The Passage of Power
The final period was one of increasingly complex and intense struggle: its complexity is due to the fact that it involved continuing conflict among incumbents to designate their successors, inter-successor conflict to discredit rivals and retain favor, and finally conflict between incumbents and successors as Mao sought in effect to pursue a "null-succession" option and keep all would-be successors at bay. Its intensity was due to the fact
that Mao was obviously at death's door. Underlying these frantic political conflicts and to some extent a consequence of them was a waning of charisma, as Mao Zedong finally abandoned the attempt to define a salvationary mission, and as Zhou's rival attempt to do so withered in the face of radical polemics.
Inter-incumbent Conflict
Following Mao's implicit repudiation of his Four Modernizations program in the drive against bourgeois right, Zhou seems to have with-drawn from the political scene; he had retired to the hospital as early as May 1974, but in view of the fact that he continued to entertain visitors and to pursue such elaborate political projects as restaffing his State Council and arranging for the NPC, the radicals considered this something of a tactical ruse.[49] Now, however, he seems to have lapsed into political inactivity, leaving his affairs in the hands of the blunt and energetic Deng Xiaoping, whose positions as first vice-premier and acting premier gave him strong claim to Zhou's mantle.
Zhou's selection of Deng as his successor, however, also tended to bias the selection of Mao's successor in Deng's favor. The reason is that inasmuch as Zhou was senior vice-chairman of the Party as well as premier, whoever succeeded him would also be favorably situated to succeed Mao himself. The choice was limited to the three surviving vice-chairmen: Ye Jianying, Wang Hongwen, and Deng Xiaoping. But Ye was too old to come under serious consideration, and Wang had fallen from favor due to his handling of the Hangzhou incident (to be explicated in chapter 6). Thus Deng Xiaoping, as first vice-premier and sole eligible vice-chairman, stood on the threshold of total power. And just before his death on January 8, according to rumors reaching Hong Kong, Zhou left a "last will" endorsing Deng.
Zhou's plans were, however, undone by the timing and sequence of the retirements of strategic members of the older generation. At Zhou's behest, Deng delivered the eulogy at the premier's memorial service on January 15 on behalf of the CC, the State Council, and the PLA, and the text was published in all newspapers throughout the country and read repeatedly over all national and provincial broadcasting stations on January 15 and 16; a television recording of the latter half of the speech was also released for nationwide distribution on January 16.[50] Mean-
[49] "Although Premier Zhou is seriously ill, he is 'busy' finding people to talk with," Wang Hongwen allegedly complained to Mao. "Those who often visited the Premier's residence include comrades such as Deng Xiaoping, Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian." Central Document (CD) no. 24 (1976), as translated in IS 13, no. 9 (September 1977): 80–110.
[50] N.B.: Deng made no reference in this speech to "stability and unity" (anding tuanjie ), or even to "stability"—terms for which he had come under attack by the radicals. But he also omitted reference to the campaign against the Rightist reversal of verdicts that the radicals were promoting.
while, the Politburo promptly deadlocked over Zhou's succession. That his own death should have preceded Mao's was obviously inopportune, as it gave Mao the chance to override Zhou's succession arrangements (it seems not to have occurred to Zhou to retire before his own death). With Zhou, Kang Sheng, and Dong Biwu now dead, both Zhu De and Liu Bocheng mortally ill, and six of the remaining members absent because their main work lay in the provinces, the radicals were able, with Mao's concurrence, to block Deng's selection. Roughly half the votes went to Deng and the other half to Zhang Chunqiao, second vice-premier and the radical choice. Hua Guofeng, a dark horse with relatively little experience at the national level, emerged as the compromise candidate.
On February 7 it was announced that Hua had been appointed acting premier and CC vice-chairman. When Deng was purged of "all offices inside and outside the Party" on April 7 in the wake of the Tiananmen Incident, Hua was appointed premier and first vice-chairman of the Party, placing him next in line to Mao. In view of later developments Hua is assumed also to have been groomed by Zhou, as a contingency selection. It is also true, however, that the radicals made no overtures to the new heir apparent, as they would have done had Mao made his wishes clear; on the contrary, they attempted to implicate him as a "capitulationist."
