Death of Mao and fall of the Gang of Four

Mao Zedong died in Beijing on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82, after ruling China for 27 years. Within a month, on October 6, a group of senior leaders, backed by the army and the security chief Wang Dongxing, arrested four of his closest radical allies: his widow Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. The press soon called them the Gang of Four. Hua Guofeng, whom Mao had named his successor, took the top posts of party chairman and premier.¹²

The arrests were the end of a decade of turmoil. The Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao in 1966, had set students and Red Guards against the party itself, driven out or persecuted millions of officials and intellectuals, and wrecked schools and much of the economy. The Gang of Four were its most prominent figures and had controlled much of the media and the propaganda. Through 1976 the country was also shaken by the death of the popular premier Zhou Enlai in January, protests in Tiananmen Square in April, and the Tangshan earthquake in July, which killed about 242,000 people by the official count, and probably more.²³

Hua Guofeng tried to continue Mao's legacy, but the veteran Deng Xiaoping, twice purged, returned to power by 1978 and led the party to a very different course. At the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978, the party turned from class struggle to economic development, beginning the 'reform and opening' of the economy. The Gang of Four were tried in 1980 and 1981 and sentenced, with Jiang Qing receiving a suspended death sentence that was later reduced. The party's official verdict was that the Cultural Revolution had been a disaster.²⁴