Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (32 page)

Immediately after the memorial ceremony, the official period of mourning was declared over. Although the bare facts of the memorial service and of Deng's eulogy were printed in the newspapers, in contrast to the usual practice when dealing with the death of a revolutionary hero, virtually nothing about Zhou's career made it into print nor was there an official estimate of the crowds that had paid homage in Tiananmen Square or along the funeral procession. Many people were upset about this glossing over of Zhou's death, not only because it failed to provide a fitting commemoration to someone they admired, but also because of what it signified—that Zhou's and Deng's enemies were in a strong political position and would pursue policies quite different from Zhou's.
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After the memorial service, Zhou's widow, Deng Yingchao, was granted her request to accompany the ashes to the airport. There workmen carried the ashes onto a plane, to be dispersed in the skies over the Chinese land to which Zhou had dedicated his life.
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Deng's Fall and the Selection of Hua Guofeng, January 1976

The Zhou Enlai memorial activities interrupted the Politburo sessions attacking Deng for only a few days. Mao, dissatisfied with Deng's two self-criticisms, had directed the day before Zhou's memorial service that both of
these self-criticisms be printed and distributed to the Politburo for further consideration.
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For Deng, the meaning was ominous. At the Politburo meeting on January 20 when Deng made his third self-criticism, he again requested an opportunity to meet Mao. Jiang Qing demanded to know why, and Deng replied that he wanted to talk personally to the Chairman about the seriousness of his errors, to hear personally the Chairman's criticisms and directions, and to present some problems he had had in his work.
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Mao, however, made no exception to his usual practice of refusing to meet anyone who had become a target of his criticism. He chose not to hear from Deng in private what he could later easily retract.
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Upon hearing that he would not have a private audience with Mao, Deng composed a handwritten letter to Mao that in effect announced his resignation, and he gave it to Mao Yuanxin to deliver to Mao. He wrote, “Chairman, I beg that you approve my request to be relieved of my duties leading the daily work of the party center.
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For the past two months I have been criticized. I fear my continuing to work will weaken the efforts of the Central Committee and that I will make further errors. I will follow the decisions of the Chairman and the Central Committee.”
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The day after he received Deng's letter, Mao met with his nephew to hear his report on Deng's conduct at their meeting the day before. In Mao Yuanxin's view, Deng's self-criticism still had not gone far enough. Yuanxin also reported to Mao that the three vice premiers, Hua Guofeng, Ji Dengkui, and Chen Xilian, had requested that someone be named acting premier. (These three younger provincial leaders had been brought into the Politburo in 1973 with the expectation that they would later be leading candidates for higher positions.) Mao immediately replied that Hua should be given responsibility for leading the daily work of the party.
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To foreigners and even to the Chinese general public, Hua Guofeng was a new face, but Mao had known Hua for two decades. He first met Hua in 1955 when Hua was prefectural party secretary in Xiangtan, Hunan, Mao's home prefecture. Hua was then a strong supporter of Mao's rapid agricultural collectivization and Mao formed a positive impression of him. Over the two decades Mao had known Hua, Hua had firmly supported Mao in each political campaign and had risen in status after each one of them. He proved a reliable supporter after Mao's controversial criticism of Peng Dehuai in 1959, and after his criticism of Lin Biao after Lin's crash. Other Beijing leaders had a chance to know Hua after he was elevated to the Politburo in 1973 (see Key People in the Deng Era, p. 729). Wang Hongwen had been too strong-willed
and failed to get people to work together; Hua enjoyed better relations with officials of different political views. He had been a senior official even before the Cultural Revolution so he could be acceptable to officials returning to work. He was also acceptable to members of the Gang of Four, who were optimistic that he would be pliable and easy to manipulate.

