THEC ASOEF THEG ANGO FF OUR -WitFhi rTsrta nsloafTt eingoH ns iaiogn-'ps "ThrPeoei sonWoeuesd s" by Chi Hsin JoinPtulbylB iys:l 1ed Cosmos Books Ltd. Books New China, Inc. COSMOBSO OKSL TD. HonKgo nJg9 77 Copyri1g9h7bt7y© CosmBooso Lktsd . 30J,o hnRsotaoBdna, s ement _HoKnogn g North American distributors: Books New China, Inc. 53 E. Broadway NewY orNkY,1 0002 PREFACE The fall of the Gang of Four and Lhe appointment of Hua Kuo-feng as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party are major events in both China and the world. This news came as a surprise to many people outside China and led to much uncertainty and concern about what is actual1y going on in China. How could these so-called "radicals" suddenly become the "real capitalist-roaders within the Party"? How could the most outspoken denouncers of "bour­ geois right" suddenly become the bourgeoisie themselves? How should the Cultural Revolution be evaluated? What was the "Campaign to Criticize Teng Hsiao-pin�" all about? \Vhat sort of a leader is Hua Kuo-feng? "The Case of the Gang of Four" is an attempt to answer these and many other related questions. These articles originally appeared in "The Seventies", a Chinese magazine published in Hong Kong which seeks to promote social con­ cern and a better understanding of China and the world. It is widely read by people in Hong Kong and by readers of Chinese all over the world. These articles have been trans­ lated to help English-speaking readers understand the current situation in China and some of the questions concerning the Gang of Four, Teng Hsiao-ping and Hua Kuo-feng. Note Some Important Names The Chinese names listed in this book are in the outdated Wade-Giles romanization, rather than the now-familiar Pinyin. Here’s a conversion for some (not all) the names you’ll encounter in this book. (Wade-Giles/Pinyin) Gang of Four Chiang Ch'ing = Jiang Qing Chang Ch'un-Ch'iao = Zhang Chunqiao Yao Wen-Yüan = Yao Wenyuan Wang Hung-Wen = Wang Hongwen Other Names Mao Tse-Tung = Mao Zedong Teng Hsiao-Ping = Deng Xiaoping Chou En-Lai = Zhou Enlai Hua Kuo-Feng = Hua Guofeng Liu Shao-Ch'i = Liu Shaoqi Teng Ying-Ch'ao = Deng Yingchao Yeh Chien-Ying = Ye Jianying Lin Piao = Lin Biao Ch'en Po-Ta = Chen Boda CONTENTS Preface I. The Rise and Fall of the Gang of Four 1 II. Theory and the Gang of Four 51 Ill. Seeing 1976 Off in Kwangchow 15 --Lively Discussion of Questions on People's Minds IV. China Ten Years After the Cultural Revolution 106 -An Interview with Hong Kong Residents from the Mainland V. The Political Ups and Downs of Teng Hsiao-ping 143 --A Tentative Analysis of the Anti-Teng Campaign VI. Some Conjectures on the Future of Arts in China 184 Translators' Notes 194 Appendices: The Three Documents Attacked by the Gang of Four (Editor's Note) 201 On the General Program of Work for the Whole Party and the Whole Nation 203 Some Problems in Accelerating Industrial Development 239 (Appendix: Talk Given by Teng Hsiao-ping on Industrial Development.) 273 On Some Problems in the Fields of Science and Technology 277 (Appendix: Comments by Teng Hsiao-ping on the Presentation of Hu Yao-bang's Report.) 287 I The Rise and Fall of t:he Gang of Four* Chi Hsi�* How Did the Gang of Four Get into Power? Q. For more than a month, China's press has carried many articles on the crimes of the Gang of Four which brought disasters to China and her people. The disc1osure of these facts is shocking. but the question I am presently concerned with is this: if the Gang of Four were so wicked and so incompetent, then why were they permitted to climb to such high positions in the first p]ace? A. The ten years since the Cu]tural Revolution have bc�n a period of very complex and sharp strugg]es in China. Understanding the rise and fa]] of the Gang of Four and the overall march of po]itical events isn't easy. We have tu look below the surface of things to analyze the ·'leftist" and rightist lines and to distinguish correct from incorrect things. because. as we know, peop]e can "wave the red flag to oppose the red flag." Things can be "left" in form but right in essence. one tendency can cover or hide another, * First published as a Books New China Pamphlet ** Pen-name judgements correct in general may be erroneous in parts, and what is wrong may appear to be right. In short, things are complicated and not easy to sort out. H()wever, people in China have learned a lesson and improved their analytical ability over this long period of struggle. Those who have not been through these last ten years of turbulence will find it difficult to make out what is happening simply from a few reports and a superficial knowledge of the events. Q. It is my understanding