Word: teng
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...interview with Novak and in talks with two touring Japanese politicians, Teng demolished a number of Sinologists' preconceptions about the poster campaign. When the campaign began, it was widely believed that Teng was planning to replace Hua as Premier. Yet in a talk with Yoshikatsu Takeiri, head of Japan's Clean Government Party, the Vice Premier renounced any designs on that prestigious job. "I am too old and I wish to live longer," he explained. "A younger man is better for the job." (Hua is 57.) Similarly, al though few experts believe that the protesters would have denounced...
When the campaign was at its height, Chairman Hua was silent, unseen by Westerners. With the jaunty confidence of a man in charge, Teng emphasized that there would not be an internecine party struggle and that there would be no firings from the Politburo, despite the posters calling for purges. "The party Central Committee headed by Comrade Hua Kuo-feng," he told a Japanese visitor, "is united and fully confident of carrying through the Four Modernizations...
...posters and demonstrations left LACK STAR little doubt that Teng had a popular base of support should he choose to restructure China's leadership by seizing the premiership. When a British journalist asked a group of Peking citizens whom they would vote for as Premier if there were free elections, they quickly shouted back the answer: "Teng Hsiao-p'ing! Teng Hsiao-p'ing!" Teng himself dismissed the calls for his elevation in an oblique, Olympian answer that was worthy of Mao himself: "This is a normal thing and shows the stable situation in our country...
...week's end, Western experts were still trying to explain the sudden burst of free expression in a society notorious for its rigidity and repression. If the poster campaign was not calculated to push forward Teng's ambitions, what then was its purpose? One answer from Sinologists was that this calculated political performance was inspired by Teng to show both the Chinese and the Western world that the outpourings of grief over Chou's death were revolutionary acts. After some of the wall posters called for an ex post facto justification...
From an endorsement of T'ien An Men, it was a small ideological step to allowing public criticism of Mao. Radical supporters of the Chairman had been responsible for condemning the mourning of Chou-who was, of course, Teng's protector and guide. The Central Committee's hallowing of that 1976 ceremony was a subtle way for Teng to humiliate his old enemies...