Inter-successor Conflict
The potential successors, having after all a greater stake in succession than the incumbents, were inclined to preempt the process without quarter or scruple. As Mao and Zhou faded from the scene they began to seize the initiative, constructing factional networks (to be described in greater detail in chapter 7) to defend their respective positions. Considerations of balance were no longer evident in the staffing decisions for the Fourth NPC, and in the ensuing period the escalation in conflict could be gauged not only by increasing mutual exclusion,[51] but by the fact that the two potential successor organizations no longer respected each other's spheres of functional specialization: the radicals attacked moderate management of the economy, and the moderates attacked radical management of the propaganda and culture organs.[52]
Successor-incumbent Conflict
Whereas Zhou's presence was no longer apparent after the summer of 1975, Mao continued to operate from behind the scenes. He tended,
[51] "They have already labelled us the 'Shanghai Gang,'" complained Zhang Chunqiao. "In a certain reception for foreign guests, they intentionally arrange us in a group. At that time I told the premier my opinion of it." Reported by Xu Jingxian on November 29, 1976, and quoted in CD no. 37, trans. in IS 15, no. 2 (February 1979), pp. 94–111.
[52] See CD no. 24, pp. 79–112; CD no. 37 (1977), pp. 94–111.
however, to abandon ambitious ideological innovations and adopt reflexive, balance-of-power tactics, shifting support unpredictably from one side to the other. He faulted the radicals for factionalism (a number of his criticisms have subsequently been published by the moderates),[53] apparently blamed them (fairly or unfairly) for the failure of the Campaign to Study Proletarian Dictatorship, and sided with Deng in his critique of their administration of culture.[54] He sharply reprimanded Jiang Qing for her attempt to turn the Water Margin campaign (to be described in chapter 6) to political account.
By the fall of 1975, as a result of the radicals' own tactical blunders as well as Mao's disenchantment, cultural radicalism had reached its nadir. Throughout the summer the media were bereft of the themes repeated everywhere in the spring: the "new-born things," the Xiaojinzhuang model, the revolutionary operas. Rehabilitation of purged veterans (e.g., Yang Chengwu, Luo Ruiqing) reached a "high tide" in July–September 1975. The moderate offensive against the radicals seemed to have been successful on all fronts. Then, suddenly, their fortunes turned. The radicals themselves attributed their salvation to the Chairman's providential intervention: on December 30 People's Daily published a letter from a group of graduating Qinghua University students, claiming that the "big debate over the revolution" that followed the "rightist wind for the reversal of verdicts" in July, August, and September had been launched by a "series of great instructions that came directly from Mao at the key moment."[55]
In fact it is hard to account for such a reversal except by the Chairman's personal intercession. What brought this change of heart? One reason is that certain signals aroused all his old suspicions that the moderates were in fact "anti-Mao" (one of the few words Mao bothered to learn in English), and that the radical "new things" upon which he had after all staked his reputation would not survive a moderate succession. The first such signal came in the form of a request approved by Deng and Education Minister Zhou Rongxin from Qinghua University President (and Party Committee Vice-Chairman) Liu Bing in August for the dismissal of Chi Qun and Xie Jingyi. These two were of a somewhat different origin from the Shanghai group: Chi was an officer in the 8341 elite guard assigned to Mao, and Xie the daughter of Xie Fuzhi, Mao's chief of secret police (following Kang Sheng's retirement). Mao thus considered Liu Bing's letter an ill-concealed attempt to attack Mao himself, and he wrote a letter back in which he placed the incident in the context of the struggle
[53] Jiang Qing's letter to Mao of November 19, 1974, as quoted in CD no. 24, complains that she has been "neglected and given almost no work."
[54] Mao allegedly expressed his approval in talks with Deng in early July, and in a written statement on July 14, as quoted in CD no. 37.
