectuals who were not CCP members. They were also considered to be potentially more corrosive of party unity since they were effectively on the ‘inside’ (Teiwes, 1997, p. 82). There is evidence that Hua responded positively to the Hundred Flowers directives on the importance of closer ties between party officials and the masses by involving himself more directly in manual labour. For example, it is reported that on 18 May 1957 he was part of an 18-member team of leading Hunan officials to visit the Huoxing APC where he and his colleagues planted grain and carried out other basic farming tasks (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 18). Another report suggests that in early June, Hua returned to the Helongjia APC in Xiangtan where he helped out with field ploughing and the collection of chicken eggs (ZCW, 1977, p. 51). Of course, it may well be that Hua got involved in this way because it was expected of him and his colleagues. That said, by this time Hua had something of a track record of adopting this kind of hands-on approach to his work, so it was not entirely out of character. The introduction of the Anti-Rightist Campaign meant that Hua’s focus moved away from mass line activities towards the identification of ‘rightists’ within the cultural and education sphere. According to Wang (1980, p. 57), Hua ‘distinguished himself by adhering to the Party line in suppressing the dissidents associated with the “literary salon clique”’. This clique comprised writers and artists associated with Kang De who was Director of Changsha’s Cultural Bureau and the Hunanese writer

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Wei Mengke. Wang claims that members of the clique had for some time been critical of party policy on art and literature and had taken the opportunity of the Hundred Flowers to articulate their criticisms. Although Wang provides us with some interesting background on the key participants in the ‘literary salon clique’, we are not given any details of precisely how Hua dealt with the clique. It is therefore difficult to know what Wang means by ‘suppressing the dissidents’. Wang (1980, p. 58) also claims that Hua was ‘firm in dealing with the “literary salon clique”’, but again we are not told how being ‘firm’ actually manifested itself. Wang’s absence of detail is not assisted by official sources, none of which elaborate on Hua’s actions in relation to the ‘literary salon clique’. After about 18 months in the Culture and Education Office, Hua was transferred to head of the CCP United Front Department in autumn 1957 (ZGHW, 1977, p. 21). This move represented a significant promotion in that Hua was prioritised ahead of several other officials who were more senior than him in the education and culture sector. Hua’s main task in this new post was to supervise the Anti-Rightist Campaign within those sectors of Hunanese society that made up the United Front, primarily ethnic minorities, organised religions, officially sanctioned democratic parties and certain industrialists and other ‘capitalists’ who had worked together with the CCP since the revolution. Once again, there is a shortage of information on precisely what Hua did in the post, possibly because his incumbency was brief (he had moved on within six months). But what there is suggests that Hua was not especially vitriolic in carrying out the campaign, in contrast to Wang’s claims. Although the rhetoric of speeches given by Hua in December 1957 implied a robust and unaccommodating approach, Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, p. 21) suggest that he was probably less zealous and forceful than his counterparts from cities such as Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing. One reason given for this is that Hunan’s Governor, Cheng Qian, may well have acted as a restraining force. Cheng was a non-communist, former KMT general who had earned goodwill among the Hunan party apparatus for surrendering Changsha to the CCP. It is also suggested that there was a paucity of obvious high-level targets affiliated to democratic parties, in contrast to those cities mentioned above. From this, the image presented by Hua is that he ‘was tough but not excessive, responsive to Peking [Beijing] yet not disturbing the balance that had emerged in Hunan. He gained in stature from the campaign, but not in an evidently assertive, head-line seeking way’ (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 21).


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The early Hunan period Just as Hua’s Shanxi period was dominated by war, the initial phase of Hua’s Hunan period was dominated by agrarian reform, starting with land reform and then moving quickly towards a more collectivised system in the form of the MATs followed by the lower and then higherstage APCs. As we have seen in this chapter, Hua’s participation in these reforms was enthusiastic to say the least. No sooner had he implemented land reform in Xiangyin County well ahead of time, than he was pushing ahead with the MATs there. By as early as 1952, following his transfer to Xiangtan County, Hua was pressing on with the lowerstage APCs such that by 1955 Xiangtan Prefecture contained almost half of all lower-stage APCs throughout the province. Not content with this, Hua also experimented with the establishment of higher-stage APCs well before this stage of collectivisation became official party policy in 1956. Hua’s steadfast dedication to rural reform as well as his commitment to other national and local policies during this period saw him move steadily through the Hunan party apparatus such that by 1956 he was working in Changsha, the capital and political centre of Hunan. But as we have seen, Hua was not afraid to dissent from the Hunan party line if he did not agree with it, most notably during the debate over the appropriate pace with which to implement the APCs. While provincial head Zhou Xiaozhou sought to resist Mao’s 1955 directive to accelerate this process, Hua remained loyal to Mao notwithstanding the reprimand it brought him from his immediate superior and the potential threat it posed to his career prospects in Hunan. Yet, in the end, once Mao had taken control of the debate, Hua’s allegiance to him on this issue served to advance his career by earning him an invitation to the Sixth Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee and ultimately, as we will see in the next chapter, promotion to the Hunan Party Secretariat in 1959. Compared to his formative years in Shanxi, Hua had developed considerably in terms of his experience and expertise as a party and government official and this was reflected by the positions that he held which were far more senior than anything he had enjoyed in Shanxi. Hua was also much better connected within the party, specifically and most importantly to Mao. This was partly due to luck given Hua’s geographical location in and around Shaoshan, but it was also because of his commitment to rural reform. This was manifested not just in his earnest implementation of policy, but also in his theoretical writings on the subject which similarly caught Mao’s eye and led to the inclusion of Hua’s works alongside Mao’s own writings.

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Yet on the grand scheme of things within a national political context Hua was still a very junior figure, far removed from the process of decision-making in Beijing and even in Changsha. While key figures and later contemporaries such as Mao, Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai were at the forefront of domestic and foreign policymaking, Hua was occupied in a much more modest capacity with local campaigns to introduce spray machines and pesticides, to eradicate schistosomiasis and to improve literacy. This is not to disparage his work and achievements at this time, but merely to recognise the very local context within which Hua was operating. At this stage there was certainly no hint of the astronomical rise to power that was to come.

3 The Great Leap Forward and the Post-Leap Recovery Period: Hua in Hunan (1958–65)

The Great Leap Forward proved to be a pivotal event in Hua’s political career. Although Hua was already in the ascendancy in Hunan as noted in the previous chapter, the Leap significantly accelerated this process. It was during the Leap that Hua began to work alongside senior party officials in Hunan for the first time since arriving in the province, chairing a number of key decision-making bodies responsible for economic planning and heading up provincial campaigns to increase production. Much of Hua’s work during the campaign remained rather unglamorous and mundane. We will see in this chapter Hua giving specific advice on techniques for increasing potato production and on the technical difficulties in pumping water from coal pits. Hua also continued to shun the limelight as he had done earlier in the decade, often preferring to remove his name from policymaking documents that were published for circulation. But this did not hold him back since in September 1959 he was appointed as a Party Secretary in Hunan, promoted over the heads of several more senior colleagues in the party apparatus. The trigger for Hua’s surprise promotion was the purge of Zhou Xiaozhou as Hunan First Secretary following his support for Peng Dehuai’s critical and ultimately career-destroying stance on the Leap at the Lushan Conference in July 1959. Zhou’s dismissal precipitated a major reshuffle within the Hunan provincial party which saw a number of Zhou’s local allies dispatched from office thereby creating space for Hua, an example of good fortune that was repeated during the Cultural Revolution. But Hua’s promotion was not all down to luck. We will examine below the likelihood that Mao facilitated Hua’s appointment in recompense for his loyalty during the agrarian reforms of the early and mid-1950s and also during the Leap itself. 69

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Notwithstanding popular belief to the contrary and the image of Hua created by the pro-Hua official media (and probably Hua himself), Hua was not always an unquestioning and devoted Maoist. One notable exception to the rule came in July 1958 when he spoke out publicly (and as it turned out prophetically) against potential cadre excesses in implementing the Leap, including unrealistic target setting and coercion. What made Hua’s remarks so noticeable was that he made them during the early honeymoon period of the Leap when the country was rallying firmly behind the new policy. In this context, as we will see, Hua was daring and also quite lucky to have avoided any reprisals when one considers the fate that befell Peng Dehuai, Zhou Xiaozhou and a number of other officials who were later to express concerns over the Leap. As China moved away from the catastrophe of the Leap during the early 1960s and towards the partially market-based reforms devised by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, Hua was relocated (although not demoted) from Changsha back to Xiangtan Prefecture to assist with the local recovery programme. He also worked outside the Xiangtan area, most notably in the district of Maotian where his contribution to famine relief and socio-economic reconstruction was exhaustively (and perhaps exaggeratedly) documented by the official media following a visit by Mao in which he praised Hua’s efforts. Yet, Hua’s participation in the economic recovery effort did not mean that he was in favour of Liu and Deng’s more privatised system of farming. Rather the evidence suggests (albeit evidence presented by the official media) that he remained firmly committed to the collectivist principles of the Leap and in particular to Mao’s commune system. After returning to Changsha in 1964, Hua oversaw the rapid construction of the high-profile Shaoshan irrigation plant, earning him direct praise from Mao during a visit to the site as it neared completion. Hua also worked on a number of other development projects in Shaoshan such as the renovation of Mao’s old school and the construction of a display hall dedicated to Mao, suggesting a clear intention on Hua’s part to further ingratiate himself to Mao. In addition to his more rural-based duties, Hua branched out into national security and foreign affairs work for the first time and was appointed as Hunan’s official spokesman for the Vietnam War. This brought him into close working contact with Marshall Ye Jianying who was later to become one of Hua’s key allies in the central party leadership during 1976–7.

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The Great Leap Forward As the Anti-Rightist Campaign gradually wound down during early 1958, Hua was transferred away from the United Front Department where he had been posted during the campaign and back to the Culture and Education Office, although this time in a party rather than a government capacity (ZGHW, 1977, p. 21). Among his duties, Hua resumed responsibility for the anti-schistosomiasis programme that he had helped to set up a year or so earlier, and during March 1958 he gave a number of speeches on new developments for combating the disease (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, pp. 22–3). Hua also resumed his work in the education sector, devising a five-year agenda for the construction of new schools and vocational colleges throughout the province (HNJY, 1977, p. 3). It was not long, however, before Hua was on the move again and over the next two years his workload was dominated by the implementation of the Great Leap Forward. Launched during spring 1958, the Leap was an ambitious economic programme which sought to rapidly increase China’s agricultural and industrial production in an effort to catch up with the levels of developed Western nations (MacFarquhar, 1983; Lieberthal, 1997). In addition, the aim was to simultaneously create a country strong enough to resist the perceived security threat posed by neighbouring countries such as India and a US-backed Taiwan. The implementation of the Leap relied exclusively on the productive capacities of China’s rural millions who were asked to turn their hands to almost any manual task from the planting of grain and other crops to the less familiar tasks of building dams and irrigation canals and producing (in massive quantities) iron and steel in the notorious backyard blast furnaces set up in villages across the country. Decision-making was decentralised to the commune which amalgamated the higher-stage APCs into about 1,600 households. Each household was divided down into specific production brigades of about 160 households. Each production brigade was further divided into smaller production teams of about 30 households which were sent out to perform designated tasks. All land and production equipment was owned by the commune and with the establishment of communal kitchens, each member of the commune ate an amount of food that accorded to the amount of work he put in, as measured by the number of work points he was allocated. Later, when it was (mistakenly) thought that there was an abundance of food, the principles of distribution were adjusted so that each member was entitled to eat according to how much food he needed. In theory,

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policies derived from the first-hand experience of local residents (especially farmers) rather than the more abstract theoretical ideas of specialist advisors and academics. In practice, with mounting political pressure from above to meet unrealistic production targets, many local cadres resorted to coercion against commune members, often referred to as ‘commandism’. Early indications suggested that the Leap was a roaring success. Apart from the effect of unusually favourable weather conditions and the economic fruition of the First Five-Year Plan (1953–7) (Lieberthal, 1997, pp. 98–9), 1958 was an exceptionally good year for the Chinese economy. Industrial growth rates rose by an unprecedented 55 per cent and grain production for that year reached 200 million tons, breaking all previous Chinese records. In the four years that followed, however, the only records to be broken were those relating to the number of people who perished from starvation as China suffered the worst recorded famine in its history. Precisely how many people died as a result of the famine is difficult to gauge since official estimates are unreliable and scholarly estimates tend to vary wildly. Coale suggests that 16.5 million people perished during 1958–61; Aird estimates that 23 million people died from 1960–1; and Mosher puts the figure at 30 million for 1960 alone (Kane, 1988). Numerical differences aside, it is clear that peasants suffered the most, especially in central and western provinces where up to 20 per cent of the population died from hunger. In Qinghai Province, it is estimated that almost half the population died of starvation. Economic statistics for the period say it all. In 1959 grain production fell to 170 million tons and in 1960 the figure dropped even further to 160 million tons, the lowest in ten years (Gray, 1990, p. 315). This left China with little alternative but to spend its scarce foreign currency reserves on importing grain from abroad (e.g. Canada), thereby contradicting the original self-sufficiency principles of the Leap. Indeed, grain accounted for more than 50 per cent of all imports during the Leap. Industrial output dropped by 38 per cent in 1961 and by a further 17 per cent in 1962 (Blecher, 1986, p. 72). GNP fell by approximately 35 per cent from 1958–62 (Saich, 2001, p. 38) and living standards fell dramatically, taking until 1965 to return to pre-Leap levels (MacFarquhar, 1983, p. 329).

Hua and the Leap Hua’s role in the implementation of the Leap saw him for the first time working alongside senior Hunan party figures, most notably Zhou

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Xiaozhou, Li Ruishan (later Governor of Shaanxi Province) and Zhang Bosen with whom Hua was allied during the Cultural Revolution (see Chapter 4). Hua was primarily engaged in an economic advisory capacity and following his appointment as an alternate member of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee in March 1958 and as Hunan Vice-Governor (a government post) in July 1958 (ZGHW, 1977, p. 22), he was appointed to three economic planning committees to carry out specific aspects of the Leap. The three committees were the Committee for Support of the Construction of Keypoint Projects, of which Hua was Vice-Chairman; the Agricultural Tool Improvement Committee; and the Preparatory Committee for the Hunan Economic Construction Exhibition Hall, of which Hua was Chairman (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 23). There is a paucity of information regarding the specific projects undertaken by Hua when he was working on these committees, although one report suggests that plans for the high-profile Shaoshan irrigation dam (finally implemented in 1965) were tabled by Hua at this time (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3). Hua was also involved in the Campaign to Increase Steel and Grain Production in Hunan, described by Mao as the two key ‘links’ to the economic success of the Leap. Noticeably, however, in a manner not dissimilar to his role in Shanxi, Hua played more of an ancillary role to the main event. While others more senior than him were thrust into the front-line of the steel and grain campaign, Hua was given responsibility for increasing the production of coal which is essential for making steel, and the production of sweet potatoes which are a substitute for grain. During a meeting of the Hunan Provincial People’s Council on industrial and agricultural production in September 1958, Hua gave a speech on the technical difficulties involved in pumping water from coal pits in order to increase coal production. Hua also advised on techniques for increasing the production of sweet potatoes. Notably, in the selfeffacing manner that was characteristic of Hua, his speech was not published, but was simply referred to in an editorial in the New Hunan Daily (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 23 and pp. 25–6). Hua was particularly active in the organisation and running of local communes, although here again it seems that he was not at the forefront of the communisation movement. According to an article written by Zhang Pinghua (1977, pp. 17–18), who succeeded Zhou Xiaozhou as Hunan First Secretary in 1959, Hua personally inspected a number of communes throughout Hunan and invariably participated in manual labour and gave practical advice to cadres and commune members. In an investigatory visit to the Helongjia Commune, which he had earlier

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helped set up as an APC (see Chapter 2), Hua joined with local farmers in planting grain and sweet potatoes and advised on improvements in farming techniques, particularly mechanical farming. Likewise, during a visit to a commune in Pingjiang County (Xiangtan Prefecture) Hua gave tips on how to pump water from local coal pits and assisted with coal mining duties. Hua also participated in the nationwide movement to rectify the communes following Mao’s directives at the Second Zhengzhou Conference in February and March 1959.1 This saw Hua giving first hand instructions to commune leaders on the principles of three-level accounting, with the production brigade as the basic accounting unit. In other words, while ownership and management powers were to remain vested in the three levels of commune, production brigade and production team, the production brigade became the principal unit of ownership. The tone of Zhang’s article is typically deferential to Hua given the period in which it was written and the fact that Zhang worked under Hua after 1977 as head of the Central Propaganda Department (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 288). It should therefore be treated with caution. For example, any notion of Hua genuinely dirtying his hands down a coalmine alongside his fellow commune workers seems improbable. That said, the basic claim that Hua took a personal interest in the establishment and maintenance of the communes should not be dismissed since it accords with his general enthusiasm for rural collectivisation and for paying on-the-spot visits to grass-roots movements, as we discussed in the previous chapter in relation to the MATs and APCs. Notwithstanding Hua’s commitment to the Leap, he was not afraid to sound a note of caution when he felt it was necessary. In a speech to the Second Hunan Provincial People’s Congress in July 1958, Hua expressed concerns that the new national plan to increase grain production by 33 per cent could be deleterious to the overall objectives of the Leap. In particular, he warned that cadre enthusiasm in achieving the plan could lead to neglecting the livelihood of local commune members, implying that cadres might be tempted to adopt coercive measures in achieving their goals (as many of them did) (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 24).2 The national mood at this early stage of the Leap was nothing short of euphoric, most notably in provinces such as Anhui, Henan and Sichuan under the radical stewardship of Zeng Xisheng, Wu Zhipu and Li Jingquan respectively (MacFarquhar, 1983, pp. 302–3; Goodman, 1986, pp. 136–58; Zhang, 1989, p. 10). As such, Hua’s cautionary remarks were bold to say the least and quite out of keeping with the public pronouncements of Zeng, Wu, Li and many other provincial officials at the time. Moreover, given the acrimonious falling-out that followed Peng Dehuai’s

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criticism of the Leap at Lushan (see later in the chapter), the purge of provincial officials that followed the Anti-Rightist Campaign and which still continued (Teiwes, 1993, pp. 273–300) and reports of attacks on lower-level cadres who were implementing more individualist methods of farming (Yang and Su, 1998, p. 148), Hua may well be considered fortunate to escape retribution for his candid position. Of significance here (and this is a point not picked up by Oksenberg and Yeung) is that the forthright views expressed by Hua run contrary to the general perception of him as a devoted Maoist, loyal to the very last letter of Mao’s directives. The official literature on Hua is unanimous in its portrayal of him as an unyielding lieutenant of Mao, although the media had a clear political agenda in portraying him this way as noted previously. The scholarly literature presents a similar picture. As we saw in Chapter 2, Wang (1980, p. 50) depicts Hua as almost slavish in his adherence to the Maoist party line, primarily for the sake of furthering his political career. However, Hua’s July 1958 speech suggests that he was prepared to dissent from the Maoist position if he thought it appropriate, although his dissent on this occasion must be seen as the exception rather than the rule. As endemic problems with the Leap began to surface during early 1959, Hua found himself increasingly in the role of a problem-solver. Following the successful grain yield of 1958 which saw a doubling of Hunan’s output, the biggest increase of any province in China (Chakrabarti, 1983, p. 19), evidence increasingly suggested that some peasants were beginning to over-consume in the huge communal kitchens that were distributing food according to need rather than labour input. At the same time, many local cadres had become complacent about the need to requisition grain from the communes in the mistaken belief that supplies were already plentiful. Hua identified these problems throughout Hunan and urged cadres to be more vigilant in collecting grain. He also advised on issues relating to the imbalances in supply created by rapid economic expansion. In particular, as head of the Support Agricultural Production Small Group from February 1959, Hua was responsible for ensuring that the agricultural sector received the supplies it required to maintain output rates and satisfy the demand of an increasing urban population (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 27).

The failure of the Leap in Hunan The failure of the Leap was felt throughout China and Hunan was no different in this regard. According to Chakrabarti (1983, pp. 18–19) the

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industrial sector was hit particularly badly as growth rates, which were relatively good in the years leading up to the Leap (Hunan ranked on average ninth in the country), plummeted during the Leap. Chakrabarti cites a drop in planned industrial growth rates from 18.9 per cent to 12.59 per cent, but it is likely that in practice growth rates fell even further than this. Chakrabarti identifies two reasons for the decline. First, millions of urban-based industrial workers were relocated to the countryside to assist with farming duties in an effort to achieve an ambitious target of a 105.34 per cent rise in vegetable production, a 24 per cent increase in pigs and an average output of more than 1,000 jin of grain per mou of land (1 mou is equivalent to 6662/3 m2). Second, the backyard furnace campaign meant that manpower and vital resources from Hunan’s larger and more specialised industries was sacrificed in the drive towards increased iron and steel production. Worse still, many of the furnaces were simply not fit for purpose. Chakrabarti cites one county in Hunan (which he does not identify) where of the 396 furnaces that were set up only 189 functioned properly. It is not entirely clear how many people died in Hunan as a result of starvation during the Leap because official reports are not altogether forthcoming on this point. Yang (1996, pp. 132–3) has concluded from his review of the ‘Compendium of Important Documents on Agricultural Collectivisation’ that mortality rates in Hunan increased by 162.5 per cent in the period from 1959–62 as compared with the preceding period of 1956–8. This made Hunan eighth highest in the national table of mortality rates during 1959–62 (the highest was Anhui with a staggering 474.9 per cent increase). It is important to remember, of course, that there were factors extraneous to the Leap that accounted for the severity of the famine. Most notably, 1959 and 1960 were the worst two years of weather in China for centuries. According to Lippit (1975, pp. 93–4), drought in the south and flooding in the north meant that over half of China’s farmland was seriously damaged by these adverse weather conditions. Although this does not relinquish the CCP from all blame for the famine, the bad weather would probably have caused some starvation in China even if the Leap had not been implemented. The escalating shortcomings of the Leap in Hunan were discovered first-hand by Minister of Defence Peng Dehuai (a native of Xiangtan) during his inspection tour of the province in December 1958, which included visits to his home village of Niaoshi and Mao’s home town of Shaoshan (MacFarquhar, 1983, pp. 196–9). Many of the problems that Peng identified were symptomatic of what was taking place throughout

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the country. For example, at a visit to a backyard iron and steel works, Peng found that iron cooking vessels and utensils were being broken up and smelted down to produce yet more iron, much of which was useless. Indeed, Peng noticed that lumps of it were left rusting on the ground.3 Some peasants spoke of widespread cadre coercion, including being forced to eat in communal kitchens after having their privately owned pots and pans confiscated by over-zealous cadres. At the inappropriately named Niaoshi Happiness Home, a retirement home set up to look after the elderly of the village, Peng met a number of emaciated inhabitants (some of whom were old acquaintances of his) living off a tiny amount of vegetables and a few grains of rice. Peng was told how the inhabitants had initially embraced the idea of communal living because they had been assured by party cadres that there would be enough food to go around. This was clearly not the case. Peng also encountered a tendency by many cadres to fabricate crop yields. He scornfully dismissed cadre claims that 10,000 jin of grain per mou was being produced in Niaoshi after what he had witnessed at the Niaoshi Happiness Home. Peng met a cadre in another region of Hunan boasting of a 3,000 jin of grain per mou yield. But following discussions with local peasants (many of whom laughed at this exaggerated claim) and on closer personal inspection, Peng found that the real output figure was much closer to 300 jin per mou.4 Another, more honest cadre admitted to Peng that the maximum output in his particular area was about 800 jin of grain per mou. The cadre noted that many of his contemporaries felt pressurised into submitting output figures far in excess of this amount in an effort to demonstrate to provincial authorities that they were committed to the Leap and to avoid being branded ‘rightists’ in light of the comprehensive purge of provincial officials that succeeded the Anti-Rightist Campaign (Teiwes, 1993, pp. 273–300). The fabrication of figures in this way created a dangerous vicious circle that was evident throughout China. Unaware (at least initially) that output figures were being invented, provincial authorities set higher targets for local cadres to achieve. When these targets were exceeded by once again submitting false figures, subsequent targets went up even further and so on. The reality, of course, was quite different. Production was dropping sharply and people were beginning to go without food.5

Lushan and the fall of Zhou Xiaozhou Dismayed by what he had discovered in Hunan and previously in visits to Gansu and Henan (MacFarquhar, 1983, pp. 195–6), Peng travelled

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to the Lushan Conference held in July and August 1959, scene of his now infamous showdown with Mao (Joseph, 1986). Convened by Mao in an apparent effort to rectify the excesses of the Leap, the conference provided an opportunity for delegates to openly express their concerns in accordance with the established intra-party principles of democratic centralism. But when Peng did just that, he quickly discovered what it meant to incur Mao’s wrath. Peng wrote a strongly worded ‘letter of opinion’ (yijian shu) to Mao, bluntly setting out his doubts about the Leap and criticising it as a manifestation of ‘petit-bourgeois fanaticism’ (xiao zichan jieji de kuangrexing). Mao responded by circulating copies of the letter within the party leadership, waiting for nine days and then launching a scathing counter-attack in which he condemned Peng as ‘right opportunist’ (youqing jihuizhuyi fenzi), threatening to split the party if other leaders did not support his call to oust Peng as Minister of Defence.6 Mao got his way and Peng was duly purged along with the other leading figures of what collectively became known as the ‘antiparty clique’ (fandang pai). They were PLA Chief of Staff Huang Kecheng, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhang Wentian and, most importantly for the purposes of this book, Hunan First Secretary Zhou Xiaozhou. The extent of Zhou’s allegiance to Peng and the ‘anti-party clique’ is not entirely clear. Certainly, it was not as entrenched as the postLushan official party line claimed, invariably describing Zhou (in typically hyperbolic tones) as deeply embroiled in a long-term conspiracy to overthrow Mao and the central party leadership. In fact, the only member of the ‘clique’ with whom Zhou had long-standing professional and personal relations was Huang Kecheng whom Zhou himself had succeeded as Hunan First Secretary in 1953. That said, the evidence does indicate that Zhou accompanied Peng on his fact-finding trip to Hunan and although Zhou was apparently reticent in criticising the Leap during Peng’s visit, he promised to issue a provincial directive critical of the excesses of the Leap (MacFarquhar, 1983, p. 199).7 Peng’s memoirs indicate that during the Lushan Conference, Zhou met with Peng privately at Peng’s residence to discuss the progress of the Leap in Hunan (Peng, 1984, pp. 490–1). Then Peng (1984, p. 494) suggests that in speeches made on or around 20 July (just a few days before Mao’s vehement riposte), ‘Zhou Xiaozhou and some others said they basically agreed with what I had said in my letter’. Whatever the extent of Zhou’s involvement with Peng prior to and during Lushan, one person who benefited from Zhou’s dismissal as First Secretary was Hua Guofeng. Hua’s ascendancy through Hunan’s political ranks before Zhou’s purge was already notable in the context

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of Hunanese provincial politics. As Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, pp. 29–31) point out, all other vice-governors in Hunan at around that time had begun their service at a higher grade than Hua and it is likely that Hua was alone among his contemporaries in the Hunan Provincial Party Committee to have started out down at the county level of the CCP. With Zhou’s departure prompting a reshuffle at the top, Hua’s rise took on even greater proportions when in September 1959 he was elevated over the heads of several members of the higher-ranking Hunan Provincial Standing Committee to become a Party Secretary, one of at least seven in Hunan.8 Hua was the only non-Standing Committee official to achieve such a promotion during the post-Zhou shake-up, circumventing the conventional requirement that only Standing Committee members could be promoted to the Hunan CCP Secretariat. So how do we account for Hua’s sudden ascent after Zhou was sacked? Did he have a powerful benefactor assisting his career progression in the form of Mao Zedong? This seems very likely. It was certainly within Mao’s power to do so and he would have been drawn to Hua earlier in the decade, particularly during the 1955 debate over accelerating the lower-stage APCs when Hua effectively sided with Mao against Zhou. Perhaps what really swung it for Hua was his further act of loyalty towards Mao in June 1959 during Mao’s inspection tour of Hunan, which included a visit to Shaoshan where Mao had not returned for more than 37 years. Given Hua’s earlier tenure in Xiangtan Prefecture (in which Shaoshan is located) and his close attention to the economic development of Shaoshan, it is highly conceivable that Hua received Mao when he arrived there.9 In contrast to Peng’s startling observations (derived from a genuinely impromptu visit, compared to Mao’s staged-managed affair), Mao left Hunan (from where he travelled directly to Lushan) with a much more positive impression of the Leap, and it is quite possible that Hua personally assisted Mao in creating this impression. According to official sources, Hua conducted his own fact-finding tour of Hunanese counties including Pingjiang and Dao and wrote reports on successful crop yields, increased industrial output and harmonious communal living, ‘enthusiastically praising the party line on socialist construction, the Great Leap Forward, the people’s communes and the boundless energy of the masses’ (RMRB, 1977a, p. 1). These reports, which contradicted Peng and Zhou’s more cautionary perspectives, were then passed to Mao for his review which he used as evidence to counter Peng’s criticisms of the Leap. The People’s Daily (RMRB, 1976b, p. 1) concludes from this that ‘in 1959, after the Lushan Conference destroyed the Peng-HuangZhang-Zhou anti-party clique, Chairman Mao personally put forward

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the name of Hua Guofeng for promotion to Secretary of the Hunan Party Committee’. It has not been possible to locate Hua’s investigation reports, but given the increasingly tense political atmosphere of the time and the resultant tendency of so many officials to fabricate their findings, we have to ask whether Hua too might have fallen into this trap. Although Hua had a growing reputation for thoroughness and attention to detail, it is certainly not impossible that he exaggerated the content of his investigation reports, especially since the reality of the situation on the ground in Hunan and in the rest of the nation differed considerably from Hua’s findings. Becker (1996, p. 237) has no doubts about Hua’s potential for deceit. In a vehemently critical analysis of the Leap and anyone who supported it, Becker claims that ‘just as many local officials lied to visiting senior leaders, so too did some prominent figures when reporting to Mao’. One such figure, Becker notes, was ‘the Party Secretary in Mao’s birthplace in Xiangtan, Hunan, Hua Guofeng, a 38-year-old from Shanxi who was determined to prove his loyalty to Mao at all costs’. Becker’s assertion, however, is unsubstantiated.10 Moreover, it contradicts what we already know about Hua’s preparedness to speak his mind on the deficiencies of the Leap as demonstrated in his forthright comments on the Leap during the July 1958 speech referred to earlier. On a related point, we saw in the previous chapter how the arrival of the Shanxi banzi (political grouping) in Hunan in 1949 was not welcomed by their native Hunanese counterparts who tended to look down on them as primitive villagers. Mao, however, did not share this derisory perception. According to the observations of former Red Guard Yang Xiguang, who rose to infamy as author of the radical publication ‘Whither China’ (see Chapter 4), Mao was actually very positive towards the Shanxi banzi. This was most likely because the Shanxi banzi (with Hua at the helm) rallied behind the Leap policies much more unquestioningly than the Hunan contingent. Unger (1991, p. 8) explains why: [T]he Hunanese-bred officialdom as a whole, including those in Liu Shaoqi’s ‘stream’, had maintained stronger networks of contacts reaching into the localities than had the Shanxi outsiders, and thus had been more concerned with the local hardships that had emerged. Evidently, this local-based concern had caused some native Hunanese to question the logic of the Leap, most notably, of course, Peng Dehuai.

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Finally, Yang and Su (1998, pp. 147–8) note that under new First Secretary Zhang Pinghua, Hunan accelerated its implementation of the Leap in accordance with post-Lushan national policy (which proved to be disastrous), an approach which hitherto had been lacking, at least on the part of Zhou and his immediate allies. By the end of September 1959, Zhang (who was appointed earlier that month) had already implemented a plan for the rectification of the communes under which ‘hungry peasants laboured during daytime and still had to attend meetings on commune rectification in the evenings’ (Yang and Su, 1998, p. 148). This brought praise from the Beijing authorities and a directive that all other provinces should adopt a similar position, although it is likely, of course, that the level of Zhang’s commitment had much to do with political pressure from above to demonstrate his dedication to the Leap in the aftermath of Zhou’s demise. A tangible manifestation of Hunan’s post-Zhou embrace of the Leap was the percentage of people in rural Hunan eating in the communal kitchens. Yang and Su (1998, p. 147) have put the figure at 97.6 per cent by the end of 1959, the second highest percentage in the country, just behind Henan but ahead of other provinces deemed to be more radical such as Sichuan and Anhui. Although there is no direct evidence to support the following conclusion, it is likely that Hua played an active role in achieving this figure for at least two reasons. First, as we saw in the previous chapter, Hua was something of a pace-setter in terms of collectivising the rural population into MATs and then APCs. Second, in contrast to his relationship with Zhou Xiaozhou, Hua formed a very close alliance with Zhang Pinghua from the outset, so it is quite plausible that Zhang obtained Hua’s assistance in bolstering rural participation in the communal kitchens.

