Word: mao
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That unprecedented day of protest was only the beginning of a momentous week in the history of the People's Republic of China. The country's Politburo, apparently meeting in Chairman Mao Tse-tung's private quarters in the Forbidden City, made several crucial changes in the country's leadership. First, the Peking leadership brought to an abrupt climax the intense ideological campaign against the notorious "capitalist reader" Teng Hsiao-p'ing (TIME Cover, Jan. 19), the wily little bureaucrat who only three months ago was considered Chou En-lai's sure successor...
...Mao's Wishes. The Politburo also said that in accordance with the wishes of Mao, it was naming a new permanent Premier: Hua Kuo-feng, 56, the relatively unknown Minister of Public Security whose appointment as Acting Premier ten weeks ago marked the first stage of the assault on Teng. Hua's confirmation as Premier had been predicted for some time by Sinologists. But few expected he would also gain a second and in some ways more significant post. Hua was also given a newly created title -First Vice Chairman of the Communist Party (there are now only...
According to the handful of foreigners who were present, the protest soon expanded into a general expression of rage against the radical drift of Chinese politics since Chou's death. One eulogy pinned to a memorial wreath pointedly praised Mao's late second wife Yang K'ai-hui-an unmistakable slight to the Chairman's current (and fourth) wife, Radical Leader Chiang Ch'ing, who is Teng's implacable enemy. Even more astonishing, a poem circulated at the protest read: "Gone for good is Ch'in Shih Huang feudal society...
...elevation of Hua to his two new posts seemed to be an attempt by the party leadership to do something about its most explosive problem-ensuring an untroubled succession to the reign of the increasingly frail 82-year-old "Helmsman." Some arrangement for succession after Mao has long been desperately needed if China is to avoid a naked power struggle when he dies...
...always, it was impossible for Western observers of the murky politics of Mao's Middle Kingdom to predict with any assurance that the succession problem had been solved for good. The fact that Hua has no strong factional ties, for example, could also mean he has no firm power base and thus could easily be pushed aside in a struggle after Mao's death. Hua, moreover, is well aware that being touted as the Chairman's heir apparent is a decidedly mixed blessing. All his predecessors ended as victims of purges as soon as Mao decided they...