On the same day Mao told Mao Yuanxin that Hua was to be acting premier, Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao arranged a meeting of the party committees at Tsinghua and Peking universities where Deng was publicly criticized by name for the first time. Chi Qun, the official at Tsinghua whom Deng's followers had criticized, took the lead in organizing more public meetings attacking Deng.
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There was a logic to Mao's timing of the public criticism of Deng and his withdrawal from public life. In 1975 the general public had accepted Deng as the leader and had approved of the job he was doing. If Hua were to be accepted as the new leader and not troubled by the presence of Deng, it would be better to remove Deng from the public scene and to take his public reputation down a notch.

The Chinese public and the foreign press learned that Hua was acting premier on January 26 from the
People's Daily
. The news was presented not in banner headlines that might have aroused opposition; instead, in an innocuous report that Hua had hosted a trade delegation from Romania, he was listed with his new title, acting premier.
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On January 28, Mao formally asked Hua to be responsible for the daily work of the party center.
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And on February 2, two weeks after Deng had submitted his resignation, the party center announced to high-level party members throughout the country that Hua, with the unanimous approval of the Politburo, had been appointed acting premier.
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Meanwhile, Deng had dropped out of sight. After submitting his resignation, Deng did not return to work until the summer of 1977.
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Mao knew that Hua Guofeng was not as outstanding as Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, or Chen Yun, but he had no other official of the appropriate age and experience who better fulfilled his requirements. Mao, at least for the moment, had abandoned Deng, but he had not abandoned his search for unity and stability, and Hua (unlike Wang Hongwen) had no enemies and avoided factionalism. Indeed, Hua was the kind of person Deng himself looked for when he was considering which lower-level officials to promote—he was a pragmatic problem-solver who rose step by step. Although Hua lacked knowledge of Marxist-Leninist theory and experience in foreign affairs, Mao hoped he could grow into those areas.

Perhaps most important to Mao, Hua Guofeng, a beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution, could be counted on not to denounce it. Unlike Deng, Hua did not have his own base of support and so his claim to leadership would depend entirely on his selection by Mao. Mao could be confident that Hua would uphold his reputation and his legacy.
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But Hua, who had not been tested in a high position, was made only acting premier: Mao still wanted to observe him before making a permanent change. In January 1975 Mao, confident of Deng's demonstrated leadership, had given him formal titles in the military, the party, and the government. In January 1976, by contrast, Hua was not even given a position on the Standing Committee of the Politburo nor was he made a party vice chairman. Furthermore, he was not yet given any important position in the military. Mao did, however, give Hua responsibility for chairing Politburo meetings and for providing overall leadership for the daily work of the party and the government. One of Hua's initial duties was to lead the campaign opposing the “rightist reversal of verdicts” that would criticize Deng Xiaoping's effort to bring back many senior officials.

The Unsuccessful Public Campaign against Deng

Even after he removed Deng from his high positions and began preparations to denounce him in public, Mao limited the attacks on Deng. In his talk on January 21, after choosing Hua Guofeng, Mao said that the differences with Deng were still contradictions among the people, which were not as serious as contradictions with the enemy, and that he would later consult again about Deng's work situation. For now, Deng's work would be reduced but he could continue to work. He would not be beaten to death. Mao had not completely given up on Deng, but he chose to proceed with the public campaign to criticize him. Mao also worked to loosen Deng's hold on the military, so as to make it more difficult for Deng to try to unite with the military against Mao.