Retreat and recovery William Joseph (1986) famously described the Leap as a ‘tragedy of good intentions’, a disaster of almost unrivalled proportion, yet one brought about by a sincere desire to modernise the Chinese economy and protect China from foreign aggression. Likewise, in summing up the Leap during the 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party, Vice-Premier Bo Yibo insisted that ‘the masses excused us [the CCP] for doing wrong because our intentions were good’ (Joseph, 1986, p. 425). This analysis is probably accurate until the Lushan Conference when it was only just becoming apparent to the central party leadership that the Leap was causing suffering throughout China. However,

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in the months immediately after Lushan, the intentions of the Leap became more sinister as Mao, whose authority had been challenged by Peng Dehuai, turned his back on the rectification programme that was to be tabled at Lushan and moved instead towards a re-assertion of the Leap (often referred to as the ‘second Leap’) despite evidence of its continuing failure. Mao then accentuated an already tenuous political situation at the grass-roots party level by condemning as ‘right opportunist’ a provincial leader from Anhui who had ordered the dissolution of communal kitchens, albeit in only one county in the entire province (MacFarquhar, 1983, p. 248). This sparked the inception of yet another political campaign known as the Campaign Against Rightist Opportunism which singled out for criticism and purge any cadre perceived as attempting to dilute the policies of the Leap. It was in this uncertain and often dangerous political environment that Hua spent the initial part of his incumbency as a Party Secretary in Hunan. During this time he invariably found himself performing a careful balancing act between two competing pressures, one political, the other practical. On the one hand, Hua was put in charge of overseeing the implementation of the Campaign Against Rightist Opportunism within the finance and trade system over which he continued to have responsibility. Hua’s commitment to the new campaign was apparent in much of the radical political rhetoric contained in his official pronouncements at the time (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 35), although there is no evidence to suggest that he went as far as identifying and purging so-called ‘right opportunists’ within the Hunan party apparatus. On the other hand, as it became increasingly clear that urban areas in Hunan (including Changsha) were running short of grain and other basic foodstuffs as well as commodities necessary for light industry, Hua felt compelled to address this more practical and pressing reality. The difficulty for Hua (and no doubt many other provincial leaders throughout China) was trying to ensure that his actions in alleviating the urban supply crisis did not overtly contradict the principles of the Leap and in so doing expose Hua himself to unwanted accusations of ‘rightism’. Hua initially sought to achieve this balancing act by carefully couching solutions to the urban supply crisis within the militant language of the Campaign Against Rightist Opportunism. For example, in their analysis of a provincial radio broadcast given by Hua on 7 September 1959, Oksenberg and Yeung, (1977, p. 35) note how Hua used the ubiquitous Leap slogan ‘oppose rightist tendencies, go all out’ (fanyouqing quganjing) as a way of trying to mobilise people to ‘go all out’ in resolving supply problems. This was certainly not the original intention of

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the slogan: ‘a careful reading of the speech suggests Hua valiantly was trying to reconcile the competing pressures on him’ (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 35). Later, in December that year, following a lengthy inspection tour of areas such as Hengyang City and Dao and Hengshan Counties, Hua gave a speech to a large-scale meeting of Hunan party officials in which he was more direct in asserting the need to address the question of urban supply shortages. At the same time, however, ever conscious of the highly politicised environment in which he was operating, Hua painstakingly distanced himself from the claims of mass supply shortages made by the ‘anti-party clique’ in Lushan (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 36). This subtle change of approach in Hua’s speeches was indicative of a gradual, albeit well-disguised process of official retreat from the policies of the Leap as Mao in particular became increasingly pre-occupied with China’s escalating diplomatic fall-out with the Soviet Union. With famine sweeping through many parts of China during the course of 1960, references (both by Hua and by the party in general) to the Leap and the corresponding elimination of ‘right opportunists’ began to diminish. Following a series of high-level emergency meetings, the party issued the Twelve Articles on the People’s Communes in November 1960 which began a (short-lived) process of re-organising the communes by expanding the decision-making power of the production team and allowing five per cent of land within the commune to be cultivated as private plots. By the end of 1960 the Leap was abandoned altogether as the focus of party work shifted towards a desperately needed resuscitation of the agricultural sector. Hua acknowledged the shift in emphasis during a speech made in late December, although he continued to refer to the importance of maintaining the ‘three red banners’ (sange hongqi) comprising ‘the general line of socialist construction, the Great Leap Forward and the rural people’s communes’ (RMCB, 1977, p. 22). This may have been to protect himself against any later charges of ‘rightism’, but more likely reflected a genuine commitment to the underlying principles of the Leap (as discussed shortly). An integral component of the post-Leap agricultural recovery plan involved the relocation of many senior provincial cadres to the lowerlevel administrative regions from where they had been promoted. Contrary to the earlier punitive tendencies of the party as reflected in the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Campaign Against Rightist Opportunism, this ‘sending down’ (xiafang) programme was not intended to be a punishment or a demotion of any sort since each respective cadre usually retained his senior position in the provincial

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party apparatus to which he later returned in a full-time capacity. Instead, it was thought that the urgent and complicated process of curtailing famine, re-invigorating rural output and re-organising the communes could best be managed by transferring experienced cadres who were familiar with a given area back down to that area (Lewis, 1963). It was for this reason that Hua was sent back to Xiangtan Prefecture in early 1961, a place where he had spent much of the 1950s. Resuming the role of problem-solver with which he was increasingly familiar, Hua is reported to have travelled throughout the prefecture in an effort to gauge the scale of the production and food crisis and implement recovery measures. Sources on this period are scarce, but what there is places Hua in Pingjiang during 1961 and 1962, a county he had visited during the implementation of the Leap a few years earlier. Principal among his duties was assisting with the conservation of water following a serious drought (RMCB, 1977, p. 22). Hua also visited Xiangtan County to work with the Qinglian Brigade of the Qiangyu Commune (RMRB, 1976c, p. 2). The People’s Daily reports that during this time ‘Hua helped the brigade and its production teams map out production plans and solve housing and other problems like pig-raising, fish-breeding and planting fruit trees’ (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3). Hua worked in other parts of Hunan during the post-Leap recovery period. His most publicised work was in the district of Maotian in Yueyang which he visited at least four times during 1962–3. According to the abundant literature on this subject Hua played an integral role in helping the people of Maotian recover from famine (RMRB, 1976d; RMCB, 1977, pp. 54–60; Luo and Sun, 1977). Cutting through the often prosaic language contained in these publications, it appears that Maotian’s success was based on its self-reliance in turning miles of infertile soil into productive land through the manpower of the local population. In particular, it is claimed that water was transported by foot over many miles for the purposes of irrigation, while land was cleared in the mountains to make way for the construction of terraced fields that were able to withstand drought and flood. It is further suggested that Mao visited Maotian in summer 1963 on an inspection tour during which he was briefed by Hua on at least two occasions. Mao subsequently praised the extent of Maotian’s recovery and recommended that Maotian should become Hunan’s first model agricultural unit under the slogan ‘learn from Maotian’ (xuexi Maotian). Notwithstanding Hua’s efforts in helping Hunan recover from the ravages of the Leap, we should not automatically assume that he was in favour of central party policy at the time. Building on the Twelve

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Articles on the People’s Communes of November 1960, the party implemented the Sixty Articles during 1961–2, primarily under the auspices of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. This saw the consolidation of the production team as the basic accounting and decision-making unit and a further shift towards a system of private farming that provided greater material incentives for peasant labour. The official media suggests that Hua opposed this approach. According to articles published during 1976–7 at a time when Liu and Deng’s programme was still portrayed as heresy, Hua remained loyal to the Leap and in particular to the collective principles of the communes. In typically hyperbolised language, the People’s Daily (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3) explains how, when Hua visited the Qinglian Brigade: [i]ts socialist collective economy was in grave danger of disintegration because of the evil influence of Liu Shaoqi’s ‘three freedoms one guarantee’ (sanzi yibao). Comrade Hua Guofeng went there with a work team. He visited the commune members in their homes, talked with every brigade cadre, making a careful investigation of the damage brought on by the revisionist line. He tirelessly explained to the peasants the truth that only socialism could save China. He lead the poor and lower-middle peasants in studying Chairman Mao’s instructions concerning people’s communes and finding ways to consolidate and develop the collective economy. Likewise during his inspection tours of Maotian, it is claimed that: Hua worked hard to reverse the counter-revolutionary revisionist line of Liu Shaoqi who sought to restore capitalism to China in the form of the ‘household farming system’ (baochan daohu). Hua set out a plan for taming the mountains and streams and transforming this hilly district into a successful agricultural unit. In so doing, Hua sought to safeguard the structure and integrity of the people’s communes that Liu was trying to ruin. (Luo and Sun, 1977, p. 1) Clearly, we need to exercise caution with regard to the accuracy of these claims given the perceived need at the time of writing to distance Hua from Liu and Deng and wed him closely to Mao. That said, there is probably some truth in the portrayal of Hua as continuously loyal to the commune system in light of his entrenched collectivist tendencies prior to and during the Leap and, as we shall see in Chapter 6,

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during his brief incumbency at the very top in the late 1970s when he (ill-advisedly) called for the restoration of a Leap-style commune system.

Returning to Changsha Following his three-year relocation to Xiangtan, Hua was transferred back to Changsha in autumn 1964 where he resumed his role as a Party Secretary. According to Wang (1980, p. 65) on returning to Changsha, Hua’s portfolio of party and state responsibilities increased beyond the scope of trade and finance to encompass industry, agriculture, education, culture and propaganda. However, we are not told precisely which positions he held in these separate capacities and none of the official sources shed further light on this. What we can be sure of is that Hua’s most high-profile project following his return to duty in Changsha was the construction of a massive irrigation plant in Shaoshan, a development over which Hua was given full control and with it full responsibility (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3; HRCB, 1978). Notwithstanding the official hype associated with the Shaoshan plant, especially when Hua was paramount leader, there is no denying the impressiveness of its scale and the speed with which it was built. Designed as an extension of an old dam project which had been abandoned in 1959, the plant comprised a 240 kilometre trunk canal cutting through a long stretch of inhospitable mountainous terrain as well as through rivers and valleys. This was accompanied by a subsidiary canal of more than 2,500 kilometres in length passing through six counties. The construction of the plant was carried out by an estimated 200,000 labourers. Work began in July 1965 and was completed by June 1966, well within the projected completion date of July 1968. Although some local inhabitants were inevitably displaced to make way for the new plant, forward planning ensured that this was kept to a minimum, with those who were displaced relocated to nearby villages. The plant was subsequently used as a model structure for other irrigation plants in China and remains in full operation in an expanded and modernised form. As noted, the official media lavished Hua with praise for his role in the construction of the Shaoshan plant. One report claims that Hua ‘laboured alongside construction workers and studied ways and means of speeding up the work together with them’ (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3). It further suggests that after one of the tunnels caved in, ‘regardless of the risks, Comrade Hua Guofeng went down to the tunnel with workers and technicians to study the situation and take appropriate measures

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to cope with it’ (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3). Another article notes how during the construction of the plant, Hua ‘visited old peasants, got peasantbuilders, engineers, technicians and leading cadres together, and held over 150 mass meetings at which the people presented their ideas’. The article states that Hua walked along the full length of the canal and ‘personally investigated every dangerous worksite’ (CR, 1977, p. 12). Setting aside the blatant hyperbole of statements such as these, Hua’s direct involvement with the Shaoshan plant was significant because of the consolidating effect it had on his personal and political relationship with Mao. Hua was already well known to Mao, and spearheading the construction of a highly acclaimed irrigation plant based in Mao’s home town (although stretching far beyond the town) would inevitably have won further favour with Mao. Indeed, reports indicate that during an unplanned visit to the plant in April 1966 (at a time when Mao was probably more preoccupied with the Cultural Revolution), Mao publicly applauded Hua’s efforts and encouraged officials from other provinces to follow Hua’s example (HRCB, 1978, p. 15). Although promotion did not immediately follow, it is likely that when the post of Hunan First Secretary became vacant a few years later, Mao’s support of Hua’s candidacy derived in part from his work on the Shaoshan plant. The Shaoshan irrigation plant was not the only project that Hua undertook in Mao’s home town. In 1966, Hua oversaw the restoration of the Hunan Number 1 Normal School where Mao had studied in his youth. In 1967, Hua supervised the construction of a new railway linking Shaoshan directly to Changsha and a display hall dedicated to Mao comprising 14 separate sections and covering an area of almost 5,000 square metres. Hua also implemented a comprehensive programme to revitalise the Shaoshan economy through the construction of factories for making television sets, farm machines, cotton textiles, chemical fertilisers and even Mao badges and other Mao memorabilia during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Wang (1980, p. 72) concludes from this, not unreasonably, that ‘transforming Shaoshan into a piece of “sacred land” of the Chinese revolution, along with the “sacred land” of Yenan [Yanan], was part and parcel of Hua’s scheme to exalt Mao’s image’. Finally in this chapter, it remains for us to analyse Hua’s national security and foreign policy work during the mid-1960s (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, pp. 46–9). As far as we can tell from the available information, this was probably the first time that Hua had been in any way involved in this type work and the experience further enhanced what was already an increasingly diverse professional portfolio.

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The context was the intensification of American military involvement in the Vietnam War during late 1964. The perceived threat that the United States now posed to China’s southern borders forced the central party leadership (which apparently had not anticipated the expansion of US forces in Vietnam) to implement an emergency contingency plan in anticipation either that the United States might invade China or that China might be dragged into the war on Vietnamese territory. On the advice of Chief of Staff Luo Ruiqing, his last military involvement before being purged from office just prior to the start of the Cultural Revolution (Harding and Gurtov, 1971), the PLA and militia units throughout China embarked on an intensified programme of military training, including war games, military competition and other exercises. Given its geographical location just behind China’s southern border provinces, military training in Hunan was particularly rigorous since the province was seen as a vital buffer against an attempted American military incursion into central China. Hua was primarily involved in militia work at this time, attending a number of militia-based conferences and training activities during October and November 1964. Accompanying Hua to many of these events was Marshall Ye Jianying, who was heavily engaged in leading China’s preparations for possible war against the United States and spent a considerable amount of time working in and around Hunan, further highlighting the strategic importance of the province. At the recommendation of Zhang Pinghua, Hua was made the official Hunan spokesman on the Vietnam War and gave a number of public addresses on the subject, including the keynote speech at the 1 May 1965 May Day rally, a time when war with America was deemed highly probable. During the speech Hua derided the United States as ‘having suffered total defeat in their special warfare in Vietnam’ but cautioned his audience that ‘they were also spreading the word that they were going to bomb China’ (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 48). Hua also participated in a number of other foreign affairs-related events, including the twentieth anniversary celebrations of China’s defeat of Japan held in Beijing, as well as ceremonial occasions hosted in Changsha such as the visit by representatives of the Vietnamese Democratic Republic and (separately) a six-man Cambodian Friendship Delegation. As noted above, Hua’s emergence as Hunan’s key representative on national security affairs and foreign policy added further weight to what was already an impressive career in provincial politics. It also, of course, increased his profile both in Hunan and within the central party leadership in Beijing. Of further significance was the close association that

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Hua formed with Marshall Ye Jianying. It is not clear whether this was the first time Hua met Ye, but it was almost certainly the first time that the two men had worked closely together, marking the beginning of a political relationship that developed considerably over the next decade or so.

Hua ascendant We have seen in this chapter how Hua’s work style and attitude during the Leap and the post-Leap recovery period remained largely consistent with that which he displayed during his earlier period in Hunan, namely, he was both industrious and loyal to Mao. Almost from the very moment that Hua set foot in Hunan, he demonstrated a propensity for hard work by immersing himself wholeheartedly into the rural collectivisation programme, and he continued with this diligent approach during the Leap where he was particularly active in economic planning and the implementation of campaigns to increase production. Of further note were Hua’s numerous, albeit often media-glamourised, on-the-spot visits to local communes to gauge for himself levels of production and morale and to offer advice and participate in manual labour. Another aspect of Hua’s industriousness was his role as a problemsolver. We saw earlier in the chapter how, as shortcomings with the Leap became apparent, Hua was called in to advise on techniques for improving the state requisition of grain and on imbalances in the supply system between rural and urban areas. Then, after the Leap had been abandoned completely, Hua was sent back to the countryside to assist with the local recovery programme, most notably in Maotian. Yet, Hua’s knowledge and practical experience was not limited exclusively to rural matters. It also extended to national security and foreign affairs work with his appointment as Hunan’s official spokesman on the Vietnam War and his involvement in local militia work as China prepared to protect itself from the threat of invasion by the United States. It greatly assisted Hua’s cause that several of the projects on which he worked came to the favourable attention of Mao Zedong. Hua’s efforts in Maotian were observed first-hand by Mao, inducing praise from him and with it an improvement in Hua’s political standing and career prospects. Mao also praised Hua when visiting his native Shaoshan to inspect the construction of the groundbreaking irrigation plant which Hua was supervising. To the extent it was not already, Shaoshan subsequently became something of a favoured location for Hua as he oversaw a number of other development projects there in what might well be

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considered a concerted effort to demonstrate his loyalty to Mao and possibly also to improve his chances of promotion. Turning more directly to the question of loyalty, there were several occasions when Hua’s loyalty to Mao came at very useful times for Mao. We noted in the last chapter how Hua came out firmly in support of Mao’s July 1955 directive to accelerate the implementation of the APCs. Likewise, as the Great Leap Forward reached a crisis point for Mao just prior to the Lushan Conference, he once again received the muchneeded backing of his trusted lieutenant in Hunan in contrast to the criticism of Peng Dehuai and to a lesser extent Zhou Xiaozhou. We have seen that Hua was not entirely obedient to Mao’s every whim. During his July 1958 speech to the Second Provincial People’s Congress in Hunan, Hua appeared uninhibited in counselling against cadre over-zealousness in implementing the Leap, despite the national consensus in support of the Leap at that early stage and the distinct possibility that Hua might have faced retribution for any deemed disloyalty to the Leap. This rather contradicts the image of Hua as unswervingly subservient to Mao, although such expressions of dissent were rare. There is no available evidence that proves categorically that Mao gave Hua a helping hand in any of the key promotions of his political career in Hunan, but it is highly likely that he did. This is perhaps most likely with regard to Hua’s surprise appointment as a Party Secretary which took place just after Lushan and might well be seen as an expression of gratitude from Mao to Hua for his loyalty during the Leap and the earlier rural collectivisation programme when Hua had backed Mao all the way. Moreover, the way in which Hua was catapulted over the heads of several more senior officials in the Hunan party hierarchy suggests that Mao may well have intervened to facilitate a ‘tweaking’ of the rules in order to secure a key position for his favoured man. Hua’s political career was clearly on the up by the mid-1960s. After his appointment as a Party Secretary in 1959, Hua became increasingly senior in the Hunan political apparatus. In addition, he was well known to Mao and had worked closely with other high-ranking party figures such as Ye Jianying. Yet Hua was still primarily a provincial official, dealing invariably with the humdrum and menial issues equated with provincial political life. We noted earlier Hua giving advice on pumping water from coal pits and on techniques for increasing potato production. We also noted a tendency to operate, at times, in an ancillary role, most notably during the steel and grain campaign during the Leap where Hua was involved in the back-up campaign to increase coal and potatoes. There was certainly no sign at this stage that Hua would become China’s

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paramount leader just over ten years later. The candidates to succeed Mao that were ahead of Hua in the pecking order were innumerable. However, unlike Hua, many of them succumbed to political purge during the Cultural Revolution. It is to this period that we must now turn our attention.

4 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Hua in Hunan (1966–70)

The Cultural Revolution, like the Great Leap Forward before it, was another stepping stone in the political career of Hua Guofeng. As the Hunan party-state collapsed in early 1967 under the weight of Red Guard radicalism, many of Hua’s colleagues were purged from office. But Hua survived, and in September 1967 he was appointed as a senior member of the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee, a temporary body designed to replace the shattered organs of local authority. A more permanent and authoritative body was set up in April 1968 in the form of the Hunan Revolutionary Committee and Hua was appointed as its Vice-Chairman and shortly thereafter its Chairman. From this followed a number of other high-profile appointments which culminated in Hua’s rise to the position of Hunan First Secretary in late 1970. Hua’s ascendancy during this period marked him out as a clear beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution, although as we shall see, Hua benefited not from the campaign itself but from the de-radicalisation of the campaign. Hua’s rise to the top was far from straightforward. In contrast to unsubstantiated scholarly opinion which suggests that Hua was too junior to have been targeted by Red Guard activists, we will discover in this chapter that in fact Hua faced his fair share of Red Guard criticism. In May 1967, Hua was incarcerated in a Changsha car factory by a group of urban workers calling itself the Changsha Revolutionary Rebel Workers’ United Committee, abbreviated in Chinese to Gonglian. But within seven weeks he was released following the direct intervention of Zhou Enlai who facilitated his appointment to the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee. It was not long before Hua was under attack again, this time by a group called the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee, better known by its Chinese name Shengwulian. In its nationwide publication ‘Whither China’, Hua 92

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was named as one of a key group of ‘red capitalists’ from Hunan, deemed as representing the old bureaucratic order that the radical Red Guards so despised. Once again, however, Hua survived the attacks and took up his position in the Hunan Revolutionary Committee. I will suggest below that notwithstanding Hua’s undoubted experience and ability as a senior official, his survival during the Cultural Revolution and his subsequent promotions had much to do with good fortune. In securing Zhou Enlai’s support for his release by the Gonglian, Hua benefited from the concerted lobbying of Zhang Bosen, with whom he had worked during the Great Leap Forward. Yet, it is not clear precisely why Zhang was so supportive of Hua. Luck was also on Hua’s side during the assault by the Shengwulian. The radical position of ‘Whither China’ came just at the wrong time for the Shengwulian and just at the right time for Hua with the CCP leadership moving towards a more moderate position and within days of its publication the group was closed down. Luck remained with Hua when arrangements were being made for the establishment of the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee and its successor body the Hunan Revolutionary Committee. With experienced local cadres desperately in demand to help administer these bodies because of the gaps created by those who had been purged, Hua found himself in a prime position to take advantage not just because of his record as a senior official, but also quite simply because he was one of the few still to be around.

The Cultural Revolution We concluded the previous chapter by examining Hua’s participation in China’s resistance against the US invasion of Vietnam, noting his role as Hunan spokesman on the Vietnam War. By mid-1966 attention had shifted away from Vietnam and a possible war against America towards domestic issues, as China became engulfed by the Cultural Revolution. Conceived by Mao as a radical campaign to reverse the tide of revisionism in China, the Cultural Revolution quickly spiralled out of control and by 1967 China had descended into civil war. The main aggressors were the Red Guards, millions of youths drawn from China’s schools, universities and urban work force. The main victims came from a much wider sector of society perceived as epitomising authority and hence oppression. They included teachers, university lecturers and intellectuals in general, as well as government and party officials from the most junior level right up to the very top. Parents were sometimes persecuted simply on the grounds of their authority status in the family.

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Methods of punishment were diverse. Some of the victims were verbally abused and paraded in public wearing dunce caps or placards bearing insults. Many more were beaten, tortured or incarcerated. Some were summarily executed and others gave up hope and committed suicide. The complexity and drama of the events that unfolded during the Cultural Revolution makes it very difficult to understand precisely why Mao launched the campaign in the first place. This is why academic interpretations have tended to differ. Some dismiss the Cultural Revolution as nothing more than a devious plot by Mao to overthrow those members of the party leadership (e.g. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping) who were intent on blocking his radical policy initiatives (Leys, 1977; Jung and Halliday, 2005).1 According to this view, the Cultural Revolution was simply a smokescreen behind which Mao hid his sole objective which was to regain the political control he lost following the collapse of the Leap. Another interpretation puts the movement down to a basic two-line struggle between Mao on one side and Liu Shaoqi on the other (Dittmer, 1974). Exponents of this view say that the two men held fundamentally different, albeit sincere, ideas about the correct road to socialism in China, with Mao representing the radical wing of the party and Liu representing the more moderate wing. Both of these interpretations have merit. There is clear evidence of a divergence of opinion between Mao and Liu during the Cultural Revolution, although a strictly two-line construal over-simplifies the matter. Likewise, while Mao did not originally conceive of the Cultural Revolution as a power struggle, his quest for power became an important feature of the campaign in that he eventually used it to dislodge his opponents at the top as they continuously blocked his radical initiatives. Yet, the thinking behind the Cultural Revolution goes beyond the rather black-and-white explanations given above and relates to Mao’s fears for the very future of the CCP and Chinese socialism in general. Convinced that the legitimacy of the party and the original principles of the socialist system were being eroded by the growth of revisionism within China, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution as a means of reinstilling the party and the masses with the spirit and energy of the Chinese revolution. As with many of his previous mass campaigns, Mao sought to bring the party and the masses much closer together, only this time with even more dramatic consequences. Mao set the tone for the Cultural Revolution at the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee in September 1962 (Baum, 1975). It was here that he identified the existence of rural class divisions and local party corruption, brought about by the post-Leap economic recovery


programme. In particular, Mao noted that some local cadres were shamelessly exploiting their authority by monopolising production contracts and allocating the most (or best quality) land to themselves, their families and their associates. Some of these associates had been rich peasants under the pre-land reform agrarian system, who, in return for these favours, provided cadres with the benefit of their business acumen. Thus emerged an unholy coalition of supposedly communist cadres and former rich peasants, joining together to exclude poor peasants from the material benefits of the post-Leap system of rural de-collectivisation and limited market reforms. Although the central party leadership was united in its revulsion at these developments, significant differences emerged over their precise implications and the methods required to deal with them. In the eyes of those who had introduced the post-Leap reforms such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, it was basically a case of unprincipled local cadres taking advantage of economic trends to increase their personal wealth and power. Any rectification was to be carried out by designated party work teams who would concentrate on re-educating the party’s rural grass roots. For Mao, the situation was much more serious. The heretic alliance of corrupt rural cadres and former rich peasants signified a lurch towards capitalism or, even worse, towards the restoration of feudalism and showed that class cleavages still existed in China despite the victory of the communist revolution over a decade earlier. Mao agreed that party rectification was required, but this could only be carried out by the direct participation of poor and lower-middle peasant associations in a manner similar to land reform and as part of what Mao called the Socialist Education Movement (SEM).

Hunan and the Cultural Revolution While many provinces were understandably guarded about Mao’s proposed method of party rectification at a time when China was still recovering from the ill-effects of the Leap, Hunan was one of few provinces to support his stance (Mao identified the other provinces as Hebei, Hubei, Henan and Zhejiang). According to Baum and Teiwes (1968, p. 59), information provided by Hunan was used by Mao at central party work conferences in February and May 1963 to help develop his Former Ten Points, the first in a series of documents calling for party rectification through the SEM. According to the text of the Former Ten Points, Mao acknowledged that reports and research data produced by all levels of the Hunan CCP had contributed directly towards the final draft of

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the document. In particular, he praised Hunan’s insistence on a unified association of poor and lower-middle peasants, citing ‘comrades in Hunan’ as saying that: to separate from the poor peasants and the lower-middle peasants is tantamount to losing the left and right hands. It will be like a commander without troops, whose words fall on deaf ears, and who is without help in doing anything and unable to move even an inch (Baum and Teiwes, 1968, p. 62). We cannot be certain whether or not Hua wrote any of the Hunan reports noted above. In a speech at a conference in Hangzhou in May 1963 during which Mao once again praised the contribution to the Former Ten Points made by Hunan, he referred not to Hua but to Wang Yanchun (Second Party Secretary) who ‘talked fluently and unceasingly about socialist education [during the Tenth Plenum] while the others did not’.2 The absence of any direct reference to Hua does not mean that Hua did not in some way contribute to the reports. He may well have done. But even if he did not, it seems likely that Hua would have supported Mao’s proposals on the SEM given his track record of backing Mao on other key points of policy. The available literature reinforces this point, although without offering any concrete evidence. One source insists that ‘Comrade Hua was fully behind Chairman Mao’s Socialist Education Movement’ (ZGHW, 1977, p. 23), while Wang (1980, p. 65) states that ‘Hua played a significant role in promoting the socialist education movement in the rural areas after the close of the tenth plenum of the eighth CCP congress, particularly in the Hsiangtan [Xiangtan] area’. The events of the Cultural Revolution in Hunan are documented by three different scholars, Jonathan Unger (1991) in an article based largely on the experiences of local Red Guard Yang Xiguang (see also Yang and McFadden, 1997), Yiching Wu (2008, pp. 339–418) in an as yet unpublished volume on social protest during the Cultural Revolution and Chen Yinan (2004, 2006), a local historian and former Red Guard from Changsha. The first reported instance of Red Guard activity in Changsha occurred on 19 August 1966. It was on this date that over 200 Hunan University students pasted large-character wall posters at the entrance of the party headquarters criticising the use of party work teams in implementing the SEM and sympathising with the alleged victims of the work teams. Officials responded by mobilising a Red Guard group of students from Yang Xiguang’s school, many of


whom were the children of party and military officials and some partisan local factory workers. These Red Guards physically assaulted those responsible for putting up the posters, accusing them of disloyalty to the party and likening them to those ‘counter-revolutionaries’ who had spoken out during the Hundred Flowers Campaign (Chen, 2006, pp. 22–3).3 According to Yang, this was the first real sign that the youth of Hunan had splintered into antagonistic factions. On the same day, party officials helped to assemble a pro-CCP workers organisation known as the Workers’ Scarlet Guards (Gongren Chiweidui) with the objective of keeping the Cultural Revolution under control, but they quickly clashed with the Red Guards from Yang’s school in what became known locally as the ‘19 August incident’ (ba shijiu shijian). Later that evening, as Unger (1991, pp. 17–18) points out, a large group of more radically inclined workers came together to hold a silent vigil in support of the assaulted students and were subsequently charged with committing ‘counter-revolutionary’ crimes. With the radicalisation of the Cultural Revolution after the October 1966 Central Work Conference, these workers were exonerated of their alleged crimes and formed their own Red Guard groups, all within a larger omnibus rebel organisation called the Xiang River Storm (Xiangjiang Fenglei). Membership of the Xiang River Storm swelled dramatically as the group successfully recruited from the disenfranchised of local Hunanese society, primarily workers but also some students who felt dissatisfied with their lot and who blamed the authorities for it.4 By the end of December, the group’s numbers had expanded into the hundreds of thousands. The Xiang River Storm and allied rebel groups were directly responsible for overthrowing Hunan’s provincial party and government in January 1967, a period of radical ascendancy often referred to as the January Revolution. According to Chen (2004), the entire Hunan leadership collapsed at this point. Hunan First Secretary Zhang Pinghua and Second Secretary Wang Yanchun were both classified as ‘traitors’ (pantu) and summarily dismissed from office. Most of the other Hunan Party Secretaries fell with them. Those who survived (e.g. Zhang Bosen) did so because they allied themselves with radical Red Guard groups. Hua’s fate will be discussed shortly. The onset of the February Adverse Current, a Beijing-authorised national military crackdown on militant activities, began in Hunan on 4 February 1967.5 On what became known at the ‘4 February incident’ (er si shijian) over 100,000 members of Xiang River Storm were arrested following a massive operation by the Hunan Provincial Military Command. Collaborating with the PLA was a pro-establishment Red

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Guard Group known as the Changsha University and College Red Guard General Headquarters (abbreviated in Chinese to Gaosi) whose leaders were motivated by a desire to acquire a greater share of power (Wu, 2008, pp. 369–70). But as central party policy shifted back in favour of the radicals during March 1967, many of those who had been incarcerated were released and the membership of the Xiang River Storm and other rebel groups increased (Unger, 1991, p. 20). By the early summer, Changsha had descended into civil war as rebel and conservative groups fought pitched battles with each other. Wu (2008, 370) cites the ‘6 June battle’ (liuliu wudou) as one example of the hostilities of the time, a street brawl which left many dead and hundreds wounded. For a while, the conservatives gained the upper hand after acquiring arms and ammunition from work-unit militias. However, the rebels quickly gained the ascendancy following a seizure of munitions from military district garrisons which army officers were powerless to prevent following a Beijing directive not to interfere in the activities of radical groups.6 Conservative Red Guards subsequently fled Changsha for Xiangtan where they had allies, leaving the radicals in control (Unger, 1991, p. 21). But rebel control of Changsha did not last long, principally because of an initiative devised by Zhou Enlai. Assisted by Qi Benyu of the eightman Cultural Revolution Small Group (CRSG),7 Zhou invited a select number of hand-picked leaders from certain of Changsha’s rebel organisations (one of which is discussed later) to come to Beijing to negotiate on the membership of the proposed Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee. Unger (1991, p. 22) suggests that this was a deliberate attempt by Zhou to create divisions among Hunan rebel groups since those who were invited to attend were by implication from Red Guard groups considered trustworthy by the party leadership, while those who were not invited were from groups who were impliedly untrustworthy. This measure successfully alienated the excluded groups and ‘by September 1967, what had been a united Rebel faction was pitched into conflict between two antagonistic camps’ (Unger, 1991, p. 22). Perhaps more significant in terms of establishing control over Changsha was the direct intervention in August 1967 of the military to restore law and order in Changsha, as it was attempting to do throughout the country. Led by General Li Yuan, Commander of the PLA Unit 6900 (also known as the 47th Army Corps) and a close ally of the ascendant Minister of Defence Lin Biao (Domes, 1970, p. 133), the PLA seized control of administrative power. Working together with the Hunan Military District Commander General Long Shujin (also an ally of Lin Biao)


who had given the instruction for the ‘4 February incident’ (Wu, 2008, p. 372), Li formed the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee in September 1967, to which Hua Guofeng was appointed.

