Capstone: Mao's Death & the Real Power Struggle That Followed

Chapter 9 closed with the Gang of Four's arrest in October 1976 described as only the opening move in a real, still-unresolved contest over who would actually lead China next. This capstone traces that contest to its own conclusion — and closes the course by tracing the recurring threads running through all ten of its chapters.

Hua Guofeng's Real Rise

Premier Zhou Enlai's death in January 1976 opened a real leadership vacancy at the very top of China's government, months before Mao's own death. Mao responded by elevating Hua Guofeng to the positions of premier and first vice chairman of the CCP — a deliberate, real signal positioning Hua as heir apparent during what turned out to be the final months of Mao's life.

The Gang of Four's Real Arrest (6 October 1976)

Hua played the central, decisive role in removing Mao's own radical allies from power. He personally summoned the Gang of Four's members to a meeting at party headquarters, where they were detained just after midnight on 6 October 1976 — Hua himself directly announcing to them the real reasons for their arrest, accusing them of conspiratorial acts against the party. The action carried real, decisive military and security backing, and its success secured Hua's own subsequent appointment as party chairman and head of the Central Military Commission.

The "Two Whatevers" (February 1977)

Hua's own political position, however, rested on genuinely shaky ideological ground. In February 1977, his administration issued what became a famous, and eventually damaging, slogan: the party would "resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave." The "Two Whatevers," as the policy became known, tied Hua's own legitimacy directly to Mao's continued infallibility — a real political liability once China's own appetite for genuine reform began to grow.

Deng's Real, Gradual Return

Deng's own path back to real power was neither instantaneous nor guaranteed — a pattern this course has now traced more than once. A widely influential May 1978 newspaper article arguing that "practice is the sole criterion of truth" directly challenged Hua's own dogmatic "Two Whatevers" position, opening real public space for questioning policies justified purely by appeal to Mao's own past authority.

The November 1978 Central Work Conference & Hua's Real Concession

By November 1978, at the Central Work Conference, Hua faced mounting real pressure from senior party figures demanding a genuine break from Maoist orthodoxy. Hua eventually conceded ground, acknowledging that the real events of the 1976 Tiananmen Incident deserved formal reevaluation — a concession that significantly strengthened Deng's own political position in the weeks that followed.

The Third Plenum (December 1978)

The contest reached its real, decisive conclusion at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978. Hua effectively lost power at this meeting, and Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's genuine, de facto leader — even though Hua would continue holding some formal titles for several more years, only losing the premiership to Zhao Ziyang in September 1980 and the party chairmanship to Hu Yaobang shortly afterward, before retaining purely ceremonial positions until his eventual 2002 retirement from the Central Committee.

Capstone: Tracing the Course's Own Recurring Threads

Ten chapters ago, this course opened with the Qing dynasty's collapse — an empire whose formal authority had already outlived its own real capacity to govern. Looking back across the whole arc, several real threads recur again and again:

The China that emerged from this course's own final chapters was neither the fractured, warlord-ridden state of Chapter 2 nor a simply linear march toward stability — it was a country whose real leadership repeatedly changed hands through a mix of alliance, purge, disputed legitimacy, and genuine ideological struggle, arriving at the threshold of Deng Xiaoping's own real Reform and Opening-up program in December 1978. Chinese Political History II: Reform, Opening & the Rise of Modern China picks up directly from that same Third Plenum, tracing what Deng actually built with the authority this chapter has just traced him winning.

Hands-On Exercises