33 Teaching Asia’s Giants: China T he 9th of September 1976: Te story of Deng Xiaoping’s ascendancy to para- mount leader starts, like many great sto- ries, with a death. Nothing quite so dramatic as a murder or an assassination, just the quiet and unassuming death of Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the wake of his passing, factions in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) competed to establish who would rule afer the Great Helmsman. Pow- er, afer all, abhors a vacuum. In the frst corner was Hua Guofeng, an unassuming functionary who had skyrocketed to power under the late chairman’s patronage. In the second corner, the Gang of Four, consisting of Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing, and her entourage of radical, lefist, Shanghai-based CCP ofcials. In the fnal corner, Deng Xiaoping, the great survivor who had experi- enced three purges and returned from the wil- derness each time. 1 Within a month of Mao’s death, the Gang of Four had been imprisoned, setting up a showdown between Hua and Deng. While Hua advocated the policy of the “Two Whatev- ers”—that the party should “resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave”—Deng advocated “seek- ing truth from facts.” 2 At a time when China was reexamining Mao’s legacy, Deng’s approach resonated more strongly with the party than Hua’s rigid dedication to Mao. By 1978, Deng outma- noeuvred Hua by harnessing popular sentiment as expressed in the Democracy Wall Movement (1978–1979), creating alliances with reformers and bringing survivors of the Cultural Revolution back into the fold, cementing his place as undisputed paramount leader of China. Now in charge, Deng had a massive task at hand. Following the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the country was going backward rather than forward. The search for a modern China continued in earnest as Deng Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones Deng Xiaoping in the Making of Modern China By Bernard Z. Keo In 1978, some Beijing citizens posted a large-character poster on the Xidan Democ- racy Wall to promote the ffth modernization political democratization. Source: Embarrassed blogspot at https://tinyurl.com/yc3yxwdu. September 21, 1977. The funeral of Mao Zedong, Beijing, China. Source: © Keystone Press/Alamy Stock Photo. Poster of Deng Xiaoping, founder of the special economic zone in China in central Shenzhen, China. Source: The World of Chinese website at https://tinyurl.com/ yyqv6opv.