Hua and the Cultural Revolution: The Gonglian We are told little of any substance by the official media about Hua’s activities and whereabouts during the Cultural Revolution. Instead, the relevant literature (most of which was published during 1976–7) focuses predictably on presenting a gleaming image of Hua as a loyal adherent of Mao’s Cultural Revolution directives, primarily for the purposes of cultivating Hua’s post-Mao personality cult. The People’s Daily (RMRB, 1977a, p. 3), for example, states that during the Cultural Revolution, ‘Hua Guofeng closely followed Chairman Mao’s strategic plans and waged tit-for-tat struggles against the two bourgeois lines of Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao’. The Guangming Daily (GMRB, 1977a, p. 3) insists that ‘while the Lin Biao anti-party clique and the Gang of Four fermented divisions among the party and society, Comrade Hua Guofeng took a series of measures to prevent the use of force and to promote a great alliance between different revolutionary organisations’. Likewise, an article published by the Liberation Army Daily (JFJB, 1976, p. 1) declared that Hua repeatedly emphasised how Mao’s ‘instructions on the Cultural Revolution must be followed, namely, that when there is a debate, it should be carried out by reasoned and balanced argument and a genuine assessment of the facts, rather than by coercion or violence’. In the absence of any deeper analysis, we are left to look elsewhere for information on whether, for example, Hua was attacked by Red Guard groups during the Cultural Revolution, a matter which is ultimately of key importance in understanding how Hua came to survive and benefit from the campaign. MacFarquhar (1997, p. 316) offers his own perspective on this question, claiming that Hua was ‘junior enough not to have been in the first group of provincial officials to be targeted by the Red Guards’. This view is erroneous on two counts. First, Hua could not accurately be described as ‘junior’ within the Hunan provincial party apparatus. As a Party Secretary, he was among the nine most senior members of the Hunan party. Second and more importantly, further research shows that Hua was indeed targeted by Red Guard groups on at least two separate occasions. The first such occasion is documented by Chen Yinan (2004) and summarised below. Based on his personal observations and participation as a local Red Guard, Chen suggests that Hua and several other

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top Hunan officials including Wang Yanchun (notwithstanding Mao’s earlier praise for Wang’s support of the SEM) were targeted by a radical Red Guard group called the Changsha Revolutionary Rebel Workers’ United Committee (abbreviated in Chinese to Gonglian). Totalling over 300,000 members, the Gonglian consisted of workers drawn mostly from large-scale industrial enterprises particularly from the car industry and was one of the many radical workers’ groups that formed in Changsha after the abandonment of the February Adverse Current (the Gonglian was established in April 1967). Initially the Gonglian had close links to the Xiang River Storm, but the two groups severed ties after leading members of the Gonglian were invited by Zhou Enlai to join the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee (noted earlier) at the expense of the Xiang River Storm.8 Like many radical workers’ groups, the Gonglian had become radicalised over the years by the perceived harsh treatment they had received by the Changsha authorities, including in respect to the car industry, the fixing of low-level salaries and a reduction in social security benefits following the nationalisation of the car industry in the 1950s. They particularly disliked the political departments in their industry for having consistently opposed wage bonuses and other benefits. According to Chen, the Gonglian seized Hua and other senior officials (including Wang Yanchun) on 9 May 1967 in a relatively peaceful incident during which the victims put up little resistance to the demands of the group. They were then incarcerated in the Changsha Car Manufacturing Factory (Changsha Qiche Dianqi Guang), the main car plant in the city. All the evidence suggests that Hua was not violently dealt with during his imprisonment. He was not, for example, paraded around the streets of Changsha wearing a dunce cap or made to publicly confess his alleged counter-revolutionary crimes, in contrast to many of his contemporaries throughout the country. Instead, Hua was subjected to low-level criticism during what appears to have been the equivalent of a period of house arrest. For reasons that are not entirely clear (there is no evidence of a particularly close personal or working relationship between the two men), Zhang Bosen, who was an Alternate Party Secretary in Hunan (junior to Hua) and with whom Hua had worked during the Great Leap Forward (see Chapter 3), decided to ally himself to Hua. Zhang had already pledged his allegiance to the Gonglian at a time when Hunan’s leaders were required to ‘declare their position’ (liangxiang), in other words take sides with either radical or conservative Red Guard groups. Zhang then persuaded the leadership of the Gonglian that their prospects of


consolidating their power base on the proposed Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee would be enhanced if they could convince Hua (who was a higher-ranking official than Zhang) to support them. As such, the leader of the Gonglian, Hu Yong (who was later appointed to the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee), met with Hua in secret on several occasions to see if he could procure Hua’s backing. During this time, fighting between radical and conservative Red Guards in Changsha grew increasingly intense (mainly between the Gonglian and the Gaosi) and it was not clear which of the two sides would emerge victorious. This uncertainty was compounded by the inconsistent position taken by Beijing regarding the overall direction of the Cultural Revolution and by divisions within the Hunan military apparatus over which side to champion. According to Chen, it was for these reasons that Hua refused to come out in support of the Gonglian, preferring (tactically) to bide his time until the outcome of the Red Guard hostilities was more obvious. Chen suggests that this cautious, non-committal approach was characteristic of Hua, describing his attitude as ‘no action without a clear outcome’ (bu jian tuzi jue bu sa ying). As a consequence of this apparently strategic indecision, Hu Yong lost patience with Hua and determined to look elsewhere for a high-profile local leader to represent the cause of the Gonglian. It was at this critical juncture that Zhou Enlai intervened in an effort to diffuse the situation. As noted in the previous section, Zhou invited a select number of Hunan Red Guards to Beijing to discuss arrangements and select personnel for the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee. Among them was Hu Yong who flew to Beijing together with Zhang Bosen, Chan Caifang (Deputy Commander of the Guangzhou Military Region) and Liang Chunyang (Deputy Director of the Hunan Provincial Planning Commission). However, in a meeting that deliberately excluded Hu Yong, Zhang made representations to Zhou that Hua should be appointed to a senior post on the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee for the sake of securing stability in Mao’s tumultuous home province. Zhou concurred with this view and ordered Hua’s release from the Changsha Car Manufacturing Factory and for arrangements to be made to fly Hua to Beijing.9 This directive effectively forced Hu Yong into line. Hua was released on 21 June 1967 (having spent less than seven weeks in captivity) and was immediately flown to Beijing to hold urgent talks with Zhou. Chen identifies this key moment as the starting point in Hua’s advance towards the position of paramount leader of

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China: ‘[I]t was from this date that he began his journey towards the peak of his career nine years later when he entered Zhongnanhai [as paramount leader] in Tiananmen Square.’ Upon his release from incarceration, Hua immediately gave his backing to the Gonglian in the form of a written declaration in which he further condemned conservative Red Guard groups as ‘capitalist factions’ (ziben pai) and pledged to study the example set by Zhang Bosen and Liang Chunyang. Hua also promised to return to Mao Zedong’s ‘revolutionary line’ (geming luxian), although in truth it is unlikely that he had ever departed from that line. The Gonglian then pasted Hua’s declaration all around Changsha in the form of large-character wall posters. On reading the declaration after Hua had departed for Beijing, conservative Red Guard groups (possibly the Gaosi) put up wall posters claiming that Hua had been coerced into officially supporting the Gonglian. In response, Hua sent a message from Beijing in which he categorically stated (in Chen’s words): I am a member of the CCP. I have not deceived anyone under alleged pressure to cite someone else’s opinion as my own. I can therefore confirm that my large-character wall poster reflects my own position and that I was not forced, so please do not believe this rumour. The content of Hua’s message was transferred on to another largecharacter wall poster by the Gonglian and pasted all over Changsha. On arriving in Beijing, Hua immediately held talks with Zhou Enlai about the make-up of the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee, the precursor to the Hunan Revolutionary Committee. By way of background, Revolutionary Committees were established throughout China from January 1967, representing a new type of leadership apparatus intended to replace the collapsed apparatus of party and state. The membership of the Revolutionary Committees consisted of three groups known as the ‘three-in-one combination’ (san he yi ). These were radical Red Guards, ‘revolutionary cadres’ (i.e. primarily those cadres who had not been purged by the Red Guards) and the PLA. In theory, the working status of each constituent group was equal in that each would participate equally in running a new, all-inclusive form of government. In practice, the Revolutionary Committees were dominated by the PLA who in effect ran the country for the next few years until power could be returned to the reconstructed party-state.10 In this way, the Revolutionary Committees represented the de-radicalisation of the Cultural Revolution.


The Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee was headed by the PLA veterans Generals Li Yuan and Long Shujin. As noted earlier, Li Yuan was commander of the PLA Unit 6900 and Long Shujin was Hunan Military District Commander. Both were closely allied to Lin Biao, so in effect they represented Lin’s interests in Hunan. Hua and Zhang Bosen were appointed to the body in a subordinate capacity (possibly as ViceChairmen) based on the strong recommendation of Zhou Enlai (RMRB, 1977a, p. 1). The Gonglian Red Guard leader Hu Yong was also appointed to the new body, although his role was not thought to be significant (one of many Red Guards to be sidelined under the new arrangements). So why did Zhou endorse Hua’s appointment to the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee? What was his rationale for doing so? Wang (1980, p. 66) posits two reasons. First, he suggests that Hua represented a more moderate political standpoint that would act as a restraint on the potentially radical tendencies of the two pro-Lin generals. To explain this further, although Hua was categorised as a ‘revolutionary cadre’ under the new political order, he was (as we have seen) very much an establishment figure in Hunan and was naturally inclined towards restoring administrative normality to the province rather than pursuing a more radical agenda. Second, albeit related to the first point, Wang notes that Hua, in stark contrast to Li and Long, had years of valuable experience as a cadre in Hunan upon which he could draw in performing his new role. Given the highly volatile political environment in the province, Zhou deemed that Hua’s entrenched political acumen was exactly what was needed. Beyond this, though, we should note that other than Hua (and Zhang Bosen), there were almost no other senior officials left in Hunan who could participate in the new power-sharing arrangements, quite simply because the vast majority of them had been thrown out of office by Red Guards and were in ‘disgrace’. While Hua’s political moderation and administrative experience were undoubtedly key factors in his appointment to the new committee, in truth there were very few contenders left standing. From this we can only conclude that there was a large element of good fortune about Hua’s appointment. Effectively, he was in the right place at the right time. Luck also played a part in Hua’s release from the Changsha car factory by the Gonglian. We are told that Zhang Bosen, who had sided with the Gonglian, strongly encouraged the group’s leaders to release Hua. Zhang then met with Zhou Enlai and successfully persuaded Zhou to sanction Hua’s release and subsequent appointment to the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee. But why was Zhang so keen to have Hua

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released? As noted before, there is no evidence of a particularly close alliance between the two men. Zhang might just as easily have gone it alone without Hua. Maybe, once again, it came down to a lack of clear alternatives to Hua, although Wang Yanchun was also in the custody of the Gonglian and he was senior to Hua. Whatever the reason, Hua was certainly fortunate in obtaining Zhang’s backing and ultimately this was a crucial step in Hua’s rise to Hunan First Secretary. There is very little available information about the activities of the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee, although it seems that its main role was to provide a foundation for the establishment of the Hunan Revolutionary Committee. What we do know is that Mao visited the Preparatory Committee in autumn 1967 during a national inspection tour. During the course of the visit Mao questioned Hua closely on the social and political climate in Changsha and took soundings from him on the proposed make-up of the Hunan Revolutionary Committee (RMCB, 1977, p. 8). Chen (2004) suggests that as a consequence of this meeting, Mao formed a very positive impression of Hua, whereas in truth it is probably more accurate to say that the meeting simply reinforced the positive impression that Mao had formed sometime earlier. Perhaps more significantly, however, it may well have been at this point that Mao identified Hua’s potential as more than just an efficient, hard-working and loyal provincial cadre. It would be premature to suggest that Mao had him in mind as a potential successor. After all Lin Biao was still first in line for that position and many others would have ranked above Hua at this stage. But it is widely accepted that Mao was on the look out for new recruits to Beijing during this time in light of the vacancies created by the Cultural Revolution and it is quite probable that Mao saw Hua as one such recruit.

Hua and the Cultural Revolution: The Shengwulian Although the establishment of the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee effectively placed Hunan under the authority of the military, this did not automatically restore law and order to Changsha as radical Red Guard factions continued to fight pitched battles against each other and target Hunan officials for criticism and purge. Such targets inevitably included Hua. Having survived the unwanted attention of the Gonglian, Hua faced criticism from another radical group in early 1968, the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee or Shengwulian.


The existing scholarly literature makes scant reference to the attacks on Hua by the Shengwulian. The official literature makes no reference at all to it, while Oksenberg and Yeung (1977, p. 51) make an indirect reference, noting Hua’s ‘survival from a concerted attack against him by a vociferous, militant “leftist” Red Guard group in early 1968’. Admittedly, their study does not purport to cover the Cultural Revolution, but it is surprising that the authors do not appear at least to know the identity of the Shengwulian at the time they were writing. Wang’s study of Hua is not much more informative, devoting just a single paragraph to the Shengwulian without placing the group or its attacks on Hua into any context (Wang, 1980, pp. 66–7). Further analysis is therefore required. Dealing first with the context in which the Shengwulian emerged during late 1967, the group was established shortly after (and probably in reaction to) Mao’s visit to Hunan in autumn 1967 when he announced his intention that all provinces should set up Revolutionary Committees by early 1968 (Wu, 2008, p. 376).11 The Shengwulian is described by Unger (1991, p. 22) as a group of political ‘have-nots’, comprising ‘more than twenty loosely affiliated organizations, each with its own particular grievances’ and is thought to have totalled over 300,000 members. In addition to those affiliated to the Xiang River Storm, other member groups included the following: the Provincial Teachers’ Alliance (Shengjiaolian) made up of disgruntled middle-school teachers who had been categorised as ‘rightists’ during the initial stages of the Cultural Revolution and were demanding formal rehabilitation; the Northern District Workers’ Alliance (Beiqu Gonglian) comprising workers from small neighbourhood factories who wanted an improvement to their political status and social and economic benefits; the Middle-School Red Guard Revolutionary Committee (Hongzhonghui ) whose members (one of whom was Yang Xiguang) came from 20 or so middle-schools and was renowned for its theoretical sophistication (Wu, 2008, pp. 378–80). One notable group who joined the Shengwulian were former members of the rural guerrilla movement known as the Hunan Liberation Army who fought in the war of resistance against the Japanese and against the KMT during the civil war. As we saw in Chapter 2, when the PLA arrived in Hunan in 1949 with Hua and the Southbound Work Group, they controversially ordered the disolution of the Hunan Liberation Army and excluded its members from all power-sharing arrangements. Those who sought to resist these measures were quickly imprisoned and officially labelled as ‘class enemies’. During the next decade or so,

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many of them sought unsuccessfully to clear their names and when an opportunity arose, through membership of the Shengwulian, to vent their frustration at the local authorities, they duly embraced it. Ultimately, however, when the Shengwulian was forcibly disbanded in February 1968 (see shortly) these former guerrillas paid a heavy price for their actions as they found themselves sentenced to much longer prison terms than those who had joined the Shengwulian from other sectors of Hunanese society. As Unger (1991, p. 23) points out, this is because ‘Hua Guofeng and the other members of the Shanxi banzi who had emerged on top in Hunan [after 1968] were apparently determined to re-bury, once and for all, that embarrassing episode from their past’. During the short time in which it existed, the Shengwulian sought, among other things, to discredit Hua and those associated with him (including Zhang Bosen) and precipitate Hua’s dismissal from office. This was most clearly manifested in an essay which shot to national attention in January 1968 titled ‘Whither China’, written by Yang Xiguang and reproduced in English by Klaus Mehnert (1969).12 The essay exemplified the disillusionment felt by its author at the inconsistent approach to the Cultural Revolution adopted by the CCP. At the risk of over-simplification, in it Yang described the highs of the 1967 January Revolution, the disappointment of the February Adverse Current, the delight at the renewed support for radicalism in March and then the bitterness at Zhou Enlai’s late summer success in dividing radical Red Guard groups through his selective invitation to join the Hunan Revolutionary Preparatory Committee. All of this persuaded Yang that China had become governed by an ossified and complacent ruling class, divorced from the masses and intent on suppressing their rights and freedoms. The principal focus of Yang’s critical attention was Zhou Enlai. According to Yang, Zhou was the ‘chief representative of China’s “Red” capitalist class’ (Mehnert, 1969, p. 88), the man who, it was claimed, had masterminded the creation of the Revolutionary Committees with the intention of re-instituting the pre-Cultural Revolution bureaucratic order. As Yang wrote, ‘proposing the three-in-one combination is tantamount to helping the re-instatement of the bureaucrats already toppled in the January Revolution’ (Mehnert, 1969, p. 87). Hua is not referred to very often in Yang’s essay. Early on in the essay Yang notes in a triumphant manner that during the January Revolution, Hua and others (including Zhang Pinghua and Zhang Bosen) ‘had their power reduced to zero’ (Mehnert, 1969, p. 84). However, during the February Adverse Current which followed, Hua and his senior


colleagues in Hunan ‘and bureaucrats throughout the country and their agents at the Center, wielded unlimited power. It was their heyday, while the power of the revolutionary people dropped to zero’ (Mehnert, 1969, p. 87). Then Yang states that in August 1967: [t]he power in most of the industries, commerce, communications, and urban administration was taken away from Chang Po-shen [Zhang Bosen], Hua Kuo-feng [Hua Guofeng], Lung Shu-chin [Long Shujin], Liu Tzu-yun [Liu Ziyun] and their like and put into the hands of the revolutionary people. (Mehnert, 1969, p. 89) Despite the infrequent direct references to Hua (Zhang Bosen is mentioned more frequently and in a more contemptible manner), Yang’s hostility to Hua was clear. Hua was one of Hunan’s principal ‘red capitalists’ by virtue of his senior membership of the Hunan provincial party before the Cultural Revolution and his subsequent appointment to the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee, a body derided by Yang as ‘a new bourgeois reactionary line, and a new adverse current of capitalist restoration’ (Mehnert, 1969, p. 93). The existing power structure in Hunan needed to be purged, Yang insisted, and Hua went along with it. In place of the existing structure, Yang demanded the establishment of a commune system based on the 1871 Paris Commune established during the French Revolution to which Karl Marx had referred favourably in several of his writings and which many academics believe was the kind of power structure Marx envisaged in the post-revolutionary socialist state (Held, 1989, pp. 105–39).13 The Hunan Commune, Yang insisted, would comprise a system of directly elected officials who were paid the same as ordinary workers and were subject to recall and re-election at any time. As he put it, those who would replace the ‘red capitalists’ such as Hua: will be cadres with true proletarian authority who will be produced naturally by the revolutionary people in the struggle to overthrow this decaying class [of ‘red capitalists’]. These cadres will be members of the commune. They will have no special privileges. Economically, they will receive the same treatment as the masses in general. They may be dismissed or replaced at any time at the request of the masses. (Mehnert, 1969, p. 99)

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The Shengwulian failed in its objective to establish a commune system and to purge Hua and the other officials it targeted. According to Chen (2006, p. 302), on reading ‘Whither China’ Hua dismissed the document as ‘totally reactionary in thought’ and ‘counter-revolutionary in action’. Hua then reported its contents and the activities of the group directly to the central authorities in Beijing for their critical attention. This set in motion the rapid suppression of the group. During a specially organised four-day conference in late January 1968, just a week or so after the circulation of ‘Whither China’, members of the CRSG and Zhou Enlai launched a series of attacks on the movement accusing it of, among other things, ‘Trotskyism’ and other ‘counter-revolutionary’ crimes.14 The written media joined in the criticism, with one sympathetic Red Guard publication accusing Yang of abusing Hua and other members of the Hunan leadership (Mehnert, 1969, p. 103). Criticism of the Shengwulian was particularly vociferous back in Hunan. According to Wu (2008, p. 410) on 26 January more than 100,000 people congregated in Changsha’s central square to denounce the group. Li Yuan, head of the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee, addressed the mass rally, condemning the group as a ‘big hodge-podge of social dregs left from the old society’ and demanding that their activities be ‘resolutely and thoroughly discredited, smashed and gotten rid of’. Other speakers joined in the condemnation and it is highly likely, given his position in the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee and his disdainful views of ‘Whither China’, that Hua was one of these speakers. He would certainly have been present at the rally as a representative of the ‘new order’. By late February the Shengwulian had been shut down completely, Yang Xiguang had been arrested in Wuhan (and was subsequently jailed for more than 20 years) and its other leaders were either imprisoned or executed. On 21 February both the Xiang River Storm and the Gonglian announced that they would dissolve their organisations (Wu, 2008, p. 412). Once again, Hua had survived any serious damage to his political reputation. In assessing why Hua survived the attacks by the Shengwulian we are left again to ponder his good fortune. What probably saved Hua from being purged was the earlier change in the central political wind away from Red Guard radicalism and towards a more moderate stance, as manifested by the establishment of the Revolutionary Committees. If ‘Whither China’ had been written a few months earlier when the party leadership was more supportive of Red Guard extremism and senior officials were ‘dropping like flies’, then Hua may well have succumbed.


The fact is that ‘Whither China’ came at precisely the wrong time for the Shengwulian and precisely the right time for Hua.

Towards First Secretary of Hunan Following the demise of the Shengwulian, plans were set in motion for the establishment of the Hunan Revolutionary Committee. Prior to its formation in April 1968, Hua was called to Beijing to report on the proposed composition of the new body and on the political and social environment in Changsha. The CRSG together with Zhou Enlai and Lin Biao then convened a separate meeting in late March 1968 to examine this report and to agree on precisely who should participate in the new committee. Wang (1980, p. 67) suggests that there were heated exchanges during the meeting, primarily because of the significance of Hunan as Mao’s home province. Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, demanded that Li Yuan and Long Shijin should control the committee to the complete exclusion of Hua and Zhang Bosen. Conversely, as he had done with the Preparatory Committee, Zhou Enlai maintained that the success of the new structure depended upon the experience brought by Hua and Zhang such that their participation in it was imperative. Infuriated by her failure to get her own way, Jiang is thought to have openly rebuked Zhou, saying, ‘in your eyes there is no revolutionary leadership, only conservative leadership’. In the end, the final composition of the Hunan Revolutionary Committee as proposed by Zhou, Lin and the CRSG had to be approved by Mao himself. It represented a compromise between the competing political forces of radicalism and moderation (as had the Preparatory Committee) ‘steering a middle course between Maoist and anti-Maoist groups’ (Domes, 1970, p. 133). Li Yuan was made Chairman, Long Shujin was made First Secretary (although he was transferred to Xinjiang Province in July) and Hua and Zhang were appointed as Vice-Chairmen (HGWC, 1968, pp. 1 and 3). In total there were 14 members on the body, eight were military men, four were ‘revolutionary cadres’ (including Hua) and two were representatives of mass organisations (Domes, 1970, p. 133). Hua’s appointment to the committee represented another significant step in his political career. It also demonstrated that Hua continued to enjoy Mao’s respect and approval at a time when no one was quite certain of enjoying such a luxury. Although Hua was subordinate to Li and Long within the Hunan Revolutionary Committee, his power and status increased with his

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election in April 1969 to the Central Committee of the Ninth National Party Congress, his first political appointment in Beijing. Li was transferred away from Hunan at Mao’s request in autumn 1970, allowing Hua to take over the position of Chairman of the Hunan Revolutionary Committee (RMCB, 1977, p. 7). In December 1970, Hua finally emerged as the most powerful political figure in Hunan when he was appointed First Secretary of Hunan Provincial Party Committee, the first province to establish a provincial party committee in the post-Cultural Revolution era (RMRB, 1970, p. 1). This represented the pinnacle of his political career in Hunan. The man who had spent so many years working in an ancillary role was now officially ‘in charge’.

Cultural Revolution beneficiary In reviewing our findings in this chapter, it is important to note that the increase in Hua’s political power during the Cultural Revolution, culminating in his appointment as First Secretary, actually occurred when the campaign was in retreat. In contrast to leading radical exponents of the Cultural Revolution period such as Lin Biao and Jiang Qing, Hua was not intimately involved in the prelude to the Cultural Revolution (although he may well have supported some aspects of it such as the SEM) and his political power was certainly not enhanced by the implementation of the campaign, as was the case with Lin, Jiang and other members of the CRSG. Quite the opposite. As we have seen, Hua’s political career was seriously threatened when the Cultural Revolution was at its apex with at least two Red Guard groups targeting him and many of his colleagues falling from power around him. Hua is often described as a beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution and this is correct. But it is more accurate to describe Hua as a beneficiary of the de-radicalisation of the Cultural Revolution. Hua’s appointment to the Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee demonstrates this point. As noted above, the establishment of this committee was the first step in a concerted movement away from the militant excesses of the Cultural Revolution, with the objective of restoring normality and order to a province suffering from chronic disruption and turmoil. Hua was appointed to the committee in his capacity as a moderating influence on Li Yuan and Long Shujin and because of the administrative experience he brought with him as a seasoned senior official. The Hunan Revolutionary Committee, to which Hua was appointed as Chairman, extended the process of de-radicalisation, followed ultimately by the restoration of the Hunan Provincial Party


Committee with Hua at its helm. Hunan needed a ‘safe pair of hands’ to help it recover from the Cultural Revolution. Hua provided this. In this sense, Hua can be accurately described as an establishment beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution. Hua’s close participation in the retreat from the Cultural Revolution did not mean that he had suddenly turned his back on Mao. Although Mao continued to espouse the rhetoric of the cultural Revolution right up to his death in 1976 (albeit at times in a more muted form), he fully supported the withdrawal from the campaign after 1967 and backed Hua’s promotions within the Hunan party hierarchy, so there was clearly no conflict of opinion there. But the evidence does not show that Hua was a radical exponent of the Cultural Revolution at the pinnacle of the policy, perhaps not surprisingly given the threat that it posed to him. This then raises questions about whether Hua needed to bind himself so tightly (and fatally) to the legacy the Cultural Revolution as he did on succeeding Mao as paramount leader. We will return to this point in Chapter 6. We have seen in this chapter how Hua managed to survive and ultimately benefit from the Cultural Revolution. While his success in so doing was in part due to his ability and reputation as a senior official, much of it was down to his good fortune. Twice Hua faced the wrath of radical Red Guard groups and on both occasions he emerged unscathed: the first time thanks to the direct intervention of Zhou Enlai via the efforts of Zhang Bosen and the second time because the political wind had turned against Red Guard radicalism. Luck remained on Hua’s side when arrangements were being made for the establishment of the Hunan Preparatory and the fully fledged Revolutionary Committee. With experienced local cadres back in demand to help administer the committee, Hua, unlike many of his colleagues, was still around to fulfil that demand. The need for administrative experience was also glaringly present within the central party leadership and here again Hua found himself benefiting from the good fortune of having survived the Cultural Revolution with his transfer to the capital in 1971. It is to this period that we now turn our attention.

5 Entering the Centre: Hua in Beijing (1971–6)

When Hua arrived in Beijing in February 1971, he was virtually unknown within senior party circles after more than two decades of relative anonymity in Hunan. Yet just five-and-a-half years later he succeeded Mao as China’s paramount leader, catapulted over the heads of veteran revolutionaries, seasoned senior administrators and accomplished Marxist theoreticians. This chapter seeks to explain (to the extent it can be explained) how and why Hua achieved this remarkable feat. In so doing, we will examine some of the key positions that he held within the party leadership, assess the significance of the work that he carried out and analyse his relationship with, among others, Mao, Deng Xiaoping and the Gang of Four. Although some sources have suggested that Hua was transferred to Beijing in order to investigate Lin Biao’s alleged plot to overthrow Mao in 1971, Hua’s own account is that he was brought in to carry out State Council work for Zhou Enlai. This spanned a variety of sectors including aquatics, forestry and agriculture and saw Hua in characteristic ‘Hunan mode’ dealing with the unglamorous yet important practical tasks of the day. Hua’s competence in performing these tasks facilitated his promotion to the Politburo in 1973 and although this enhanced his political power and status within the party, as an establishment beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution, as illustrated in the previous chapter, it also brought him directly into the firing-line of the Gang of Four who were keen to curtail any movement away from the radicalism of that period. We will see in this chapter how the Gang’s attempt to de-stabilise Hua during the 1974 Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius Campaign ended in failure, although this did not stop them trying again. Hua continued his rise through the elite party ranks when in January 1975 he became Minister of Public Security and a Vice-Premier. His 112

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increasingly diverse remit included the rehabilitation of senior officials, responsibility for the modernisation of science and technology and the preparation of a high-profile report on agriculture at the Dazhai Conference which became party policy but which later brought him into conflict with the Gang of Four. It was during 1975 that Hua worked most closely with Deng Xiaoping at the highest level of government in the absence of the ailing Zhou Enlai and we will note here that there was no evidence of any animosity between the two men or signs of any significant policy differences as is often claimed. However, as Deng fell out of favour with Mao towards the end of the year, it was Hua and not Deng who succeeded Zhou as the new head of state in January 1976, albeit in a de facto capacity as Acting Premier. It will be argued that Mao probably delayed appointing Hua as full Premier until he had shown himself worthy of that position. We will also discuss why Mao chose Hua ahead of other (arguably) more viable candidates such as Li Xiannian and Zhang Chunqiao. If Hua was indeed serving a kind of probationary period as Acting Premier, then by early April he had successfully come through it following his appointment as full Premier and as CCP First Vice-Chairman, effectively number two in the party behind Mao. This further promotion was most likely a reward for Hua’s role in successfully dispersing the Tiananmen Square public demonstrations that took place in protest at the way in which Zhou Enlai’s memory had been mistreated by the authorities. Yet if Mao anticipated that Hua’s further promotions would bring unity to the leadership, then he was wrong; the Gang of Four simply intensified its criticism of Hua and his policies, focusing in particular on his Dazhai rural report. This criticism continued unabated until Mao’s death in September 1976 and only ceased when Hua authorised the arrest and detention of the Gang a few weeks later.

Transfer to Beijing: The Lin Biao affair It is often claimed that Hua’s transfer to Beijing in February 1971 was a direct consequence of events that took place during the Second Plenum of the Ninth National Party Congress in Lushan of August and September 1970 (also known as the Second Lushan Plenum) where Hua, it is claimed, supported Mao in opposition to Lin Biao. As is welldocumented, it was at the Second Lushan Plenum that Lin persisted with his call for Mao to resume his old position as head of state (ceded to the late Liu Shaoqi in 1959) notwithstanding Mao’s repeated opposition to this idea as well as plans under the new draft constitution to

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abolish the post altogether. Lin’s thinking in pushing this line was ultimately self-serving in that if Mao continued to refuse the state chairmanship as Lin anticipated, then Lin would step in and take it himself thereby strengthening his hand within the government apparatus against arch-rival Zhou Enlai (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 261). Mao, however, was alert to Lin’s ulterior motives and quickly produced and circulated a document that indirectly criticised Lin by directly criticising some of those who were closely involved in supporting him. One of them, Mao’s former personal secretary Chen Boda, was subsequently purged from office as a scapegoat for Lin, although Lin was shortly to follow. Lin articulated his desire to retain the state chairmanship during the opening address of the Second Lushan Plenum in front of 255 members of the Central Committee. As MacFarquhar (1997, p. 260) states, most of the delegates ‘were not in the know’ regarding the real objective behind Lin’s proposal, and Lin’s reputation and seniority meant ‘they were hardly likely to express opposition’. However, according to Wang (1980, p. 75), one delegate who did speak out against Lin was Hua Guofeng. Unfortunately, Wang does not tell us what Hua is meant to have said to Lin or how Lin reacted to Hua’s alleged outburst. All we are told is that Hua’s actions ‘made a great impression on Mao’ and probably accounted for his transfer to Beijing. Ultimately, we have to question Wang’s assertion, not least because in the relevant footnote Wang (1980, p. 163) concedes that ‘there is no document to back this up, but it has some value for reference’. Official sources also identify the Second Lushan Plenum as the key event determining Hua’s elevation to Beijing. Former Hunan First Secretary Zhang Pinghua (1977, p. 21) claims it was then that ‘the attempted coup plotted by the Lin Biao anti-party clique was smashed by Chairman Mao Zedong with help from comrade Hua Guofeng and as a result Mao personally requested that Hua be brought to Beijing’. Again, however, we are not given adequate details of precisely how Hua is meant to have helped Mao during the plenum. A further suggestion made by several other official sources is that, following his support for Mao at Lushan, Hua was sent to Beijing specifically to assist with investigating Lin’s alleged September 1971 coup to overthrow Mao which resulted in Lin’s death on 13 September (GMRB, 1977a, p. 3; RMRB, 1977a, p. 3). As noted, a lack of convincing documentary evidence makes it difficult to know whether Hua really did speak out at Lushan as is claimed. Certainly, it would have taken a brave man to do so given the extent of Lin’s power and influence at the time and the environment of fear that still pervaded political life in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution.


If Hua really did speak out, then he might well have been rewarded by Mao with promotion to Beijing, although his start date of February 1971 was some time after Lushan; so there does not appear to be any obvious or immediate relationship between the two events. What we can be sure of is that, in contrast to the official claims referenced above, Hua was not brought to Beijing to deal with Lin’s alleged coup against Mao because he said so during his interview with the BBC’s Felix Greene: I was transferred to work in the State Council in February 1971 and put in charge of agriculture, finance and commercial affairs. Soon after my arrival Premier Zhou Enlai sent me on an investigation tour of provinces in south China so I could become familiar with conditions in the country as a whole. My transfer had nothing to do with the Lin Biao affair and his attempted overthrow of Chairman Mao.1 In reality, official efforts to equate Hua’s promotion to Beijing with the Lin Biao affair probably reflected a need at the time of writing to make the truth (and Hua) sound more exciting that it (and he) really was.2 Given his background and experience in Hunan as well as his junior status at a national level, it is more likely that Hua was first brought to Beijing to employ his practical and administrative skills (see later) rather than to become involved in such a high-profile case as that pertaining to Lin Biao. Notwithstanding the above, it may have been that Hua became involved in the Lin Biao affair later in 1971 either just before Lin’s death when preliminary investigations were being made into Lin’s activities or immediately afterwards when a much lengthier investigation took place. Certainly, the scholarly literature supports this view. Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 445) list Hua’s early ‘important political assignments’ as including ‘investigating the Lin Biao affair’. They note, in particular, that Mao ‘entrusted him [Hua] to brief Zhou on his concerns about Lin’, although they fail to go into any further detail (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 37). Domes (1977b, p. 478) identifies Hua as a key member of the Secret Police Left (of whom more later) which he suggests ‘played its decisive role in the overthrow of Lin Piao [Biao]’. Wang (1980, pp. 78 and 164) refers to Hua’s participation in the work of the Special Investigation Group, a central party six-man body (although not including Hua) that was set up in late September 1971 to investigate the Lin Biao affair. This is verified by Baum (1994, p. 31) who refers to the group as ‘a blue-ribbon panel assigned to investigate the conspiracy and death of Lin Biao’.3 Zhang Pinghua (1977, p. 22) suggests that Hua

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was sent back to Hunan in October 1972 to interrogate some of the key members of the Lin Biao group from that province. This seems likely given that provincial heads were dispatched at around this time to build up a posthumous case against Lin Biao as an ‘ultra-rightist’ (having previously been denounced as ‘ultra-leftist’) which could then be presented to the public. However, relevant editions of the New Hunan Daily make no reference to Hua’s alleged involvement in investigating the Lin Biao affair in Hunan, so this rather adds to the lack of clarity.

