Person1921 – 2008

Hua Guofeng

Also called: Hua Kuo-feng

Mao’s chosen successor, who became premier and party chairman in 1976 and had the Gang of Four arrested, but was eased out by Deng Xiaoping after 1978

Born Su Zhu at Jiaocheng in Shanxi, he joined an anti-Japanese guerrilla unit at fifteen. After the civil war he went south to Hunan as a cadre, served as party secretary of Xiangtan prefecture, Mao’s home district, and won Mao’s trust during the Great Leap. Brought to the centre in 1971, he joined the Politburo in 1973 and became minister of public security in 1975. After Zhou Enlai’s death he became acting premier and in April 1976 premier and first vice chairman of the party; in October he had the Gang of Four arrested and became chairman of the party and of the Central Military Commission. But his “Two Whatevers” — upholding whatever Mao had decided and instructed — left him outmanoeuvred by Deng Xiaoping’s camp, and he gave up the premiership and party chairmanship in 1980–1981. He died in Beijing in 2008.

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3 related events

1
1976Death of Zhou Enlai and the April Fifth Tiananmen Incidentrelated figure
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.
2
1976Tangshan Earthquakerelated figure
Before dawn on 28 July 1976 an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 (7.8 on the Chinese scale) struck Tangshan in Hebei, levelling almost the entire city. The official death toll is 242,419, and some estimates put it higher.
3
1976Death of Mao Zedong and Arrest of the Gang of Fourkey figure
Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976, and a month later, on 6 October, Hua Guofeng, with Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing, arrested the “Gang of Four” — Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. The Cultural Revolution was effectively over.

People who appear alongside

Deng Xiaoping1904 – 1997
General Secretary of the Communist Party (1956–1966), twice purged during the Cultural Revolution, and from 1978 China’s paramount leader who launched “reform and opening up”
Jiang Qing1914 – 1991
Wife of Mao Zedong, a former Shanghai actress who married him in Yan’an, led the Central Cultural Revolution Group and was arrested in 1976 as one of the “Gang of Four”
Zhou Enlai1898 – 1976
First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit
Mao Zedong1893 – 1976
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party who won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949, and launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

Themes this person appears in

From the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution1927 – 1976
From the collapse of the United Front in 1927, through rural bases, the Long March and Yan’an, to the Communists’ victory in the civil war and the founding of the People’s Republic — then land reform, the Great Leap Forward and famine, the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution, up to Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, while the Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan