Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (36 page)

By this time, other leaders had begun to assume that at some point Deng would return to work. Some leaders thought he might be assigned a role like the one Mao had conceived for him in 1974 when he replaced Zhou Enlai in leading government work and was paired with Wang Hongwen. Perhaps Deng Xiaoping would use his immense experience and skills to handle government work under party head Hua Guofeng. Others thought Deng might play a more limited role, handling foreign affairs, and still others thought he might at some point take over party responsibilities completely as he had in mid-1975. On January 6, 1977, a decision was made that Deng would return to work. It turned out, however, that Hua Guofeng would have another six months to establish himself before Deng returned to work.

The End of Radical Maoism

The scholar Joseph Levenson describes the fate of Confucianism in the late imperial period: when it lost its vitality, Confucianism was still celebrated in the temples and museums, which people visited to pay homage, but it had lost its connection to people's daily lives. Similarly, after Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four, Mao was still enshrined, and multitudes continued to visit the Mao Mausoleum in the center of Tiananmen Square. But radical Maoism, with its mass movements and class warfare, was no longer a part of the daily experience of the Chinese people.

This process of separating radical Maoism from the people's daily lives had in fact already begun under Mao when in 1974 he announced his support for national stability and unity. It continued under the leadership of Deng in 1975 and under Hua in early 1976. With the arrest of the Gang of Four, radical Maoism finally lost its last powerful advocates. The spontaneous celebrations after the announcement of the arrest of the Gang of Four, in addition to the outpouring on April 5, 1976, were powerful, visible symbols of
the public's s animus against the radical Maoism that had brought such chaos and destruction.

The trial of the Gang of Four took shape as a giant national rite in which radical Maoism was blamed not on Mao but on the Gang of Four. In truth, many people, including some of the officials who were now celebrating the arrest and trial of the gang, had once shared the vision of radical Maoism and had even taken part in the efforts to realize the vision. Even so, the demise of the Gang of Four marked the end of an era, of hopes to reshape the world through continuing revolution and class struggle. The relief and excitement of the Chinese people at this turn of events was to translate into a deep base of support for pragmatic policies underlying reform and opening.

Shortly after Hua was named premier and first vice chairman of the party in April 1976, Thomas Gates, head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, met with him for an hour and forty-five minutes. Gates's staff wrote an assessment of Hua based on that meeting, which Gates signed, that proved remarkably prescient. It concluded that Hua was “an intelligent, colorless individual whose hallmark is caution. He handles his material well enough, but he gave off no sparks of unusual intellect or charisma. Hua came across as an ideal transition figure who is unlikely to take any dramatic steps in either internal or external affairs.... I doubt Hua has the vision or the leadership qualities necessary to make it over the long term.... I think new and better qualified leadership will arise … and the colorless Mr. Hua, having fulfilled his historical purpose, will be forced to step aside.”
¹
Chinese officials would never have said so publicly, but officials at the U.S. Liaison Office undoubtedly sensed that some of them held similar views.

In keeping with a long-standing tradition in Chinese political history writing, which glorifies the victor and denigrates the vanquished, Deng has been credited with launching opening and reform, and Hua has been blamed for following everything Mao decided and directed. It is true that Hua's rise to the highest level of leadership was a stretch for someone who had spent his career in a province and had little experience in Beijing, had no experience in foreign affairs, and had only limited experience in military affairs. In his first year of meetings with foreign leaders, Hua, cautious about making mistakes, understandably fell back on general statements of policy, vague platitudes, and safe slogans. Hua was bright and had been a good official, but he could
not compare to Deng in overall ability and leadership qualities. In addition, he did not support the full-scale return of senior officials who had been brought back to work under Deng's leadership, and he could not have provided the sure-footed bold leadership and achieved the good relations with foreign countries that Deng achieved.

But many underestimated Hua and his commitment to reform. Later official histories understate Hua's willingness to depart from the ways of Mao, as well as his support for the policy of opening China to the West. During his interregnum, which lasted from Mao's death in September 1976 until the Third Plenum in December 1978, Hua in fact not only arrested the Gang of Four but abandoned radical Maoism, reduced the roles of ideology and political campaigns, focused on modernization more than class struggle, and regularized the scheduling of party meetings that had been held irregularly under Mao. Hua also sent delegation after delegation abroad to learn about modern technology. He—not Deng—launched China's special economic zones, which experimented with efforts to bring in foreign direct investment. Hua did try to delay Deng's return to office in 1977, but he did not undo the progress that Deng had made in 1975, and he supported the later changes that Deng introduced after returning in 1977. He not only promoted the rapid opening of the country, but even suffered sharp criticism for carrying it too far in his “Western-led Leap Forward”
(yang yuejin)
.
²

Hua's Authority: Official, Not Personal

Hua Guofeng's claim to authority and power stemmed entirely from his selection by Mao and from the official positions he held in the party and governmental bureaucracies. But in China, in 1976, the underpinnings for formal institutional authority were still weak. Mao's dominance of the top positions in the party, the military, and the government during his twenty-seven-year rule had made it more difficult for others to challenge him, but the core of Mao's power remained personal. His authority came not from his official positions, but from his extraordinary success in leading the revolution to military victory, his mastery of the uses of power, his grandiose visions, and the hope and awe he inspired in his people—with the help of a disciplined party and a controlled media.