Transfer to Beijing: State Council work In his interview with Felix Greene, Hua referred to his association with Zhou Enlai as commencing not long after he arrived in Beijing. While there is no evidence of any previous relationship between Hua and Zhou prior to February 1971 (it is likely that the two men first met after Hua was appointed to the Central Committee in 1969), it appears that Zhou quickly became impressed by Hua’s abilities since by October 1971, Zhou had procured Mao’s approval for Hua to assist him with State Council work, specifically as deputy head of the State Council’s group in charge of administrative affairs (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, pp. 36–7). In truth, Zhou probably found that he was able to obtain Mao’s consent without much difficulty. Hua was already well liked by Mao because of his earlier displays of loyalty on the issue of rural collectivisation and his sterling endeavours in Mao’s hometown of Shaoshan. Mao was also very familiar with Hua’s administrative talents following his two decades as an official in Hunan. Despite these very positive impressions, Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 37) claim that during a meeting between Mao and Hua in August 1971, Mao ‘chided Hua to develop a “political nose” to go with his administrative skills’. What Mao probably meant by this was that Hua needed to become tougher and cannier in a political and strategic sense, anticipating perhaps the power struggles to come with potential radical opponents such as his own wife, Jiang Qing. Whether Hua ever achieved this ‘political nose’ is debatable. Hua did not go into any detail about his early work in Beijing during the Felix Greene interview, but official sources summarised by Wang (1980, pp. 79–80) suggest that he was employed in a number of different State Council sectors all under the auspices of Zhou Enlai. For example, Hua is thought to have worked in the aquatic and forestry sectors, chairing a series of high-profile national conferences in 1971–2 during which he introduced a range of new measures for, among other things,


increasing fish production and expanding tree planting. During a conference on agriculture in February 1972 Hua highlighted the importance of mechanisation procedures and the corresponding need to rationalise the labour force and he introduced new techniques for crop rotation and irrigation. Hua also spoke at conferences on light industry and handicrafts during the first year after his transfer to Beijing. Here we can see that Hua was very much playing to his strengths. The nitty-gritty of devising and implementing new government initiatives at a grass-roots level in areas such as agriculture and light industry was exactly what Hua had been immersed in during his two decades in Hunan. His speeches in Beijing on unglamorous practical issues such as fish production and crop rotation were reminiscent of those he gave back in the late 1950s on techniques for pumping water from coal pits and increasing potato production, as noted in Chapter 3. To this extent Hua was very much continuing where he had left off in Hunan. That said, there is evidence to suggest that Hua was becoming involved in areas of political life that were less familiar to him. Although Hua’s participation in the Lin Biao affair is unclear, Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 44–6) offer a little more detail on his involvement in the process of rehabilitating party cadres that took place after Lin’s death. While Lin’s fall brought with it the purge of his key allies from the Politburo and senior military organisations, those who were less directly involved with Lin but still tainted by their association with him were treated with uncharacteristic leniency by the party. Categorised as cadres who had been deceived by the former Minister of Defence rather than actively conspiratorial with him, they were required to make self-criticisms in the traditional way but significantly they were not publicly condemned nor indeed dismissed from their positions. This policy was known as ‘saving the patient’ and stood in stark contrast to the more unforgiving ‘strike all, suspect all’ approach that symbolised the Cultural Revolution. The rehabilitation process also included restoring to office those officials had been forced out during the Cultural Revolution (for which Lin was held fully responsible), and by 1972 some local areas saw over 90 per cent of purged cadres reinstated to their original posts. Hua, through his membership of the Central Organisation Department, was specifically involved in examining the cases of veteran cadres who had been dismissed from office during the Cultural Revolution (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, pp. 45–6). In late 1971 a small number of elderly cadres and their families began sending letters directly to Mao and Zhou Enlai complaining about the harsh treatment they had endured and demanding redress. Mao took these letters very seriously and as more

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flooded in following his sympathetic address at the funeral of Marshal Chen Yi (a senior victim of the Cultural Revolution) Mao instructed Zhou to deal with the complaints in a formal capacity. In assigning Hua a leading role in assessing these complaints, Zhou, via Mao’s direct orders, was assigning Hua a task of considerable importance.

Promotion to the Politburo Notwithstanding the diversity of Hua’s work in Beijing in the early 1970s, it is not entirely clear which formal positions he held during this time. We know that Hua was a member of the State Council and that he worked as a senior member of the State Council’s group in charge of administrative affairs. However, a paucity of official announcements on party and state appointments at the time means that we know little more than this. Such lack of clarity was not unusual in the post-Cultural Revolution era and reflected a party and government organisational structure that remained in a state of flux. With regard to the government, for example, the National People’s Congress had not convened since 1966 despite the constitutional requirement to hold plenary sessions every year and to reconstitute every five years (the next congress did not convene until 1975). The constitution dictated (and still does) that senior governmental appointments were to be made by the National People’s Congress and announced to the public shortly thereafter. However, as noted there were very few official announcements at this time. Hua’s party status became clearer at the Tenth National Party Congress in August 1973 when he was promoted to the Politburo. Although this appointment was not altogether unanticipated (it had been decided by a preparatory group back in May 1973), it remained a significant achievement for Hua given the short period of time he had been in Beijing and his relative anonymity within senior party circles before then. We will shortly discuss the probable reasons why Hua was elevated to the Politburo. But what is noticeable is that in many respects the significance of Hua’s appointment was completely overshadowed by the astonishing rise of Wang Hongwen who was promoted to Vice-Chairman of the CCP, a member of the PSC and effectively China’s third-ranking leader overall. If Hua was a relative newcomer to Beijing and a bit of a surprise package, Wang was a complete bolt out the blue (Wang, 1977b, pp. 49–134). At the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution Wang was working in a


modest capacity as a cadre in a Shanghai factory, but after catching Mao’s eye in summer 1967 as a radical labour activist in the Shanghai Commune (prior to which Wang was completely unknown to Mao), Wang was catapulted into the central political arena. Youthful ( just 38-years old at the Tenth National Party Congress) and genuinely proletarian (Wang came from a peasant family and had served as a low-ranking soldier in the Korean War), Wang was the perfect fit for Mao’s criteria as a future leader of China and was clearly being lined up as an alternative to the other radicals on offer, most notably Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Jiang Qing. Furthermore, Wang was untainted by any association with Lin Biao, could not be held culpable for the nationwide urban anarchy of 1967–8 and, for the moment at least, he was independent of any leadership faction, although of course he was shortly to become labelled as a member of the ill-fated Gang of Four along with Zhang, Yao and Jiang. Hua was a very different proposition to Wang and owed his new Politburo status to at least three factors. First, as he had done in Hunan and on entering the central political arena in Beijing, Hua continued to benefit from gaps in personnel created by the purges of the Cultural Revolution and more recently the fall of Lin Biao. In this sense, the experiences of Hua and Wang were not entirely dissimilar because Wang too had benefited from these fortuitous openings. Second, as we have seen in previous chapters, Hua demonstrated an almost unswerving loyalty to Mao that went back at least to the 1955 debate over rural collectivisation. In this sense Hua and Wang differed significantly in that Hua and Mao went back a lot further than Wang and Mao, and there was a much clearer and more entrenched personal and professional relationship between the two men based primarily on the Hunan factor. Third, Hua had a tried-and-tested record as a competent and reliable administrator which stretched back to his Hunan days and which he had continued to demonstrate with his work for the State Council. He was, to coin a phrase, a ‘safe pair of hands’ and in this sense very much an establishment figure. Wang, by contrast, was a virtual novice in administrative terms and had a reputation as a political firebrand. In elevating both Hua and Wang up the political order, Mao was effectively seeking to cover as many political bases as possible as he increasingly contemplated his own mortality and what would come afterwards. While there were other possible successors to Mao’s throne (e.g. Zhang Chunqiao, Ji Dengkui and possibly even Deng Xiaoping who was restored to office in early 1973), Wang was Mao’s preferred

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choice at this stage given his youthful vitality and radical verve, although he remained very much under probation as a potential political leader. The Hua option was probably more of a contingency plan for Mao to be implemented if Wang failed to impress, which of course he soon did. As MacFarquhar (1997, p. 281) explains: With only six years’ experience of revolutionary struggle and politics, he [Wang] was expected to keep up with and contend against men like the premier [Zhou Enlai], who had survived six decades of revolutions, civil wars, foreign invasion, and Party infighting. It was a grossly unequal contest, another Maoist gamble that would fail.

Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius Campaign We concluded in the previous chapter that Hua can most accurately be described as an establishment beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution, someone who advanced through the political ranks during the de-radicalisation of the campaign when a number of administratively experienced and moderate figures were promoted to help restore a semblance of political normality to China. As an establishment beneficiary who was firmly located in the political forefront following his appointment to the Politburo, Hua inevitably became a target of the radical beneficiaries within the party leadership, most notably the Gang of Four and Kang Sheng. This wing of the party were intent on reigniting the Cultural Revolution and saw Hua and other moderate figures within the party elite (e.g. Chen Xilian, Li Desheng and Ji Dengkui) both as potential opponents and as symbols of ‘revisionism’ who they could use as a vehicle for precipitating a return to the Cultural Revolution. The first attack by the radicals on Hua came during the bizarrely named and bizarrely conceived Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius Campaign over which Jiang Qing assumed leadership. Formally launched in January 1974 (although it had been simmering since the Tenth National Party Congress), the stated objective of the Lin-Confucius Campaign was to identify and criticise Lin Biao as an alleged representative of Confucianism, someone who had intended to return China to the bygone feudal system, referred to at the time as ‘restorationism’ (huifu zhuyi). The campaign was officially portrayed as a continuation of the anti-Lin Biao process that had been ongoing since Lin’s death and which sought to weed out Lin’s supporters in the party. In truth, however, the principal target of the campaign was Zhou Enlai and those moderate politicians deemed to be close to him, including Hua.


In keeping with the Chinese communist tradition of using the media as a battleground for elite political struggle specifically through the use of historical analogy (Cotton, 1984), a series of esoteric articles were published in the national press criticising, among others, the Confucian statesman Zhou Gong, also known as the Duke of Zhou. By way of background, the Duke of Zhou was renowned for his desire to reunite China during the tumultuous Warring States period (475–221 BC) and in particular for his calls to rehabilitate those who had been driven from office, with the long-term objective of returning China to a golden age of feudalism. The implied attack on the Duke’s namesake Zhou Enlai was not difficult to miss (at least within the higher echelons of the party) and Jiang Qing anticipated that criticism of the Duke would precipitate a concerted campaign against Zhou Enlai for his leadership in restoring ‘revisionists’ (i.e. officials purged during the Cultural Revolution) to the party apparatus and allegedly seeking to return China to the feudalism of the pre-revolutionary era (Goldman, 1981, pp. 166–76). Although Hua was originally a member of the seven-person ‘small group’ that was set up to organise the Lin-Confucius Campaign (as was Zhou), Jiang sought to turn him into a focal point of the campaign. The link to Hua was tenuous to say the least and went back to Hua’s earlier support for a documentary that was made in Hunan about the play ‘The Song of the Gardener’, a form of traditional Chinese opera known as Xiang Opera (from Xiangtan in Hunan), popular during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644 AD). Set in modern times, the main character of the play was a young boy called Dao Li whose obsession with becoming a train engineer caused him to neglect his studies and break school rules. Undeterred by this, Dao Li’s teacher saw potential in the youth and patiently transformed him into a hard-working, obedient and courteous student (Wang, 1980, pp. 96–7). Jiang objected to the play for two reasons. First, she argued that the content of the play focused on narrow, romanticised themes that detracted from the key political issues of the day such as class struggle and continuous revolution (Ye, 1993a, p. 74). Second, and more importantly, Jiang focused her attack was on the Confucian era from which the play derived, an example, she argued, of a wider agenda by ‘revisionists’ within the party who were seeking to pollute education and culture with outmoded and reactionary ideas (Ye, 1993a, p. 74). After seeing a preview of the documentary in April 1974, Jiang promptly banned it from general release and a number of polemical articles subsequently appeared in the national press criticising the opera and the decision to approve the making of a documentary about it. Although Hua was

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not named in person, it was clear to the party leadership (if not to the general public) that he was being dragged into the firing line of the Lin-Confucius Campaign. Jiang’s implicit attacks on Hua took place in April and May 1974 and formed part of a broadening and intensification of the Lin-Confucius Campaign that lasted well into the summer and began to resemble the return to the Cultural Revolution that Jiang desired. As well as hauling moderate leaders such as Hua into the political frame and identifying issues such as the alleged erosion of radical socialist principles in education and culture, the campaign began to single out other political issues that had been fiercely debated during the Cultural Revolution. This included a comprehensive critique of the Chinese economic system, with particular critical attention on national development strategies, methods of industrial management, the use of material incentives and the merits (or otherwise) of trading with foreign countries. As Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 157) note, it was during this time that ‘another Cultural Revolution-style phenomenon emerged’ evidenced most ominously by the pasting of ‘wall-posters criticizing individual leaders, including Politburo members Li Desheng, Chen Xilian, Xu Shiyou and Hua Guofeng’. In another example of political good fortune for Hua, the LinConfucius Campaign was scaled down before it claimed any significant political scalps. The turning point came during a speech made by Mao in August 1974 applauding those in authority who had made selfcriticisms during the campaign and calling for a period of stability and unity. This was recognised within the political elite as a clear indication that the campaign had to be moderated, although it was not abandoned completely. A number of reasons account for this change in direction by Mao, the most significant of which probably related to the resultant decline in economic production (Yan and Gao, 1996, pp. 450–1). Most importantly for our purposes, as he had done during the zenith of the Cultural Revolution, Hua survived the Lin-Confucius Campaign and emerged once again with his political career in tact, although this did not stop Jiang resuming her attacks on Hua during 1976 as we will see later in this chapter. Hua’s support for the making of the documentary on ‘The Song of the Gardener’ demonstrated his generally liberal attitude towards art and literature at the time. Although Deng Xiaoping is often credited with spearheading the push for a relaxation of cultural policy during his period in office in 1975 (Yan and Gao, 1996, p. 467), Hua was ahead of Deng on this matter. According to Kraus (1991, p. 237), Hua


arranged for the documentary of ‘The Song of the Gardener’ to be screened to Mao when he was in Changsha in November 1974. Mao is thought to have responded positively to the documentary and it is perhaps no coincidence that shortly afterwards he began to express his irritation with the Gang of Four over the ideological straitjacket they had imposed on cultural productions. We should also note that Hua’s decision to show Mao the documentary was actually quite bold. Given the uncertainty of the period and the increasing volatility of the ageing statesman, Hua was taking something of a risk that could easily have backfired and exposed him to unfavourable consequences. Here again we should draw a contrast with Deng’s much-heralded efforts to relax art and literature in 1975 when Mao had authorised a loosening of the strictures on cultural policy through his open support of the Double Hundred Policy (first espoused in the prelude to the Hundred Flowers Campaign). Hua had no equivalent reassurance to fall back on.

Vice-Premier Hua The next significant step in Hua’s political career came during the Fourth National People’s Congress in January 1975 when Hua was promoted to Minster of Public Security and Vice-Premier. Without underestimating the importance of Hua’s appointment as Minister of Public Security, the more noteworthy position was probably his Vice-Premiership because it was the power and status associated with this post that really put him in the picture for possible succession to Mao. Hua became one of 12 Vice-Premiers; so he clearly had competition as far as the succession was concerned and he was far from being the obvious choice as paramount leader at this stage. Those who ranked above him (in order) comprised Deng Xiaoping (in Mao’s favour during most of 1975), Zhang Chunqiao (the radical alternative to Deng), Li Xiannian (the veteran revolutionary option) and the slightly less well-known Chen Xilian (a veteran military leader and post-Mao ally of Hua) and Ji Dengkui (another postMao ally of Hua). Notwithstanding this ranking structure, the level of responsibility accorded to Hua as Vice-Premier put him above Chen and Ji in an informal sense. In addition to his responsibility for the daily work of the State Council (along with Li and Ji), Hua was placed in charge of political and legal work (also reflected in his appointment as Minister of Public Security) as well as the development of science and technology which was a key government priority during 1975. This also made Hua

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one of the closest governmental colleagues of Deng Xiaoping who was effectively placed in charge of the country during 1975, a professional relationship which is overlooked in much of the academic literature. Given his extensive portfolio, Hua was involved in a diverse range of work during 1975. Following on from his earlier involvement in the rehabilitation of officials ousted during the Cultural Revolution, Hua was given 350 further cases to review by Mao. Included in these cases were the so-called ‘61 renegades’. These were a group of high-ranking veteran party leaders (including Bo Yibo, An Ziwen, Liu Lantao and Yang Xianzhen) purged during the Cultural Revolution because they had signed a newspaper declaration back in 1936 renouncing their allegiance to the CCP, notwithstanding that this was on the specific instructions of Liu Shaoqi who had approved the measure in order to secure their release from incarceration by the KMT (Lubell, 2002, pp. 1–3). In May 1975 most of the ‘61 renegades’ were released from prison so that they could receive medical treatment or take up their designated job assignments, although they were not fully rehabilitated until December 1978 (Lubell, 2002, pp. 166–7). While Deng is often credited with facilitating the release of these veteran leaders and the continuing thaw during 1975 towards victims of the Cultural Revolution (Lieberthal, 1978a, p. 123; Lubell, 2002, p. 166), Teiwes and Sun (2007, pp. 272–3) suggest that this underestimates the key role played by Hua and that, in fact, Deng was much less involved in the rehabilitation process than is widely acknowledged. As part of his science and technology remit, Hua hosted a number of foreign delegations during 1975 including a telecommunications delegation from France in June, science delegations from each of Pakistan ( July), Albania ( July), Denmark (October) and Romania (December) and a French atomic delegation in November (Lieberthal, 1978b, pp. 37–8). Notwithstanding the failure by some scholars to mention Hua’s role in this area (e.g. Domes, 1977b, p. 481), Hua was closely involved in the publication of a policy document, the first draft of which was prepared by, among others, Hu Yaobang (Hua’s successor as party leader in 1980) setting out a ten-year programme to modernise China’s ailing science and technology sector and titled the Outline Report on the Academy of Sciences. Although couched in the radical political rhetoric of the day as was required, the report was a progressive, modernising document which set out three key objectives: undertaking major new research tasks to facilitate economic growth and improve military defence; introducing new areas of science and technology including space exploration, cybernetics and environmental science; and developing research in the core


natural sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry and biology). Underpinning all of this was a call for the party to accept and encourage a greater advisory role for specialists and intellectuals which would thereby require a toning down of its previously harsh attitude towards this category of professional (Lieberthal, 1978b, pp. 143–4). In the end, the report was shelved as the political climate turned against Deng later in the year, although this did not stop the Gang of Four using it in an attempt to discredit Hua during the following year by labelling it as one of the ‘three poisonous weeds’ (see later). Hua’s most significant contribution during 1975 on the basis that it did become official party policy was his report to the Dazhai Conference in September and October (full name Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture Conference). The report set out a number of directives for the modernisation of agriculture, a sector that incidentally appears to have fallen outside Hua’s designated portfolio as Vice-Premier although Hua had been closely involved in agriculture since arriving in Beijing. Named after the much-heralded Dazhai Brigade from Xiyang County (Shanxi Province) which was praised by Mao as a model brigade back in 1964, the conference was first planned in early 1972 when Hua ordered the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to prepare for a national conference on what could be learnt from the example of the Dazhai Brigade. The conference was then repeatedly postponed until in August 1975 when a preparatory small group led by Hua and Chen Yonggui reported to the State Council on a proposed agenda (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 351). Much of the academic literature on the Dazhai Conference suggests that there were clear differences of opinion between discrete factions within the party leadership. According to Zweig (1989, pp. 34–5), the Gang of Four (among others) represented a ‘hard radical’ faction which was hostile to the use of markets and private plots, focusing instead on the ideological indoctrination of the peasantry and a rapid transition towards brigades without the use of the much-hated party work teams. The ‘soft radicals’ represented by Hua, Chen Xilian and Ji Dengkui were more inclined towards modernisation. They championed the cause of mechanisation and argued for a more gradual shift towards brigades, while acknowledging the need to limit although not curtail the activities of the private sector. Deng Xiaoping is presented in a more moderate light than the ‘hard’ and ‘soft radicals’, although his stance is not very clearly articulated in many of the scholarly works. Yang (1996, p. 124), for example, simply notes that in Deng’s opinion ‘agriculture, like other sectors, required rectification. Learning from Dazhai called for honest work’.

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Teiwes and Sun (2007, pp. 357–61) dispute the conventional scholarly perspective on Dazhai arguing that no concrete ‘hard radical’ programme was tabled at the conference, although they acknowledge that the Gang sharply criticised Hua’s Dazhai report during 1976 (see later). They also state that the positions of Hua and Deng were basically aligned. According to this view, the crux of Hua’s report focused on two themes both of which Deng supported. The first theme related to organisational rectification. As Deng had done throughout 1975, Hua’s report criticised an apparent tendency among party cadres towards idleness and negligence of duty and Hua stressed that economic progress could only be made if the party was more disciplined and professional in carrying out its work. The second theme related to Hua’s general proposal on rural development. As noted above, Hua favoured a measured transition towards the establishment of the brigades and this was explicitly affirmed by Deng during a speech he gave at Dazhai. Deng also supported Hua’s push towards mechanisation and his suggestion to allow a limited role for the private sector. Likewise, both Deng and Hua reverted to the ambitious political rhetoric of the Great Leap Forward, specifically the emphasis on ‘more, better, faster and more economical’. While Yang (1996, p. 124) insists that ‘the basic thrust of Hua’s [Dazhai] speech clearly diverged from Deng’s’, Teiwes and Sun’s conclusion is that this was far from being the case. There is a strong possibility, of course, that Deng supported Hua at Dazhai not because he genuinely agreed with Hua on matters to do with rural development but because he was obliged to agree with Hua in order to ensure that he continued to receive Mao’s backing. The rehabilitated Deng was still very much under observation by Mao as he continued to weigh up his options as far as the succession was concerned, and there is little doubt that Mao remained suspicious of Deng for a number of reasons, including his ambivalence towards the principles of the Cultural Revolution which Mao still held very dear. Consequently, most of what Deng did and said during 1975 was dictated and constrained by the often unclear or inconsistent political parameters set by Mao. That Deng had little choice but to stick to Hua’s script at this time was particularly evident after Mao died when Deng wasted no time in distancing himself from Hua on policy matters and attacking him. We should note at this point that none of Hua’s work during 1975 appeared to be especially radical in nature. Quite the opposite. As we have seen, Hua’s position on science and technology was decidedly progressive in proposing a number of new initiatives designed to modernise the sector while freeing up intellectuals and other specialists to


assist in the modernisation programme. The Dazhai report was perhaps slightly less progressive, but still a moderate policy document all the same. By contrast, when Hua came to power in 1976 he espoused a much more radical policy direction associated with Mao, feeling dutybound to remain loyal to his erstwhile patron. This is a point we will return to in the next chapter.

Acting-Premier Hua The outcome of Deng’s trial period in charge of government affairs during 1975 was that by the end of the year Deng had completely lost favour with Mao such that shortly after Zhou Enlai’s death in January 1976, Mao turned not to Deng as his new Premier but to Hua. To be precise, Hua was appointed to the position of Acting Premier, the first time this role had been used in the PRC. So why was Hua not made full Premier? MacFarquhar (1997, p. 298fn) suggests that this may have been for reasons of administrative protocol. Whether we believe that Hua emerged as a compromise figure from a deadlocked Politburo (Dittmer, 1987, p. 130) or was chosen exclusively by Mao whose decision was then rubber-stamped by the Politburo as seems more likely (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 440), the fact remains that Hua was not appointed to this position by the correct constitutional means. Consequently, it is possible that Hua was made Acting Premier until such time as he could be formally and legally appointed as full Premier, which could only be done by a meeting of the National People’s Congress. The problem with this suggestion, as MacFarquhar (1997, p. 298fn) himself concedes, is that when Hua did become Premier in April 1976 there was, once again, a complete absence of any constitutional process, suggesting a continued lack of concern for any established formal procedure. Another explanation for Hua’s appointment as Acting Premier is that Mao was looking to mitigate the possibility of a political backlash from pro-Deng veteran revolutionaries within the party leadership (e.g. Li Xianian and Ye Jianying). By selecting Hua only in an ‘acting’ capacity, Mao could have been implying that Deng had not been permanently dispatched from high office, but only temporarily sidelined. This may explain why in his subsequent criticisms of Deng, Mao referred to Deng’s alleged political failings as contradictions among the people that could be resolved (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 299fn). It seems most likely, however, that as with Deng during 1975, Hua was now undergoing his own trial period in authority (to the extent Mao was physically and mentally able to supervise Hua’s progress) and

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it was for this reason that he was appointed to what appeared to be a provisional post. In so doing, Mao was probably attempting to cover himself in case Hua failed to live up to Mao’s own expectations. ‘Possibly Mao, conscious of the error he had made in elevating an untried Wang Hongwen to a top slot, put Hua on probation to minimize the damage if he proved equally incompetent’ (MacFarquhar, 1997, 299fn). The suggestion that Hua was on probation is strongly reinforced if we look at his positions within the party and the military. That these positions yielded considerably less power than the more established Deng Xiaoping when he became de facto Premier in January 1975 suggests that Mao may have had greater faith in Deng in January 1975 than in Hua in January 1976. In contrast to Deng who was already a ViceChairman of the CCP in January 1975 when he took over government affairs, Hua was not promoted to this position. Nor was he elevated to the PSC which meant that he was nominally subordinate to, among others, all four members of the Gang of Four. Hua’s military status was non-existent, while Deng had become both PLA Chief of Staff and ViceChairman of the Military Affairs Commission in January 1975. Here again, Hua found himself nominally outranked by many others in the leadership, most notably Wang Hongwen and Zhang Chunqiao (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 445). If we assume that the final decision on appointing Hua as Acting Premier came from Mao, why was it that Mao chose Hua as ahead of other more experienced and arguably more viable candidates, most notably Li Xiannian and Zhang Chunqiao? Mao is often quoted as applauding Hua’s ‘kind’ and ‘honest’ character at around the time he selected Hua, but this is not enough to explain Hua’s promotion to such a senior position. The loyalty factor was much more significant. We have noted in previous chapters Hua’s close adherence to Mao’s directives during the 1950s on issues such as rural reform and the Great Leap Forward, as well as his earnest endeavours in Mao’s native Shaoshan during the 1960s. So was this enough to see Hua elevated to such lofty heights? Possibly not. It is more likely to have secured his steady ascendancy through the Hunanese political ranks and then perhaps on to Beijing in 1971, but once in the capital it was down to Hua to prove himself at the highest level, irrespective of his legacy of devout Maoism at the provincial level. That said, Hua’s loyalty to Mao remained unswerving after his arrival in Beijing and this would have demonstrated to Mao that, if nothing else, Hua was obedient, possibly even to the point of being unquestioning. It is highly likely this unquestioning obedience convinced Mao to appoint Hua to the top government position, a factor which also contributed


significantly to Mao’s choice of Hua as full Premier and de facto head of the party in April 1976, to which we will return later in the chapter. Were Li Xiannian and Zhang Chunqiao any less loyal to Mao? Dealing with Li first, he was the logical choice to take over as head of state given his vast experience in high-level administrative and economic affairs and there was nothing to suggest any sharp divergence of opinion between Li and Mao who had worked closely together since the 1930s. What may have worked against Li was his closeness to both Zhou Enlai who grew increasingly estranged from Mao during the last year or so of his life and to Deng who Mao had only recently abandoned (again). Moreover, like Deng, Li was at best ambivalent towards the Cultural Revolution, despite surviving the campaign with his career in tact. Zhang must also have been in the running for the Premiership (although he was considerably less experienced in state affairs than Li) and had the added advantage of being on the radical wing of the party with views on the Cultural Revolution that were closely aligned to those held by Mao. As with Li, there was no clear sign of any falling out between Zhang and Mao. Crucially, however, Mao had by this time identified Zhang as a member of the Gang of Four and it was probably Zhang’s unpopularity within the political elite and his tendency towards intra-party factionalism that dashed his chances of becoming Acting Premier. Hua, by contrast, had managed to avoid becoming embroiled in the factional infighting that characterised the first half of the 1970s, and although he was clearly less experienced in high-level administrative affairs than Li and less well-versed in theoretical and ideological affairs than Zhang, he was by all accounts the compromise figure that Mao was after, a potentially unifying force. We will return to this discussion later in the chapter when we look at the reasons why Mao went on to choose Hua as full Premier. For now it remains for us to examine the key challenges that confronted Hua as Acting-Premier, one of the most important of which was his leadership of the Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign.

Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign Signs of Deng’s demise became apparent in November 1975 when he was suspended from all duties other than those pertaining to foreign affairs following what Goodman (1994, p. 83) describes in very unspecific terms as ‘Deng’s proposals to reverse the Cultural Revolution’. The campaign against Deng emerged almost simultaneously with the

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publication of a series of newspaper and journal articles that were critical of some of the policies he had implemented during 1975. Yan and Gao (1996, pp. 480–1) identify the reprint of a Red Flag article in the People’s Daily in early December as the starting point for the campaign. Written by a ‘joint criticism group’ from Beijing and Qinghua Universities which had earlier posted critical wall-posters in their respective campuses (Domes, 1977b, p. 483), the article highlighted a ‘revisionist’ trend in education away from the Cultural Revolution emphasis on class background and ideological purity as a measure for advancement and towards academic excellence. Deng then made several attempts to submit a self-criticism, each of which was rejected by Mao as he sought to distance himself from Deng and effectively thereafter ceased all meaningful communication with him. Hua was brought into the anti-Deng campaign just before he was promoted as Acting Premier. In late November 1975, at Mao’s behest, Hua relayed to the Politburo a synopsis of a speech made by Mao which highlighted alleged attempts from earlier in the year to divide the party leadership and attack the Cultural Revolution ‘in an effort to reverse its verdicts’ (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 297). Without naming him directly, the target of these criticisms was clearly Deng and from this point onwards Mao accorded Hua with full responsibility for the campaign against Deng. Notwithstanding this, much of the scholarly literature identifies the Gang of the Four’s leading role in the implementation of the campaign, particularly after the death of Zhou Enlai which left Deng, their arch rival, politically exposed (Baum, 1994, pp. 31–2; Yan and Gao, 1996, pp. 486–9) while Barnouin and Yu’s (1993, pp. 286–8) portrayal of the campaign suggests that Mao was very much calling the shots. Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 456) err more towards the latter perspective, although they note that Hua and Mao were not in frequent contact at the time, suggesting that Hua was given a considerable degree of autonomy in how to manage the campaign. Whatever the real extent of Hua’s autonomy, it seems that the antiDeng campaign placed Hua in something of a quandary in terms of how vigorously to pursue the campaign. While the Gang of Four put pressure on Hua to go on the offensive, Hua was aware that an overly aggressive approach might cause him to lose control of the situation leaving China hurtling towards another Cultural Revolution. Consequently, he attempted characteristically to strike a balance between publicly criticising Deng’s alleged errors while at the same time containing the campaign such that it did not escalate into a wide-ranging purge of officials associated with Deng, as the Gang intended. The former


approach included calling for a ‘thorough exposure of Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s revisionist line errors’ while the latter included banning the Cultural Revolution tradition of seizing officials and parading them on the streets. In practice, however, Hua struggled to maintain this equilibrium. Although Wan Li (Minister of Railways) was the only high-level minister to be removed from office during the campaign, social and political unrest affected many parts of China resulting in public demonstrations against ‘radicals’ and ‘revisionists’ alike at both the local and national level (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 459).

