Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (69 page)

In order to gain a broad popular consensus, one that would lead to unity rather than to polarization, Deng directed that high-level officials in both Beijing and the provinces be given a chance to comment on the draft. Thus on October 12, 1980, after the latest draft was cleared by the Politburo, the party's General Office sent it to some four thousand high-level officials who were to express their views. A summary of their views would then be sent to the drafters for further consideration.
⁴¹
In fact, including the 1,500 students at the Central Party School, an estimated 5,600 high party members joined in the discussions of the draft. Some were outspoken in demanding a more critical account. Fang Yi, a specialist in science and technology, declared that Mao had been a tyrant
(baojun).
Tan Zhenlin, one of those who had dared to complain about the Cultural Revolution in February 1967, declared that Mao had acted against his own teachings. But when Huang Kecheng—who had been seriously criticized when his superior, Peng Dehuai, was attacked—
defended Mao's contributions, it became difficult for others to demand a more severe criticism of Mao.

Although the rounds of drafting and consultation continued, the major discussions were concluded by late November 1980. On March 24, 1981 when Deng discussed one of the later drafts with Chen Yun, Chen said that they should give more weight to Mao's pre-1949 role, which would emphasize Mao's positive achievements. Chen also suggested that they pay special attention to Mao's contributions to theory, emphasizing both Marxist-Leninist theory and Mao Zedong Thought. Deng accepted Chen Yun's views and passed them on to the drafters.
⁴²

The extended discussions reflected just how important high officials considered the question of Mao's reputation, since the place he would hold in history would determine both their own political futures as well as the treatment of their family members and associates. Significantly, in these evaluations, the political differences between Mao and Liu Shaoqi and between Mao and Peng Dehuai were no longer regarded as so serious as to be described as a “struggle between two lines.” That gave everyone breathing room, but especially the victims' relatives and friends, who were grateful for the change in language.

The final draft of the document was full of praise for Mao Zedong Thought and for Mao's contributions as a great proletarian revolutionary, but it remained critical of Mao's role in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The problems of the Great Leap Forward, for example, were “due to the fact that Comrade Mao Zedong and many leading comrades, both at the center and in the localities, had become smug about their successes, were impatient for quick results, and overestimated the role of man's subjective will and efforts.” The Cultural Revolution, too, “was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the party, the state, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic. It was initiated and led by Comrade Mao Zedong.”
⁴³
The document dealt with Mao's errors only in a general way, but Deng stated that fifteen years later, it would be possible to make another evaluation of Mao. The implication of Deng's comment seemed clear: if the party were to criticize Mao too harshly in 1980, it could be too divisive and weaken the support of the people, but years in the future, when the party could distance itself from present emotions and current personnel issues, it would be possible to make a more detailed and far franker criticism of Mao.
⁴⁴

As in the Soviet Union, where Stalin's merits were said to be 70 percent
and his weaknesses 30 percent, Mao's merits too were rated at 70 percent. Mao, after all, had admitted to making errors. Deng pointed out that during the Cultural Revolution, Mao's estimates of the situation were wrong, the methods he had used were wrong, and that the combination of these mistakes had caused serious damage to the party and to China. On March 19, 1981, as the drafting of the evaluation neared an end, Deng expressed his satisfaction with the discussion of Mao's role during the Cultural Revolution.

Deng was keenly aware that just as it was imperative to reassure the Chinese public that the process of evaluating Mao and Hua was orderly and proper, so it was important to convey to the rest of the world that no disruptive “power struggle” and no “de-Maoization” was taking place in China. At this point, Deng agreed to an interview with the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, one of the world's best-known interviewers of high-level officials. Fallaci was known for her confrontational style, for being very well-prepared, and for asking shrewd and tough questions. Deng enjoyed the challenge. The interview on the morning of August 21, 1980, went so well that at the end Deng joked, “Let's go have lunch. My stomach is starting to lead a revolution,” and he offered to meet her a second time two days later.

Two weeks before Fallaci first met Deng, Beijing had sent out a notice that the number of pictures of Mao displayed in public places and the posting of his poems could be reduced. So Fallaci began by asking if Mao's portrait would remain in Tiananmen Square. Deng answered “It will, forever.” Deng explained that Mao had made mistakes but, unlike the crimes of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, Mao's mistakes were secondary to his achievements. He explained that Mao Zedong Thought still provided important guidelines, even though Mao, in the later stages of his life, had lost touch with reality and had taken actions counter to the views that he had earlier advocated. When Fallaci asked about the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward, Deng replied that they were not Mao's alone; rather, they were mistakes for which all those who had worked with Mao must share the blame.
⁴⁵
When she inquired about Mao's selection of Lin Biao, Deng said that it was feudalistic for a leader to choose his own successor. Deng's implication was unmistakable: it was also wrong for Mao to have chosen Hua Guofeng as successor. And when asked how experiences like the Cultural Revolution could be avoided in the future, Deng explained that party leaders were looking into restructuring China's institutions in order to achieve socialist democracy and uphold socialist law.
⁴⁶

Many other leaders would have become testy under Fallaci's confrontational
questioning, but Deng responded easily and confidently. Later, Fallaci, reflecting on her long career, listed her two interviews with Deng as among her favorites. Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, who sat in on this and other meetings with Deng, rated Deng's performance in these two interviews as one of his most brilliant.
⁴⁷

After May 1979, Hua Guofeng did not often appear in public. In his last major presentation, at the NPC of June 18, 1980, Hua did not explicitly say that class struggle had ended, but he did say that class struggle was no longer the major contradiction and that the party should not undertake large-scale class struggles. On economic matters, his comments were in tune with party policy of the time: he supported Chen Yun's call for readjustment and stressed the importance of agriculture and light industry.
⁴⁸
Some of the documents presented at that NPC, such as the “Guiding Principles,” were, in effect, potent criticisms of Hua Guofeng's leadership.

