CHINA: Mao Tse-tung to the Wall

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The further deglorification of the Great Helmsman

By the thousands, from dawn to well past nightfall, residents of Peking last week thronged the capital's Wang Fu Ching Street, site of the city's People's Daily headquarters. Jostling one another for view, some making notes, they avidly scanned an eight-sheet wall poster that had been put up on the street and signed by, of all people, an auto mechanic in a nearby garage. In a society where the wall poster is the semiofficial harbinger of political shifts and cultural upheavals, the document on Wang Fu Ching Street was undeniably momentous. As part of a continuing campaign to deglorify Mao Tsetung, the poster dared for the first time to criticize the late Great Helmsman by name for serious political mistakes. Indirectly, in a move that could have ominous repercussions, the poster also criticized Hua Kuo-feng, Mao's chosen successor as Party Chairman and Premier.

While Mao was being nailed to the wall, Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing received flattering references in the same poster. Mao, it said harshly, "because his thinking was metaphysical in the last years of his life and for all kinds of other reasons, supported the Gang of Four in raising their hands to strike down Comrade Teng Hsiao-p'ing." Although the commentary omitted specifics, few people who read it were unaware of the reference to one of the strangest and most important events in recent Chinese political history.

The event occurred on April 5, 1976, three months after the death of Premier Chou Enlai. The populace of Peking discovered that the flowers they had placed in Chou's honor at the Martyrs' Monument in T'ien An Men Square had been removed. In protest, tens of thousands of citizens marched on the square, but were repulsed by militiamen. The incident erupted into the most remarkable public demonstration in Peking in 30 years: before it ended, angry marchers had set fire to automobiles and a nearby building. Countless protesters were bloodied and hustled off to jail. Mao was outraged by the affair and blamed it on Teng; the Chairman insisted that Teng, a protege of Chou's, had orchestrated the demonstration to enhance his own position. Mao pronounced the demonstrators "counterrevolutionaries" and purged Teng as a potential heir apparent in favor of the relatively unknown Hua. Five months later, as he lay dying, Mao is said to have whispered to Hua: "With you in charge, I am at ease," and, sure enough, Hua later became both Premier and Party Chairman. Not until July 1977, when his talents were required to supervise China's economic changes, was Teng rehabilitated. But the reported terms on which he returned were that he not tamper with Mao's legacy and that he refrain from seeking retribution against those who had helped in his purge.