Tiananmen demonstrations Coinciding with and partly arising out of the general unrest that emanated from the anti-Deng campaign was a much more significant show of public feeling, the handling of which became Hua’s next big test as Acting Premier and one that arguably convinced Mao to appoint him as full Premier: the Tiananmen demonstrations of April 1976. As has been well documented in the scholarly publications (Garside, 1981), the Tiananmen demonstrations were primarily a manifestation of public anger at the way in which the nationally (and internationally) popular Zhou Enlai was treated by the party leadership after his death. Tensions were already high as a result of the restrictions imposed on honouring Zhou’s memory immediately after he died, including the ‘five no’s’ (no wreaths, no mourning halls, no memorial meetings, no disseminating photographs of Zhou and no black armbands) as well as other prohibitions that were implemented following Zhou’s memorial service on 15 January. Add to this the smouldering public resentment deriving from the anti-Deng campaign (much of which was perceived as a slight against Zhou, Deng’s patron) and more generally from the disastrous and deeply traumatic Cultural Revolution period as a whole and the stage was set for the explosion of public anger that became the Tiananmen demonstrations. The pro-Zhou Enlai demonstrations began in Nanjing in late March following the removal (deliberately or otherwise) of an elegiac couplet from a wreath honouring Zhou that was left at the Yuhuatai Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs (Louie and Louie, 1981). While this sparked small-scale protests in nearby cities such as Wuxi, Changzhou and Huaiyin, it was in Beijing that events really took off culminating in over two million people gathering in Tiananmen Square on 4 April to lay pro-Zhou wreaths at the Monument to the People’s Heroes and to vent their opposition to the Gang of Four. The state-sanctioned removal of

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all wreaths during the early hours of the following morning triggered a day-long stand off between security forces and demonstrators which was finally resolved by a brief burst of force late into the evening of 5 April to clear the few hundred demonstrators that remained in the square. Much of the scholarly literature implies that the radical wing of the party elite dominated the decision-making process during the Tiananmen demonstrations with little or no mention of the part played by Hua (Yan and Gao, 1996, pp. 499–501). Wang (1980, p. 104) on the other hand points out that Hua had overall responsibility for maintaining law and order in his capacity as Minister of Public Security but comments only (although not altogether inaccurately) that ‘he moved cautiously, choosing to refer to the politburo and Chairman Mao for guidance’. Teiwes and Sun offer greater detail on Hua’s decision-making role during the demonstrations. They note that Hua chaired each of the high-level emergency meetings that were convened during the crisis. This was significant because an expanded Politburo meeting held just a few days earlier on 26 March to discuss the direction of the anti-Deng campaign was chaired not by Hua but by Wang Hongwen, reflecting ‘an ongoing shift of authority to Hua that was only completed after the crisis on April 7’ (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 278). Crucially, it was an ongoing shift in authority that was authorised by Mao (a point not made by Teiwes and Sun), providing further evidence of Mao’s increasing conviction that Hua would be his successor. The image of Hua presented by Teiwes and Sun (2007, pp. 480–4) and more vaguely referred to by Wang (as immediately above) during the intra-elite debate on Tiananmen is that of an arbiter. For example, during the 4 April late-night discussions on whether or not to remove the wreaths from the Monument to the People’s Heroes, Hua was faced by those who wanted to confiscate the wreaths immediately and those who wanted to delay this potentially provocative act. Jiang Qing represented the former perspective after she had received reports identifying a distinctly anti-Jiang undertone to the protests. Conversely, Beijing’s mayor Wu De (shortly to be an ally of Hua) who had direct management responsibilities for handling the demonstrations suggested a more conciliatory approach that involved moving the wreaths to a nearby cemetery rather than disposing of them altogether. Hua, it appears, listened closely to both sides of the debate and slightly favoured Wu’s more restrained approach. In the end, the majority of the Politburo (reportedly without any input from Mao) sided with Jiang Qing and the wreaths were removed. Hua also acted as mediator following the decision taken on


5 April to clear the square of demonstrators later that day. While Wang Hongwen was keen to mobilise more than 100,000 militiamen to do the job, Wu De strongly favoured the preparation of a speech that could be broadcasted by radio to the demonstrators persuading them to disperse. Ultimately, Hua acted on both positions. He authorised Wu to prepare a draft of the radio broadcast (which he then vetted) condemning the ‘counter-revolutionary’ nature of the protests and warning the demonstrators that they should leave the square immediately. At the same time, Hua agreed with Jiang Qing that the forceful clearing of the square should commence at 8 pm that day if anyone was still there, although ultimately this course of action was not employed until about 11 pm. Deng was subsequently blamed for inciting the ‘counter-revolutionary’ demonstrations, labelled a ‘right opportunist’ and removed from all leadership posts, although he was not expelled from the party (in contrast to what Jiang Qing had wanted). The forceful clearance of the square was reported back to the Politburo by Mao Yuanxin (Mao’s nephew and closest confidant at the time) to have delighted the ailing Mao (Baum, 1994, p. 36) and Hua was quickly rewarded with further promotion. On 7 April, just two days after the square was cleared, Hua was elevated to full Premier, thereby resolving any uncertainty associated with his leadership of the government in his previously ‘acting’ capacity. Hua was also appointed CCP First Vice-Chairman, another unprecedented title, but one which suggested in form, if not in name, that Hua was now at the helm of the party, given that he was now the highest-ranking party member. Conversely, Deng was dismissed from all official posts for his alleged instigation of the demonstrations. The decision to promote Hua and dismiss Deng came ultimately from Mao (via his nephew) but was formalised by the Politburo. Wang (1980, p. 106) rightly identifies the unconstitutional nature of the formalisation process and, as we will see in the next chapter, Deng was later to take full advantage of this by raising doubts over the constitutional legitimacy of Hua as paramount leader. Despite Hua’s nominally integral role as chair of the intra-party discussions during the Tiananmen crisis, the academic consensus insists that it was Mao who made the all-important and conclusive decision to use force to disperse the demonstrators, a decision that was then relayed to Hua and the rest of the Politburo by Mao Yuanxin (Wang, 1980, p. 104; Baum, 1994, p. 35; Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 483). If this was so, why did Mao give such a boost to Hua’s political career? Did Hua actually do anything outstanding (in Mao’s eyes) to warrant the promotions he received? Had Hua finally developed the ‘political nose’ that Mao

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was after? On the face of it, one would have to say no. Hua, as we have seen, was very much the mediator during the discussions and does not appear to have acted particularly decisively or independently of any particular faction or point of view. But this may well have been precisely the characteristic Mao desired. In light of the protracted infighting that had ravaged the party elite during and after the Cultural Revolution, Mao was looking for a unifying figure to take the party forward into the post-Mao era and Hua’s apparent success in reaching compromises and negotiating between vying factions probably convinced Mao once and for all that he had found his man. On the other hand, Mao might simply have felt that he could no longer delay his decision to appoint a successor. The ambiguity and uncertainty that derived from Hua’s appointment as Acting Premier created an intolerable political situation that needed resolving. As his death grew ever closer and his mental ability ever weaker, Mao may have felt that it was finally time to act before it was too late.

Towards Chairman Hua and the arrest of the Gang of Four In the last six months before his death, Mao took further steps to manoeuvre Hua into place as his successor. This included putting Hua in charge of foreign affairs, ensuring that he received greater attention in the media (albeit nothing comparable to the Hua personality cult that followed Mao’s death) and assigning him full responsibility for the relief and reconstruction effort following the massive Tangshan earthquake of July 1976 which in itself served to heighten Hua’s media exposure (Kao, 1977, pp. 7–9). Notably, however, Hua still held no position whatsoever within the military and this remained the case until after the arrest of the Gang of Four in October when Hua became Chairman of the CMC. Mao’s most well-documented attempt to solidify Hua’s political inheritance came in the form of the note he passed to Hua containing the legitimising words ‘with you in charge I am at ease’ (ni banshi wo fangxin). There has been some dispute about when Mao actually wrote the note. Official sources initially claimed that Mao wrote it on his deathbed and handed it over to Hua just a short while before he died, although the hand-drawn pictures depicting this alleged scene show a remarkably healthy Mao sitting upright and comfortable.4 It is now widely accepted that the note was written on 30 April shortly after Mao had met with the New Zealand prime minister Robert Muldoon, although Hua did not release details of the note or the note itself until after the


arrest of the Gang, presumably in an effort to fortify his credibility as Mao’s chosen successor. In any event as we will discuss in Chapter 6, a barely legible handwritten note penned by a gravely ill leader was an extremely fragile basis upon which to base the legitimacy of China’s next supreme leader. We have already examined some of the factors which may explain why Mao chose Hua as his successor, namely his ability as an administrator, his loyalty to Mao over the decades and his perceived role as a unifying figure within the party leadership. But there was surely also the belief in the back of Mao’s mind of a lack of credible alternative candidates to Hua. A detailed analysis of each of these alternatives is beyond the scope of this book. In part this has been done earlier in this chapter with reference to Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao and Li Xiannian. Deng, as we have seen, was no longer in the front line; Ye Jianying (like his PLA colleague Li) had probably been too close to Zhou Enlai; and Ji Dengkui who for a short while may have rivalled Hua as a potential successor was probably deemed too inexperienced at the highest level (although possibly no less experienced than Hua). The other two members of the Gang of Four, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan, would also have featured strongly in Mao’s thoughts and their zealous commitment to the Cultural Revolution would certainly have acted in their favour. Yet, ultimately, the strength of anti-radical feeling during the Tiananmen demonstrations must have convinced Mao that to leave any member of the Gang in charge would have been a deeply unpopular choice, both within the party leadership and throughout the country. Notwithstanding Mao’s belief that Hua had the potential to unite the party leadership, conflict remained rife at the elite level. The academic literature on this period focuses largely on the role played by the Gang of Four, although not all scholars agree on the extent to which that role was necessarily divisive. The majority, including, Starr (1976), Domes (1977a and 1977b) and Ye (1998, pp. 1–6) tend to portray the Gang as a constant thorn in Hua’s side during the last few months of Mao’s life. Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 497) suggest that this over-exaggerates the reality of the situation. They argue that the Gang (perhaps with the exception of Jiang Qing) actually supported Hua’s supreme position within the leadership. They do, however, acknowledge that there were several key areas of conflict between the Gang and Hua and this, it would seem, came to convince Hua that he simply could not trust the Gang to work together with him in the post-Mao era, contributing considerably to his decision to authorise their arrest.

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One of the main points of confrontation concerned the position taken on rural policy at the Dazhai Conference during the previous year (Zweig, 1989, pp. 67–9). We noted earlier the content of Hua’s Dazhai report which proposed a measured transition towards the establishment of brigades, a greater emphasis on mechanisation and a role, albeit limited, for private markets. Hua sought to reaffirm this position at a conference in Wuxi ( Jiangxi Province) in April only to be countered in the Gang-controlled media with articles in Red Flag and the People’s Daily accusing Deng (and by implication Hua) of abandoning the Cultural Revolution principles of continuous revolution and class struggle. Particular hostility was levelled at the use of party work teams to implement the Dazhai policy at the grass-roots level and this bore strong and ominous parallels to the conflict surrounding the role of the work teams in the SEM during the early 1960s in the prelude to the Cultural Revolution. The end result was unrest in some parts of rural China as the Gang sought to extend the escalating anti-Deng campaign into a quest against ‘class enemies’ in the countryside. According to Zweig (1989, p. 69) ‘in many locations private plots and household sidelines were attacked. The types of crops raised in private plots were restricted as well’. Other areas of assault by the Gang included Hua’s 1975 science and technology report (noted earlier) which the Gang labelled as one of the ‘three poisonous weeds’ (Wang, 1980, p. 109) and an attempted reversal of ‘Party Document no.16’ implemented by Hua in July 1975 which clamped down hard on party factionalism and radical activity at the local level (Forster, 1990, pp. 237–9). Yet, probably the most vitriolic attack on Hua came in the build up to and during a national planning work conference in July and August 1976 which was convened in order to revise the over-ambitious annual target of over seven per cent growth set for 1976 (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, pp. 505–11). A Politburo meeting was held on 25 June to discuss preparations for the seminar and this provided the Gang with an opportunity to attack Hua’s foreign trade policy. The importing of chemical fertiliser and exporting of crude oil was condemned as ‘selling out the country’ and Jiang and Zhang derided to those involved in the policy as ‘Han traitors’ and ‘slaves of foreigners’. When Hua defended the policy by pointing out that Mao himself had approved all the imported items, Jiang responded by saying, ‘you always use the Chairman to oppress people’. The conference itself was disrupted by Gang-initiated radical regional groups from Shanghai and elsewhere who indirectly accused Hua of instigating a ‘rightist wind’ and ‘restorationist high tide’, leading to the direct preventative intervention


of the Politburo. This sparked further elite conflict with Zhang insisting that local radicals should be allowed to express their opinions and issue a conference bulletin to this effect. It was at this stage that Hua acted decisively by stepping in and blocking such a move. It is widely argued in much of the foreign scholarship (which in effect reinforces the official narrative) that Mao’s death on 9 September 1976 served to intensify the Gang’s efforts to destabilise Hua’s position. This included alleged attempts made by Wang Hongwen to control all communications between Beijing and the regions to the exclusion of Hua, Jiang’s efforts to procure Mao’s private documents so that she could amend them to suit her political purposes and prejudice Hua’s, a bid by the Gang to organise a petition calling for Jiang to be made Party Chairman and the other three to receive senior posts (with no mention of Hua), the claim that Mao’s deathbed utterances identified Jiang as his successor not Hua and ultimately the well-documented allegations that the Gang were plotting a coup d’etat against Hua with the help of their Shanghai militia (Baum, 1994, p. 40; Yan and Gao, 1996, pp. 519–21; MacFarquhar, 1997, pp. 307–8). Onate (1978, pp. 560–1) and Forster (1992, pp. 282–3 and 289–90) are sceptical about some of these claims, especially the allegations of a coup for which, they suggest, the Gang were not militarily strong enough and Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 556) conclude very persuasively that the above claims ‘were either factually distorted, or failed to take into account the larger meaning of the situation’. Whatever the extent of the pressure exerted by the Gang on Hua, he clearly felt threatened enough by their imposing presence to authorise their arrest. On 5 October, Hua along with Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian (with whom he was forming an increasingly close alliance) called a Politburo meeting to the exclusion of the Gang where it was unanimously decided to arrest them and their main supporters. Wang Dongxing head of PLA Unit 8341 and the Secret Police (and also Mao’s former bodyguard) carried out this instruction the next day and this was quickly followed by another unanimous Politburo decision which appointed Hua as Chairman of the CCP and the CMC. Already Premier since April 1976, Hua now completed the full set. He was officially China’s paramount leader (Gittings, 2006, pp. 164–8). Wang Dongxing’s direct assistance in arresting the Gang was clearly pivotal and he formed part of a mini clique known as the Secret Police Left because of their experience in public security work (Domes, 1977b, p. 478). In addition to Wang, the group comprised Ji Dengkui as First Political Commissar of the Beijing Military Region, Chen Xilian in his capacity as head of the Beijing Military Region and Wu De as Mayor of

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Beijing. The Secret Police Left ensured that the city was militarily secure while Wang carried out the arrest and remained on high alert after the arrest to ensure that there were no outbreaks of violence or other types of unrest. Notwithstanding the vital support provided by the Secret Police Left as well as Ye and Li, we will see in the next chapter that there was a catch. In return for their help with dispatching the Gang, each of them expected preferential treatment from Hua once he was in power. However, their demands proved to be incompatible with the demands of other rival factions and served to increase pressure on Hua at a time when Deng was making his own political comeback. As a final point, it has often been suggested that Hua was reticent on the question of whether or not to arrest the Gang and that Ye and Li had to virtually twist his arm on the matter (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 310). There is something to this argument. Certainly, Ye and Li as veterans of the Long March were far more experienced than Hua in matters of high political office and were thus far more accustomed to making big decisions. It is also widely thought that Ye was Hua’s de facto guardian, entrusted by Mao on his deathbed to look after his younger colleague. Ye was therefore in a strong position to influence Hua. We should further note that both Ye and Li were sharply opposed to the radicalism embodied by the Gang of Four which they perceived, quite rightly, as a grave threat to the military establishment that they represented. They would therefore have been very keen to see the back of the Gang and no doubt very forceful in pushing for this. In response to the arguments above, Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 591) suggest that as the holder of the highest formal office in China, only Hua was in a position to issue directives that would be unquestionably accepted by the small number of people involved in arranging for the arrest of the Gang. That may well have been the case, but it still does not mean that Ye and Li were pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Far more persuasive is the observation that Hua’s leading role in ousting the Gang was acknowledged by the 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party (see Conclusion), published after Hua had been eclipsed as paramount leader when there would have been no need to credit him with such a deed: While arguably unfair to Wang Dongxing, the very fact that Hua retained pride of place at a time when he was being removed from the Party Chairmanship and falsely accused on all sorts of issues suggests that denying him rightful credit for his crucial role at this


seminal juncture in CCP history involved more distortion than even his enemies could countenance. (Teiwes and Sun, 2007, p. 591)

The pinnacle of power We have seen in this chapter how in just five-and-a-half short years Hua moved from almost complete obscurity on a national political scale to paramount leader shortly after Mao’s death, elevated ahead of others with far more experience and political acumen than Hua and possibly more ability too. Four key reasons have been put forward to explain Hua’s astronomical rise to the helm. First, Hua had shown himself to be an excellent administrator during his two decades in Hunan and then on moving to Beijing, often dealing with humdrum practical issues but dealing with them in a capable and eye-catching manner. One might say that what Hua lacked in allure and excitement, he made up for in competence. Second, with one or two exceptions, Hua had been extraordinarily loyal to Mao over the years, at pivotal times for Mao when Hua was in Hunan (which probably got him promoted to Beijing) and then in Beijing itself. It is clear from this that Mao trusted Hua to do the right thing by him after he was dead, although he may not have been entirely convinced that Hua was completely up to the job nor that he really had developed that ‘political nose’ that Mao desired of him. Third Mao saw Hua as a potentially unifying force, someone who had thus far managed to steer a middle course between the unrestrained radicalism of the Gang of Four and the perilous revisionism of Deng Xiaoping. If anyone could bring the two sides together in the post-Mao era, it was Hua, or at least that is what Mao thought. Finally, and closely related to the previous point was a lack of credible alternatives to Hua in Mao’s mind. Deng and the Gang were at opposite ends of undesirable extremes for Mao, while others such as Li Xiannian and Ye Jianying had been too close to Zhou (and thus Deng) and Ji Dengkui was simply too inexperienced. In this context, it might not be an exaggeration to suggest that Hua was the best of a bad bunch. Notwithstanding the rapidity of Hua’s ascent to the very pinnacle of Chinese politics, his journey to the top was far from unproblematic. On assuming his position in the Politburo in August 1973 Hua quickly came under attack by the Gang of Four, one of several targets of the Criticise Lin, Biao Criticise Confucius Campaign. As it became clear at the beginning of 1976 that Hua was the front-runner in the race to succeed Mao,

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the Gang intensified their attacks on him to such an extent that Hua moved against them shortly after Mao died, sweeping them away from the political scene by authorising their arrest. Deng meanwhile had departed the political arena, purged from office for a second time in just a few years primarily because of his refusal to endorse the principles of the Cultural Revolution. In his absence, Hua did him a massive favour by arresting his fiercest opponents. This was a real stroke of luck for Deng, removing what would have been a formidable obstacle to his return to political office. All that remained in Deng’s way was Hua himself who proved to be a much less formidable obstacle. It is to this period which we must now turn our attention.

6 The Return of Deng Xiaoping: Hua in Decline (1977–80)

We have traced in previous chapters Hua’s remarkable rise to the apex of the Chinese political system from his very modest beginnings in Shanxi during the 1930s and 1940s, his two decades rising steadily, albeit unspectacularly, through the political ranks in Hunan and then just five-and-a-half years in the central party apparatus in Beijing. As Hua assumed top spot as head of the party, the state and the military, it seemed, on the face of it, that his tenure was impregnable. Hua’s arguably decisive action in authorising the arrest of the Gang of Four removed a major impediment to his authority (particularly the removal of Jiang Qing) and met with widespread approval within the party and throughout the country. His most obvious challenger as paramount leader was Deng Xiaoping, but he was languishing in the political wilderness following a vociferous campaign against him that had culminated in his purge from office after the Tiananmen demonstrations of April 1976. Add to this, Hua’s closeness to Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian as well as his alliance with the Secret Police Left and Hua looked well set to remain in power indefinitely. Yet, it was not long before Hua discovered that institutional power did not guarantee political longevity. Despite the apparent supremacy of his position at the helm of China’s three institutions of power as well as the other political advantages described above, Hua was quickly eclipsed as paramount leader by a resurgent Deng Xiaoping whom Hua was forced to rehabilitate in July 1977. By 1981 Hua had been formally removed from each of his leadership posts, although in effect he relinquished political control at the landmark Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978. This amounted to just over two years in authority and just 15 months following Deng’s rehabilitation. If Hua’s rise to power was remarkable, his fall was even more so. 141

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This chapter examines the circumstances surrounding Hua’s demise. We will see how in effect Hua was up against it from the outset. First and foremost, Hua’s support base, despite outward appearances, was weak, founded as it turned out on a fragile coalition of factions which pulled in completely different directions and which crumbled all too easily under the manipulative hand of Deng Xiaoping and his allies. Second, as a beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution, Hua felt obliged (possibly mistakenly) to associate himself with the radical form of Maoism that embodied this tumultuous period, but which, in truth, no one really wanted anymore. Deng, by contrast, championed an earlier, more pragmatic, mode of Maoism which appealed to the vast majority of people who wanted to rebuild and rejuvenate China. Third, Hua’s ascendancy (and that of many of his followers) was achieved without recourse to the correct procedural sanctions and this raised doubts (with a little help from Deng) about the legality of his position at the helm. Finally, as a relatively unknown figure with a fairly ordinary political legacy, Hua lacked the charismatic authority enjoyed by his predecessor (Mao) and his challenger and successor (Deng), which was so fundamental to political leadership in China at the time.

Inheriting instability Hua’s reign as paramount leader was beset with difficulties from the very beginning. One of the most apparent was the unstable socio-economic environment that Hua inherited from Mao. Popular discontent following years of intense political warfare at both the central and local level was manifested through a sudden increase in labour unrest which included go-slows, full scale strikes and industrial sabotage. According to Domes (1985, pp. 140–1) workforce disturbances of one form or another significantly restricted output in at least 21 provinces. The railway system was a particular target of saboteurs, affecting at least 23 provinces. In Guizhou, Henan, Yunnan and Zhejiang it was only in March 1977 that trains began running again and in Anhui, Henan and Xinjiang the PLA had to be called up to restore operational service. Another form of public disorder were the frequent, often organised, attacks on party, government and PLA offices, many of which had to be quelled by military force. Unofficial estimates suggest that up to 50,000 people died during the unrest of winter 1976–7, a figure which does not include the spate of mass public executions enforced against those involved in the unrest (Domes, 1985, p. 141). Repressive tactics by the new Hua regime were not, however, altogether successful as smaller

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outbreaks of public and labour unrest and sabotage continued into the summer of 1977. As was typical during this era of ‘scapegoating’, the disturbances were officially blamed on alleged supporters of the now-detained and therefore ineffective Gang of Four. But this was a smokescreen. Those involved in the unrest came from a much broader cross-section of rural and urban society and included disaffected intellectuals and students as well as workers who were desperate to improve their standard of living. A loose coalition of these disenfranchised social forces came together to protest at China’s recent volatile past and to demand a completely new direction in party policy away from the radicalism of the Mao era (Domes, 1985, p. 142). Even at this early stage in Hua’s incumbency, many ordinary people clearly doubted his personal ability to restore ‘greatness’ to China as he had pledged to do on coming to power. This lack of public faith would have been confirmed by the release of statistics which showed that economic targets were not met during 1976 (partly because of the Tangshan earthquake)1 and losses during 1974–6 comprised 28 millions tons of steel, RMB100 billion in value of industrial production and RMB40 billion in state revenues. As MacFarquhar (1997, p. 314) suggests, ‘Hua had called for a return to “great order”, but Deng was more likely to bring it about’. It is quite possible that this atmosphere of discontent was not exclusive to the general public, with tensions also running high within senior party ranks. The popular unrest described above constituted a direct and immediate challenge to the party’s authority and wider legitimacy. The Cultural Revolution and its protracted political fallout demonstrated that, far from being a vanguard of the masses as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the party was palpably incapable of representing the interests of the people and more concerned with political infighting and leadership struggles. In this context there were real fears, most likely among the military establishment and party old guard, that the unrest could spill over into a more organised national uprising against the party. This made the need for stability all the more urgent and exerted further pressure on Hua as the new incumbent.

The reinstatement of Deng Xiaoping Before we assess the reasons behind Hua’s fall from power, it is necessary to examine the background to Deng’s return to the senior party apparatus. As noted already, following his purge earlier in the year, Deng was forced into political exile. The received wisdom (Teiwes,

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1984, p. 75; Baum, 1994, p. 36; Goodman, 1994, p. 85) is that Deng fled south to Guangzhou where he lay low under the military protection of Politburo members Xu Shiyou (Commander of the Guangzhou Military Region) and Wei Guoqing (head of the Guangdong provincial party and a former ally of Hua). However, Teiwes and Sun (2007, pp. 490–1) claim (with Teiwes correcting his earlier position) that Deng remained in semi-isolation in Beijing under the watchful eye of Wang Dongxing. Unofficial calls for Deng’s rehabilitation were posted on Beijing city walls on 8 January 1977 to mark the first anniversary of Zhou Enlai’s death. This was combined with other outward expressions of sympathy and support for Deng, including symbolically lining the boulevards of Beijing with small bottles, xiao ping in Chinese (albeit the characters are not the same as Deng’s ‘Xiaoping’). In February 1977 Xu and Wei sent a joint letter directly to Hua in which they raised three fundamental points (Domes, 1985, pp. 146–7).2 The first queried the continuation by the Hua leadership of radical Maoist policies (see later) and hinted that the party should undertake a candid re-evaluation of Mao’s political legacy (which it did in 1981). The second raised questions about the constitutional legitimacy of Hua’s appointment as CCP Chairman which was made during an ‘emergency session’ of the Politburo rather than by a plenary session of the Central Committee (also discussed later). Finally, the letter demanded the reversal of the verdict on Deng as a ‘right opportunist’ for his alleged role in the Tiananmen demonstrations and insisted that Hua immediately reinstate Deng to each of the positions he had occupied before his removal from office. Hua initially resisted calls to rehabilitate Deng. During a central party work conference in March he re-asserted the correctness of his post-Mao adherence to radical Maoism and refused to reverse the post-Tiananmen verdict on Deng. But after pressure both from provincial leaders (at least eight of them according to Domes (1985, p. 147)) and central party veterans including Chen Yun and more crucially Ye Jianying and Li Xianian (see below), Hua was forced to yield, and during a Politburo meeting later in March he agreed in principle to Deng’s return. Later, at the Third Plenum of the Tenth Central Committee in July, Deng was re-instated to all of his previous leadership positions: PSC member, Vice-Chairman of the CCP, Vice-Premier, Vice-Chairman of the CMC and PLA Chief of Staff. MacFarquhar (1997, pp. 313–14) suggests that Ye and Li, Hua’s two principal allies in the leadership, played an important role in persuading Hua to bring Deng back notwithstanding the dilemma in which this


placed them (although Bonavia (1977, p. 16) doubts Li’s involvement in this regard). On one hand they would have felt hesitant about the prospect of Deng’s restoration. In Deng’s absence they were able to dominate the political agenda. They were, after all, much more experienced than Hua and would probably have been able to manipulate their younger colleague from behind the scenes. If Deng returned they would be forced to relinquish much of their power to him. On the other hand, both men acknowledged the increasing volume of support for Deng’s return and probably realised that it would be futile and potentially divisive to continue to impede Deng’s rehabilitation. They must also have recognised that only Deng was capable of restoring popular faith in the party through a much-needed programme of socio-economic reform, although they (and Deng himself) could never have predicted just how far the reforms would go. MacFarquhar (1997, p. 314) further notes that in return for his recall to the leadership Deng had to be persuaded (possibly by Wang Dongxing) to make certain concessions to Hua and the Hua leadership, although there is some dispute over this. In the 1975–82 volume of his selected works, Deng (1984, pp. 51–2) insists that he refused to make any compromises and MacFarquhar (1997, p. 314) concurs with Deng on this point, suggesting that in a letter to the Central Committee on 10 April Deng condemned Hua’s Two Whatevers (for more, see later) and ‘proposed instead the use of “genuine Mao Zedong Thought taken as an integral whole”’. MacFarquhar also suggests that we cannot be sure if Deng indicated in the letter whether or not he would support Hua (unlikely given his alleged opposition to the Two Whatevers) because the letter has never been published. Unless Deng wrote two letters to Hua on exactly the same day which seems unlikely given that their content would have been poles apart, MacFarquhar’s position is erroneous for two reasons. First, the 10 April letter has indeed been published and featured in the volume of party documents prepared by Myers, Domes and Yeh in 1995; so MacFarquhar could have easily accessed this letter. Second, the letter itself is wholly supportive of Hua and does not contain any of the criticisms that MacFarquhar suggests. Instead Deng states categorically that ‘I completely support Chairman Hua’s fundamental policy of “grasp the key link of class struggle and bring about the great order across the country” as well as the measures to take care of various immediate issues and related working arrangements’ (Myers, Domes and Yeh, 1995, p. 175). In fact there is evidence that Deng supported Hua’s leadership (albeit nominally) from the very beginning of Hua’s incumbency. In a letter

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to Hua on 10 October 1976 Deng stated that not only was Hua ‘politically and ideologically the best suitable successor to Chairman Mao, but age-wise he can also ensure the stability of the proletarian leadership to last for fifteen or twenty years’ (Myers, Domes and Yeh, 1995, p. 174–5). Deng further noted with reference to the arrest of the Gang of Four that ‘the Central Committee headed by Comrade Kuo-feng [Guofeng] vanquished those bad elements and achieved a great victory. This is the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie’ (Myers, Domes and Yeh, 1995, p. 175). Deng’s immediate written support for Hua therefore sheds doubt over claims by MacFarquhar that Deng had to be strong-armed into openly supporting the Hua leadership. Notwithstanding this or the apparent confusion over the content of Deng’s 10 April letter, in neither case, so it turned out, was Deng sincere in his support for Hua. This became apparent almost as soon as Deng resurfaced at the centre.

Contesting the mantle of Mao During the ensuing leadership contest between Hua and Deng, both men borrowed heavily from Mao’s political legacy. Although the calamity of the Cultural Revolution had cast a huge shadow over the wisdom of Mao’s ideas and methods, Mao, in memoriam, remained greatly revered among party and masses alike. In this context, Hua and Deng knew that in order to establish their own individual legitimacy in the quest to succeed Mao they would need to pay homage to Mao. The problem was finding aspects of Mao’s heritage that were still deemed to be credible and as will become evident, Hua clearly failed in this respect. In seeking to draw on Mao in this way Hua and Deng attempted to bolster what Max Weber (1964, pp. 341–58) calls their traditional legitimacy. Put simply, the theory of traditional legitimacy refers to the application of political concepts and methods of governance that stretch back through the ages and which are therefore familiar to and (arguably) popular with the population. Claims of traditional legitimacy usually apply to the prevailing patterns of the pre-modern era, namely the Confucian period in China’s case, but this is by no means a pre-requisite. In both a Soviet (Lane, 1984) and a PRC context (Weatherley, 2006, pp. 9–10), such claims have also drawn on the ruling communist party’s own traditions (the CPSU and the CCP respectively). As Hua and Deng battled it out to succeed Mao, both of them looked to shore up their own traditional legitimacy by pledging to continue with certain Maoist traditions, albeit very different aspects of this tradition.


Hua’s radical Maoism Hua wedded himself to the more radical form of Maoism. On the political/ideological front this manifested itself in a close adherence to the militant principles of the Cultural Revolution, notwithstanding his appeal for calm and political unity in the new post-Mao era. As he declared during his Political Report to the Eleventh National Party Congress in August 1977: Stability and unity do not mean writing off class struggle. The victorious conclusion of the first Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution certainly does not mean the end of class struggle or of the continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Throughout the historical period of socialism the struggle between the two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and between the two roads, socialism and capitalism, continues to exist. The struggle will be protracted and tortuous and at times even very sharp. (Myers, Domes and Yeh, 1995, p. 205) Remarkably, given the turmoil created by the Cultural Revolution, Hua continued: Political revolution [in the form of the Cultural Revolution] will take place many times in the future. We must follow Chairman Mao’s teachings and continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat to the end, gradually eliminate the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, bring about the triumph of socialism over capitalism and eventually realize our ultimate goal – communism. (Myers, Domes and Yeh, 1995, p. 205) MacFarquhar (1997, pp. 311–12) suggests that Hua had little alternative but to bind himself to the Cultural Revolution in this way. This is because as one of the principal beneficiaries of the era, Hua was obliged to remain loyal to this most radical of Maoist campaigns and the philosophy of class struggle and continuous revolution that underpinned it. As MacFarquhar (1997, p. 312) puts it: To disavow the Cultural Revolution would be to undermine the position of the man who had chosen him as his successor, and indeed to negate the whole period whose upheavals had permitted Hua to rise from relative obscurity to his current eminence.

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But is it altogether accurate to argue that there was no other option for Hua in this regard? As we have seen in previous chapters, although Hua was indeed a beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution, he was an establishment beneficiary, propelled more directly into the central political arena in Hunan after the 1967 retreat from extremism to help restore order and normality to the province and then promoted to Beijing to continue with the normalisation process but on a national scale. There is little to suggest that Hua was a particularly zealous exponent of the Cultural Revolution (unlike, for example, Jiang Qing or Wang Hongwen) which makes his radical proclamations quoted above appear all the more peculiar and out of place. During the zenith of the campaign, Hua was targeted at least twice by radical Red Guard groups and may well have fallen victim to the campaign, so he was unlikely to be a particularly strong advocate of it. Nor is there any evidence that Hua was naturally inclined towards Maoist radicalism during his time in Beijing. As we saw in the previous chapter, much of Hua’s work following his promotion to the capital related to the rehabilitation of purged officials and during 1975 he took a decidedly moderate stance on the science and technology and agricultural sectors. In light of this, Hua might well have sought to adopt a more moderate approach to Mao’s political legacy, possibly supporting the Cultural Revolution in a more understated manner without resorting to the emotive rhetoric that we would have associated more with the deeply unpopular Gang of Four. Moreover, given that Hua believed the ‘first Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ had reached its ‘glorious conclusion’, did he really have to commit himself to another one? Clearly, he felt that he did. How did Hua’s post-Mao radical line on the Cultural Revolution differ from that espoused by the Gang of Four, who, after all, had only recently been arrested under Hua’s authority for being too radical and were now publicly vilified as enemies of the people? In truth there was little, if any, difference between the two positions. This similarity between Hua and the Gang created an obvious problem for Hua. So the solution required some creative thinking. The Gang, according to official hindsight, were extreme ‘rightists’ and had only pretended to be radical supporters of Mao in order to ingratiate themselves with him and so further their careers. This explanation was ironic in the extreme since it was precisely the line that the Gang had used to distance themselves from Lin Biao’s radical legacy following Lin’s demise in 1971. Hua’s economic pronouncements were equally radical. During the Fifth National People’s Congress in February 1978 Hua recalled the


formula used by Mao during the Great Leap Forward by proposing a strategy of reliance on communal farming and mass mobilisation to achieve ambitious production targets in agriculture and light industry. As Mao had done 20 years earlier, Hua asserted the importance of taking grain as ‘the key link’ in the push to produce ‘more better, faster and cheaper’ (Saich, 2001, p. 50). Such wild proclamations would no doubt have sounded ominously familiar to those who remembered the catastrophic failure of the Leap. In industry, Hua proposed the adoption of a new Ten Year Plan (1976–85) aimed at increasing steel output by 150 per cent and oil output by over 200 per cent. This would include establishing 120 major industrial projects and 14 new heavy industry plants (Fang, 1984, pp. 595–6; Swaine, 1986; Saich, 2001, p. 50). Two examples were set for the whole country to emulate. In agriculture Hua resurrected the Dazhai model that he had outlined in 1975, although as we saw in Chapter 5 this was not a particularly radical approach. In industry Hua referenced the Daqing oilfield in Heilongjiang. Hua estimated that by 1980 one third of all industrial enterprises would mirror the Daqing model while one third of all counties would adopt the Dazhai model by the same end date (Kallgren, 1979, pp. 12–13). In an effort to reinforce the message that only Hua was the true successor to Mao, a number of other measures were undertaken by the new Hua administration. Almost immediately after the arrest of the Gang of Four, Hua’s allies in the propaganda apparatus began circulating details of the April 1976 exchange between Mao and Hua noted in the previous chapter when Mao is thought to have handed over power with the legitimising words, ‘with you in charge, I am at ease’. By way of evidence, the barely decipherable note containing these words was exhibited in Beijing’s military museum for all to see and was published widely by the press and other sources.3 Using this as a starting point, and with the help of his main ally Wang Dongxing, Hua adopted a political slogan which he hoped would bind him permanently to Mao’s legacy: ‘[W]hatever policy Chairman Mao decided upon, we shall resolutely defend; whatever directives Chairman Mao issued, we shall steadfastly obey’, otherwise known as the Two Whatevers (liang ge fanshi) (Ye, 1998, pp. 172–5). The choice of slogan proved to be unfortunate since it enabled Deng to portray Hua and his key followers (and members of the Secret Police Left) Wang Dongxing, Chen Xilian, Wu De and Ji Dengkui as both incapable of making their own decisions and slavish in their adherence to Mao, thereby lacking the imagination and creativity required to guide China towards political and socio-economic recovery. Ultimately, they became known in derisory terms as the ‘whateverists’ (fanshezhe).

