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China End of the Era of Mao Zedong, 1972-76
Among the most prominent of those rehabilitated was Deng
Xiaoping, who was reinstated as a vice premier in April 1973,
ostensibly under the aegis of Premier Zhou Enlai but certainly with
the concurrence of Mao Zedong. Together, Zhou Enlai and Deng
Xiaoping came to exert strong influence. Their moderate line
favoring modernization of all sectors of the economy was formally
confirmed at the Tenth National Party Congress in August 1973, at
which time Deng Xiaoping was made a member of the party's Central
Committee (but not yet of the Political Bureau).
The radical camp fought back by building an armed urban
militia, but its mass base of support was limited to Shanghai and
parts of northeastern China--hardly sufficient to arrest what it
denounced as "revisionist" and "capitalist" tendencies. In January
1975 Zhou Enlai, speaking before the Fourth National People's
Congress, outlined a program of what has come to be known as the
Four Modernizations (see Glossary)
for the four sectors of
agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology
(see Economic Policies, 1949-80
, ch. 5). This program would be
reaffirmed at the Eleventh National Party Congress, which convened
in August 1977. Also in January 1975, Deng Xiaoping's position was
solidified by his election as a vice chairman of the CCP and as a
member of the Political Bureau and its Standing Committee. Deng
also was installed as China's first civilian chief of PLA General
Staff Department.
The year 1976 saw the deaths of the three most senior officials
in the CCP and the state apparatus: Zhou Enlai in January, Zhu De
(then chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress and de jure head of state) in July, and Mao Zedong in
September. In April of the same year, masses of demonstrators in
Tiananmen Square in Beijing memorialized Zhou Enlai and criticized
Mao's closest associates, Zhou's opponents. In June the government
announced that Mao would no longer receive foreign visitors. In
July an earthquake devastated the city of Tangshan in Hebei
Province. These events, added to the deaths of the three Communist
leaders, contributed to a popular sense that the "mandate of
heaven" had been withdrawn from the ruling party. At best the
nation was in a state of serious political uncertainty.
Deng Xiaoping, the logical successor as premier, received a
temporary setback after Zhou's death, when radicals launched a
major counterassault against him. In April 1976 Deng was once more
removed from all his public posts, and a relative political
unknown, Hua Guofeng, a Political Bureau member, vice premier, and
minister of public security, was named acting premier and party
first vice chairman.
Even though Mao Zedong's role in political life had been
sporadic and shallow in his later years, it was crucial. Despite
Mao's alleged lack of mental acuity, his influence in the months
before his death remained such that his orders to dismiss Deng and
appoint Hua Guofeng were accepted immediately by the Political
Bureau. The political system had polarized in the years before
Mao's death into increasingly bitter and irreconcilable factions.
While Mao was alive--and playing these factions off against each
other--the contending forces were held in check. His death resolved
only some of the problems inherent in the succession struggle.
The radical clique most closely associated with Mao and the
Cultural Revolution became vulnerable after Mao died, as Deng had
been after Zhou Enlai's demise. In October, less than a month after
Mao's death, Jiang Qing and her three principal associates--
denounced as the
Gang of Four (see Glossary)--were arrested with
the assistance of two senior Political Bureau members, Minister of
National Defense Ye Jianying (1897-1986) and Wang Dongxing,
commander of the CCP's elite bodyguard. Within days it was formally
announced that Hua Guofeng had assumed the positions of party
chairman, chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, and
premier.
Data as of July 1987
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