by James Palmer
Given their fundamental weaknesses at the centre, the most sensible move would have been for at least one of the Gang to shift permanently to Shanghai. There they would have been shielded by a circle of political allies and a workers’ militia primed to follow them. Holding Shanghai would have left them with a valuable bargaining chip in any political negotiations, allowing them at least to maintain some place in whatever new political order now emerged. However, doing that would have required a degree of self-awareness of their situation, of their basic problems in Beijing, and of the hatred that so many in the Politburo felt for them.
Instead, they gave the worst possible impression, flying down to Shanghai to talk to leaders there for a day or two and then back to Beijing. With the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, mostly sycophants of Wang Hongwen, they talked vaguely about the danger posed by rightists, and about counter-revolutionary forces that threatened the centre. Wang even stated outright that, in the event of a rightist coup, the Shanghai leaders might have to take to the hills and fight as guerrillas.
Zhang may have made a particularly feeble attempt to reach out to the Shanghai military leadership. He approached one of the garrison commanders, and showed him some positions on a map, which he suggested the Shanghai troops should occupy in case of ‘invasion’. Well, invasion by whom, the commander wanted to know. Foreign imperialists, Zhang replied. Then why, the commander asked, were the positions all so far from the beaches where the imperialists would be landing?
The biggest military assets of the leftists were the late dictator’s son Mao Yuanxin, with his army position, and the people’s militia in Beijing. But Mao Yuanxin was travelling about the north-west, organising relief efforts around Tangshan, and they never made proper use of the militia. Zhang was the only one who even put together a bodyguard of his own, assembling some of the biggest and brawniest of the militia into a personal unit he named ‘the Bears’.
The plotters around Hua, meanwhile, expected far more concrete action from the Gang of Four than they actually took. Ye Jianying used his extensive network within the PLA closely to monitor potential military moves near the capital. Tangshan was a particular concern. The continuing disaster relief efforts meant that army units were constantly moving in and out of the region. Hua’s allies watched the situation carefully, concerned that this could be used as cover for an assault on the capital, only a day away. There was a story told that Mao Yuanxin had tried to shift an armoured division from Shenyang to the capital, commanded by an officer with ties to Wang Hongwen, and that Ye blocked this. But this seems to have been nothing more than rumour, as were stories that Mao had tried to gather support among troops in Tangshan where most of the forces were indeed still tied up in quake relief. A more plausible threat seems to have come from the 6th Tank Division, stationed in a county on the edge of Beijing, which was receiving regular visits from Zhang Chunqiao’s younger brother, Zhang Qiuqiao.
The possibility that the Gang might be planning a military advance on the capital disturbed Ye enough for him to warn Hua about it. Hua then consulted with Wu De and was reassured that the Beijing garrison commander was reliable, and that, if necessary, a loyal tank battalion could be brought into play. But Zhang Qiuqiao was a commissar in the PLA, and the visits were a routine part of his job; there would be no epic tank battles for the capital.
Everything was delayed until after the National Day holiday on 1 October. The holiday, commemorating Mao’s declaration of the People’s Republic from Tiananmen Square in 1949, was marked by vast meetings in memory of Mao. It would have been both logistically nightmarish and politically inappropriate for either side to act while these were going on.
Across the nation, people’s nerves were stretched to the limit. ‘Even as a child, I knew something was wrong,’ one woman recalled, ‘Nobody wanted to talk about it, but my parents kept saying things to each other in private about what could be happening in Beijing. My father read the newspaper from cover to cover every day, looking for information.’ Like seismologists poring over charts of ground anomalies, the Chinese public looked for signs of the political earthquake they feared was coming.
The atmosphere of fear was particularly strong in Tangshan, although it focused on the possibility of both natural and political disasters. As usual, ‘bad elements’ were blamed for ‘rumour-mongering’, specifically the spreading of ‘reactionary and superstitious remarks’. Spreading ‘false rumours’ remains a criminal offence even today in China, often used as an excuse by local authorities to crack down on protestors. It was of particular interest in 1976 when, as the protests in March and April had shown, rumour could be a tremendous political weapon.
In Tangshan, the first thing the authorities were keen to crack down on was any claim that the disaster somehow foreshadowed the fall of the government or future calamities. With Mao dying and Zhao Enlai and Zhu De dead, the earthquake was rapidly worked into a narrative of a ‘disastrous year’, which implied more disasters to come. It was a direct challenge to the Mandate of Heaven, a blow struck at the very heart of the government’s legitimacy.
The most persistent rumour was that the government had known about the quake, but failed to act. They didn’t care about Tangshan, or they were caught up in their own power struggles, or it was a deliberate attempt to engineer a disaster that would allow a coup. The government’s own insistence on the Haicheng prediction as a miracle of scientific socialism, submissive nature bowing before Maoist ingenuity, came back to haunt it. The idea that there simply hadn’t been enough evidence to make a strong prediction was unthinkable, especially as word of Qinglong’s actions began to spread among the survivors.
