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Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 10. May 16 1977

How The Gang Of Four Hanged Itself

page 6

How The Gang Of Four Hanged Itself

We reprint below portions of a speech which the noted authoress, Han Suyin, gave to a gathering of students, journalists and others in Hong Kong earlier this year.

Image of Chiang Ching

Modernization and Chinese leaders.

The publication of Chairman Mao's Ten Major Relationships precisely shows that progress, modernisation a high standard of living, are not incompatible to socialism, but actually what it should promote. On it, therefore, hinges the whole process of the continuation of socialism in China, to achieve what Mao Tsetung said in 1949 — a strong modern prosperous and socialist China. Modernisation has always been on Mao's books.

There is therefore no de-Maoisation, but only the carrying out of Mao's real policies creatively applied by Premier Chou En-lai.

Chou En-Lai therefore stands now with Mao together as the builders of China. Together with them stand those old and true and tried revolutionary companions, who for so may years laid down their lives to make it possible for a quarter of humanity today to look forward to the future with confidence.

Image of a Chinese ad

There is, therefore, a demand, and I think it may be fulfilled, that the Mausoleum for Chairman Mao in Peking should also have place for Premier Chou En-Lai, for Chu Teh, perhaps also for others. The Chinese revolution was possible primarily because of the leadership and teaching of Mao. But he was not alone in it. With him were all the others, and with him were also the Chinese people. So this lesson is one that is manifested today, and which shows that, far from de-Maoisation, the true spirit of Mao's teaching and the true understanding of what he meant has at last permeated among the people of China.

The gang's strategy for seizing power.

Now what is very interesting is that it was precisely these people (the veteran and trusted revolutionaries) whom apparently the 'gang of four' wanted to annihilate totally. I wouldn't have believed it if I had not personally seen the documents, some of them in their own hand-writing, in which there were lists of people they wanted to kill: if I had not understood through these documents Which circulate among the people that their strategy for seizing power was to launch a young generation., the more ignorant the better, against the [unclear: older] ones: Students against teachers, young workers against older ones and the [unclear: techal] staff, training up therefore not educated and red young people, but ignorant young people.

Rise of ignorant young men.

In order to be able to achieve these generational conflicts, it is a very fascinating thought to use all the young to make them deliberately ignorant, and launch them against their fathers and mothers. There was encouragement not to study, encouragement to investigate anybody over 45.

For instance, in the Health Ministry which came under the control of the 'gang of four', a barefoot doctor of 21 was to be Vice-Minister. In the Education Ministry the Minister on the list which the 'gang of four' prepared was to be Chang Tieh-sheng, a young man of 29 who was unable to answer his examination questions. The Cultural Ministry and the mass media were particularly under their tender care and you know the result.

I give you some examples which happened in my province. My province, as I told you, has been badly hit by them. A surgeon who was doing an operation and young hooligans trained so tenderly by the 'gang of four' came to tell him that he must stop the operation in order to be struggled against politically. When he refused to interrupt the operation, he was called an unrepentant capitalist roader.

Another example concerns cancer. There was a need for some more good equipment for treating cancer. The doctor who dared to say that he needed these new machineries from abroad was told he was selling the country down the drain.

This kind of extraordinary nonsense, which went on particularly during the last year, developed rather suddenly. If you really investigate throughout the last ten years, it was really the last two to three years that were the worst.

Drawing of children and a woman

How the gang's power enlarged.

I would pinpoint it at the end of 1974, coinciding with the fact that Premier Chou En-Lai became ill in 1974, and that Chairman Mao himself also at that time showed signs of illness and decline. So did practically at the same time Kang Sheng and Chu Teh. As for Marshal Lui Po-cheng, he is very old. Now the point is that all these people were members of the Politburo. So that when people ask how did the 'gang of four' get so much power, well, it is very easy to understand once you look at the composition of the Politburo. You'll realise that six of them were practically never there because they were in the provinces, that five or six of them were in bad health or declining and unable to attend. Therefore there was this bloc of these four who could practically run things because there was just nobody there to oppose them.

Chairman Mao took measures.

I have heard many Europeans say to me: but why didn't Chairman Mao do something about it, for instance, arbitrarily kick them out of the Politburo say in 1973 or 1974? If you are Chinese, you understand that the best way to get somebody to hang themselves is to give them a lot of rope.

I have seen myself the documents which show that it is absolutely certain that since 1974 Mao Tsetung had been taking measures very quietly to stamp them. Between 1971 and 1973, after the crash of Lin Piao in 1971, the 'gang of four' did not appear to be very much in the limelight. But then they emerged in 1973 at the Party's Tenth Congress. But already in 1974 we know the re-emergence of Teng Hsiao-ping, obviously a move to block them, and this re-emergence was due to Mao Tsetung himself. In 1974 Mao also began to warn the Politburo against Chiang Ching and against the forming of the 'gang of four.'

In January 1975 Teng was given great power by Mao both in the party, in the army and in the State Council; whereas Mao refused to let Chiang Ching, Yao Wen-yuan and Wang Hung-wen have any share in the formation of the State Council of the National Assembly, and and this was very obvious. The documents today do reveal that before the holding of the Fourth National Assembly the 'gang of four' did go to Mao and requested to form the cabinet. Well, they didn't get it. So this proves that Chairman Mao knew what he was doing.

Drawing of a woman reading and a mouse

Strategy of terror.

It is in 1975 and 1976 especially a the end of 1975, that they begin their strategy of terror.

The 'gang of four' hunted down anybody who, as they said, indulged in gossip. The students of the university were told that they must report their friends, or anybody that they had heard pass any comments. They were interrogated at the university and they had to report. They really instituted what I think had never happened before, a kind of system of spying of people spying on each other.