[55] CNS , no. 596 (December 31, 1975).
between the two classes and the two roads. Mao's letter was promptly published by the grateful radicals, setting off criticism of the impending education "rectification" promised by Deng and Zhou Rongxin.[56]
Another such signal was contained in an address by Deng Xiaoping to a State banquet for National Day on October 1, in which he quoted the Chairman as saying: "The entire people must continue to follow the important instructions of Mao Zedong: to study the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to struggle against revisionism, and to take care to promote stability and unity and to further national economic development."[57] Although Deng did not identify the original citation, on the same day that the speech was published another lead article in People's Daily also attributed the three commands to Mao.[58] Fruitless attempts to track down this "three-point directive" suggest, however, that Deng was exercising liberal poetic license.[59] On January 1, having apparently only recently become cognizant of the matter, Mao sharply repudiated Deng's directive: "What? Stability and unity does not mean giving up class struggle! Class struggle is the key link, upon which everything else depends."[60] Both of these incidents indicated to Mao that, as he presciently noted of Deng later that winter, "he said he would never reverse the verdict. It cannot be counted on."[61]
A second possible reason for Mao's fateful change of heart is more personal, having to do with the Chairman's deteriorating health. There is ample testimony that the Chairman retained full command of his mental faculties until the end, but continual pain and physical disability (for example, he could no longer read) prevented him from attending formal meetings and made him increasingly dependent upon those close to him.[62] As of 1973, Mao's wife seemed to have lost this proximity as a result of personal incompatibility, taking up residence in the official guest
[56] See Wang Xizhe's remarks in Qishi Niandai , no. 2 (February 1981): 20–23.
[57] RR , October 1, 1975, p. 2.
[58] Ibid.
[59] The directive was not attributed to Mao in provincial broadcasts or articles, and none of the articles later quoting it printed it in the customary boldface type. It was not included in the Mao quotations on National Day and has never been printed in Mao-quotation form before or since. CNS , no. 597 (January 7, 1976).
[60] Mao's repudiation is prominently quoted in the New Year's joint editorial of RR , HQ , JFJB (January 1, 1976).
[61] RR , March 28, 1976.
[62] According to a member of the Schmidt delegation, which met with Mao in December 1975, "Mao cannot rise from his chair with his own strength. He moves his arms with difficulty, he cannot fully close his mouth, his voice is broken, and the articulation of every word creates considerable difficulty for him. . . . There is however consensus that the illness of the 82-year-old Chairman says nothing negative about his mental [geistliche ] abilities. Mao Zedong follows what goes on around him with alertness." Rudiger Machetzki, in CA , December 1975, pp. 767–770.
house. Zhou retained direct access to Mao until he was personally incapacitated in the fall of 1975. For a while Mao was close to Wang Hongwen, but when Wang fell from favor in May 1975 he retreated to Shanghai. Then in the fall of 1975 Jiang Qing regained access by recalling Mao Yuanxin from Liaoning to serve as secretary of her personal office. Mao Yuanxin, a nephew who had been raised in Mao Zedong's house-hold after his father was killed by the warlord Sheng Shicai, had managed to stay in Mao's good graces. At this point he seems to have reinforced his uncle's radical impulses, perhaps by subtly nuancing the information he related about the outside world. As the Chairman's health further declined, Jiang Qing also regained access to him.
Yet the Chairman remained ambivalent to the end. Having rescued the radicals from political oblivion, he watched as they tried to press their advantage, scrambling to a position of dominance second only to Hua and Mao in the new Politburo (upon Deng's "retirement" in February)—and then dropped them from favor. When Hua and Jiang presented Mao with alternative scenarios for the campaign against Deng, Mao opted for Hua's more moderate plan. Deng's errors represented a "contradiction among the people," and neither Deng nor those who had supported his 1975 modernization plans should be purged. Jiang made speeches on February 23 and March 2 advocating a harder line, but to no avail.[63] Mao is said to have asked Ye to persuade Deng to submit another self-criticism, but even after lengthy discussion the latter refused, saying he had always tried to act according to the center and Chairman Mao; the errors he had committed in the past he had long since given up (jiaodaiguo ), so he was not thinking of writing another self-criticism.[64] When at the end of March the radicals arranged to hold an expanded meeting of the Politburo to criticize Deng, inviting their supporters at Qinghua and Beijing universities, Deng remained silent and seemingly indifferent throughout the meeting. Upon its conclusion his only response to the criticisms was "My ears are deaf, I could not hear well" (ting bu qingchu ).[65] Deng had apparently arrived at the shrewd tactical estimate that he was sure to outlive Mao and prevail over the hated radicals in the long run in any case, so there was no need to stoop to another self-criticism.