When the men of the Seismological Bureau arrived, people spat at them and threw bricks and stones at their van. They were turned back from food lines. An injured scientist was taken to a medical station, but when he gave his profession, the crowd turned against him. ‘Don’t treat him, doctor! Let him bleed to death! Why didn’t the earthquake get him?’ Rumours of future earthquakes were passed on in whispers, most frequently that disaster was going to strike at the government’s heart in Beijing – a story told with the occasional hint of vengeful wish fulfilment.
In response, hundreds of propaganda teams were sent across the region to remind people of the government line, going from tent to tent ‘expressing the sympathy of the Central Party Committee’, and ‘to explain the incomparable superiority of the socialist system, explain the great truth that “man can conquer nature”, and explain scientific knowledge about earthquakes’. Cars drove through the rubble proclaiming Mao’s deep concern for the victims. A new poster showed a worker with his hand thrown up and scenes of disaster relief behind, proclaiming ‘Earthquakes don’t frighten us! The people will surely vanquish nature!’ Meanwhile, higher-level Hebei officials visited Qinglong, already being touted within the State Seismological Bureau as an example of successful prediction, and quietly ordered the leaders there not to publicise the evacuation.
On 5 August, People’s Daily published a poem reinforcing these themes:
The mountain collapsed and earth cracked but there is no fear
We swear to win victory over the disaster.
When Taishan [a famous mountain] falls on our heads we will not bend
Fighting earthquakes is like forging our red heart.
When the earth sinks we fix it.
When the heavens collapse we hold them up.
The reaction the authorities were looking for is expressed in a wonderfully stilted quote from the official Chinese history of the disaster:
People in the disaster area said with deep feeling, ‘In the old society, when a disaster occurred the local authorities and profiteers took advantage of the people’s misfortune and the labouring people became destitute and homeless. Today in a socialist society the Party and government have shown the utmost solicitude to people in the disaster area. We have been hit by a natural disaster but are not in distress. Truly, the old and new societies are two di
fferent worlds!’13
Tangshanese would have been surprised to find that they were not in distress. Howsoever extensive the disaster relief effort, the city had become, in effect, an enormous refugee camp. Ruined houses were cleared and tarpaulins draped over what walls were left to create shelters. The army threw up temporary wooden buildings for the administration of the stricken region, and erected tens of thousands of tents for homeless survivors.
Throughout those weeks, the conspirators continued to see signs that the Gang was planning a counter-coup. One of the most ridiculous centred on the differing interpretations of Mao’s final instructions. He had told Hua to ‘act according to past principles’, but after his death Jiang and the others started to promulgate a different version, that he had instructed his successors to ‘act according to the principles laid down’. After reading Jiang’s version in several articles published in late September, Hua angrily crossed them out of a document he was sent on 2 October, noting, ‘I am striking this out to prevent the wrong version being spread.’14
The distinction between the two was, even in the nuance-driven linguistic paranoia of the time, minimal. Whatever his exact words – and Mao had probably uttered both versions at some point – the injunction to continue his work, and specifically the Cultural Revolution, was clear. Indeed, Hua had used the ‘principles laid down’ version himself on occasion.
But the spat over the wording became, in the words of two experts on the period, ‘more a question of ownership and mutual antagonism than any profound ideological confrontation’ and ‘much ado about nothing’.15 Hua’s insistence on his version demonstrated his determination to be seen as the anointed successor, and to stamp his authority upon the Party. Yao tried to strike a bargain with Hua, pushing the use of both versions in different papers, but all this did was stir further suspicions when an article in Guangming Daily, authored by a study group controlled by the Gang, strongly put forward the ‘principles laid down’ line and went on to condemn ‘revisionist chieftains’. Hua and the others saw this as a shot at themselves, and brought plans for the arrest of the Gang forward.
The original plan was to move against the leftists around ten days after National Day, leaving plenty of time to prepare. Ye started to hear rumours, however, that the Gang was claiming there would be ‘great news’ and a ‘happy event’ by 9 October. Jiang and Wang, in particular, were making factory and university visits, giving speeches, and attacking the eternal foe, the ‘little Deng Xiaopings’ and the greater beast behind them. They weren’t attacking Hua and the others, but instead harping on about old enemies. Beating Deng for a second time had left them so satisfied that they kept focusing attacks on him and his supposed allies, rather than looking around to find genuine threats. When Jiang spoke of ‘extraordinarily happy news’, what she was probably referring to was the formal plenum of the Central Committee that would confirm her place in the post-Mao leadership.
Jiang’s behaviour had a touch of hysteria about it. Losing her husband, and her political rock, had thrown her way off balance. She continued to launch into long rants in front of befuddled audiences, warned darkly of political enemies while continuing to ignore Hua, and ranted endlessly on about the role of women, which did nothing but hand her opponents ammunition. Her fixation on female leadership was easily turned against her; Wu Zetian, her model, had been a hate-figure for generations of patriarchal leaders, and the image of malevolent, usurping feminine power was easy for Hua and his group to exploit.
One of the last events Jiang and the others appeared at together as a group was a photo call, sometime around 3 – 4 October. The photographers were puzzled at the nature of the pictures they were asked for, which seemed to involve an unusual number of close-ups and a particular set of grimaces. Then they realised: they were poses for placard portraits of the type carried at parades. It was a pointlessly arrogant and presumptive gesture, sadly typical of many of the Gang’s efforts since Mao’s death.