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Hua also attempted to develop his very own cult of personality, so desperately needed if this barely known successor to Mao was ever to establish a name for himself. So, for example, a plethora of literature was published which greatly embellished Hua’s revolutionary activities in the 1930s and 1940s and exaggerated his personal and political relationship with Mao. According to Schram (1984, p. 417fn) at least 300 books and pamphlets on Hua were placed in Beijing University library (some of which have been reviewed in this book) and this, Schram estimates, was only a fraction of those published throughout the rest of the country. In addition, scores of portraits and wall posters were produced featuring ‘Chairman Hua’ as China’s new paramount leader. In some Hua stood side-by-side with Mao, presumably in the hope that some of Mao’s personal authority might rub-off on him. In those in which Hua stood alone, it is rumoured (perhaps maliciously) that he tried to adopt the same pose as Mao and sometimes even the same hairstyle.4 Finally, Hua announced that he would personally edit a fifth volume of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, although many of Mao’s speeches were conveniently ‘amended’ to suit Hua’s purposes (Schram, 1977). Hua also announced that he was arranging for Mao’s memory to be honoured by housing the late Chairman in a giant mausoleum at the south end of Tiananmen Square, where it still stands today (Wagner, 1992). In so doing, Hua contradicted a decision made by the Central Committee in March 1949 prohibiting the public glorification of CCP leaders by entombing them in mausolea, celebrating the anniversary of their birthdays or using their names for places or streets. As MacFarquhar (1997, p. 312) concludes, by authorising the construction of the Mao mausoleum, ‘Hua had no doubt of Mao’s continuing significance for himself; he, and presumably his fellow beneficiaries, wanted to try and ensure that Mao’s continuing significance for the country would be set in marble’. Deng’s pragmatic Maoism Just as Hua associated himself with the radical form of Maoism, Deng embraced an altogether more moderate version. Following his reinstatement to all leadership posts in July 1977, Deng emerged as a fervent exponent of Seek Truth from Facts, a concept drawn from an essay that Mao wrote as a young man. In it Mao emphasised the importance of linking theory (i.e. ideology) with practice so that if a particular theory did not prove consonant with the practical realities of the day it would be necessary to take a more flexible and pragmatic approach to the application of that theory and possibly even to revise it. In this way, policy issues were to be governed less by rigid adherence to ideological


dogma and more by contemporary practical considerations. This ultimately provided a platform for Deng’s policies on economic reform and ‘opening up’ to the outside world, although it is erroneous to suggest that at this stage Deng had a specific package or programme in mind. The first real indication that Deng intended to adopt the Seek Truth position came during the Eleventh National Party Congress, just one month after Deng’s rehabilitation. While Hua, as paramount leader, sought to dominate the event by, among other things, opening the conference with a seven-hour speech, Deng effectively caught everyone’s attention right at the end of the conference with an eight-minute concluding address. In it, he stated that ‘we must revive and carry forward the practice of seeking truth from facts, the fine tradition and style which Chairman Mao fostered on our Party’ (Myers, Domes and Yeh, 1995, p. 251). Then, in a subtle dig at Hua’s extravagant economic target setting (conveniently only footnoted in the published form of Hua’s political report), Deng noted that ‘we must reject flashiness without substance and every sort of boasting. There must be less empty talk and more hard work. We must be steadfast and dedicated’ (Myers, Domes and Yeh, 1995, p. 251). Tactically, the adoption of the Seek Truth principle was a stroke of genius since it allowed Deng to challenge Hua’s authority as Mao’s chosen successor without appearing to be anti-Mao. Quite the contrary. As Deng looked for support in his quest to oust Hua, he argued that Seek Truth from Facts was a return to the best traditions of Maoism and the only genuine way of understanding and applying Mao’s ideas to modern Chinese conditions. In this way, as Schram (1984, p. 419) points out, the Seek Truth principle ‘not only made good sense but it was doctrinally sound’. Remarkably, Deng was trying to play Hua at his own game by presenting himself as the only genuine inheritor of the Maoist legacy. This was an audacious claim by someone whose relationship with Mao had often been fraught (particularly after the Great Leap Forward) and who had been purged by Mao on two occasions. It was also evident that in espousing the views articulated by the young Mao, Deng was associating himself with a much more credible concept than the discredited militant ideas of Mao’s later years to which Hua had unwisely entangled himself. As we shall discuss later, Deng’s choice of moderate Maoism in contrast to Hua’s adherence to the more radical form was crucial in determining Deng’s rise and Hua’s demise. Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. xv) suggest that the depiction of Hua and Deng at opposite extremes or even on different sides is fundamentally flawed. Referring to an as yet unpublished work titled Hua Guofeng,

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Deng Xiaoping and the Road to the Third Plenum, 1976–78, they purport to ‘challenge the dominant view of the period up to the Third Plenum as involving both a relatively clear-cut policy conflict between lingering Maoism and emerging “reform”, as well as an on-going power struggle between Hua and Deng’.5 Clearly, given that the Teiwes and Sum volume is currently unpublished, it is difficult for us to assess the wisdom or accuracy of such an ambitious statement. It certainly appears on the face of it that Deng and Hua were not at opposite ends of the political spectrum during 1975 when the two men worked together at the highest level of government (although it is not clear just how closely they worked together). We saw in the last chapter, for example, that Hua and Deng were basically aligned (at least outwardly) over the content of Hua’s Dazhai report on agriculture, contrary to popular scholarly opinion. Yet, as suggested previously, Deng was under considerable pressure during 1975 to conform to the parameters set by an increasingly volatile Mao in order to retain Mao’s tenuous support for his position as de facto head of state. Deng was therefore unlikely to oppose Hua (palpably, one of Mao’s ‘favourites’ at the time) on this or any other aspect of government policy at that time. The same pressures also applied to Hua. He too would have been very conscious of retaining Mao’s support and would most likely have kept quiet over any differences he may secretly have harboured with Deng, who after all was his immediate superior within the government structure. As such, any unity between the two men during 1975 was probably down to the political constraints imposed upon them by Mao at the time. But with Mao gone and Hua anointed as his successor things changed dramatically as matters quickly polarised. Hua, in what proved to be an unnecessary tactical error chose radical Maoism as the basis of his legitimacy. Meanwhile Deng, without the heavy constraints imposed upon him by Mao, was free to adopt his own more moderate position and attack Hua without incurring Mao’s wrath. This is exactly what he did.

Dismantling Hua’s fragile coalition In terms of Hua’s key allies in the party leadership, we saw in the previous chapter how his emergence as paramount leader was greatly facilitated by the assistance given to him from senior colleagues within the party, most notably Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian and the Secret Police Left. This was particularly the case regarding the decision to and physical act of arresting the Gang of Four. But as Deng returned to the political


centre he brought with him his own supporters, who according to Fontana (1982, pp. 241–2) were staunchly opposed to Hua and sought to dismantle his power base. One group of supporters comprised military commanders from southern China, most notably Wei Guoqing and Xu Shiyou who had played a key role in facilitating Deng’s rehabilitation. A second group consisted of rehabilitees from the Cultural Revolution, including key members of the Long March generation such as Chen Yun and Yao Yilin as well as the younger generation of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, both of whom came to represent the dynamism of reform during the 1980s. Before we examine the challenges to Hua posed by Deng and his allies, it was apparent even without these challenges that Hua had his hands full trying to keep his own coalition of supporters welded together. The main problem was that the interests represented by Ye, Li and the Secret Police Left were largely incompatible and forced Hua into making promises that he could not keep as Fontana (1982, pp. 247–8) has explained and as are summarised below. This was most evident during the heated debate over the future direction of the economy and in particular the question of where best to channel state resources. On one side of the debate was the Secret Police Left who, in an effort to alleviate the social unrest of the post-Mao era, proposed that living standards be raised through an increase in state investment in light industry and the production of consumer goods, as well as increases in agricultural subsidies. These were just some of the demands made by the Secret Police Left in return for backing Hua against the Gang in 1976, although in truth it was not a huge concession for Hua to make given his entrenched background in agriculture and light industry. In opposition to these proposals stood Li Xiannian and his supporters, whom Fontana (1982, p. 239) calls the Oil Kingdom Faction. Notwithstanding his military background, Li also represented the oldfashioned Stalinist model of the command economy which encouraged state investment in heavy industry at the expense of the light industrial and agricultural sectors. In addition, Li’s group wanted to develop China’s newly emerging petroleum industry in north-west China which again would divert state money away from light industry and agriculture. Just as he had done with his colleagues in the Secret Police Left, Hua had promised to support Li’s interests in exchange for his support in removing the Gang and facilitating Hua’s own rise to power. Clearly, however, these promises were contradictory. Ye Jianying’s continued support was dependant upon increased state investment in the military, particularly in the northern region

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of China that he represented and which Fontana (1982, p. 239) refers to as the Northern Military Alliance. Ye and his supporters (many of whom had ties to Lin Biao) remained hostile to the Soviet Union (as Lin had been) and insisted that state resources were desperately needed to equip China’s ground army and depleted air force in the north for the inevitability of war along the vast Soviet/Chinese border. But this would require money to be taken both from the agricultural and light industrial sectors as represented by the Secret Police Left and the heavy industrial and petroleum sectors as represented by the Oil Kingdom Faction. As Hua tried to please everyone, Deng accentuated Hua’s problems by deliberately stirring up trouble between his allies. In direct contradiction to the demands made by the Northern Military Alliance, Deng encouraged Wei Guoqing and Xu Shiyou to call for money to be invested in the modernisation of the southern military region, particularly in the navy. In making these demands Wei and Xu argued that the military threat to China did not come from the Soviet Union in the north, but from Vietnam which was threatening China’s offshore islands in the south. This, in turn, precipitated further calls from Ye Jianying for money to go northwards and thus heaped pressure on the increasingly beleaguered Hua (Fontana, 1982, p. 248). In seeking to weaken Hua’s alliance with Li Xiannian, Deng let it be known via the rumour mill that he believed Li should be China’s Premier, not by implication Hua. Deng also pushed hard for Lin Hujia (an ally of Li) to replace Wu De (an ally of Hua) as Mayor of Beijing which he did in 1978. In addition, Deng openly supported Li’s calls for greater investment in heavy industry and the petroleum sector, intentionally undermining Hua’s preference for investment in agriculture and light industry (Fontana, 1982, p. 248). Fontana (1982, pp. 245–6) suggests that the most destructive of Deng’s supporters was probably Zhao Ziyang, head of the Sichuan provincial party.6 No doubt encouraged by Deng himself, Zhao (shortly to succeed Hua as Premier) repeatedly disregarded Hua’s central directives on the collectivisation of agriculture (both men had competing claims to be China’s leading expert in this sector) and instead implemented in Sichuan an experimental, decentralised system of farming which allowed families to farm their own much smaller plots of land without undue interference from the state (Qian, 1999, pp. 5–6). This model (and variants of it) soon caught on in other provinces (e.g. Anhui) in direct contradiction of Hua’s central directives on agriculture, demonstrating a


emphatic disdain for Hua’s authority at the local level (see more below) and eventually became official state policy in the form of the household responsibility system. Zhao also snubbed Hua’s authority by belatedly acknowledging Hua’s ‘appointment’ as paramount leader. For example, Zhao declined to endorse Hua at a provincial rally in Chengdu in 1976 and ensured that it took more than three weeks after the event for the Sichuan Daily to announce news of Hua’s succession to Mao. Teiwes and Sun (2007, p. 359) dispute what they regard as an erroneous conventional view that Zhao and Hua were arch-enemies. They suggest that Hua and Zhao developed a healthy respect for each other when both were in charge of agriculture in their respective provinces (Guangdong and Hunan) before the Cultural Revolution. This manifested itself during the debate over Hua’s 1975 Dazhai report when Zhao and his supporters ‘acknowledged that the Dazhai report was worthy of admiration and did not attack it, although they thought its nationwide implementation would be disruptive given the great diversity of local conditions’. The authors also claim that Zhao and Hua held similar views on the household responsibility system, although they do not elaborate on this.7

Securing the provinces As well as eroding Hua’s support base at the centre, Deng concentrated his efforts on building up a network of support at the provincial level. This turned out to be one of the key factors in his eventual victory over Hua, who for his part became almost obsessed with balancing the divergent interests of his allies at the centre in the naïve belief that if he controlled the centre he would simultaneously control the rest of China. As a consequence, Hua neglected his provincial supporters thereby allowing Deng to step in and fill the void. Such a gross tactical oversight was puzzling, to say the least. As we saw in Chapter 2, Mao had shown during the 1955 debate over rural collectivisation just how vital the provinces could be in forcing the centre into line after his careful persuasion of provincial leaders and junior officials during an extensive tour of the provinces successfully overturned central policy which had set more modest targets on collectivisation than Mao desired. Hua had first-hand experience of this. As an official in Hunan, he had actually met Mao during his provincial tour and supported Mao’s position in direct contradiction to the wishes of Zhou Xiaozhou. Moreover, Hua had even attended the Central Committee

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meeting in October 1955 when votes were cast to officially sanction Mao’s position. Yet it was Deng rather than Hua who seemed to have learnt from this experience. Notwithstanding Deng’s concerted attempts to undermine Hua’s governance of the centre noted in the section above, Deng’s central support base was still relatively weak by comparison. In assessing the make up of the Politburo after the Eleventh National Party Congress in August 1977, Domes (1985, pp. 150–1) notes that of the 23 full members of the Politburo, Deng had the definite support of only 9 (including himself ) while Hua could depend on 7 votes. The balance of power was held by the other 7 members, each of whom were expected to vote with Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian. All the while that Ye and Li remained loyal to Hua, Deng was politically hamstrung. This made it imperative for Deng to pursue a provincial route to power. In constructing a network of provincial support, Fontana (1982, pp. 249–50) suggests that Deng employed a three-pronged attack which in effect amounted to removing Hua’s supporters and replacing them with his own. He began by consolidating his support base in those areas where he already wielded considerable authority such as the foreign ministry. This included dispatching Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister Qiao Guanhua (although Qiao was much closer to Jiang Qing than Hua) along with opponents from other government departments, the navy and the southern provinces. Shortly afterwards Deng launched a vigorous rehabilitation campaign to reinstate provincial cadres who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution. Tactically, this was a very astute move since, in so doing, Deng automatically acquired the loyalty of a large group of experienced cadres. Furthermore, as Deng probably realised, they were in the main willing to implement the kind of socio-economic reforms that Deng had in mind given the inevitable hostility they felt towards the old Maoist system which had treated them so badly during the Cultural Revolution. Deng then placed many of these rehabilitees in the Revolutionary Committees that were set up after 1967 following the retreat from the Cultural Revolution. These newly reinstated officials wasted no time in wresting control from the incumbents, who, as beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution like Hua, were generally much younger and less experienced and so were easily out-manoeuvred and intimidated by their more senior counterparts. Many of the returning senior cadres were only too happy to settle old scores with those who had been promoted at their expense.


In tandem with the rehabilitation process, Deng spearheaded a comprehensive purge of Hua’s supporters within the provincial apparatus. This task was achieved with surprising ease since most of Hua’s allies at the local level were effectively tainted by their links with disgraced radical groups such as the Lin Biao clique and the Gang of Four. In culling Hua’s allies, all Deng had to do was remind people of this fact. As Fontana (1982, p. 250) explains: Since all the leftist and center-leftist groups [now associated with Hua] had at one time either worked with or supported the now proscribed Gang of Four or Lin Biao factions, attacking them through their past connections was merely a matter of dredging up past history. With the provinces lining up to support Deng, he now needed to find a way of using them to topple the intransigent political centre. He achieved this by bringing his Seek Truth position to the very forefront of the political agenda through the medium of the national press. On 11 May 1978, the Guangming Daily published an article entitled ‘Practice is the Sole Criterion of Truth’ (although Womack (1979) suggests that similar views were expressed in February 1978). The article, originally penned by Hu Fuming, a philosophy professor from Nanjing University, was heavily revised by theoreticians sympathetic to Deng. In it, the author applauded the pragmatic approach of Seek Truth from Facts and implicitly criticised Hua’s stance that the truth derived from whatever Mao had decreed. As Deng and his allies had hoped, the article was quickly republished in the People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily, bringing it to a much wider public audience (Hao and Duan, 1984, pp. 680–3). Then, in seeking to capitalise on this advantage, Deng reiterated the importance of Seek Truth during a speech he gave at the AllArmy Political Work Conference on 2 June, which Hua also addressed but pointedly avoided making any reference to Seek Truth. Here, Deng carefully selected quotations from Mao’s early works to demonstrate his commitment to Mao’s finest traditions and concluded by asking: Is not seeking truth from facts, proceeding from reality and integrating theory with practice the fundamental viewpoint of Mao Zedong Thought? Is this fundamental viewpoint outdated and will it ever become outdated? How can we be loyal to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought if we are opposed to seeking truth from facts, proceeding from reality and integrating theory with practice?

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To where would that lead us? Obviously, that would only lead us to idealism and metaphysics, to losses in our works and setbacks in our revolution. (RMRB, 1978, p. 1) Deng’s speech had the desired effect. On 24 June the Liberation Army Daily published its own article in support of Deng’s Seek Truth standpoint, insisting that any attempt to ‘revise’ Mao Zedong Thought was not a form of ‘revisionism’, a derisory term directed at alleged opponents of Mao during the Cultural Revolution, but was in keeping with the strictures of orthodox Marxism. This article was immediately republished in the People’s Daily. Then on 1 August the Liberation Army Daily reinforced Deng’s new line in an editorial commemorating the 51st anniversary of the 1927 Nanjing Uprising (against the KMT). Again, the People’s Daily followed suit by republishing the article (Domes, 1985, p. 157). As Deng had anticipated, the nationwide publicity given to Seek Truth by the press precipitated an intense debate within local party organs as scores of party-sponsored conferences on the subject were convened all over China. It was at this juncture that the recent consolidation of Deng’s local support base paid dividends as provincial leaders lined up to support Deng. By mid-September, at least ten provinces threw their weight behind the Seek Truth cause. By early November Deng had the backing of all China’s provinces (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 319). The rapid build up of provincial support for Deng forced the centre inexorably into line. Two of the first to shift allegiance were Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian. Although both moved more towards a middle ground between Hua and Deng rather than firmly into the Deng camp, this was still significant in that it deprived Hua of his two most senior and powerful allies. It also meant that the 7 members of the Politburo who indirectly supported Hua through his and their alliance with Li and Ye likewise moved away from Hua. Li and Ye’s desertion galvanised key veteran party figures into action such as Chen Yun and Tan Zhenlin who demanded a reassessment of the injustices of the Cultural Revolution (Hao and Duan, 1984, p. 689). From here, Hua had little choice but to concede further ground (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 319). His first move was to reverse the verdict on the Tiananmen incident such that rather than being ‘counter-revolutionary’ it was now classified as ‘completely revolutionary’. By implication, the verdict on Deng as a ‘right opportunist’ for his alleged involvement in the incident was reversed. Hua then gave his consent to commence the official process of rehabilitating


victims of the Cultural Revolution, although as we have seen, Deng had unofficially started this process (at the local level) some months earlier.

The Third Plenum The key turning point in the Hua/Deng leadership struggle came at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee held during December 1978 (Ye, 1998, pp. 193–5). It was here that the scales of power tipped decisively in Deng’s favour. With the rehabilitation process firmly under way, a number of fervent Deng supporters were reinstated or appointed for the first time to influential positions of authority. The most influential returnee was Chen Yun who was restored as a member of the PSC following his purge in 1966. Crucially, this meant that of the six PSC members, four (Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, Ye Jianying and Deng himself) were pro-Deng leaving only Hua and Wang Dongxing representing the Hua camp. At the Politburo level, the appointment of Deng Yingchao (Zhou Enlai’s widow), PLA veteran Wang Zhen and (soon to be General Secretary) Hu Yaobang gave Deng a clear advantage over Hua since, of the 27 Politburo members, 12 were Dengists, 7 were Huaists and 8 were ‘neutrals’, but, as allies of Ye and Li, were now thought to be more pro-Deng than pro-Hua. At the Central Committee level, a total of nine purged officials, all of whom were Deng’s allies, returned as full members of the Central Committee, including the veterans Huang Kecheng, Chen Zaidao, Song Renqiong and Hu Qiaomu (Domes, 1985, pp. 162–3; MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 320). The Third Plenum also oversaw the restructuring of key party bodies which had the effect of further fortifying Deng’s position at the helm. Most notably, steps were taken to dismantle the Central Committee General Office which had been established in place of the Secretariat at the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution and Wang Dongxing was removed as its head. In its place, steps were taken to recreate the Secretariat (albeit in embryonic form at this stage) with Hu Yaobang put in charge (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 320). As the balance of power shifted towards Deng, delegates to the Third Plenum began to distance themselves from Hua, voting to jettison his Maoist stance on continuous revolution and class struggle and rejecting his ‘whateverist’ approach to Mao’s policies and directives. On the economy, Hua’s wildly ambitious Ten-Year Plan was ignored altogether and alternative plans were set out by Chen Yun for a more measured and rational programme of industrial growth founded in part on the post-Great Leap Forward model of the early 1960. Delegates also

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recommended a complete overhaul of China’s largely unproductive rural economic policy, discarding Hua’s Dazhai model in favour of what was to become the household responsibility system of small, family-run plots of land (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 320–1). Perhaps the biggest blow for Hua was the revised party line on the legacy of Mao Zedong which differed significantly from the position espoused by Hua just 18 months earlier at the Eleventh National Party Congress. From now on, Mao was to be referred to not as ‘Chairman Mao’ but simply as ‘comrade Mao’. This principle was also to be applied to subsequent party leaders (including Deng) in a clear attempt to move away from the destructive personality cult politics of the Mao era. Similarly, the Third Plenum acknowledged that Mao was a ‘great’ Marxist but no longer described him as the ‘greatest’ Marxist. It was further proposed that any future pronouncements made by party leaders should be referred to as such and not as ‘directives’ or ‘orders’ in an effort to present a more collective approach to the decision making process (Ye, 1998, p. 199).

Utilising Democracy Wall As support gathered for Deng inside the confines of the party apparatus, so it gathered outside, initially from China’s literary intellectuals (i.e. writers and artists). Vilified at regular intervals under Mao, writers and artists were invariably prohibited from expressing themselves freely. Instead, in keeping to the austere boundaries laid down by the 1942 Yanan Conference on Art and Literature (as noted in Chapter 1) they were restricted by the protocol which dictated that all forms of art and literature should be devoted exclusively to serving the cause of Chinese communism (MacDougall, 1980). The brief lapse in political control created by the Hua/Deng power struggle gave intellectuals a rare opportunity to break free from their state-imposed Maoist straightjackets and for the first time since the Hundred Flowers scores of books and articles were written on issues that did not conform to Yanan prescriptions. Attention focused on the traumas of China’s recent past as writers in particular came forward to express the personal suffering endured during the Maoist zenith of political campaigns and mass purges, especially the Cultural Revolution. This signalled the beginning of a new genre in Chinese literature appropriately referred to as ‘scar literature’ or the ‘literature of the wounded’ (Barme, 1993). By articulating the day-to-day misery that underpinned the Cultural Revolution, Chinese writers legitimised Deng’s cause in two interrelated ways. Without mentioning his name specifically, they successfully


besmirched Hua’s political reputation as someone who continued during the post-Mao era to espouse the wisdom of the Cultural Revolution. This, by implication, bolstered Deng’s image as a much-needed reformer, someone who could bring economic growth and political stability to China after decades of turmoil and uncertainty. Deng also benefited from the support of China’s urban work force and disenfranchised former Red Guards who, joined by exponents of ‘scar literature’, formed part of a new movement that became known as Democracy Wall. As delegates gathered for the Third Plenum, calligraphy posters began appearing on walls in central Beijing and throughout all major Chinese cities expressing candid opinions on a number of sensitive political issues (Brodsgaard, 1981; Goodman, 1981). The Cultural Revolution was again the focal point and Mao was criticised for masterminding the campaign and for lending his support to Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. Other posters concentrated on the redundant policies of Hua’s ‘whateverist’ faction, depicting Hua as a puppet controlled by Mao from beyond the grave and bitterly condemning Hua and Wang Dongxing for the suppression of the Tiananmen movement in April 1976. Another popular theme was the optimism symbolised by the theory of the Four Modernisations (in agriculture, industry, defence and science and technology) developed by Zhou Enlai, and several posters endorsed Deng Xiaoping as Zhou’s obvious successor as Premier, thereby implicitly opposing Hua’s continued incumbency. Ever the Machiavellian, Deng was quick to utilise the new movement in an effort to undermine Hua’s authority, as Fontana (1982, pp. 252–3) explains. First, Deng used it to broaden and accelerate his ongoing purge of Hua’s supporters within the party. As more and more people came forward in protest at the current regime, often identifying (albeit implicitly) specific individuals with whom they had grievances, Deng exploited the situation. One example of this was a wall poster demanding justice for the murder in 1975 of Zhang Zhixin, a local party activist. As chief of the Beijing military region, Hua’s close ally Chen Xilian was indirectly involved in Zhang’s death and Deng used this as a way of levering Chen from office. Second, Deng used the movement to reinforce doubts about the legality of the Hua regime, which was ironic given the illegal methods Deng had only recently employed in using the provinces to pressurise the centre (see previous section) thereby breaching the rules of democratic centralism. One of the several demands made by the Democracy Wall protestors was for the restoration of a clearly defined legal system to act as an impediment to any social turmoil that might arise from an unwelcome

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return to radical leftism. Deng ensured that such calls were perceived as a direct criticism of Hua and his followers, many of whom had risen to power without constitutional sanction and as a result of the purge of the previous incumbent. Hua’s own position was a case in point. As we saw in the previous chapter, Hua’s appointment as Premier in April 1976 was not made by the National People’s Congress as required by the state constitution but by an ‘emergency session’ of the Politburo, a party organ. Similarly, Hua’s assumption of the posts of Chairman of the CCP and the CMC in October 1976, again via a Politburo resolution, was not properly ratified until the Eleventh National Party Congress ten months later. The case of Wang Dongxing provides another useful example of an individual operating outside legal and constitutional boundaries (Chang, 1978). Promoted to Director of the Central Committee General Office in 1966, Wang unilaterally broadened his scope of work so as to encompass the duties undertaken by the old Secretariat. Likewise, as head of the 8341 Unit and the Secret Police, Wang arbitrarily expanded his powers by instructing his subordinates to take control of public security organs throughout the entire country after they were attacked by Red Guards during Cultural Revolution. The fate of the Democracy Wall Movement is well-documented (Brodsgaard, 1981; Goodman, 1981). In a manner reminiscent of the Hundred Flowers, some Democracy Wall activists pushed beyond the parameters of permissible expression. Having dealt with issues that assisted Deng’s objectives, they then began to explore more controversial subjects such as the absence of multiparty democracy and a system of human rights in China. This precipitated the formation of unofficial political discussion groups and a human rights organisation. A leading figure in these new developments was Wei Jingsheng, an electrician who worked at Beijing Zoo. Wei was editor of a journal called Exploration and in it he published an article which implored China to embrace democracy as a ‘fifth modernisation’. Wei also launched a personal attack on Deng Xiaoping, rebuking Deng for his lack of genuine commitment to the principles of democracy and rights (Chen, 1984). It was at this point that Deng turned against the Democracy Wall activists. Emerging triumphant after the Third Plenum, Deng determined that the movement had served its purpose in further destabilising Hua. On Deng’s orders, the posters on Democracy Wall were taken down and the movement was hastily suppressed. Wei Jingsheng was arrested and sentenced to a 15 year jail term. Like Mao before him, Deng showed that he could be ruthless in the face of dissent (Garside, 1981, p. 262).


Defeating Hua Following his success at the Third Plenum and the subsequent suppression of Democracy Wall, Deng moved to consolidate his position by appointing more of his allies to senior party and government posts. At the Fourth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in September 1979, another 12 victims of the Cultural Revolution were appointed to the Central Committee at the expense of those who had benefited from the movement. Of greater significance were two appointments to the Politburo: Peng Zhen, the former Mayor of Beijing and Zhao Ziyang. Peng’s appointment marked the return of one of the first high-profile casualties (and one of the initial two targets) of the Cultural Revolution while Zhao was promoted on the strength of his growing reputation as an economic reformer (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 325). Deng’s ascendancy continued into 1980. During the Fifth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in February, Hua’s main allies, Wang Dongxing, Chen Xilian, Wu De and Ji Dengkui, were all removed from the Politburo and Wang was dismissed from the PSC to be replaced by Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. This left Hua completely isolated in the PSC. Hu Yaobang became General Secretary of the CCP, a post vacated by Deng when he was purged during the Cultural Revolution but subsequently resurrected so that Hu could directly rival Hua who was still Chairman of the party. By this time the Secretariat had been fully reconstituted under the auspices of Hu Yaobang and its entire membership was staffed with Deng supporters with none at all from the Hua camp. In April, the State Council was cleansed of ‘whateverists’ following the dismissal of Chen Xilian and Ji Dengkui (as Vice-Premiers) who were replaced by Zhao Ziyang and Wan Li (MacFarquhar, 1997, pp. 325–6). With Hua’s support base rapidly evaporating, Deng turned his attention to removing Hua himself from office. In an effort to force Hua’s resignation as Premier, Deng (1984, pp. 302–25) assumed the role of political and institutional reformer by espousing the need for a clear demarcation of duties between the party and the state to avoid the continued domination of the latter by the former. Deng also advocated the abolition of concurrent appointments in the party and state, tendering his own resignation as Vice-Premier as a gesture of good faith. After initial objections were raised within the Politburo, these (and other) reforms were eventually accepted in August 1980 and implemented by the State Council at the Third Plenum of the Fifth Central Committee in September 1980. Hua had little choice but to resign as Premier to be replaced by Zhao Ziyang.

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The way was now clear for an open assault on Hua’s party and military positions. During a meeting of the Politburo in December 1980 Hua’s political record was mercilessly dissected. Although he was commended for authorising the arrest of the Gang of Four, he was roundly condemned for persisting with the inflammatory language of the Cultural Revolution after Mao’s death, for obstructing the rehabilitation of its victims, for his involvement in the Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign and for stubbornly adhering to the indictment of the Tiananmen incident as ‘counter-revolutionary’. He was also criticised for the rash decision to construct the Mao mausoleum and for his flawed economic policies. Concentrating in particular on Hua’s plans for a rapid increase in heavy industrial projects, it was noted that China had neither the money to pay for these projects nor the skills base to manage them and as a result of Hua’s policies had suffered a massive growth in its trade deficit with developed countries from US$ 1.2 billion in 1977 to US$ 4.5 billion in 1979 (Saich, 2001, p. 50). In light of these damning conclusions, Hua attempted to resign his remaining leadership posts as CCP and CMC Chairman. However, in an effort by the new Deng leadership to demonstrate a commitment to proper legal procedures, Hua was made to wait to be formally dismissed until the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in June 1981. In the interim, Hu Yaobang took over Hua’s duties as party Chairman until the post was abolished in 1982 when Hu became General Secretary, while Deng assumed Hua’s responsibilities as Chairman of the CMC. Hua remained as a member of the PSC and the Politburo until the Twelfth National Party Congress in September 1982, but his reign as paramount leader was now effectively over (MacFarquhar, 1997, p. 327).

Assessing Hua’s fall We have noted at least four reasons which help to explain the transitory nature of Hua’s incumbency as paramount leader. The first relates to the fragility of Hua’s central coalition which comprised three factions with different priorities in terms of the allocation of state funding. The Secret Police Left (to whom Hua was most closely aligned) wanted money to be directed towards agriculture and light industry. Li Xiannian’s Oil Kingdom Faction wanted funds for the development of heavy industry and China’s fledgling petroleum sector. Ye Jianying’s Northern Military Alliance sought state investment in the modernisation of China’s military in the north. Hua promised to accommodate the demands


of each of these factions, but in practice this turned out to be wholly impracticable. Deng, for his part, actively disrupted the increasingly brittle relationship between Hua and his supporters and encouraged his own allies (e.g. Wei Guoqing, Xu Shiyou and Zhao Ziyang) to do likewise. But the key to Deng’s overthrow of Hua was his success in constructing a provincial support base at Hua’s expense. Despite Hua’s experience during the mid-1950s’ debate over rural collectivisation when Mao enlisted his support, among many others, in undermining central party policy on the subject, Hua chose to focus his efforts more narrowly on keeping his central coalition together rather than protecting his provincial support base. Deng exploited this lapse in judgement by systematically purging Hua’s provincial allies and replacing them with his own. Then, having forced his Seek Truth position onto the political agenda via the national press, Deng used his newly consolidated provincial support network to force it onto Hua at the centre. This precipitated a decline in Hua’s power from which he never recovered. The second reason that Hua’s reign at the top was so brief relates to his entrenched association with radical Maoism. It is debateable as to whether Hua really needed to wed himself so tightly to Mao’s Cultural Revolution legacy in particular, given that Hua was an establishment beneficiary, brought in to restore normality to Hunan and then nationally following his elevation to Beijing in 1971. Aside from this, it is clear that Hua aligned himself with the wrong mode of Maoism, a mode that had failed the people and thrown the country into chaos. The 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations had shown just how unpopular radical Maoism had become and reports of labour unrest and industrial sabotage during the immediate post-Mao era suggested that many people remained deeply unhappy with Mao’s radical legacy. The popular feeling was that China needed a decisive break from its recent militant past not a continuation of it. The resurgent Deng Xiaoping, through his espousal of Seek Truth from Facts, represented this break with the past. But it was not just Hua’s rhetoric that proved to be his undoing. So too did his deeds. His association with the anti-Deng political campaign during 1976 made him deeply unpopular, as did his persistent indictment of the Tiananmen incident as ‘counter-revolutionary’ and his rush to build the Mao mausoleum. Perhaps most importantly, his economic policies and in particular his grandiose plans for heavy industry were deemed to have impeded rather than facilitated Chinese economic growth.