At a Politburo Standing Committee meeting, members were asked whether in the document on party history it was better to use a brief six lines to summarize the period since 1976, or whether it was better to use a longer version that went into greater detail about the four years since 1976—a version that inevitably would include criticisms of Hua Guofeng. Hua was of course against spelling out the details of those four years. The participants agreed that they would first send the briefer version to other leaders for discussion and await their reactions.
⁴⁹
Significant numbers of those leaders were critical of Hua Guofeng's role in blocking Deng's prompt return and they argued for the longer version. In the end, Deng agreed that the document should include a discussion of those four years, so that the reasons for Hua's removal would be clear.
⁵⁰
The longer version thus became part of the final draft.
⁵¹

In late May 1981, some seventy participants at an enlarged Politburo meeting gave final approval to the revised draft on party history. After the drafters did some fine-tuning, a polished final piece was presented to the Sixth Plenum, and approved on June 27. It was publicized throughout the country on July 1, 1981, the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the party.
⁵²

The issue of whether to oust Hua from his major positions, as chairman of the party and chairman of the CMC, came to a head in a series of nine Politburo meetings held from November 10 to December 5, 1980. Those discussions were considered so sensitive that, even three decades later, most of the records of the meetings have not been made available, even to party historians. But one key document, a speech by Hu Yaobang on November 19 spelling
out Hua's problems, was released to the public. In it, the main lines of argumentation were made clear.

After retirement, Hu Yaobang said that his most enjoyable years were those when he served under Hua, a comment that likely reflected his resentment for being pushed aside by Deng. Hu, in 1980, however, was assigned the task of making the case for Hua's removal. In his presentation of the history of this period, Hu began by acknowledging that the party and the people would never forget Hua's contribution in arresting the Gang of Four, although Hua had overstated his personal role in that achievement: given the political climate after the April 5 demonstrations, it had not been difficult to arrest them. Hu also said that after Mao died, Hua had continued Mao's errant policies of pursuing class struggle instead of correcting them, and he had rushed to publish volume 5 of Mao's
Selected Works
without broad consultation. When Mao was alive, Hua had sometimes disagreed with Mao and had even been criticized by him (Mao complained that Hua paid too much attention to production), but after Mao's death, Hua had used the “two whatevers” to strengthen his own power. Hu also criticized Hua for promoting a personality cult for his own self-glorification. Finally, recalling his own depression after the April 5, 1976 incident, Hu said that he was not given the opportunity to speak with Hua Guofeng from that time until February 26, 1977, and he did not feel free to visit Deng Xiaoping until March 14, 1977.

Hu reported that Chen Yun, who had not been allowed by Hua to return to work until the atmosphere of the Third Plenum demanded it, said that from Mao's death until March 1977 Hua had been very harsh in his treatment of senior officials. In particular, Hua had refused to reverse verdicts on the April 5, 1976 incident, afraid that the return of old officials would interfere with his ability to govern. Hu said that even though Marshal Ye and Li Xiannian had urged Hua on several occasions to allow Deng to return to work, and even though Chen Yun and Wang Zhen at the March 1977 work conference had agreed, Hua still had refused. Instead, Hua had relied on a tiny group of advisers, Hu said, including Wang Dongxing, Ji Dengkui, Wu De, Su Zhenhua, and Li Xin, while sometimes keeping other officials in the dark on party matters until the last minute. Hua Guofeng also tried to spur the economy to move too quickly. Hu acknowledged that this was not only Hua's error, but also Deng's and his own: indeed, at the time, only Chen Yun had recognized that the plans were too ambitious.
⁵³

The most serious resistance to pushing Hua aside in late 1980 came from Marshal Ye. During the party history discussions, Marshal Ye did not support
the emphasis on Mao's later errors. He felt that, for the good of the country, it was essential to go further than Deng in maintaining Mao's reputation. He preferred instead to place the onus on Jiang Qing and Lin Biao. The two issues were inextricably linked for Ye: at one of the Politburo meetings, Ye recalled dramatically that when he had gone to pay his final respects to Mao shortly before his death, Mao beckoned to him. Although Mao was unable to speak, Ye understood what Mao wanted to say: Mao hoped that Ye would support Hua and help him grow into the leadership position. (Mao Yuanxin, however, who had been with Mao at the time, declared that no such incident occurred.
⁵⁴
) Reportedly, Marshal Ye believed that Hua should retain his titles and that Deng should continue to carry on his work, but that officially Deng should be under Hua.

Why did Marshal Ye defend Hua Guofeng? Some speculated that Marshal Ye himself wanted to play a key role in Chinese party and governmental politics, and was supporting the man who could make that happen. But Ye was too old and weak, and not only had he never shown any sign of personal ambition, he had also for years been reluctant to manage daily affairs. More likely, as other party officials argue, Marshal Ye was concerned that Deng might become too authoritarian—that he would behave too much like Mao—and he thus sought to retain Hua as a way of constraining Deng's power and promoting inner-party democracy.

In the end, the protests of Marshal Ye and others were overcome by the majority view of the Politburo, which supported the resignation of Hua and the centralization of power in the hands of Deng and his associates. In an internal memorandum, circulated on December 5, 1980, immediately after the last in this series of Politburo meetings, the Politburo announced it would recommend to the Sixth Plenum that Hua's resignation from the chairmanship of the party and the CMC be accepted; that Hu Yaobang replace Hua as chairman of the party; and that Deng replace Hua as chairman of the CMC. Hua would remain a vice chairman of the party and a member of the Politburo.
⁵⁵