Death of Zhou Enlai and the April Fifth Tiananmen Incident

Also called: April Fifth Movement, Qingming Incident, Death of Zhou Enlai

After Premier Zhou Enlai died on 8 January 1976, wreaths and poems piled up at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square at the Qingming festival on 4–5 April. When the authorities removed the wreaths crowds protested, and on the night of the 5th militia and police cleared the square. The incident was declared “counter-revolutionary” and Deng Xiaoping was purged again.

Zhou Enlai, who as premier had kept the government running through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, died of cancer on 8 January 1976. Resentment built up at moves by the Gang of Four’s camp to limit mourning, and from late March Beijing residents laid wreaths at the Monument to the People’s Heroes and posted poems honouring Zhou and obliquely attacking Jiang Qing and her allies. Similar mourning took place in Nanjing and other cities.

When the authorities removed all the wreaths on the night of 4 April, huge crowds gathered in protest on the 5th, and vehicles and part of a building were set on fire. That night militia and police drove out with clubs and detained those still in the square. The Politburo declared it a “counter-revolutionary incident”, on 7 April stripped Deng Xiaoping, named as its instigator, of all his posts, and made Hua Guofeng First Vice Chairman of the party and Premier. The numbers injured and arrested are not reliably known.

After Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four, the party re-evaluated the incident in November 1978 as “a thoroughly revolutionary action”.