that the Gang of Four came to power only at the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cul­ tural Revolution in 1966. Prior to this. they were neither members nor even alternate members of the Central Commit­ tee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). At that time, Chiang Ching, the wife of Mao Tsetung, did not hold any sub­ stantive position in the Party or govemment. Chang Chun­ chiao's position was higher: he was the deputy secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and the head of its pro­ paganda department. Yao Wen-yuan was the editor-in-chief of Shanghai's Liberation Daily. Wang Hung-wen was just an ordinary factory worker in Shanghai. What enabled them to leap into the highest positions in the Chinese Communist Party? Was it because of their relationship with Mao Tsetung? A. One should rather say that they owed their positions to Chiang Ching, who was actually the head of the Gang of Four. Chiang Ching's own rise to power .was the outcome of a certain political development and did not happen sim­ ply because she was Mao's wife. We would say it was a necessary outcome of the time when Mao initiated the Cul­ tural Revolution. At some point after the Soviet Union suddenly launched its attack on the Chinese Communist Party in the Bucharest meeting of 1960, there was a division in the Central Commit­ tee of the Chinese Communist Party into two "fronts," i.e., the so-called first front and second front. The leaders of the first were those in charge of the day-to-day administration of the Party and state. The leaders of the second concerned themselves with the study of theoretical questions of the inter­ national communist movement and the struggle against Soviet rev1s10msm. Mao implied that he belonged to the second front, while Liu Shao-chi took over the leadership of the first and served as head of state with Teng Hsiao-ping as General Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of CPC, managing the Party organizations throughout the nation. In a few years, Liu Shao-chi came to control many of the major departments in the central government, slowly pro­ moting a revisionist line, especially in the superstructure and in the cultural sphere. Stories of emperors, kings and generals flooded the stage and screen. The schools turned out groups after groups of people with an elitist outlook. In the health field, the majority of the doctors and large hospitals were concentrated in cities, completely ignoring the scarcity of medical staff and medicine in rural areas. Mao Tsetung time and again criticized these phenomena, but Liu Shao-chi simply ignored his criticisms and even prevented his directives from reaching the cadres and masses. As a result, there were two rival headquarters in the Central Committee: Mao's headquarter and Liu's "bourgeois headquarter." In 1964, Chiang Ching began to intervene in the cultural area. She produced the "Red Detachment of Women", a modern ballet, to reflect Mao Tsetung's intentions. Later in 1965, Liu Shao-chi rejected Mao's suggestion at a Central Committee work meeting that the new historical drama "Hai Jui Dismissed from Office"1 be criticized. Because Mao felt that his_ suggestion could not be carried out in Peking, Chiang Ching was sent to Shanghai to examine the matter with Chang Chun-chiao, head of the propaganda department of the Shanghai Municipal Committee. Mao also instructed Yao Wen-yuan to write the article "On the New Historical Drama Hai Jui Dismissed from Office," which first appeared in Shanghai's Wen Hui Pao. It is said that Mao Tsetung re­ vised this article seventeen times and wrote some of the im­ portant points himself. Since they participated in writing the article and since it was this article that initiated the Cultural Revolution, Chiang, Chang, and Yao were able to sneak into power. Q. Can the writing of an article be of such signi­ ficance? Surely Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Communist Party would not elevate unknown people to the highest level of the Party just because they had written a good article, especially when it had to be revised by Mao so many times. A. "On the New Historical Drama Hai Jui Dismissed from Office" is not just an ordinary article. It reflected the struggles over political lines in the Chinese Communist Party since 1959. Mao had said that "the key point of 'Hai Jui Dis­ missed from Office' is the question of 'dismissal from office.' Emperor Chia Ching di�misscd Hai Jui from office. In l 959, we dismissed Peng Teh-huai2 from office. Peng Teh-huai is Hai Jui.'' This clearly shows that the appearance of this drama at that time had its specific political purpose. It was a 4