As Beijing readies itself for the 17th Party Congress, much of the gossip, I mean analysis and speculation, is focused on who will be put in a position to take over power when Hu Jintao retires in five years.
Ah, for the good old days of a major natural disaster portending the death of the leader, followed by a hastily played game of “last man standing,” the rounding up of your political enemies, and the printing of new posters, new stationary, and a giant framed oil painting of yourself hanging in a square.
I’ve been fascinate
d with the career of Hua Guofeng, who was paramount leader of China for about 18 minutes in the mid-1970s, since I began studying Chinese history. I would stare at my professors’ notes on the board:
1949-1976 Mao Zedong
1978-present Deng Xiaoping.
“Wait,” I thought, “What about 1976-1978?”
That was Hua. And it’s not like he wasn’t a big deal. The man had his own personality cult (sorta) and everything.
The problem was that everybody forgets about Hua. Sure he ordered the arrest of the Gang of Four, but then what? After the chaos and tragedies of the Cultural Revolution, it seems his colleagues really wanted something a little more, well, inspiring than Hua’s “We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.”
But Hua owed Mao a lot. Like his job. After Mao had purged, arrested, and exiled all his
previous heirs apparent, Hua was literally the last guy in the room as the Great Helmsan prepared to meet Marx. Mao’s ringing endorsement? “With you in charge, I can rest easy.” It was a line and an image that Hua and his handlers trotted out at every possible opportunity.
I mean, seriously: What else did Hua have going for him? You can imagine how those first few CCP meetings went…Hua calling the minutes while everybody else scratched their heads and went: “Really? Mao said that? Are you sure?”
To help people with this transition, Hua promptly made sure that anything Mao could do, Hua could do too.
Meet with minority groups? Check.
Meet with farmers? Check.
M
ilitary? Workers? Check. Check.
Masses rejoicing? Definite check.
Not that Hua was any kind of cowering toady to Mao. Well, he was kind of…but you gotta love the symbolism in this poster from 1976 commemorating the building of the Mao-seleum:
Last year at this time, I wrote a post to remember the 30th anniversary of Hua being named Chairman. And in that spirit, I hereby pronounce October 12th to be Hua Guofeng day here at the Granite Studio. It’s time to give the old guy some due.
Frankly, I think he’s just waiting in the reeds like a pit viper for the right time to sign a six-figure book deal…something like The Once and Former Chairman or No Really, I Had a Big Picture up There Too: The Hua Guofeng Story. Both seem superior choices to his working title of I’m Chairman Hua and Deng Xiaoping was a Chain-Smoking Queue-jumping Gnome. Anyway, I’m sure his editors will think of something.
Happy Hua Guofeng Day.
By the way, another point of this post was to give you just a little taste of the FANTASTIC collection of visual material available at Stefan Landsberger’s Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages. Stefan has taken the time to organize the posters, translate them, and provide some fabulous commentary to place each image in the proper historical context. Definitely worth checking out and all of the images used in this post are via his Hua Guofeng page.
yajun is right, you are unnaturally obsessed with the man.
I always refer to him, in my Chinese politics class, as the Gerald Ford of China – and then I have to explain who Gerald Ford was…to the American students! Oh well, such are the burdens of non-fame.
Excellent work, Granite Jotter! Poor Hua is all too easily forgotten. After all, he was the one who actually opened China to the outside world, although Deng always gets the credits for it.
I’m totally putting this day on my calendar. Good to see someone making creative use of the Landsberger archives, too! That’s a great resource.
Sam,
In my post last year, I used the same reference and then Gerald Ford died, and I wondered if I was being unfair…and then I couldn’t decide: unfair to whom?
Stefan,
Thanks for compliment and let me just say: kudos on your site. Brilliant work and an invaluable resource. Thanks for taking the time that you do on it.
I remember well the first time we had to read Lu Xinhua’s “The Wounded” in Contemporary Chinese Lit.
As with pretty much all the stories in the “literature of the wounded” genre it spawned, the story ends with the guy and the girl facing out to the wide world, moving on from their traumatic CultRev past and shouting affirming things about their willingness to move on under the guiding hand of Chairman Hua.
“Chairman Who?” we all said.
Unfortunately, Hu wasn’t in charge yet at that time, so none of the now-obvious jokes could be done.
I always love the chubby, ruby red cheeks of everyone in those propaganda posters. Was it because they were happy or because the wind was chaffing them?
Well Granite Jotter, you could elevate your man to a new level of fame by recording how long each day and how many continuous days the old man sleeps through the big meeting.
He is still hanging in there:
http://www.joecool.dk/blog/?p=467
He was a great man indeed but blindly following mao’s instruction was not so clever after all. i have more sympathy for him, not because his loss of power, but rather, his secret identity as the son of Chairman Mao…
Now there’s a theory worth exploring…there IS an uncanny physical resemblance, though Stefan Landsberger, the expert on Chinese propaganda posters, once suggested to me that the artists may have touched up Hua’s portraits to give him more of a “Maoist” visage.
It wasn’t unusual in the medieval Vatican for the unacknowledged sons of popes to rise high in the ecclesiastical establishment. Given Mao’s, erm, proclivities one wonders if there were cadres whose ties to the Helmsman were closer than could be officially admitted.
Doesn’t change my basic feelings on the subject, though. Only three more months until the next Hua Guofeng Day, get your shopping done early.