Mao's Forgotten Successor: The Political Career of Hua Guofeng

摘要

China made one of its most encompassing changes of its developmental paradigm between 1976 and 1980, and yet the nominal leader of the country throughout this period has remained almost forgotten - a hiatus filled by Robert Weatherley's useful book. Hua Guofeng emerges as a true child of China's poor peasantry, born in Shanxi in 1920 and raised in a single-parent household, making an early commitment to the Party and contributing modestly to the War of National Resistance against Japan and the ensuing civil war, thereby earning a local administrative post in Hunan. From there he was able to pursue a successful bureaucratic career, negotiat-ing a slow but ultimately successful ascent from the bottom to the very pinnacle of Chinese politics. Most of the book (the first five of six chapters) is focused on this rise. Hua emerges as a true radical, assuming a vanguard role in the organization