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At the risk of this becoming a Chairman Hua fansite…thanks to Chris Amico for spotting the former chairman in a NYT slide show of the 17th Party Congress. According to the NYT caption writers, that’s Hua (sleeping, we hope) on the top left. I mean, he looks asleep…but I wouldn’t put it past the CCP to pull a “Weekend at Bernies” either. 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 fascinated 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 On this date in 1976 former Chinese leader and Granite Studio sympathy fave Hua Guofeng ordered the arrest of the widow Mao (Jiang Qing) and three other accomplices, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen–collectively better known as the Gang of Four (四人帮). The Gang went to trial in 1981, accused of trying to seize power during Mao’s waning days.I’ve said this before, but Hua gets short shrift. By arresting the Go4, he created a useful way to signal the end of the Cultural Revolution–then already well past its zenith–and gave the CCP a neat little political handle to grapple with the complex, mixed, and bloody legacy of the man called Mao. Anti-Japanese resistance? Good Mao. Bloody chaos and social mayhem in the Cultural Revolution? Gang of Four. Not so easily duped, people in Beijing for many years after the arrest would sometimes hold up five fingers when referencing the Gang–four fingers for those in prison and a fifth for the one kept under glass in Tiananmen Square. The machinations and maneuvering of the 1960s and 1970s are only now just starting to emerge from the shadows. We have the broad strokes (Mao dies, supposedly names Hua as successor, Hua |
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