Although the radicals eventually succeeded in bringing Deng down by holding him responsible for the Tiananmen Incident, they could not plausibly claim to have regained Mao's favor for the succession. Hua's competing claim is stronger, but clouded by the attendant circumstances:
[63] "In China there is an international capitalist agent named Deng Xiaoping," Jiang claimed in one of her speeches. "It might be correct to call him a traitor. Nevertheless, our Chairman has been protecting him." CD no. 24.
[64] Zhang Changxi, in ZW , no. 338 (March 1, 1976):4.
[65] Zhou Xun et al., Deng Xiaoping (Hong Kong: Guangjiaojing Pub., 1979).
Hua was reporting to Mao on the progress of the anti-Deng campaign on April 30, whereupon the Chairman, his speech impeded, responded with a written directive containing these three instructions: (1) take your time, don't be anxious; (2) act according to past principles; and (3) with you in charge, I am at ease. "If you have any questions, ask Jiang Qing," he added (according to Jiang Qing, in a later interpolation). According to the best evidence so far available, Mao explicitly designated no successor.
Lost Mission
Upon the collapse of the "bourgeois right" campaign, Mao seems to have given up attempts at theoretical clarification of the revolutionary mission, resigning this task to future generations, and his terminal statements on this question even suggest pessimism about the capability of his successors to rise to the occasion. On December 31, Mao met with the Nixon delegation, revealing in an interview with Nixon's daughter Julie a despair over the political proclivities of China's youth reminiscent of his mood on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. "Young people are soft. They have to be reminded of the need for struggle," he told her.
Mao had rated the chance of permanent success of his revolution less than fifty percent. The Chairman told us, there will be struggle in the Party, there will be struggle between classes, nothing is certain except struggle. . . . it is quite possible the struggle will last for two or three hundred years.[66]
His last public instructions appeared in an article by the editorial departments of People's Daily , Red Flag , and Liberation Army Daily on May 16, which quoted him attacking "high officials" and calling upon the masses to rise up against them. On June 1 he convoked a group of Politburo colleagues (viz., Hua Guofeng, Wang Hongwen, Ye Jianying, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, Li Xiannian, and Chen Yonggui) for what were to prove his last (apocryphal) recorded remarks. In these he gave voice to feelings of persecution and doom, characterizing himself as "the target of everyone, an isolated poor old man standing alone." While foreseeing the possibility that "in China a restoration of the bourgeoisie would occur everywhere," this would only be a temporary setback, and "in a few decades, centuries, at the latest a few ten thousand years, the red banners will again wave everywhere."[67]
After a series of natural disasters of the type that traditionally augur dynastic changes in China, Mao passed away on September 9, 1976, at
[66] Julie Nixon Eisenhower, in Ladies's Home Journal , January 1976, as quoted in The Hong Kong Standard , December 27, 1976, p. 9.
[67] Quoted in CA , November 1976, p. 581.
12:11 A.M. , at the age of eighty-two.[68] Although in retrospect his charisma would seem to have so ebbed that he could neither transfer it to a chosen successor nor protect his own reputation from posthumous abuse, this was by no means clear at the time. The evidence at hand was ambiguous. On the one hand, he seemed ultimately triumphant: his "latest instructions" could override constitutional law, his obiter dicta were tantamount to Central Documents. The inordinate significance attached to two "forgery" episodes in the last year of Mao's life—the first of which resulted in the dismissal of Deng Xiaoping, the second (a quibble over whether Mao had told Hua to follow "past" principles or "principles laid down") in the arrest of the Gang of Four—demonstrated the authoritative character ascribed to his every word. On the other hand, compliance sometimes seemed ritualistic, an impatient charade masking self-interested behavior.