Hua lacked Mao's and Deng's heroic revolutionary past, their grand appreciation of history, their sure-footed sense of how to respond to issues, and their confidence and poise. He was knowledgeable about many different aspects
of party work; he had been minister of public security; and since 1971 (when he was invited to attend Politburo meetings) and 1973 (when he was elevated to full membership on the Politburo), he had had ample opportunity to learn about national politics. But his personal accomplishments, breadth of perspective, and overall stature among the people of China could not compare with those of the seasoned old revolutionaries—Deng Xiaoping, Ye Jianying, Chen Yun, and Li Xiannian.

After Mao's death, the Politburo had given Hua the appropriate titles—chairman of the party, premier, chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC)—to enable him to govern. Ye and his colleagues announced that the party should increase the importance of formal institutions that did not depend on the personality of one person. Earlier, in the mid-1950s, as China had begun to build a stable structure, organizations had developed predictable procedures; and again in the early 1960s, after the Great Leap disasters, and in 1975 under Deng, they returned to regular procedures that limited leaders from making arbitrary decisions.
³
But there was still a long way to go before these regular procedures and emerging government organizations would acquire the same force of law that they had in many Western countries. Instead, when Chinese officials at lower levels read documents that came from higher levels of power, they realized that in a crisis the top officials could create new documents, each undoing the content of the last.

In late 1976 and early 1977, Marshal Ye and Wang Dongxing endeavored to build up a cult of personality for Hua to enhance his weak personal base of power. Hua's extraordinary victory in arresting the Gang of Four, the lone achievement that raised him above ordinary good officials, was widely celebrated, and in the months after October 1976, hundreds of books and articles appeared lauding Hua's leadership.
⁴
Poems and songs celebrating his leadership were composed and widely distributed, and his picture appeared throughout the country, paired with that of Mao. Television was not yet widespread in China, but radio messages, piped through loudspeakers in work units and rural villages, celebrated his great abilities at the helm.

The promotion of Hua, however, stirred up reactions. Senior party revolutionary leaders who had gone to battle for their country looked down on young upstarts like Hua, who had entered the party after 1938, and found his glorification excessive and presumptuous. Furthermore, many influential party leaders were reluctant to again worship an individual, fearing that doing so would inhibit inner-party democracy. By late 1978, Hua was on the defensive for having allowed the publicity about his own achievements to
reach such heights. He had failed to convince others that he had a personal claim to power that went beyond his appointed positions of leadership.

Hua's modest leadership style was a natural response to his situation in Beijing, but even in Hunan he had a reputation for being cautious and timid compared to other officials of the same rank.
⁵
Others felt comfortable working with him because they knew he would not boldly challenge them. Indeed, except for the Gang of Four and their followers whom he considered beyond the pale, Hua made an effort to get along with everyone.

When the Communists took power in 1949, Mao and his colleagues had already spent almost two decades planning what to do after they took power, but Hua had little time to prepare. The former revolutionaries who had built the country and created policies from scratch held far broader perspectives than did Hua and others of his generation, who grew up learning how to implement rather than create programs and policies. Until early 1976, when Hua was suddenly elevated to replace Wang Hongwen as the leading candidate to succeed Mao, he was unprepared for top leadership. Even after becoming acting premier in January 1976, Hua was so busy dealing with urgent issues—the death of Zhou, the April 5 Tiananmen incident, the death of Mao, the arrest of the Gang of Four—that he had little time to consider broad strategic issues. After October 1976, Hua, confronted with such huge problems, like an earnest young emperor ascending the throne, welcomed the advice of two senior counselors, Marshal Ye and Li Xiannian. Both were ready to guide him.

Hua had known Marshal Ye and Li Xiannian long before 1976, but he had not been particularly close to them until they bonded to form a small trusted circle, operating in secret to plan the arrest of the Gang of Four. Ye and Li, like Hua, did not suffer deeply during the Cultural Revolution, and they remained relatively free of the passion and animus of the senior officials who had been removed and persecuted. Marshal Ye had been shunted aside before the Cultural Revolution and therefore was not one of the power holders whom Mao had attacked. Li was part of the
yewuzu
, the group of officials who attended to the more routine government activities like running the economy while the political battles of the Cultural Revolution raged around them. Hua, Ye, and Li had all worked well with senior officials before the Cultural Revolution, and all three proved able to collaborate with the beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution as well as with the senior officials.

Marshal Ye and Li were not among the radicals who attacked others, nor were they on the forefront of those demanding greater democracy and bolder
experimentation in the economic sphere. Instead, they were ready to help Hua navigate pragmatically and safely in the uncharted post-Mao period. In particular, Marshall Ye could pave the way for Hua in his relations with the military and Li Xiannian could guide Hua on economic issues.

Hua Balances Mao's Legacy with China's Opening

From the time of Mao's death, Hua was under pressure to show the hardcore radicals that he was following Mao's legacy. They could see that Hua, while claiming to be a follower of Mao, was not pursuing political campaigns and class warfare. Reports in the Western press that after Mao's death China was beginning a process of “de-Maoization” created even more of a burden on Hua to show that he was staying true to Mao's legacy.

The arrest of the Gang of Four was enormously popular with most party officials and with the Chinese public, but radicals who saw themselves as following the real Mao were upset about it. They knew that until his death Mao had tried to ensure a place for the Gang of Four among the top party leadership. This dissonance put Hua and his senior advisers, Marshal Ye and Li Xiannian, on the defensive; they strained to prove that the arrest of the Gang of Four was consistent with carrying out Mao's legacy. Hua collected materials that spelled out the crimes of the gang and, in three batches of material he had distributed, made the case that their arrest was consistent with Mao's views.