I wanted to write this last week, but never found the time. I actually wanted to write it two weeks ago, but Xinhua waited before making Hua’s death ‘official’ to release the news. There were, after all, medal counts to consider. And in the end, isn’t that fitting? Hua gets a couple of lines and photo on the bottom of the page while the national media prints multi-page full-color spreads mourning the Achilles tendon of a certain hurdler.
I’ve compiled a brief survey over at The China Beat of the various homages, obituaries, and ‘who died?’ pieces published this past week. Most of them make note of Hua’s passing while dismissing him as a transitional figure forced to make way for Deng Xiaoping after being in power only a few short years. In essence, Hua was political road kill on the superhighway of China’s economic miracle.
It’s not entirely fair. Now, granted not everybody gets my fascination with Hua, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m the guy who puts Frank Stallone CDs on at parties.
Hua’s rise to “power” was not quite as sudden as most believe, neither is it likely that Hua was Mao’s son as is sometimes rumored. After a decade