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Third, there were huge question marks over the legality of Hua’s position as paramount leader and Deng was only too happy to publicise this fact in an effort to embarrass Hua and further erode his authority. Following the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution when political decisions were often taken randomly and officials were appointed or dismissed arbitrarily, there was a popular feeling (as expressed during Democracy Wall) that politics in China needed to return to normality and that correct legal procedure must be closely adhered to by all occupants of high political office. Yet, the Hua era represented a continuation of the old contemptuous attitude towards law and proper procedure. For example, Hua was selected as paramount leader not collectively (although the Politburo did rubber stamp the decision), but by one very old and sick man. Worse still, the evidence put forward to prove that Mao had endorsed Hua as his successor was flimsy, to say the least, namely, a barely legible note handed over by Mao to Hua during a meeting with (conveniently) no witnesses present. Add to this the failure to employ the correct constitutional procedures in appointing Hua as Premier and Chairman of the party and the military and this was hardly the new era of legal rational transparency that the populace demanded. Finally, it was apparent that Hua never really enjoyed the right type of power. Although he appeared to be in an unassailable position as leader of China’s three main institutions, he lacked a vital legitimising quality enjoyed so abundantly by his predecessor, namely charisma. This was not for want of trying. As discussed earlier, Hua went to great lengths to build up his very own cult of personality, including (allegedly) an image makeover designed to mirror that of his late patron. With a bit more time and propaganda Hua may well have been able to ‘persuade’ the Chinese masses that he was the rightful new leader of China. But this was never going to be adequate within leadership circles where his colleagues, many of them seasoned veterans from the Long March era, demanded more than just a Hua Guofeng beautification campaign to be convinced of his leadership qualities. In contrast to Mao, foundingfather of the party and helmsman of the 1949 revolution, Hua cut a rather ordinary figure as a man with few revolutionary credentials to speak of, someone who had risen to national attention somewhat fortuitously after a solid, but unremarkable, career as an official in Hunan. In this context, Hua was incapable of inspiring the respect and admiration required to convince his contemporaries that he was the natural successor to Mao. Ironically, it was the very reputation of the man who had handed Hua power that contributed to Hua’s failure to establish himself among his leadership colleagues.


Contrast this to Deng whose charismatic legitimacy was particularly pronounced among his colleagues. Teiwes’ ‘crisis theory’ helps us understand why. According to Teiwes (1984, p. 48), in revolutionary societies such as China, a leader’s charismatic authority among his colleagues is grounded in a ‘demonstrated success at a time of revolutionary crisis’. Deng had a proven track record of surviving crises as noted in the Introduction following two purges, attacks by Red Guards, numerous anti-Deng campaigns and six years labour in a tractor factory in Jiangxi Province. To survive all of this and still come out victorious highlighted a formidable inner strength and resolve and it was this that marked Deng out among his colleagues as a man of exceptional quality (Goodman, 1994, Shambaugh, 1995, Stewart, 2002). Perhaps, in the end, however, Deng’s victory over Hua can be attributed to the fact that he was simply much cleverer than Hua. Notwithstanding his subsequent rejection of Mao’s legacy, in order to get into a position where he could begin eroding this legacy, Deng employed a degree of political guile in outwitting Hua that would have had Mao (another notable Machiavellian) applauding from his mausoleum. In launching his political comeback, Deng shrewdly associated himself with one of Mao’s more pragmatic and credible ideas in the form of Seek Truth from Facts which put Deng in the dual position of being both a Mao supporter and an advocate of reform and change. Meanwhile, Hua clung hopelessly (and unnecessarily) to the failed era of the Cultural Revolution and even promised to repeat it. When Deng’s power base in the party centre was still too weak to launch a direct attack on Hua, Deng used the classic Maoist technique of building a support base outside the centre (i.e. in the provinces) to put pressure on Hua. Meanwhile, Hua, in more myopic fashion, persisted in his futile attempts to shore up a central party coalition. Deng then forged a close, albeit temporary, coalition with the Democracy Wall Movement which he used to purge Hua’s allies and expose the illegality of Hua’s rule. Meanwhile, Hua just looked on hopelessly. In this context, Hua was out of his depth. There was simply no comparison between the two men.

Conclusion

The aim of this book has been to examine and elucidate the political career of Hua Guofeng. Although there are some existing academic works on Hua (albeit not many), we have seen that what there is has its limitations. They range from official publications which are often drenched in hyperbole (either pro or anti-Hua) to more creditable scholarly sources but which are limited to a specific period of Hua’s career and a single book, which although useful in parts, is inadequate from an analytical perspective and contains too many unsubstantiated claims. The objective of this book therefore has been to bring together the existing literature on Hua and analyse new sources in an effort to present Hua’s story as a complete analytical whole from his beginnings in Shanxi to his anointment as China’s paramount leader and subsequent fall.

The unextraordinary Hua What was perhaps most extraordinary about Hua in light of his astronomical rise to the zenith of the Chinese political system was that he was altogether unextraordinary, especially in comparison to his predecessor Mao, his successor Deng and many of his other contemporaries in the party leadership during the 1970s such as Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian and Ye Jianying. This was apparent from the very outset of Hua’s political career. As we saw in Chapter 1, Hua started out in a very modest capacity as a guerrilla warfare fighter in the Luliang mountains of Shanxi during the war against Japan. Deng was also in Shanxi at the time, but while he was making a name for himself heading up the Taihang Base Area in south-east Shanxi and directing thousands of troops in his capacity as Political Commissar of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, Hua was supervising small civilian units who 168

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were assisting the front-line troops by spying on and sabotaging enemy positions. At the risk of sounding acerbic, Deng was at the very heart and soul of the military action while Hua was teaching local peasants how to make landmines out of mountain stone and iron bells. Hua played an ancillary role at the beginning of his career fighting the Japanese and it may well be that he never really abandoned that ‘ancillary role’ mentality. On moving to Hunan in 1949 Hua began to develop as an experienced party cadre and became deeply embroiled in the rural collectivisation of the 1950s, acquiring a local reputation as something of a pace-setter in the implementation of the MATs and APCs, as we discussed in Chapter 2. Yet, it was very much a local reputation. In the grand scheme of things Hua was still a very junior figure, far removed from the decision-making processes in Beijing and remote even from the policymakers in Changsha. While Mao, Deng and Zhou were at the cutting edge of domestic and foreign policy decision-making at the time, Hua was occupied with local campaigns to eradicate schistosomiasis and improve literacy. This kind of comparison is not intended to belittle Hua’s achievements at this time, but to stress that they were very much local, low-level achievements. The Great Leap Forward saw Hua working for the first time alongside senior party officials in Hunan on matters related to economic planning and production. But even then as Hua got closer to the frontline of Hunanese politics, he tended to gravitate towards what might be described as secondary issues. For example, as we saw in Chapter 3, the campaigns to increase production over which Hua was given authority were not the headline campaigns to increase steel and grain (Mao’s two key ‘links’), but the supplementary campaigns to increase coal (required to make steel) and sweet potatoes (a substitute for grain). It might be a bit unfair, of course, to depict Hua as a perennial secondin-command type of figure, in effect a member of the support staff. After all, he did subsequently assume some very senior posts in Hunan including First Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee and headed up some major projects, including the construction of the landmark Shaoshan irrigation plant. Yet, one does get the distinct impression when assessing Hua’s political career in its entirety that he was much more comfortable in and among the leading figures than as the leading figure himself. The upshot of Hua’s rather ordinary political career in Shanxi and Hunan was that it made it much harder (arguably impossible) for him to establish himself as a creditable successor to Mao. At a time when charisma was such a vital ingredient for political leadership in China, Hua quite simply had none. Mao was able to draw on his unrivalled

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revolutionary credentials during the Long March, the war against Japan and the Chinese Civil War, not to mention his well-documented belligerent stance on the Soviet Union during the 1935 Zunyi Conference (Kampen, 2000, pp. 69–75). Deng also had a highly creditable record as a revolutionary, not to mention the iron-willed resilience he displayed in surviving numerous attacks from his political enemies. Hua could boast a long and successful career as a hard-working local official in Hunan, but nothing awe-inspiring. He was too young to have participated in the Long March and played little more than a bit-part role during the pre-revolutionary war years. As Teiwes (2009, p. 262) concludes when assessing the very early stages of Hua’s career: Hua was one of many new recruits who played their part in advancing the revolutionary cause but with virtually no opportunity for heroic contributions and the accompanying prestige. Hua’s junior status was appropriate for his subsequent march up the ranks of the party apparatus to a provincial-level post before the Cultural Revolution, but it was the fundamental political weakness that explains his demise at the very top of the CCP four decades later.

Towards the legal rational Ironically for Hua, contemporary China no longer demands that its leaders must exude charisma in order to be plausible. In fact, if anything, those at the top are decidedly unexciting in terms of their political background. The current paramount leader (if we can call him that) Hu Jintao is a case in point (Lam, 2006). Born in 1942, Hu was only seven years old when the PRC was established and therefore played no role whatsoever in the revolution. Instead, like so many other ‘fourth generation’ senior political figures in China, Hu is an educated and pragmatic technocrat with a strong engineering background. This reflects the contemporary stress on economic development and social and political stability. In terms of regime legitimacy, as the importance of individual charisma in China has waned, the focus has switched (albeit with limited success) to constitutional and procedural legitimacy or what Weber (1964, pp. 329–41) calls legal-rational legitimacy, particularly with regard to the duration of political tenure and the transfer of political power. This reflects Teiwes’ (1984, p. 54) belief that the two modes of legitimacy cannot exist simultaneously since an emphasis on one mode is likely to be made at the expense of the other. In stark contrast to the often random nature of political office during the Mao era, tenure as head

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of party and state is now fixed at two five-year terms respectively with the handover of power taking place at the relevant party and government congresses (Lyman Miller, 2002; Fewsmith, 2003). Hua’s dismissal from office set a precedent for this kind of approach. Although Hua was illegally toppled by Deng who borrowed Mao’s technique of using the provinces to bring pressure to bear on the centre, he was the first political leader in China to be replaced as head of party, state and military in accordance with constitutional procedure rather than by recourse to ‘expanded’ or ‘emergency’ meetings. That said, Deng did not always stick to constitutional protocol in dismissing senior party figures during the post-Hua era. Both Hu Yaobang in 1987 and Zhao Ziyang in 1989 were dismissed from the post of General Secretary during meetings that were conveniently enlarged by Deng to include elderly members of the Central Advisory Committee who Deng knew were opposed to Hu and Zhao (Goldman, 1994, p. 207; Shambaugh, 1989). Another notable precedent that was established by Hua’s fall was the absence of bloodletting, widespread denigration and/or incarceration in contrast to the fate that befell Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. Hua was moved aside peacefully, allowed to retain his Central Committee membership (as we will discuss shortly) and left to live the rest of his life without intimidation or fear of retribution. As Sandschneider (1985, p. 658) puts it in his study of political succession in the PRC, ‘for the first time, a loser was not completely purged or physically eliminated after the resolution of a successor conflict’. That is not to say that Hua escaped censure altogether. The 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party was forthright in its summing up of the alleged mistakes made by Hua between October 1976 and December 1978 (Saich, 1995; Kluver, 1996, pp. 51–61). The Resolution specifically blamed Hua for resisting efforts at the time to correct the ‘Left errors’ of the Cultural Revolution including his continued espousal of the Two Whatevers, his attempts to suppress the Seek Truth from Facts debate initiated by Deng, his obstruction of the re-instatement of veteran cadres and the redress of other past injustices (including the 1976 Tiananmen verdict against Deng) and his fostering of a personality cult. The Resolution further stated that Hua ‘also had his share of responsibility for impetuously seeking quick results in economic work’ and concluded that ‘obviously, under his leadership it was impossible to correct “Left” errors within the Party and all the more impossible to restore the Party’s fine traditions’.1 Yet, despite the frankness of the Resolution, there was no witch-hunt against Hua of the kind that occurred so frequently under Mao’s reign.

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Hua’s significance? What was the significance of Hua’s incumbency as paramount leader within the wider context of post-revolutionary Chinese politics? Certainly one of Hua’s notable achievements (perhaps his only achievement) was his authorisation of the arrest of the Gang of Four in October 1976. As we saw in Chapter 5, there is some debate over just how proactive Hua was in giving this authorisation, with some scholars suggesting that Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian had to put Hua into a metaphorical headlock in order to force the authorisation out of him. Notwithstanding this, Hua is officially credited with the arrest of the Gang, an act which removed from office those most likely to return China to the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. This is acknowledged by the 1981 Resolution, although it is careful not to give Hua too much of the credit: This [the arrest of the Gang of Four] was a great victory won by the entire Party, army and people after prolonged struggle. Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian and other comrades played a vital part in the struggle to crush the clique. Paradoxically, of course, although Hua precipitated a decisive break with the tumultuous era of the Cultural Revolution by arresting the Gang, he failed to distance himself from that era and this proved to be a key factor in his downfall. One commentator in writing Hua’s obituary noted that Hua was ‘a man who helped China to break with an unhappy past and yet remained tarnished by it’.2 To a certain extent this is correct because Hua, as someone whose career clearly benefited from the Cultural Revolution, would always have been unfavourably associated with that campaign. Yet, it was not just a question of being ‘tarnished by association’ as though Hua could not somehow have broken free from the shackles of the Cultural Revolution. He did not want to. As we saw in Chapter 6, Hua emerged as an ardent exponent of the Cultural Revolution, promising rather ominously that political revolutions of a similar type would take place again and again. Arguably, Hua did not need to bind himself so tightly to the campaign. As noted in Chapter 4, Hua was targeted twice by Red Guard groups and there is no evidence that he actively supported the campaign when it was in progress (although he may well have backed the SEM). So while he was ‘Mao’s man’ and therefore felt duty-bound to stick to Mao’s legacy, he would have been wise to have avoided the militant rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution at a time when the campaign was so deeply

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unpopular. Instead, he might usefully have adopted the more pragmatic aspects of Mao’s heritage (notwithstanding that Deng got there first) which in any event would have conformed to his moderate stance as Vice-Premier during 1975, particularly in his work in the science and technology sector and at the Dazhai Conference. Hua’s adherence to the Cultural Revolution was a gross and unnecessary tactical error. Aside from the arrest of the Gang of Four, it might well be argued that Hua’s key significance in the wider historical context was actually inadvertent in that he acted as a necessary stopgap between the old (i.e. the radical Mao era) and the new (i.e. the reformist Deng era). In light of the almost unquantifiable esteem with which Mao was held both by the party and the masses, it would have been unfeasible (and certainly unwise) for Deng to have embarked on a process of economic reform immediately after Mao’s death given that the very core of Deng’s reforms were based on a negation of Maoist economic principles. China was simply not ready for this in September 1976 because it was too soon after the death of the paramount leader and founding father of the revolution. Hua’s period in office gave China the necessary breathing space it required to recover from Mao’s passing and prepare itself for further change, albeit initially a fairly moderate change and one carefully couched in early Maoist discourse. Hua also provided something of a temporary scapegoat for the failure of the Mao era, particularly the radical policies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Hua emerged as an ardent exponent of these policies on assuming Mao’s mantle of leadership and in challenging Hua on this, Deng was able to criticise Mao but without doing so directly. To have criticised Mao directly as soon as he had died would have been tantamount to political suicide. No doubt Deng had Khrushchev in mind, whose demolition of Stalin’s legacy in his infamous ‘secret speech’ nearly three years after Stalin had died contributed to his downfall (Taubman, 2004). Instead, Deng was able to criticise Mao’s excesses through Hua, thereby laying the groundwork for a full and frank reassessment of Mao’s role that came in the 1981 Resolution on Party History.

The loyalty factor We have seen throughout this book how Hua displayed a largely consistent level of loyalty to Mao, often at crucial junctures when Mao found himself under political pressure and in need of support. One of the most apparent instances took place during the mid-1955 leadership debate

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over rural collectivisation when Hua backed Mao’s minority position on accelerating the implementation of the APCs in direct contradiction to the view held by Hua’s boss Zhou Xiaozhou. Later in June 1959 as grave concerns about the wisdom of the Great Leap Forward began to emerge and Peng Dehuai was preparing for his blistering outburst against the Leap at Lushan, Hua is believed to have written a number of positive investigation reports on the progress of the Leap specifically in Hunan. These were handed to Mao and used by him as a means of rebutting Peng’s criticisms of the Leap. Official sources have also suggested that Hua was part of a group of Hunan officials who rallied behind Mao’s SEM in mid-1963 while many other provinces maintained a stony silence on the matter. At a time when political contacts were paramount to the success of any politician in China (Pye, 2002), Hua, through his loyalty to Mao, had the most powerful and influential contact of all. This clearly benefited Hua in his ascendancy through the political ranks in Hunan and during his time in Beijing. Hua’s appointment as a Party Secretary in Hunan in September 1959 was most likely authorised by Mao, probably in recompense for Hua’s loyalty to Mao during the 1955 collectivisation debate and just before the 1959 Lushan Conference via his Hunan investigation reports. Similarly, Hua’s elevation to the Hunan Revolutionary Committee and then to First Secretary would have received Mao’s approval and no doubt Mao recalled Hua’s sterling efforts in the construction the Shaoshan irrigation plant and the various other Shaoshan projects that Hua embarked on during the 1960s. Having deliberated long and hard on the matter, it was (and could only have been) Mao who handed Hua the opportunity to succeed him as paramount leader based primarily on Hua’s dependability over the years. At the same time, while Mao’s patronage of Hua guaranteed his numerous promotions, it also acted as something of a poisoned chalice for Hua when he reached the very top because it prevented him from really establishing himself as a credible independent force. His rise through the ranks in Hunan, his invitation to work in Beijing and his elevation to the position of paramount leader through the incredulous handwritten note, all came together to create the strong impression that Hua was little more than Mao’s puppet, incapable of independent thought or action. Then, on coming to power, Hua unwisely reinforced this impression by propagating the ill-conceived and slavish Two Whatevers and espousing the failed Maoist principles of the Leap and the Cultural Revolution. Clearly, any potential Chinese leader at the time would have needed Mao’s blessing to take over at the helm, Deng

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included. But unlike Deng, there was no evidence that Hua had a strong voice or vision independently of Mao.

Hua in later life Finally, in this book it remains for us to examine what Hua did after he relinquished his two remaining leadership posts in June 1981. The answer appears to be not very much. In terms of his political career, Hua was not forced out of the party by the new Deng leadership but was instead allowed to remain as a member of the Central Committee. One source claims that he retained his position on the Central Committee until the Sixteenth National Party Congress in November 2002 when he was voted off,3 while Gittings in his obituary of Hua suggests that Hua did not attend the congress because of illness.4 Hua did attend the Seventeenth National Party Congress in October 2007 under invitation as a ‘special delegate’5 and there are a number of photographs of him looking rather frail on his feet as he took up his position towards the back of the conference hall.6 One photograph of him sleeping peacefully during the meeting was widely circulated around the Internet to much public hilarity.7 Hua’s opinion of the post-Mao economic reforms is not entirely clear. Rumour has it that he was thoroughly opposed to the scale and extent of the reforms which seems likely, although there are no available sources to back this up.8 Another rumour deriving from Hua’s former chauffeur claims that when his health permitted, he took drives around Beijing where he would marvel at the new architecture and infrastructure developments.9 Certainly, Hua would have been astounded at the dramatic and rapid socio-economic changes he witnessed in Beijing (where he lived in a party compound funded by a state pension) especially in comparison to his earlier experiences in the impoverished provinces of Shanxi and Hunan. Hua is thought to have become a recluse during the last few years of his life. One source claims that his only real interest during his latter years was growing grapes but that he kept up with current affairs by subscribing to a host of different newspapers.10 As we noted in the Introduction, party historians were largely unsuccessful in their attempts to interview Hua about his experiences in government. It seems that he just wanted to be left alone. The last reference to Hua in the People’s Daily as ‘Chairman Hua’ (Hua Zhuxi) was on 20 May 1980. For a short while after that he was referred to simply as ‘comrade Hua’ (Hua tongzhi). After 1982 there were very few references to Hua at all in the People’s Daily until his death

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in August 2008. It is thought that Hua’s health began to deteriorate in early 2008 and he was hospitalised three times for kidney and heartrelated complaints. His death occurred during the Beijing Olympics with one source suggesting that this accounted for the lack of attention given to it in the state media.11 It seems more likely, however, that Hua was just not very newsworthy. Alternatively, it may be that he represented a period of Chinese history that the media wanted to forget. That said, Teiwes (2009, p. 265) claims that on his death there was an official acknowledgement not only of Hua’s role in defeating the Gang of Four, but of his alleged role in ‘restoring social order, reviving innerparty life, starting to reverse unjust verdicts, achieving relatively rapid economic recovery and development, and placing science, education, and culture on the correct path before the Third Plenum’. This suggests some acknowledgement of the work Hua carried out during 1975 in particular. Hua’s funeral was a modest affair and stood in stark contrast to the lavish state funerals provided for Deng and particularly for Mao. Several Chinese news outlets show Hua’s widow Han Zhijun being consoled before the funeral by Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin (although neither attended) which shows that there was at least some degree of respect for Hua within the party leadership.12 Another source claims that attendees at Hua’s funeral included Hu Yaobang’s son Hu Deping, Liu Shaoqi’s son Liu Yuan as well as relatives of Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian and Yang Shangkun. Li Yuan, the former commander of PLA Unit 6900 with whom Hua worked on the Hunan Revolutionary Committee also attended (in his wheelchair), as did Wang Dongxing’s widow. Hua’s memorial took place at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery which again suggests a degree of reverence for his legacy (Zhuang Gong, 2008, p. 1). A number of sources picture Hua signing a copy of Mao’s Selected Works for Mao’s grandson and there are other pictures of Hua visiting Mao’s mausoleum with his wife. Gittings’ obituary of Hua suggests that he went there twice a year on the anniversaries of Mao’s birthday and death (he may have had an attachment to the place given that he authorised its construction). Gittings concludes that Hua ‘instructed his family members accompanying him to bow three times to the great leader Chairman Mao’. It seems that that right up until the very end Hua remained ever faithful to his erstwhile patron.

Notes Introduction 1. An obituary of Hua published by The Independent suggests that ‘Hua first impressed the Great Helmsman with his idealism in 1954’ although we are not given any context for this claim. See http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/obituaries/hua-guofeng-successor-to-chairman-mao-904010.html (21 August 2008). 2. This book appears to have been based primarily on an mini biography of Hua that Wang published in Chinese three years earlier. See Wang (1977a). 3. A particularly critical review of Wang’s book is provided by Lampton (1981), notwithstanding Jurgen Domes’s support for the book in the Foreword (Wang, 1980, pp. vii–viii). 4. The interview is divided into three 10-minute sessions. See http://chinastudies.blip.tv/file/file/267914/; http://chinastudies.blip.tv/file/file/267926/; http://chinastudies.blip.tv/file/file/267947/ 5. See, for example, http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1025/7756831.html (2 September 2008); http://bbs.thebeijingnews.com/thread-26249-1-1.html (31 December 2008); http://znonline.net/html/renwen/2008/0630/13038. html (31 December 2008).

1 The Young Revolutionary: Hua in Shanxi (1921–49) 1. See http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/h/u.htm#hua-guofeng (18 August 2009). 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng (18 August 2009). 3. See for example http://bk.baidu.com/view/16210.htm (18 August 2009). 4. For more on this claim see http://www.l6666.cn/Article/ShowArticle.asp? ArticleID=9332 (15 November 2007). 5. http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1025/7756831.html (2 September 2008). 6. See http://chinastudies.blip.tv/file/file/267914/ 7. This highlights a general lack of information about Hua’s schooling. Official sources are virtually mute on the subject. All that Hua himself said was that he graduated from primary school aged thirteen, stayed at home for a year because his family could not afford the fees to send him to middle school at that time and then, aged fourteen, he attended a new vocation school in Jiaocheng where he remained until the Japanese invaded China in July 1937. See ibid. 8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng (18 August 2009). See also http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1025/7756831.html (2 September 2008). According to Wikipedia Hua’s first son is called Su Hua (a retired air force officer), his second son is Su Bin (a retired army officer), his eldest daughter is Su Ling (a party and union official at the Civil Aviation Administration of China) and his youngest daughter is Su Li (a State Council employee). 177

178

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9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng (18 August 2009). 10. Palmowski (2008, p. 282) also erroneously claims that Hua served for 12 years under Zhu De in the Eighth Route Army. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this. 11. The official sources on Hua in Shanxi refer to Jiaocheng rather than Jiaodong, probably to avoid confusing the reader over the temporary redrawing of the boundaries. 12. Feng Chongyi (2000, p. 155) identifies a contradiction within the CCP’s own records about the exact composition of the Jin-Sui Base Area and Border Region. The official history of the CCP refers to Jin-Sui as comprising north-west Shanxi, south-west Shanxi and Daqingshan. However, local CCP documents suggest that Jin-Sui consisted of only north-west Shanxi and Daqingshan. 13. The scholarly works on anti-Japanese base areas in northern China include Feng and Goodman (2000); Goodman (2000). For Chinese language sources see Wei Hongyun and Zuo Zhiyun (1990); Wei Hongyun (1997). 14. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek decided in December 1936 that the KMT should join the Yan-CCP alliance, possibly because he feared that he would lose Yan and other northern warlords to the CCP if he did not join the united front (Gillin, 1967, p. 241). Prior to this, in late October 1936, Chiang had sent more than 20,000 KMT troops to Suiyuan to assist Yan (Gillin, 1967, p. 233), so it may well have been that Yan’s fears of KMT non-intervention in northern China’s war against Japan were ill-founded.

2 Towards Rural Reform: Hua in Hunan (1949–57) 1. Unger (1991, p. 7) notes that the Shanxi banzi was not the only political grouping to take root in Hunan. When Zhang Pinghua replaced Zhou Xiaozhou as Hunan First Secretary in 1959, he brought with him his own banzi from neighbouring Hubei Province (notwithstanding that Zhang himself was from Hunan) many of whom he appointed to senior positions in the Hunan party apparatus. 2. Shue (1980, p. 17) points out that recruitment into the ‘self-defence corps’ and other forms of local militia was often a very hurried affair and rarely included any kind of detailed research into an applicant’s personal and political background or motivations for wanting to sign up. She concludes that ‘quite often they were themselves little more than “local bullies”, attracted primarily by the guns and status of militia membership, knowing and caring little about the revolution’. 3. There is an inaccuracy in one of the official sources on Hua’s work with the Liu Zhengquan MAT. A People’s Daily article (RMRB, 1977a, p. 1) claims that Hua became involved with this MAT when he was CCP Secretary of Xiangtan County. This is unlikely, however, because Yongle was (and is) not in Xiangtan County; so it would not have fallen within Hua’s jurisdiction at that time. 4. See http://chinastudies.blip.tv/file/file/267914/ 5. Mao was acting illegitimately in this instance because he breached the established Leninist rules of democratic centralism which held that once a policy

Notes 179 had been determined by the central party it had to be adhered to without complaint. However, as Sullivan (1986–7, p. 630) explains, ‘Mao skirted formal policy-making channels at the party centre by issuing direct orders to party and non-party personages and stressing that he directly represented rank-and-file and popular interests’. 6. At Mao’s invitation, the Sixth Plenum was attended by a number of prefectural secretaries with voting rights who were expected to be supportive of Mao’s directive.

3 The Great Leap Forward and the Post-Leap Recovery Period: Hua in Hunan (1958–65) 1. The First Zhengzhou Conference took place a few months earlier in November 1958 and (like the Second Zhengzhou Conference) was designed to rectify certain mistakes in the implementation of the Leap, in particular to do with ownership and organisation. 2. Hunan First Secretary Zhou Xiaozhou was equally cautious about the potential excesses in setting unrealistically high production targets, as noted by a Soviet visitor who met with Zhou during summer 1958 (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 24). 3. MacFarquhar (1983, p. 197) notes that on discovering this alarming situation, Peng ‘took aside the cadre in charge of the blast furnaces and patiently explained the uselessness of the whole operation, comparing it to beating a gong with a cucumber’. 4. Peng criticised this cadre in full view of passing peasants and this unleashed a plethora of spontaneous and vehement peasant criticism against cadre deceit (MacFarquhar, 1983, p. 198). 5. It is difficult to find any reliable information about the number of people who died of starvation in Hunan as a result of the Leap. According to Becker (1996, p. 236) by 1960 many Hunanese were trying to live off half a pound of grain per day. Citing a source from Hong Kong, Becker claims that in Hengyang District ‘nearly an entire production team had died of hunger, and there was no one left with the strength to bury the bodies. These were still lying scattered about in the fields from which they had been trying to pull enough to stay alive’. 6. Mao remarked ‘I will go to the countryside to lead the peasants to overthrow the government. If those of you in the Liberation Army won’t follow me, then I will go and find a Red Army. But I think the Liberation Army would follow me’ (Schram, 1979, p. 139). 7. When Peng asked Zhou directly if he disapproved of the back-yard furnace campaign in Hunan, Zhou responded in a non-committal manner that ‘it’s difficult to say’. MacFarquhar (1983, p. 199) concludes from this that, ‘if a provincial 1st secretary, an alternate CC member, felt thus constrained even in the presence of a sympathetic Politburo member, how much more terrifying must it have been for a lower-level official to report unpalatable facts to his superior’. 8. The other six were Li Ruishan, Yu Mingdao, Zhou Li, Zhou Hui, Tan Yubao and Xu Qiwen.

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9. There is evidence to suggest that two days after Mao’s Shaoshan visit, Hua and others were invited by Mao to a reunion with Yang Kaizhi, a surviving elder brother of Yang Kaihui, Mao’s second wife who was killed in 1930 by the KMT (Oksenberg and Yeung, 1977, p. 31). 10. Becker (1996, p. 237) then goes on to insist that Hua had a personal vendetta against Peng Dehuai ‘and in the anti-Peng hysteria that followed the Lushan conference, he personally supervised the brutal persecution of Peng’s family who lived in Xiangtan prefecture’. Here again any convincing evidence for this claim is absent.

4 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Hua in Hunan (1966–70) 1. This perspective is also shared by Wang (1980, p. 78) who claims that ‘Mao Tse-tung [Zedong] launched the Cultural Revolution with the primary aim of overthrowing the leadership of the Party Committee and the administrative organisations’. 2. See http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume9/mswv9_03.htm 3. Unger (1991, p. 17) refers to this Red Guard group as Red Power. However, Chen (2006) refers to them throughout his book as the Changsha Red Regime Defence Corp (Changbaojun). 4. A detailed analysis of the origins and make-up of the Xiang River Storm is provided by Wu (2008, pp. 361–3). 5. Accounts of the February Adverse Current are provided by Lee (1978, pp. 169–70); Liu and Chan (1988, pp. 57–68) and Suo (1986). 6. The first Red Guard groups to get their hands on weapons were the Changsha Youth (Changsha Qingnian), small-time thieves who had just been released from prison and the Youth Guardian (Qingnian Weijun), a collection of lowpaid trade apprentices (Unger, 1991, p. 21). 7. In addition to Qi, the CRSG comprised Chen Boda, Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Li and Guan Feng. 8. Wu (2008, p. 375) notes that Beijing favoured the Gonglian on the basis of its ‘proletarian purity’ (comprising industrial workers) and its more centralised and disciplined organisational structure. By contrast, the Xiang River Storm was mistrusted ‘for its socially heterogeneous composition’. 9. The only reference made to this incident by the official media claims that Zhou telephoned Hua directly from Beijing to invite him to join the Hunan Preputory Revolutionary Committee. See RMCB (1977, pp. 6–7). 10. According to Snow (1972, p. 103) over two million PLA personnel were dispatched to participate in civil affairs during the Cultural Revolution. 11. A detailed background of the Shengwulian is provided by Unger (1991, pp. 22–4) and Wu (2008, pp. 376–83). 12. For analyses of the content of ‘Whither China’ see Unger (1991, pp. 24–32) and Wu (2008, pp. 383–406). 13. Analyses of how the Paris Commune has been perceived in Chinese political thought include Starr (1972), Diamond (1975) and Meisner (1982, pp. 132–44).

Notes 181 14. Speeches criticising the Shengwulian given by Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan can be found in Mehnert (1969, pp. 107–18).

5 Entering the Centre: Hua in Beijing (1971–6) 1. See http://chinastudies.blip.tv/file/file/267914/; http://chinastudies.blip.tv/ file/file/267926/; http://chinastudies.blip.tv/file/file/267947/ 2. The Times (10 September 1976, p. 14) claims erroneously that Hua ‘was brought to Peking [Beijing] by Mao after the Lin Piao [Biao] affair to sort out its ramifications as Minister of Public Security’. We know that Hua was not made Minister of Public Security until 1975 and Hua himself said that he was not brought to Beijing specifically to deal with the Lin Biao affair. 3. The six members of the Special Investigation Group were Ye Jianying, Zhang Chunqiao, Li Desheng, Ji Dengkui, Wang Dongxing and Chen Xilian. For information on the work and controversial findings of the body see Domes, (1977c, pp. 127–35). 4. Such a picture is provided in Baum (1994, p. 38).

