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Hua Guofeng

Hua Guofeng (1921-2008), a native of Jiaocheng, Shanxi Province, served as First Vice-Chairman of the CPC Central Committee and Premier of the State Council in April 1976. In October of the same year, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee took drastic measures to defeat the Gang of Four, during which time, he, Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian played an important role.

Like Chairman Mao, Hua Guo-Feng is a native of Hunan province. This is one of the explanations, along with his unstinting endorsement of Mao, for the dazzling ascension of this mediocre politician. The opinion shared by most of the Party cadres was that Hua was an imbecile, too weak to govern China. There is certainly some truth in it. Just notice how easily Deng Xiao-Ping ousted Hua Guo-Feng from power.

Born in 1921 to a tannery worker's family in Jiaocheng County of northern Shanxi Province, he was originally given the name Shu Zhu. He later changed it to Hua Guofeng after joining the war against Japanese aggression in 1938. The same year, he joined the CPC. After being sent back by the Party to his hometown, Hua led the local resistance movement against the Japanese and later the Kuomintang army. In 1949, he moved to central Hunan Province with the People's Liberation Army and worked as a local official until 1971.

During his stay in Hunan, Hua performed well in improving local agriculture and rural development. Then Chinese leader Mao Zedong had said he was "an honest man that did not lie." Hua was promoted to the State Council in 1971 and was elected as a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau in 1973, when he was assigned to take charge of agriculture development under the leadership of then Premier Zhou Enlai. Two years later he was appointed vice premier and minister of public security. Following Zhou's death on Jan. 8, 1976, Hua took his place to lead the Cabinet. He had also effectively handled the rescue and relief work in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that leveled Tangshan City in the northern Hebei Province on July 28 the same year.

On Sept. 9, Mao died. Hua Guo-Feng was Chairman Mao‘s most faithful among the faithful, even his heir apparent. Just before his death, Mao is said to have scrawled the following words: "With you in charge I am at ease."

In the following months, Hua played a critical role in crushing the "Gang of Four," a political group that had put the country in chaos during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Its core members, including Mao's widow Jiang Qing, were arrested and jailed. This should have earned him the eternal gratitude of the Party. But the communist leadership decided otherwise. Probably to protect Mao‘s image, they erased mention of this disciple, too compromised by aberrations of the Cultural Revolution.

Afterwards, he served as Chairman of the Central Committee, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Premier of the State Council. During his four years as the chairman of the CPC Central Committee and Central Military Commission, Hua worked with other senior Party leaders to restore the country's political and economic life and started correcting cases of officials who were wronged during the Cultural Revolution.

Hua was later accused of trying to build up a Mao-like personality cult around himself -- he even had his hair styled in the same swept-back wave as the late Great Helmsman. But before long, Deng was angling for power and the much younger Hua, who lacked the military's full backing, could not compete.

In September 1980, he resigned the post of Premier of the State Council. In June 1981, at its Sixth Plenary Session, the Eleventh CPC Central Committee, in view of the fact that he stuck to the wrong principle of the ``two whatevers'' and continued to affirm the wrong theories, policies and slogans of the ``cultural revolution'' after the downfall of the Gang of Four, unanimously agreed that he should also resign as Chairman of the Central Committee and of the Central Military Commission. He resigned from his posts in June 1981 and stayed as the CPC Central Committee vice chairman and a member of the Standing Committee of CPC Central Committee Political Bureau until September 1982.

Hua was a member of the ninth to 15th CPC Central Committees and a member of the Standing Committees of the 10th and 11th CPC Central Committee Political Bureaus. He was also a special delegate to both the CPC 16th and 17th National Congress.

Hua died of illness at 12:50 p.m. on 20 Aug. 2008 in Beijing at 87. Hua was called in the official obituary "an outstanding CPC member, a long-tested and loyal Communist fighter and a proletarian revolutionary who once held important leading posts in the CPC and the government." President and Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee General Secretary Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, sent their condolences on his passing. In addition to Hu, the other members of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang, also sent condolences.

"In his 70 years working for the revolution, Hua had been loyal to Communism, loved the Party and people, always put the Party's cause first and devoted his whole life to independence and liberation of the Chinese people as well as construction of socialism," said an official statement. "He never bothered what he personally got or lost ... always putting the interests of the Party and people first."