Hua and the others saw strength and conspiracy in the Gang’s various blunderings. Organised and determined themselves, it was hard for them to comprehend that their opponents could be so inept. Some of their fears were exaggerated or concocted afterwards, naturally, as part of the line that their own coup had been necessitated by the imminence of the Gang’s, but they were also genuinely nervous. The article in Guangming Daily and the rumours about the plots pushed their plans forward by several days. Ye, Hua and Wang Dongxing agreed between themselves that they had to act now.
Still nervous about being watched, Hua took a circuitous route to Wang’s home in Zhongnanhai, despite living extremely close by, and arrived just before midnight on 4 October. They sat up until 3:00, working themselves into a state of nervous exhaustion as they sketched out the details. Hua was worried about going home, where his late arrival might be noted by whatever watchers the Gang had set – as usual, they were attributing far more competence to the four than they possessed – and instead slept in temporary accommodation in Zhongnanhai, with a platoon of bodyguards personally picked by Wang placed outside his door.
The next morning they took separate cars to visit Ye, who was now, after moving from his old home to evade Wang Hongwen’s spying, living in a mountainside villa inside the Summer Palace, another imperial resort. It was entirely appropriate that all this scheming took place inside the homes of the old emperors.
The plot for the arrest itself was beautifully simple. Wang Hongwen, Zhang and Yao were told to come to an 8:00 a.m. meeting on 5 October to discuss some revisions to chapter 5 of Mao Zedong’s collected works. The legacy of the Chairman was serious business, and the three arrived at Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai, a two-storey pagoda which was one of the regular meeting points for the leadership, ready for a heated ideological discussion. Zhang, foolishly, left his minders, his ‘bears’, behind.
Wang Hongwen was the first to arrive, coming through the door only to be seized by Unit 8341 guards, handpicked once again by Wang Dongxing, who was waiting with them in the reception hall. He tried to fight them off, shouting ‘I’m here for a meeting!’ and trying to pull out his gun, but was handcuffed and marched into the meeting room, where Ye and Hua were waiting. They read out charges against him, accusing him of ‘crimes against the Party’. As he was marched away, he reportedly muttered ‘I wasn’t expecting it this soon . . .’ Yao and Zhang went down more easily. Zhang, his glasses misted over, kept saying ‘What’s going on?’ when he was grabbed, then said nothing as the charges were read out. Yao shouted out ‘How dare you!’ as the guards seized him, but is said to have fainted when told of the charges.
As these arrests were going on, a group of guards led by the commander of Unit 8341 knocked on the door of Zhongnanhai Building 201, to which Jiang Qing had recently moved. It was much easier than arresting her in her normal residence in Diaoyutai, where she had a considerable entourage; in Zhongnanhai she was more or less alone. The official accounts have her wearing silk pyjamas and watching a Hong Kong movie; neither of which is that implausible, but these decadent touches are a little suspicious. According to Mao’s doctor, she looked at the commander as he announced the charges, and remarked ‘You too! I have long anticipated this day!’16 (Other accounts have her more confused, asking ‘Why? Why?’)
The Gang were placed in cells in the underground nuclear shelters, the same network in which Mao’s body was being pickled. Across Beijing, Wang’s men moved to pinch off the Gang’s allies. Mao Yuanxin was seized – though without any formal charges, unlike the Gang – in his quarters at Zhongnanhai, while several supporters in the Ministry of Culture and other departments were quietly arrested, as were the Party secretary and vice-secretary of Tsinghua University, close followers of Jiang Qing. Most critically, they arrived at important media outlets, including People’s Daily and Liberation Daily, and abruptly announced that they were under a new management. By 9:35 that morning, every prominent supporter of the Gang in Beijing was neutralised and Hua and Wang controlled the media. It was
a precise surgical strike; now they just had to explain it to the rest of the leadership, and then the country.
The leadership wasn’t a hard sell. Hua, Wang and Ye announced the arrests, presented as a forestalling of the Gang’s own planned coup, to the Politburo that evening back at Ye’s villa. Many of them already had a vague idea what had been planned, but the events themselves came as a surprise. It was clearly a done deal, and nobody present was willing to go down with the Gang, so there was almost no dissent. To make sure, none of them were allowed to return home that evening, instead sitting up for an all-night meeting.
Many of those present were jubilant at the news; Chen Xilian and his two roommates at Zhongnanhai, also both high-level officials, leapt about and excitedly hugged each other, despite all of them having been seen as allies of the leftists in the past. The celebrations were prompted by more than just personal dislike of the Gang; there was a feeling of deep relief that the uncertainty was over, and that a clear new order was emerging. That same evening, the Politburo officially voted Hua in as both Chairman and head of the Central Military Commission, the two most important posts in the country.
Announcing the news to the rest of the country, when the public had already shown their feelings about the ‘Shanghai clique’ and ‘Jiang’s little court’ so vehemently, wasn’t going to be that demanding. The information would be distributed to the regional leaders first, then down through the ranks, and finally be announced to a public already primed by rumour for the news.