Hua's legacy is rooted in those two years before he was effectively stripped of power.
#MAO SUCCESSOR FULL#
Hua sanctioned their arrests (if reluctantly), blamed the excesses of the previous decade of tumult on them, and was declared party chairman.īut lacking the full backing of the military, Hua's unwillingness to abandon Mao's policies and break decisively from the Cultural Revolution opened the way for Deng to outmaneuver him in short order. Weeks after Mao's death in September 1976, the reformers convinced Hua he had to topple the Gang of Four, which included Mao's widow Jiang Qing, or be toppled himself.įor its part, the Gang of Four saw toppling Hua as the first stage in its power battle with former vice premier Deng Xiaoping to be Mao's true successor. With Zhou dead and Mao dying, the party was in ferment of plot and counter-plot. He gained a place in the all-powerful Politburo in 1973 as vice premier and minister of public security before succeeding Zhou Enlai as prime minister in April 1976. Though he had established a reputation neither as a gifted administrator nor a party ideologue, the following year he was appointed party secretary of Mao's home province, Hunan. He didn't make the leap to the party's Central Committee until 1969, when he was already in his late 40s.
At age 15, he joined Mao's fight against Chiang Kai-shek's government and the invading Japanese.įollowing the Communist assumption of power in 1949, Hua held a succession of party and provincial posts, rising loyally if unspectacularly through the ranks and avoiding the early Cultural Revolution purges in the mid 1960s. Hua was born to a poor family in northeastern Shanxi province in 1921, the year the Communist party was founded. After 1978, Maos successor, Deng Xiaoping, and other leaders focused. "He was an outstanding member, a long-tested and loyal Communist fighter and proletarian revolutionary," it said. After World War II, the Communists, under Mao Zedong, established a socialist system. Xinhua today was glowing in its tribute to Hua. Though an obscure figure, he remained on the Central Committee until 2002, at which point he was 81. Unlike other leaders who were purged by Deng or banished into internal exile, Hua was allowed to remain in Beijing and keep his place on the party's Central Committee. His formal leadership of the party ended in 1981, when the post of party chairman was abolished. On his deathbed, Mao had famously said of Hua, "With you in charge, my heart is at ease." But, with the radicals routed, Hua was quickly pushed aside by Deng.
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