Succession arrangements remained unclear for about a month, during which both sides engaged in negotiation and backstage scheming. The underlying basis of cleavage was obviously the issue of succession, and the lack of a solution suggested a deadlock. Apparently Jiang sought the position of Party Chairman for herself, with Hua relinquishing his premiership to Zhang Chunqiao (rumors and wall posters had predicted such appointments some three weeks after Mao's death).[69] As of Mao's death Jiang probably counted on the support of Chen Yonggui and Ji Dengkui, plus the four charter members of the "Gang." Of the ten remaining Politburo members, the moderates could probably rely on another six (Ye Jianying, Xu Shiyou, Liu Bocheng, Chen Xilian, Li Xiannian, and Wei Guoqing), leaving four "swing" votes (viz., Hua Guofeng, Li Desheng, Wang Dongxing, and Wu De). It is not clear that a vote was actually taken prior to October 6 but it is reasonable to suppose so, nominating Hua as the most plausible candidate for chairman even before the traditional forty-day period of mourning had elapsed as a way of winning over the undecideds and forcing the Four to their reserves. Chen Yonggui and Ji Dengkui had served under Hua as vice-premiers for the preceding six months, hence their ideological loyalties to the Four were placed under organizational cross-pressure. Hua's nomination flushed out the opposition of the Four (Jiang called him "incompetent"), who
[68] In 1976 the PRC was hit by seven earthquakes, affecting Hebei, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Gansu provinces and the major cities of Beijing and Tianjin. The worst of these occurred in Tangshan on July 28. It measured 8.2 on the Richter scale and reportedly claimed 655,337 lives and injured another 800,000, making it China's worst since 1556. SCMP , January 5 and 6, 1976.
[69] Leo Goodstadt, China's Watergate: Political and Economic Conflicts , 1969 –1977 (New Delhi: Vikas Pub., 1979), pp. 4–12.
proposed Vice-Chairman Wang Hongwen as an alternative. They succeeded in blocking Hua on the first ballot, but after a heated discussion he was elected during a second meeting. Having placed the Four under close (reportedly including electronic) surveillance (Hua had functioned concurrently as Minister of Public Security since January 1975), the moderates were now in a position to move swiftly at the slightest sign of "illegal" activity in resistance to the majority decision, which was not long in emerging.
How elaborate or effective such conspiratorial activities were is hard to gauge.[70] Though there is little credible evidence of a radical plot to launch a coup and seize power on a national scale, there was some effort to organize local resistance in Shanghai—all of which came to naught upon the announcement of the arrest of the Four on October 6.[71] On the morning of October 7, a meeting of the Politburo was held at which leaders of the moderate faction read reports on the arrest, and the Politburo unanimously supported Hua's decision and elected him chairman of the CC. On October 8, the new Politburo announced its first two decisions: to establish a memorial hall in Beijing to house the corpse of Mao Zedong (in violation of Mao's personal wishes), and to publish volume 5 of Mao's Selected Works (Hua accepted chairmanship of both the building committee and the editorial board). The Politburo report announcing the arrest was meanwhile secretly circulated nationwide to middle and high ranking cadres.[72]
The political repercussions of the arrest seem to have been quite widespread, belying Hua's claim that the issue had been drawn "without firing a single shot or shedding a drop of blood." Serious disturbances erupted in Fujian, necessitating the presence of PLA troops to maintain order; chaos was also reported in such provinces as Jiangxi, Hubei, and Hebei. Although Fujian is the only province in which the PLA was ordered to intervene, radio broadcasts spoke of "civil war" in Sichuan, and "beating, smashing, and looting" were reported from northern Shandong in the November 1976–May 1977 period, southern Jiangxi,
[70] Jiang Qing apparently contacted Mao Yuanxin, political commissar of the Shenyang MR, to request support from his division in Beijing (the reason being that the "8341 troop" was said to be preparing to help the reactionaries stage a coup), but Yuanxin needed the approval of Li Desheng, commander of the MR, to give the troops marching orders, and Li in turn consulted with Vice Chief of Staff Yang Chengwu in Beijing, who informed Hua and other high functionaries of Mao Yuanxin's request. This report is impossible to corroborate. Certainly continuation of the campaign to criticize Deng would have provided the radicals with ample opportunity to embarrass and perhaps even purge members of the moderate group.
[71] See Ronald Suleski, "Changing the Guard in Shanghai," AS 17, no. 9 (September 1977): 886–98.
[72] Ming Bao (Hong Kong), October 28, 1976, p. 1.
Guizhou, and Baoding (a railroad center 110 miles southwest of Beijing). In fact, newscasts and commentaries reported damage in twenty-one of the twenty-nine administrative units in the country.[73] There was little indication, however, whether such unrest was recent or whether the reports referred to chronic troubles, and it was also unclear to what extent disorder could be attributed to organized resistance by loyal followers of the Four and to what extent to crimes of opportunity during a transitional lapse of central authority.