Already on January 18, just two days before Deng sent Mao his letter of resignation, a crowd estimated at 7,000 to 8,000 officials in the national defense science sector were assembled in the Peasants Gymnasium
(Xiannongtan tiyuguan)
to criticize the “rightist reversal of verdicts.” General Zhang Aiping, who had worked closely with Deng on national defense science and who had already been roundly criticized and even called a Taiwan spy by Jiang Qing, sent word that he was unable to appear at the gathering because of illness. In
his brief message, he explained that he was personally responsible for the decisions he had made and that those working under him had played no role in those decisions.
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General Zhang wasn't the only one feeling ill as the political climate rapidly turned against Deng and his associates. Aside from Zhang Aiping, the other three “protective Buddhist deities” and their closest associates were also attacked—Hu Yaobang and his colleagues promoting science, Wan Li and his colleagues working on the railways, and Zhou Rongxin and his education colleagues were all subject to attack. Two months later Zhou Rongxin died. On February 2, it was announced that because Marshal Ye Jianying was ill, Chen Xilian would lead the work of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Chen Xilian had worked closely with Mao's nephew Mao Yuanxin in Liaoning, and Mao Yuanxin could serve as go-between, ensuring that Mao's interests in the military would be upheld. On February 16, the party center approved a CMC report announcing that at the enlarged CMC conference the previous summer Deng and Marshal Ye had made serious errors, so circulation of their speeches would be discontinued. Once this notice was published, the participation of Deng and Marshal Ye in CMC work stopped.
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Mao would not run any risk that Deng and Marshal Ye, under criticism, might try to unite with the military leaders against Mao.

Mao Yuanxin took the lead in organizing a conference sponsored by the Central Committee, at which provincial-level leaders and leaders of the large military regions joined in criticizing Deng. During this conference, held from late February to early March, many regional leaders first heard about Mao's criticisms of Deng Xiaoping, based on materials collected by Mao Yuanxin. Mao had complained to his nephew that Deng's linking of Mao's “three directives” (to resist revisionism, encourage unity and stability, and boost the national economy) had neither been cleared by the Politburo nor reported to Mao. Mao had also protested that Deng's use of the “white cat, black cat theory” (“it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mouse”) did not make any distinction between imperialism and Marxism-Leninism; it reflected bourgeois thinking. Zhang Chunqiao chimed in that Deng was a representative of the monopoly capitalist class and that he was a revisionist at home and a capitulationist abroad.

At some earlier criticisms of Deng, his name was not mentioned, but at this meeting, Hua Guofeng mentioned Deng by name and criticized his “revisionist” line. Yet Hua, like Mao, placed limits on the anti-Deng campaign:
there would not be any big-character posters criticizing Deng, nor would any criticisms be broadcast. On March 3 a summary of Mao's and Hua's criticisms of Deng was circulated to all levels of the party.
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Jiang Qing was, as usual, less restrained. She called a meeting on March 2 for leaders from twelve provinces, at which she tried to escalate the seriousness of Deng's errors, calling him a “counter-revolutionary” and a “fascist.” To Mao, this was going too far. He criticized her for calling the meeting without consulting him and forbade her from sending out announcements reporting on the results of the meeting. On March 21, when the
People's Daily
asked whether the “person pursuing the capitalist road [Deng] who is trying to reverse verdicts … will have a genuine change of heart,” officials in Beijing understood: Mao, still hoping Deng might change, was giving him another chance.
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Deng, however, showed no signs of softening his stance. On April 5 it would become clear that the campaign to criticize Deng had not won the hearts and minds of the public.

Demonstrating for Zhou and Deng: Tiananmen Square, April 5, 1976

The Qing Ming (Annual Grave Sweeping) festival is held every year in China to remember the dead. In the weeks before the 1976 festival, which was scheduled for April 5, the Gang of Four began to anticipate that some people would use the occasion to launch demonstrations to remember Zhou Enlai. They were right to be concerned. In Beijing, not only officials and students but also many ordinary people, upset that Zhou Enlai in January had not been properly memorialized, were indeed planning to show their respect for him on April 5.

On March 25, a few days before the festival, Shanghai's
Wenhui bao
, a newspaper dominated by the Gang of Four, published an article criticizing Deng and his “backer,” another person “taking the capitalist road,” whom everyone understood to mean Zhou Enlai. In this case, the Gang of Four proved to have a poor grasp of public opinion, for the article attempting to dampen support for Zhou Enlai backfired. Angry former Red Guards turned the skills they had acquired in attacking Jiang Qing's enemies against Jiang Qing herself. In Shanghai, large crowds immediately surrounded the offices of the newspaper to demand an explanation.