By Richard Baum, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
With Mao dead and Jiang Qing under arrest, Hua Guofeng set about trying to consolidate his newly acquired authority. At that point, his only real claim to power was a hastily scrawled six-character bequest from Chairman Mao. And Hua soon found himself facing a new, and potentially devastating, challenge, not from the Gang of Four on the left, but from a group of senior party and military leaders on the right—the friends of Deng Xiaoping.
The Political Fallout
As one watched the events unfold in the latter half of 1976, one was both mesmerized and perplexed by the dreamlike, surreal quality of the political intrigues that were unfolding in Beijing. It was high drama, rich in political posturing, theatrics, and deception.
The political fallout from the demise of the Gang of Four was quite serious. All existing photographs of the Gang had to be withdrawn from circulation. That was no easy trick—especially since the four members of the Gang had been prominently featured in publicity photographs taken at Mao’s memorial service in Tiananmen Square just two weeks before they were placed under arrest.
Borrowing a page from Joseph Stalin’s playbook, China’s new leaders acted quickly and decisively. They ordered the four Gang members to be airbrushed out of all official photos of Mao’s memorial service, leaving several conspicuous gaps in the ranks of the mourners.
However, making his jailed rivals disappear by airbrushing them turned out to be the least of Hua Guofeng’s problems. For no sooner had Jiang Qing and her cronies been tossed in jail, that the supporters of Deng Xiaoping came forward to lobby hard for their fallen hero to be rehabilitated.
This is a transcript from the video series The Fall and Rise of China. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Deng Xiaoping
Deng had been in disgrace ever since Madame Mao had convinced her ailing husband that Deng had engineered a counter revolutionary incident at Tiananmen Square. This was in April of 1976, at a time when thousands of Beijingers were spontaneously venting their grief for the late Zhou Enlai and their rage at Jiang Qing and her fellow radicals.
On the face of it, Deng’s supporters made a compelling argument. Deng’s purge had been engineered by Jiang Qing and her allies, who themselves now stood accused of committing a series of treacherous crimes, including forgery and a conspiracy to seize power.
Exonerating Deng
Seeking to take full advantage of the downfall of the Gang of Four, Deng’s backers demanded that the verdict on him should be reversed, and that he should now be fully exonerated.
Hua Guofeng was caught between a rock and a hard place. If he gave in to the demand to exonerate Deng, he might well be setting the stage for Deng to eclipse him. On the other hand, if he upheld Deng’s dismissal as “counterrevolutionary,” he would be perceived as in cahoots with the Gang of Four.
Deng Xiaoping was a serious contender having been once chosen by Mao to be his successor. Deng had been named first vice premier, and so the succession by ordinary rules should have gone to him.
For Hua, it was a no-win situation, and it would eventually help to secure his downfall.
Learn more about Mao’s political ‘rehabilitation’ of Deng Xiaoping.
Public Relations Campaign
However, Hua did not simply fold up his tent and go quietly into the night. As pressure to reverse the verdict on Deng mounted in late 1976 and early 1977, Hua’s own supporters ginned up a full-blown public relations campaign designed to furnish him with a ready-made personality cult all his own, similar to Mao’s famous cult.
Newspaper and magazine articles began to appear glorifying Hua’s proletarian virtues and celebrating his deep affection for the laobaixing. Dozens of new songs and dances in praise of Chairman Hua were commissioned and performed at festivals and on holiday occasions.
Portraits of Hua’s benign visage were routinely hung in public places and private homes alike, right alongside Chairman Mao’s.
Hua’s handlers also worked on his physical appearance. In 1977, he began to appear in public wearing a loose-fitting Mao-style PLA uniform—despite the fact that Hua had never even been in the army.
He also began to grow his hair long, abandoning his traditional close-cropped crew cut in favor of slicked-back hair combed back from his sloping forehead, a là Chairman Mao. He even altered his calligraphy to make it resemble that of his illustrious predecessor.
Learn more about Hua Guofeng’s educational and cultural reforms.
National Campaign
The pièce de résistance, however, was a national campaign, begun in 1977, to saturate Chinese cities and towns with billboard-size posters—huge posters—depicting the now-famous ‘anointment scene’, showing Hua sitting with Mao receiving the dying chairman’s last bequest: “Ni ban shi, wo fang xin” (With you in charge, my heart rests easy).
This was Hua’s indispensable ace in the hole, and he played it for all it was worth: Mao had personally selected him as his successor. Not even the Gang of Four had been able to overcome such a potent trump card.
Common Questions about How Hua Guofeng Consolidated Power after Mao’s Death
Deng Xiaoping’s backers demanded that the verdict on him should be reversed, and that he should be fully exonerated.
Hua Guofeng‘s public relations campaign was launched to furnish him with a ready-made personality cult all his own. Portraits of Hua’s benign visage were routinely hung in public places alongside Chairman Mao’s. Dozens of new songs and dances in praise of Chairman Hua were also commissioned and performed at festivals.
The national campaign, which began in 1977, was an attempt to saturate Chinese cities with billboard-size posters, depicting the famous ‘anointment scene’, showing Hua Guofeng sitting with Mao receiving the dying chairman’s last bequest: “Ni ban shi, wo fang xin” (With you in charge, my heart rests easy).
