Word: deng
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...public eye, was Party Chairman Hua Guofeng. Instead, the gathering's host was Secretary-General Hu Yaobang, 65, who has been rumored to be the man who would displace the missing Hua. Hu is a close ally of China's most powerful figure, Vice Chairman Deng Xiaoping...
Foreign observers who examined the reasons for Hua's fall from grace reached varying conclusions. The Chairman-who still holds the title until the Central Committee takes it from him-had erred in disputing the breadth and speed of Deng's modernization program. Also a factor: his increasingly embarrassing connection with the discredited Cultural Revolution. It was Hua, after all, who as Premier suppressed a now celebrated demonstration against the Gang of Four in Peking in 1976. His slide from power may have been accelerated by the Gang of Four show trial, which concluded its hearings last week...
...this week. Meanwhile, speculation swirled around a particular question: Why would Peking's current leaders have decided to step up the level of attacks on Mao even before the trial of his widow was finished? One possible explanation is that the ascendant faction led by Senior Vice Chairman Deng Ziaoping may not be opposed to an unofficial linking of the "mistakes" of Mao with the "crimes" of the Gang of Four. The pragmatic Deng seems to have decided that a thoroughgoing de-Maoization is going to be necessary...
...fact, Hua has for months appeared to be losing out in his contest for power with Deng, TIME Peking Bureau Chief Richard Bernstein reported. Last September Deng elbowed him out of the country's premiership to make way for younger, more pragmatic government leaders. In Deng's controlled press, articles indirectly accused Hua of blocking the dismissal of venal provincial officials, opposing economic reforms and acting like an old-style palace eunuch who rose to power by toadying to the Emperor-in this case, Hua's onetime patron...
...campaign against Hua also seemed to presage a stepped-up purge of other party officials considered by Deng's forces to be disloyal or inept. Last week every major newspaper in China frontpaged a toughly worded statement by Vice Chairman Chen Yun that was cited by Secretary-General Hu Yaobang. It warned that changing the bad "work style" of some leaders was a "matter of life and death for our party...