6 The Return of Deng Xiaoping: Hua in Decline (1977–80) 1. Saich (2001, p. 51) notes that national income rates dropped by 2.3 per cent during 1976, while total production grew at just 1.7 per cent which was below the rate of population growth. 2. The claim that Deng was in Guangzhou with Xu and Wei probably derives from the fact that these two sent Hua the joint letter. 3. A copy of the note as exhibited in the museum is contained in the pictures section of Wang (1980) between p. 112 and p. 113. 4. Taken from an informal conversation with senior political scientist from Beijing University. 5. According to the authors, this proposed text forms the second of three volumes on the transition from revolution to restoration and then to reform. The first volume is Teiwes and Sun (2007) and the third volume is provisionally titled Between Restoration and Reform, 1979–82. 6. For background on Zhao Ziyang see I&S (1978). 7. The authors promise to elaborate upon this view in their third volume Between Restoration and Reform, 1979–82.

Conclusion 1. http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm 2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2591227/Hua-Guofengsuccessor-to-Chairman-Mao-dies.html 3. See http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_15-11-2002_ pg4_1 4. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/21/china?gusrc=rss&feed= worldnews

182 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Notes See http://cul.sohu.com/20080505/n256668060.shtml See ibid. http://www.fming.net/bbs/read.php?tid=11869 Informal conversations with a senior political scientist from the People’s University in Beijing. Source derived from Chinapol (an invitation-only email discussion group). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng Ibid. http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2008-09-01/135914386372s.shtmlo

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Index Agricultural Producers Co-operative – see APCs Aird, J 72 Albania 124 An Ziwen 124 Anhui Province 74, 81, 82, 142, 154 Anti-Rightist Campaign 17, 65, 71, 75, 77, 83 APCs 74, 81 Dongtingwei APC 57–8, 61 Helongjia APC 57, 65, 74 higher-stage 57–8, 63, 67, 71 in Hunan 59 Huoxing APC 65 lower-stage 56–7, 67, 79 Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery 176 Baidu 22 Barme, G 160 Barnouin, B and Yu Changgen 130 Baum, R 94, 115, 130, 133, 134, 137, 144, 181fn Baum, R and Teiwes, F 95, 96 Beijing Olympics 176 Beijing University 10, 130, 181fn Beijing University library 150 Beijing Zoo 162 Becker, J 80, 179fn Blecher, M 51, 59, 72 Bo Yibo 28, 29, 81, 124 Bonavia, D 145 Brodsgaard, K 161, 162 Byron, J and Pack, R 24 Cambodian Friendship Delegation 88 Campaign Against Bureaucratism, Commandism and Violations of Laws and Discipline 53 Campaign Against Rightist Opportunism 82, 83

Campaign to Increase Steel and Grain Production 73 Canada 72 Caozhuangtou Village 35 Central Advisory Committee 171 Central Committee 33, 55, 144, 145, 146, 159 Fifth Plenum of Eleventh 163 Fourth Plenum of Eleventh 163 Ninth 109 Sixth Plenum of Eleventh 164 Sixth Plenum of Seventh 59–60, 67, 155, 179fn Tenth Plenum of Eighth 94, 96 Third Plenum of Eleventh 1, 141, 159–60, 161, 162, 163 Third Plenum of Fifth 163 Third Plenum of Tenth 144 Central Committee General Office 159 Central Plains Campaign 37 Central Propaganda Department 74 Central South Region 48 Central South Regional Committee 56 Chahar 29 Chakrabarti, S 75, 76 Chan Caifang 101 Chang, P 162 Changde 63 Changsha Car Manufacturing Factory 7, 92, 100, 101, 103 Changzhou 131 Chen Boda 59, 114, 180fn Chen Erjin 162 Chen Geng 36 Chen Han-Seng 38 Chen Qingguan and Song Guangwei 9 Chen Xilian 120, 122, 123, 125, 138, 149, 161, 163, 181fn Chen Yi 118

192

Index 193 Chen Yinan 13, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 107, 180fn Chen Yonggui 9, 125 Chen Yun 11, 58–9, 144, 153, 158, 159 Chen Zaidao 159 Cheng Qian 66 Chengdu 155 Chiang Kai-shek 38, 178fn China Reconstructs – see CR Chinapol 182fn Chinese Resistance Nation-Saving Vanguard Team 26 CJZX 13 CNA 15; and ‘Bombarding Hua Kuo-feng’ 22–6 Coale, A 72 communes 71–2, 83 Helongjia Commune 73 Luoda Commune 14 Qiangyu Commune 84 Hunan Commune 107 Paris Commune 107, 180fn Shanghai 119 ‘Compendium of Important Documents on Agricultural Collectivisation’ 76 Confucianism 120, 146 Cotton, J 121 CPSU 146 CR 22, 87 Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign 129–31, 132, 136 Criticise Lin Biao Criticise Confucius Campaign 120–3, 140 CRSG 98, 108, 109, 110, 180fn Cultural Revolution 93–5 and February Adverse Current 97, 100, 106, 180fn Central Work Conference of 97 and January Revolution 97, 106 Cultural Revolution Small Group – see CRSG Dao County 79, 83 Dao Li 121 Daqing 149 Daqingshan 178fn

Dare-to-Die Corps 28–9 Datong 37 Dazhai Brigade 125 Dazhai Conference 125–6, 136 Democracy Wall Movement 3, 160–2, 163, 166 Deng Xiaoping as Chairman of CMC 164 charismatic legitimacy of 2, 19, 142, 167 Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign 129–31, 132, 136 and Cultural Revolution 94 and debate over rural collectivisation 58–9 and Democracy Wall Movement 3, 160–2, 167 dismissal after Tiananmen demonstrations 133 as head of Taihang Base Area 29–30, 168 leadership battle with Hua Guofeng 146–64 as Political Commissar of 129th Division of Eighth Route Army 29–30, 168 and post-Leap recovery programme 70, 85, 95 post-Mao re-instatement of 141, 143–6, 150 and pragmatic Maoism 150–2, 173 and relaxation of cultural policy 122, 123 resignation as Vice-Premier 163 and Seek Truth from Facts 150–1, 157–8, 165, 167 speech at All-Army Political Work Conference 157 and Third Plenum of Eleventh Central Committee 1, 159–60, 163 Deng Yingchao 159 Denmark 124 Diamond, S 180fn Dictionary of Contemporary World History 22 Dictatorship of the Proletariat 143 Dittmer, L 94, 127 DLYZ 26

194

Index

Domes, J 98, 109, 115, 124, 130, 135, 138, 142, 143, 144, 156, 158, 159, 177fn, 181fn Dongta Village 34 Dongting Lake 47, 57 Double Hundred Policy 123 Duke of Zhou 121 DZC 9 Eighth Route Army 4, 5, 20, 29, 30, 178fn Eighth Sub-region – see Luliang District Encyclopaedia of Marxism 22 Exploration 162 Fang Weizhong 149 Feng Chongyi 27, 28, 29, 178fn Feng Chongyi and Goodman, D 178fn Feng Dongshu 9 Fewsmith, J 171 First Five Year Plan 72 Fontana, D 153, 154, 156, 157, 161 Forster, K 136, 137 Four Modernisations 161 Fourth Field Army 48 France 124 French atomic delegation 124 French Revolution 107 Gang of Four 9, 10, 24, 99, 112, 113, 119, 120, 123, 125, 128, 129, 139, 140, 143, 147, 153, 157, 161, 171 arrest of 2, 8, 12, 15, 18, 134–9, 141, 146, 149, 152, 164, 172 criticism of Dazhai report 126 and Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign 129–31 and Tiananmen demonstrations 132 Gansu Province 77 Garside, R 131, 162 GHW 49 Gillin, D 27, 28, 29, 178fn Gittings, J 138, 176 GMRB 30, 31, 37, 40, 47, 50, 51, 57, 99, 114 Goldman, M 121, 171

Goodman, D 29, 30, 74, 129, 144, 161, 162, 167 Grain Distribution Movement 48 Gray, J 72 Great Leap Forward 1, 12, 16, 43, 85, 86, 92, 93, 95, 100, 126, 128, 148, 151, 160, 173, 174, 179fn failure of 71–2, 75–7 retreat from 81–6 ‘second Leap’ 82 Greene, F 15, 22, 54, 115, 116 Guan Feng 180fn Guangdong Province 46, 48, 155 Guangming Daily 12, 13, 15, 57, 99 publication of ‘Practice is the Sole Criterion of Truth’ 157 Guangzhou 16, 66, 144, 181fn Guizhou 142 Guomindang – see KMT Han Zhijun 47, 176 Hao Mengbi and Duan Haoran 157, 158 Hangzhou 96 Harding, H and Gurtov, M 88 He Dongfang 9 He Long 29 Hebei Province 45, 95 Hefeng Village 50 Heilongjiang Province 149 Held, D 107 Henan Province 74, 77, 81, 95, 142 Hengshan County 83 Hengyang 63, 83, 179fn Hinton, W 11, 40 HGWC 109 HJX 47 HLA 46–7, 105 HNJY 62, 63, 71 Holm, D 34, 35, 36 Hong Kong 40, 179fn HRCB 86, 87 Hu Deping 176 Hu Fuming 157 Hu Jintao 170, 176 Hu Jiwei 13 Hu Qiaomu 159 Hu Yanwen 52

Index 195 Hu Yaobang 124, 153, 159, 163, 164, 171, 176 Hu Yong 100, 101, 103 Hu Zongnan 36 Hua Guofeng absence of charismatic legitimacy 2, 5, 19, 142, 166 as Acting-Premier 18, 113, 127–9, 130, 131, 133, 134 as alternate member of Hunan Provincial Party Committee 73 and Anti-Rightist Campaign 44, 65–6 and APCs 5–6, 12, 17, 43–4, 57–62, 67, 169 and arrest of Gang of Four 8, 18, 134–9, 140, 141, 164, 172, 173 attendance at Sixth Plenum of Seventh Central Committee 59–60, 67, 155, 179fn birth of 4, 22 and Campaign Against Rightist Opportunism 82–3 and Campaign to Increase Steel and Grain 73 and Central Organisation Department 117–8 as Chairman of CCP 2, 3, 137, 144, 162, 163, 166 as Chairman of CMC 2, 3, 134, 137, 162, 166 as Chairman of JAJA 30–3 as Chairman of Xiangtan Prefecture Government 43, 56 and communes 73–4, 89 contributions to Upsurge of Socialism in China’s Countryside 17, 61 and Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign 12, 18, 129–31, 164, 165 and Criticise Lin–Confucius Campaign 112, 120–3, 140 and Cultural Revolution 7, 99–108, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174, 180fn as Cultural Revolution beneficiary 7–8, 19, 92, 110–11, 112, 120, 142, 147, 148, 172

and Dazhai Conference 12, 113, 125, 136, 173 and Dazhai report 113, 125–7, 136, 149, 152, 155 death of 10, 22 and debate over rural collectivisation 11, 17, 44, 59, 67, 79, 90, 119, 155, 165, 174 and Democracy Wall Movement 160–2 as Deputy Secretary of Xiangtan Prefecture CCP 56 as Director of Jiaodong Propaganda Department 20, 33 and dismissal as Chairman of CCP 164 and dismissal as Chairman as CMC 164 and dismissal as Politburo member 164 and dismissal as PSC member 164 election to Central Committee of Ninth National Party Congress 109, 116 as First Secretary of Hunan CCP 1, 7, 18, 92, 104, 109, 110, 169, 174 as First Vice-Chairman of CCP 113, 133 funeral of 176 and Gonglian 7, 18, 92, 99–104 and Grain Redistribution Movement 48–9 and the Great Leap Forward 6, 8–9, 17, 69, 70, 71, 72–5, 89, 90, 169, 174 as head of Culture and Education Office 44, 62–4, 66, 71 as head of United Front Department 66, 71 in Hunan 5–8, 43–111 and Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee 7, 92, 93, 98, 102–4, 108, 110, 180fn and Hunan Revolutionary Committee 7, 93, 109, 110, 174, 176 and Hundred Flowers Campaign 44, 65

196

Index

Hua Guofeng – continued interview with Felix Greene 15, 22, 54, 115, 116, 177fn and investigation reports during Leap 79, 80 and land reform in Hunan 40, 41, 43, 49–50, 57, 67 and land reform in Shanxi 10, 17, 21, 40–1, 48, 57 in later life 175–6 and leadership battle with Deng Xiaoping 146–64 and Lin Biao affair 113–6, 117, 181fn as Liu Zhengrong 23, 25 in Maotian 7, 18, 70, 84, 85, 89 and MATs 5–6, 17, 43, 50–2, 54–6, 57, 67, 169, 178fn as Minister of Public Security 1, 112, 123–4, 132, 181fn national security and foreign policy work in Hunan 70, 87–9 obituary of 172, 177fn and Outline Report on the Academy of Sciences 124–5 parentage and childhood 15, 20, 22–6, 177fn and Party Document no.16 136 as a Party Secretary of Hunan CCP 6, 18, 60, 67, 69, 80, 82, 86, 90, 99, 174 personality cult of 13, 21, 25, 99, 134, 150, 166, 171 as Political Commissar of Wen-Jiao Guerrilla Detachment 37 as Political Commissar of Xiangyin Military Unit 47 as Political Commissar of Yangqu Guerrilla Detachment 37 and Political Report of Eleventh National Party Congress 147 and post-Mao social instability 142–3 as Premier 1, 3, 18, 113, 127, 129, 131, 133, 138, 154, 162, 166 problems of historiography 13–16 and promotion to Politburo 8, 18, 112, 118–120, 140

and proposed Ten Year Plan 149, 159 and radical Maoism 147–50 and re-instatement of Deng Xiaoping 143–6 and removal from Central Committee 175 resignation as Premier 163, 164 and Secret Police Left 115 as Secretary of Jiaodong CCP 4, 20, 21 37 as Secretary of the Xiangtan County CCP 37, 54, 55, 56, 178fn as Secretary of Xiangtan Prefecture CCP 43, 56 as Secretary of Xiangyin CCP 47, 49, 52, 43 as Secretary of Yangqu CCP 4, 21, 37–8 in Shanxi 4, 20–42 and Shaoshan irrigation dam 9, 18, 70, 73, 86–7, 169, 174 and Shengwulian 7, 18, 92, 93, 104–8 and ‘Song of the Gardener’ 120–2 and Southbound Work Group 44–6, 105 and Special Investigation Group 115 speech at Eleventh National Party Congress 151 speech at Second Hunan Provincial People’s Congress 6, 12, 18, 74, 90 and State Council work 8, 9, 18, 93, 101, 112, 115, 116–8, 123 as Su Zhu 25 and Tangshan earthquake 134 and Tiananmen demonstrations 12, 18, 131–4, 164, 171 and Third Plenum of Eleventh Central Committee 2, 159–60 and transfer to Beijing 8, 18, 53, 112, 113–8, 148, 174 and Two Whatevers 2, 6, 145, 149, 171, 174

Index 197 as Vice-Governor of Hunan 73 as Vice-Premier 1, 18, 112, 123–7, 173 and Vietnam War 70, 88 and Village Drama Movement 20–1, 33–6, 41 and war against KMT and Yan Xishan 4, 20, 36–8, 41, 42 and war of resistance against Japan 4, 13, 20, 21, 26, 30–3, 41, 42, 168–9 and Wipe Out Bandits, Oppose Local Bullies Movement 47–8 ‘with you in charge I am at ease’ 2, 134, 149 and Yang Delun incident 41, 52–3, 54 and Youth Work Committee 49 Hua Yu 23–4 Huaiyin 131 Huang Kecheng 78, 79, 159 Hubei Province 48, 95, 178fn Hunan Cultural Revolution in 13, 95–8 Great Leap Forward in 72–7 and Vietnam War 88 Hunan Communist Youth League – see GHW Hunan Liberation Army – see HLA Hunan Number 1 Normal School 87 Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee 98, 100, 104, 111 Hunan Provincial Party Committee 79 Hunan Provincial People’s Council 73 Hunan Provincial Standing Committee 79 Hunan Revolutionary Committee 102, 108, 111 Hunan University 96 Hundred Flowers Campaign 64–5, 66, 97, 123, 160, 162 HWSJ 63 Independent 177fn India 71 Inner Mongolia 26, 29

JAJA 30–1 Japan 88 war of resistance against 16, 21, 26–33, 46, 105, 177fn, 178fn JFJB 13, 99 Ji Dengkui 119, 123, 125, 135, 138, 139, 149, 163, 181fn Jiang Qing 10, 24, 109, 110, 116, 119, 135, 136, 137, 141, 148, 156, 180fn, 181fn and Criticise Lin-Confucius Campaign 120–2 and Tiananmen demonstrations 132–3 Jiang Zemin 176 Jiangxi Province 3, 136, 167 Jiaocheng County 4, 22, 23, 24, 26, 177fn, 178fn Jiaodong County 21, 26, 31, 33, 35, 40, 41, 49, 178fn Jiaoxi County 26 Jin-Sui Base Area 26–7, 33, 34, 178fn ‘Jin Wu Sells Firewood’ 35 Joint Anti-Japanese Association – see JAJA Joseph, W 78, 81 Jung Chang and Halliday, J 94 Kallgren, J 149 Kampen, T 170 Kane, P 72 Kang De 65 Kang Sheng 10, 16, 22, 24, 120, 180fn, 181fn Kang Zhou 46, 48, 50, 56 Ke Jingshi 63 Khrushchev, N 173 Kluver, A 171 KMT 23, 28, 31, 34, 44, 47, 49, 66, 124, 158, 178fn; and Jin-Sui Base Area 27 and Chinese Civil War 16, 34, 36–8, 46, 105 Korean War 119 Kraus, R 123 Lam, W Wo-Lap 170 Lampton, D 177fn

198

Index

land reform 11, 38–40, 50–1 in Hunan 49–50, 51 in Shanxi 40–1 Lane, C 146 Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture Conference – see Dazhai Conference Lee Hong Yung 180fn Lewis, J 84 Leys, S 94 Li Desheng 120, 122, 181fn Li Jingquan 74 Li Ruishan 73, 179fn Li Xiannian 9, 56, 113, 123, 127, 128, 129, 135, 138, 139, 141, 144, 154, 156, 158, 159, 168, 176 and reinstatement of Deng Xiaoping 144–5 and arrest of Gang of Four 137, 152, 172 and Oil Kingdom Faction 153, 154, 164 Li Yuan 98, 102, 103, 108, 109, 110, 176 Liang Chunyang 101 Liberation Army Daily 99, 157, 158 Lieberthal, K 71, 72, 124, 125 Lin Biao 5, 10, 29, 16, 41, 98, 99, 102, 104, 109, 110, 112, 119, 148, 154, 157, 161, 171 Lin Biao affair 113–6, 181fn Lin Hujia 154 Lin Qingshan 10 Lingshang Village 31 Lippit, V 50 Liu Bocheng 29, 37 Liu Guokai and Chan, A 180fn Liu Lantao 124 Liu Shaoqi 11, 29, 58–9, 80, 85, 99, 113, 171, 176 and Cultural Revolution 94 and post-Leap recovery programme 16, 70, 95 Liu Yuan 176 Liu Ziyun 107 Liuzhuang Village 35 Long Shujin 98, 102, 103, 107, 109, 110

Long March 4, 16, 26, 42, 138, 153, 166, 170 Longshan County 14 Louie G and Louie K 131 Lu Dingyi 9 Lu Yan and Bao Guozhu 31, 37, Lubell, P 124 Luliang 20, 23, 24, 26, 30, 32, 36 Luliang Campaign 36–7 Luo Ruiqing 88 Luo Shixian and Sun Nansheng 84, 85 Lushan Conference 69, 75, 78, 79, 81, 83, 90, 174, 180fn Lushan Plenum, Second 113–5 Lyman Miller, H 171 Lynch, D 34 Ma’ao Village 54 MacDougall, B 34, 64, 160 MacFarquhar, R 7, 64, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 78, 82, 99, 114, 120, 127, 128, 130, 137, 138, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 150, 158, 159, 160, 163, 164, 179fn MacFarquhar, R and Schoenhals, M 11 Mao Yuanxin 133 Mao Zedong 1, 2, 5, 13, 12, 69, 70, 102, 109, 112, 116, 123, 126, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 159, 160, 166, 169 and breaches of democratic centralism 178–9fn charismatic legitimacy of 3, 142 and Criticise Deng Xiaoping Campaign 130 and Criticise Lin-Confucius Campaign 122 and Cultural Revolution 93–6, 99, 110–11, 165, 180fn and Dazhai Brigade 125 death of 113, 134, 137, 139, 173 and debate over rural collectivisation 11, 44, 58–9, 67, 79, 90, 155 decision to appoint Hua as Acting Premier 127–9 and directives at Second Zhengzhou Conference 74

Index 199 and Double Hundred Policy 123 downgraded from ‘Chairman’ to ‘comrade’ 160 Former Ten Points 95, 96 and Hundred Flowers Campaign 64–5 and inspection tour of Hunan 79, 180fn and Lin Biao affair 113–5 and Long March 170 and Lushan Conference 78, 90 and Maotian 7, 89 Mao Zedong Thought 145, 157, 158 mausoleum 150, 164, 165, 167, 176 ‘On Protracted War’ 32 and rehabilitation of purged cadres 117–8 rumoured to be Hua’s father 22 and ‘second Leap’ 82 and Seek Truth from Facts 150–1, 157 Selected Works of Mao Zedong 150, 176 and Shaoshan irrigation dam 7, 87, 89 and ‘Song of the Gardener’ 123 and Soviet Union 170 and support for Hua’s promotion to Politburo 119–20 and support of Hua as successor 8–9, 134–7 and support for Wang Hongwen 119–20 Talks at Yanan Conference 35 and Tiananmen demonstrations 131–4 Upsurge of Socialism in China’s Countryside 17, 61 visit to Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee 104, 105 and war of resistance against Japan 170 and Zunyi Conference 170 Maotian District 84, 85 MATs 51, 56, 67, 74, 81 He Jianchang MAT 54–5

Liu Xinhua MAT 54 Liu Zhengquan MAT 51–2, 57, 178fn Mayu Village 38 Marx, K 107 Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought 157 Mehnert, K 106, 108, 181fn Meisner, M 180fn Military Control Commissions 45 Ming Dynasty 121 Monument to the People’s Heroes 132 Mosher, S 72 Muldoon, R 135 Mulianpo Village 20, 33 Mutual Aid Teams – see MATs Myers, J, Domes, J and Yeh, M 145, 146, 147, 151 Nanbao Village 23 Nanjing 28, 131 Nantou Village 34 National Land Conference 38 National Party Congress 119, 150 Eleventh 3, 147, 151, 156, 160, 162 Ninth 109 Second Plenum of Ninth 113 Seventeenth 175 Sixteenth 175 Tenth 120 Third Plenum of the Eleventh 152 Twelfth 164 National People’s Congress 64, 118, 127, 162 Fifth 148 Fourth 123 New Hunan Daily 11, 12, 15, 55, 60, 73, 116 New Zealand 135 Niaoshi Happiness Home 77 Niaoshi Village 76, 77 Nanjing University 157 Nanjing Uprising 158 Nie Rongzhen 9 Ningxiang County

200

Index

Oksenberg, M and Sai-cheung Yeung 6, 11–12, 50, 52–3, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 63–4, 65, 66, 71, 73, 74, 75, 79, 82, 83, 87, 88, 104–5, 179fn, 180fn Onate, A 137 Pakistan 124 Palmowski, J 22, 26, 178fn Peng Dehuai 5, 6, 16, 18, 29, 37, 41, 69, 70, 75, 76, 77, 78, 90, 174, 179fn, 180fn Peng Zhen 23, 24, 25, 163 People’s Daily 12, 13, 15, 38, 40, 58, 61, 79, 84, 85, 99, 130, 136, 157, 158, 175, 178fn People’s Drama – see STGW People’s Liberation Army – see PLA People’s University 182fn Pingjiang County 74, 79, 84 PLA 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 78, 88, 97, 98, 102, 105, 135, 142, 179fn, 180fn Politburo 3, 133, 144, 156, 159, 162, 163, 166 Politburo Standing Committee – see PSC Poor Peasant Associations – see PPAs PPAs 38, 39, 40 PSC 29, 159, 163, 164 Puzhong Campaign 38 Pye, L 27, 174 Qi Benyu 98, 180fn Qian Yingyi 154 Qiao Guanhua 156 Qinghai Province 72 Qinghua University 130 Qinglian Brigade of Qiangyu Commune 84, 85 Qingxu County 38 Red Army 4, 13, 179fn Red Flag 54, 60, 130, 136 Red Guards 2, 10, 13, 40, 41, 46, 80, 94, 96, 147, 161, 162, 167 Changsha Red Regime Defence Corp 180fn

Changsha Revolutionary Rebel Workers’ United Committee or Gonglian 7, 92, 97, 99–104, 108, 180fn Changsha University and College Red Guard General Headquarters or Gaosi 97, 101, 102 Changsha Youth 180fn Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee or Shengwulian 7, 92, 93, 104–8, 180fn, 181fn Middle-School Red Guard Revolutionary Committee 105 Northern District Workers’ Alliance 105 Provincial Teachers’ Alliance 105 Red Power 180fn Workers’ Scarlet Guards 97 Xiang River Storm 97–8, 100, 105, 108, 180fn Youth Guardian 180fn Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party 81, 138, 171, 173 Revolutionary Committees 102, 106, 108, 156 Revolutionary Cultural Relics – see TWG RMCB 16, 83, 84, 104, 180fn RMRB 6, 14, 37, 38, 40, 47, 58, 61, 73, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 99, 103, 109, 110, 114, 158, 178fn Romania 124 Sacrifice League 28–9 Saich, T 72, 149, 164, 171, 181fn Sandschneider, E 171 Schram, S 151, 179fn Secret Police Left 138, 141, 149, 152, 153, 154, 164 Secretariat 159, 162, 163 SEM 95, 96, 99, 110, 136, 172, 174 Seybolt, P and Kuei-Ke Chiang 62 Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region 27 Shaanxi Province 29, 36, 73 Shambaugh, D 2, 167, 171

Index 201 Shanghai 63, 66, 137 Shanxi banzi 46, 80, 106, 178fn Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region 29 Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation – see Sacrifice League Shanxi-Suiyuan Base Area – see Jin-Sui Base Area Shanxi Youth Dare-to-Die Corps of Resistance Against the Enemy – see Dare-to-Die-Corps Shaoyang 63 Shaoshan 5, 43, 54, 55, 67, 73, 76, 79, 86–7, 116, 128, 180fn Shi Dongbing 13 Shijiazhuang 45 Shilou County 37 Shue, V 47, 48, 178fn Sichuan Daily 155 Sichuan Province 74, 81, 154 Sixty Articles 85 Snow, E 180fn Socialist Education Movement – see SEM ‘Song of the Gardener’ 121, 122, 123 Song Renqiong 159 Southbound Work Groups 44–5 South-Western Shanxi Campaign – see Luliang Campaign Soviet Union 83, 154, Spartacus Troops of the No. 637 Headquarters 15, 23 Special Investigation Group 181fn Stalin, J 173 State Council 163 Starr, J 135, 180fn Stavis, B 41 Stewart, W 2, 167 STGW 34, 36 Study 60 Su Bin 177fn Su Hua 177fn Su Li 177fn Su Ling 177fn Sui, H 57 Suiyuan 28, 29, 178fn Sullivan, D 179fn Suo Guoxin 180fn

Suzhou 23 Swaine, D 149 SXRB 30 Taiwan 71 Taiyuan 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 37 Taiyuan Campaign 37 Tan Yubao 179fn Tan Zhenlin 158 Tangshan earthquake 134, 143 Taubman, W 173 Teiwes, F 2, 58, 59, 65, 75, 77, 143–4, 167, 170, 176 Teiwes, F and Sun, W 12, 15, 74, 115, 116, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 144, 155, 181fn Between Restoration and Reform 181fn Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping and the Road to the Third Plenum, 1976–78 151–2 Thought Reform Campaign 63 Three Antis Campaign 53 Tianjin 66 Tiananmen demonstrations 131–4, 135, 141, 144, 158, 161, 165 Tiananmen Square 101, 113, 132, 150 Times 181 Tseng Kao 134 Twelve Articles on the People’s Communes 83, 84–5 TWG 34, 35, 36 Unger, J 46, 80, 96, 97, 98, 105, 106, 178fn, 180fn United Front 66 United States – see US US 71, 89 and Vietnam War 88, 93 Van Slyke, L 29 Vietnam 154 Vietnam War 88, 93 Vietnamese Democratic Republic 88 Village Drama Movement 33–6

202

Index

Wan Li 131, 163, 180fn Wang Dongxing 137–8, 139, 144, 145, 149, 159, 161, 162, 163, 176, 181fn Wang Hongwen 10, 118–20, 128, 132–3, 135, 137, 148 Wang Ko-Hung and Wu Tzu-Hai 22, 31, 32, 33 Wang Ting 25, 26, 30, 31, 33, 40, 41, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 65–6, 75, 86, 87, 96, 103, 105, 109, 114, 115, 116, 118, 121, 132, 133, 136, 177fn,180fn, 181fn Chairman Hua: Leader of the Chinese Communists 10–11 Wang Shengfu and Ren Huiyuan 28 Wang Yanchun 96, 97, 99, 100, 103 Wang Zhen 36, 159 Wagner, R 150 Warring States 121 Weatherley, R 146 Mao’s Forgotten Successor 12 Weber, M 2, 3, 146, 170 Wei Guoqing 16, 23, 144, 153, 154, 165, 181fn Wei Hongyun 178fn Wei Hongyun and Zuo Zhiyuan 178fn Wei Jingsheng 162 Wei Mengke 66 Wei Yuejin 36, 37 Wen-Jiao 37 Wenshui County 37 Wikipedia 22, 25, 26, 177fn Womack, B 157 Wong, J 39 Wu De 132–3, 138, 149, 154, 163 Wu Yiching 96, 97–8, 105, 108, 180fn Wu Zhipu 74 Wuhan 56, 108 Wuxi 131, 136 Xiangtan County 12, 53, 54, 57, 63, 76, 84 Xiangtan Prefecture 55, 56, 59, 62, 65, 70, 74, 79, 80, 84, 86, 96, 98, 121, 180fn

Xiangyin County 5, 14, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54 Xiangxi Prefecture 14 Xiaodian Village 38 Xiaoloufeng Village 20, 33, 34 Xiao-Mu drama troupe 20, 33, 34, 35, 36 Xiazhuang Village 35 Xie Fuzhi 36 Xinjiang Province 109, 142 Xiyang County 125 Xu Qiwen 179fn Xu Shiyou 16, 23, 122, 144, 153, 154, 165, 181fn Xu Xiangqian 9, 37 XYXB 45 Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao 122, 123, 130, 132, 137 Yan Xishan 4, 15, 23, 25, 31 and Jin-Sui Base Area 27 relations with the KMT 28 united front with CCP 21, 27–9, 178fn and war of resistance against Japan 27–9 Yanan 24, 33, 87 Conference on Art and Literature 34, 35, 64, 160 Resolution on the Implementation of Party Policy on Art and Literature 34 Yang, C 39, 51, 56, 57 Yang Dali 76, 125–6 Yang Dali and Su Fubing 75, 81 Yang Delun 52–3 Yang Kaihui 180fn Yang Kaizhi 180fn Yang Shangkun 29, 176 Yang Xianzhen 124 Yang Xiguang 96, 97, 105 and ‘Whither China’ 80, 92, 93, 106–8 Yang Xiguang and McFadden, S 96 Yangqu County 21, 26, 37, 38, 40, 41, 50 Yao Wenyuan 10, 119, 135, 180fn, 181fn

Index 203 Ye Jianying 9, 70, 88, 89, 90, 127, 135, 138, 139, 141, 153, 156, 158, 159, 168, 176, 181fn and arrest of Gang of Four 137, 152, 172 Northern Military Alliance 153–4, 164 and reinstatement of Deng Xiaoping 144 Ye Yonglie 10, 13, 60, 121, 135, 149, 159, 160 Yellow River 27 Yingze Village 38 Yongle Village 50, 51, 178fn Yue Fengxiang 35 Yueyang 45, 46, 84 Yujie Village 52, 53 Yu Mingdao 179fn Yuhuatai Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs 131 Yunnan 142 ZCW 65 Zeng Xisheng 74 ZGHW 13, 54, 60, 62, 66, 71, 73, 96 Zhao Ziyang 153, 154–5, 163, 164, 165, 171, 181fn Zhang Aiping 9 Zhang Bosen 73, 92, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103–4, 106, 107, 111 Zhang Chunqiao 10, 24, 113, 119, 120, 123, 128, 129, 135, 136, 137, 181fn Zhang Gensheng 15 Zhang Pinghua 73, 74, 81, 88, 97, 106, 114, 115, 178fn Zhang Wentian 78, 79 Zhang Xiaoli 74 Zhang Zhixin 161

Zhejiang Province 95, 142 Zhengzhou Conference First 179fn Second 74, 179fn Zhilan Village 31 Zhongnanhai 101 Zhongshan University 15, 23 Zhongyang County 37 Zhou Enlai 12, 22, 29, 68, 98, 100, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 120, 129, 135, 139, 159, 161, 168, 180fn and Criticise Lin-Confucius Campaign 121 death of 127, 130, 144 and Hunan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee 92, 101, 102, 103, 106, 109 and Hunan Revolutionary Committee 109 rehabilitation of purged cadres 117–8 and Tiananmen demonstrations 131 Zhou Gong – see Duke of Zhou Zhou Hui 179fn Zhou Li 179fn Zhou Xiaozhou 5, 6, 11, 16, 17, 33, 44, 58, 59, 60, 67, 69, 70, 72–3, 77–81, 90, 155, 169, 174, 178fn, 179fn Zhu De 29, 178fn Zhuang Gong 176 ZHSZ 44, 45, 48, ZHXD 54, 55, 57, 59 ZSJW 14, 30, 32, 38 Zweig, D 125, 136

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