Hu seems to displace Hua, as the Gang of Four trial ends
The case of the missing Chairman seemed all but solved by default last week after a New Year's tea party in Peking's Great Hall of the People. The reception, televised to the Chinese people, was held by the Communist Party's Central Committee and marked by a conspicuous absence: nowhere to be seen, after 36 days out of the 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.
Next day Chinese newspapers gave prominent play to Hu Yaobang's apparent new role as the man actually in charge of party affairs. The official Communist organ, the People's Daily, spoke of "democratic reforms" and the abolition of lifetime tenure in high office—which Hua had once been presumed to enjoy.
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.
The final week and a half of the trial had been devoted exclusively to the star defendant, Jiang Qing, 67, the fearsome Mme. Mao. Proud, defiant, nearly regal in her contempt when the trial opened almost seven weeks ago, the onetime actress turned its final hours into a dramatic shouting match. Presiding Judge Zeng Hanzhou interrupted her concluding remarks on the grounds that she was using her right to speak to "smear and vilify party and state leaders," which, he said, was a "counterrevolutionary" offense.
Jiang sneeringly retorted that it was the court that was counterrevolutionary, whereupon the judge ordered her to leave. She refused. As bailiffs then dragged her unwillingly from the chamber, she shouted Cultural Revolution slogans, unheard in China for years, that echoed her radical past: "Revolution is no crime!" she cried out. "To rebel is justified!"
It was a strangely appropriate end to the often disorderly trial of Jiang Qing and nine other former high-ranking officials. The court is now to deliberate over the evidence accumulated during the 27 days of hearings and then issue its verdicts, probably some time this month. There is no question that all the defendants—eight of whom have obediently accepted most of the charges against them—will be found guilty. There is even a possibility that one or two will be executed. Still, Jiang Qing succeeded in raising some serious questions about the validity of the case against her.