Hua Guofeng

Hua Guofeng was Mao Zedong’s chosen successor in the immediate aftermath of Mao’s death, but his authority rested on an unstable inheritance: he wanted to abandon the Cultural Revolution without rejecting the legacy that had helped raise him to power. He used his brief ascendancy to arrest the Gang of Four, then lost the contest over the meaning of the post-Mao era to Deng Xiaoping. Their struggle opened the way for economic reform, even as the Communist Party retained its political monopoly.

Rise in the Power Vacuum

After Zhou Enlai died, Mao appointed Hua acting premier instead of Deng. In the political uncertainty of 1976, Hua accumulated substantial personal power. Mao’s death in September transformed that uncertainty into a struggle among leaders with sharply different ideas about whether the Cultural Revolution should continue and what change might mean for the Communist Party’s rule.

Hua occupied an ambiguous position. He wanted to move away from the Cultural Revolution, but could not distance himself too far from it because its effects had helped bring him into the party leadership. The Gang of Four, including Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and three close associates, sought to continue the Cultural Revolution’s policies as a means of consolidating their power and the party’s dictatorship. Hua, by contrast, advocated a more balanced version of Mao’s approach, a stance he expressed through the “Two Whatevers.”

The Arrest of the Gang of Four

Within a month of Mao’s death, Hua used his power to mount a coup against the Gang of Four and have its members arrested. The move was a decisive intervention in the succession struggle: it ended their immediate effort to perpetuate the Cultural Revolution’s political program and made Hua the leader able to determine the next stage of the contest. In March 1977, he reinstated Deng, who had been removed from office after being blamed for the April 5 protest in Tiananmen Square.

The arrest did not settle the direction of the country. Hua wanted to abandon the Cultural Revolution, yet his dependence on Mao’s authority constrained how far he could break with it. His attempt to preserve Mao’s policies in a moderated form became a liability as Deng and his supporters pressed for a more direct repudiation of the period and for changes to the institutions it had left behind.

The “Two Whatevers” and Their Challenge

In 1977, Hua’s position was summarized by the “Two Whatevers”: he argued that the party should uphold whatever policy decisions Mao had made and follow whatever instructions Mao had given. The formula offered continuity after the death of the leader who had dominated the party, but it also made Mao’s words the standard by which policy would be judged. Deng explicitly attacked this approach in September 1978, arguing that policy should be guided instead by “seek truth from facts.”

Deng’s challenge was both political and institutional. He encouraged public criticism of the Cultural Revolution and helped place people who had suffered during it in important party positions. In 1978, complaints about the country appeared on Beijing’s Democracy Wall, a visible expression of public pressure against the existing course. The growing criticism made it harder for Hua to maintain a middle position: he could neither convincingly defend the Cultural Revolution nor decisively separate himself from the Maoist authority on which his own standing depended.

Deng’s Ascendancy and the Reform Turn

Hua also faced a political disadvantage within the party. He was comparatively new to the centers of power and lacked the web of personal connections and informal relationships Deng had built over many years. Deng used speeches to criticize Hua’s policies and, alongside public criticism, developed support within party institutions. The struggle therefore turned not on a single public confrontation but on the accumulation of influence across the party, army, and government.

The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, held in November and December 1978, marked a breakthrough for Deng’s direction despite Hua’s objections. The party shifted its focus from class struggle to economic modernization and announced tentative experiments with a household responsibility system in some provinces. The experiments sought to roll back collective agriculture and restore incentives to farming. By the following year, the Central Committee recognized the importance of “truth from facts” and declared the Cultural Revolution a great calamity for the Chinese people.

Deng’s growing influence translated into a systematic rearrangement of leadership. Hua was gradually outmaneuvered; by 1980 he had been forced to leave the premiership, which passed to Zhao Ziyang, and by 1982 Hua had been removed from the Central Committee. Deng’s reshaping of the party continued beyond Hua’s removal: by 1985, younger, reform-minded figures had replaced many senior leaders. The leadership change accompanied an economic turn that included incentives for farmers, greater autonomy for state enterprises, and the designation of fourteen open cities able to attract foreign investment.

Limits and Historical Significance

Hua’s defeat did not mean that Deng sought to end Communist Party rule. Deng and his supporters remained products of the same revolutionary party and believed economic growth could proceed without surrendering political control. They promoted market forces, incentives, expanded private ownership, foreign investment, and international trade, while treating genuinely inclusive economic institutions or a substantial reduction in party control as outside the available choices. Hua’s struggle with Deng thus concerned the means and direction of rule, not whether the party should relinquish power.

The episode is presented as a contingent turning point rather than an inevitable succession. Hua’s willingness to act against the Gang of Four shaped what became possible after Mao’s death, but his inability to repudiate the Cultural Revolution weakened him against Deng, whose deeper network and developing political support proved more effective. The transition displaced the “Two Whatevers” as the guiding formula and made economic modernization the party’s announced priority, while leaving the boundaries of political authority intact.