Seizure of power stepped up.

In 1975 the four began to issue and freely distribute cards for communist party membership, at least in my province. In my province, in the city of Chengtu, they took over the security bureau by issuing cards to hooligans and so on, promoting them as communist party members, and forming them into what they called security corps, thus taking over the security bureau. They sent 1,500 such hooligans to Chengtu to try and take over power there.

This was actually a resurrection of the methods of Lin Piao. This is exactly why today everybody says that they were like Lin Piao.

Hitler's Mistake.

Then in January 1976, Premier Chou En-lai died. At the death of Premier Chou En-lai, the four issued orders not to wear mourning. They did not allow memorial meetings. But all over China memorial meetings were held and black bands were worn in defiance of the four. By that single act between January and April 1976, the four lost all their power and appeal among the people of China. They lost the young whom they thought they had in hands, they lost everybody, and they did not know it. They did not know it because they controlled the mass media themselves; and controlling the mass media themselves, they made the big mistake that was made by Hitler, they believed their own propaganda.

Tienamen Incident.

Then followed in April 19/6 the Tienamen Incident which was a vast political demonstration against them. It is now agreed that the four sent in their strong armed men. I know students from the university who were interrogated and jailed by the four in Tsinghua University for having been to Tienamen in order to show their love to Premier Chou En-lai. So they made, in their foolishness, this fatal mistake. As people in China say today: If they had been really clever, they would have pretended to have great sorrow when Premier Chou En-lai died and then they would have fooled a lot of people. But this was the touchstone. When they showed how much they hated Chou En-lai, then it was finished and they were finished. Unfortunately or fortunately they didn't know it. So they got a little bit more rope.

Chairman Mao chose his successor.

This was followed of course by the withdrawal of Teng Hsiao-ping, and as you know, at that moment — I don't know if you realise it — Mao Tsetung did not allow Chang Chun-chiao to become Prime Minister. Chang Chun-chiao was all geared for it. He had his photographs taken. He thought he was going to be Prime Minister when Teng Hsiao-ping was down. He had prepared his speech. But he didn't get it. The old man knew what he was doing. Chairman Mao knew. It was that 'unknown' Hua Kuo-feng who not only became Prime Minister but First Vice-Chairman of the Party. Now the word 'First' had never been used before in Chinese Communist Party nomenclature, and the word 'First' was added in Mao's own hand. This meant automatically that Mao was choosing Hua Kuo-feng.

Drawing of a woman holding a leaf

Again I must repeat here that if Mao Tsetung had acted before, before the 'gang of four' did this extraordinarily stupid thing of exposing themselves completely to the whole people of China to 800 million, showing what they really were like, there would have been trouble in China. Because they had a following. It may have led to civil war. It certainly would have led to misguided young people believing them (after all they controlled the two major universities, Tsinghua and Peita in Peking), perhaps rising up in order to defend what they thought was Chairman Mao and the revolutionary path. It would have page 7 led to bloody conflict, then it would have had need to call the army, and people would have got very muddled. Nothing of this happened by waiting and waiting paid.

A miscarried coup

Between April and September, the 'gang of four' did all they could to hasten and hurry in order to catch power. It was then that they arranged to have a military coup. They armed the militia in Shanghai. They stored food. They placed their people then in Chengchow, in Paoting, in order to control the railways. It was in the summer of 1976 that they took over the railways, and immediately there were shortages in many cities except Shanghai.

In order to keep Shanghai their base, they increased the salaries in Shanghai, all the time shouting against material incentives. Shanghai salaries went up, nowhere else in China. They even subsidised bicycles there, because they wanted to keep Shanghai quiet and make trouble everywhere else. In that way, with China in trouble everywhere else, they would have come out and said: 'You see, there is trouble everywhere, people do not like Chairman Hua Kuo-feng. He can't do anything, and it is up to us now to restore order.'

A great relief.

For China, of course, the arrest (of the four) was a spectacular deliverance. Some officials told me: "We thought that perhaps some people would rise for them. Nobody did.' On the contrary, since then there has been complete pacification — including my province of Szechwan. There were no armed conflicts. Some of them subsided on their own. Some did not, and of course the army had to intervene there. It intervened in small doses in certain areas.

Again I must repeat, in China the Chinese people feel that they have their share in it. Because for the last two or three years, the number of people who put up wall-posters at their great peril against the 'gang of four', the people who openly went against them, is quite considerable. And so they feel that it was not a kind of thing done without their also being there and Chairman Hua has paid attention to this and has lauded the Chinese people for their participation and for their understanding of it.

Some Party officials even told me: 'We thought that perhaps the people wouldn't quite understand, we would have to tell them and explain to them why we had to arrest the four. But the people said, "Don't explain, we have been waiting for this for a long time."

So now the prospects before us, the most positive and important thing, I think, is to realise, though some experts have been predicting chaos, disasters, civil wars, etc, none of these have happened.

The second thing I think that we must realised is that China today has a unity which I had not seen for at least twelve years.

The third thing is that, so far as I am concerned, I feel that the Party people relationship with this new audacity, the frankness of speaking, the subtle way in which this constant communication between the Party and the people goes on, is something which I hope will be carried on. It's very gratifying.

Drawing of a woman and a siren

And fourthly, the propelling force comes from the masses, from the people, as Chairman Mao said. Today it is very gratifying to hear Chairman Hua repeat it in that editorial of a few days ago when he said, when he warned that the masses are ahead of us. This was a warning to the Party organisations that, to be a leader, you must serve the people, and you must take due account of everything they say and this also is very gratifying because it hasn't been done for two or three years.