Post-Mao Transition and the Rise of Deng Xiaoping

Lesson Information

Title:: Post-Mao Transition and the Rise of Deng Xiaoping
Period:: 1976–1979 CE, with emphasis on the 1978 political transition
Previous:: The Cultural Revolution and the End of the Mao Era
Era:: 1978 — Reform and Opening Era
Next:: Reform and Opening in the 1980s

Lesson Orientation
Learning Objectives
China After Mao
Hua Guofeng's Succession
After the Arrest of the Gang of Four
Continuity and Change Under Hua
The Problem of Mao's Legacy
The “Two Whatevers”
Deng Xiaoping's Rehabilitation
Deng's Power Without the Top Formal Title
The Eleventh Party Congress of 1977
Restoring Education and Expertise
The Restoration of the National College Entrance Examination
Science, Technology, and Modernization
The Four Modernizations
The 1978 Constitution
Hua's Modernization Program
Learning from Foreign Technology
Deng's 1978 Foreign Travel
The Truth-Criterion Debate
“Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth”
Hu Yaobang and Cadre Rehabilitation
Reversing Cultural Revolution Verdicts
Reassessing the 1976 Tiananmen Incident
The Central Work Conference of November–December 1978
The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee
What the Third Plenum Was Not
From Class Struggle to Economic Development
Restoring Socialist Legality
Chen Yun Returns to Economic Leadership
The Rise of Deng Xiaoping
Development and Political Legitimacy
Rural Experiments Before National Reform
Xiaogang and Household Contracting
Anhui and Sichuan Reform Experiments
The Democracy Wall Movement
Wei Jingsheng and the “Fifth Modernization”
The Limits of Political Opening
Reform Did Not Mean Immediate Westernization
The 1978 Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship
Normalization with the United States
Taiwan and the Continuing Cross-Strait Division
Deng's 1979 Visit to the United States
The Transition Was Not Finished in 1978
How Do We Know?
Think Like a Historian
Historical Significance
Key Takeaways
Key Terms
Check Your Understanding
Continue the Story
Further Study

Lesson Orientation

After Mao Zedong's death in September 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four the following month, the People's Republic of China entered a period of political uncertainty rather than an immediate reform era.

Hua Guofeng formally succeeded Mao as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and premier. Deng Xiaoping, purged again in 1976, returned to leadership in 1977 and gradually became the most influential advocate of a different political and economic direction.

The decisive transition occurred through a series of debates, rehabilitations, institutional changes, experiments, and leadership struggles that culminated in the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978.

This lesson therefore treats the rise of Deng as a process rather than a single moment and distinguishes Deng's growing informal authority from the formal titles held by Hua and other leaders.

Learning Objectives

After completing this lesson, the learner should be able to explain Hua Guofeng's succession after Mao; describe the political aftermath of the Gang of Four's arrest; explain Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation and growing influence; define the Two Whatevers and the truth-criterion debate; describe the restoration of higher education and technical expertise; explain the Four Modernizations; identify the importance of the 1978 Constitution and Central Work Conference; summarize the decisions and limits of the December 1978 Third Plenum; explain the Democracy Wall movement; describe initial rural reform experiments; and explain why the late 1970s are best understood as a transition into reform rather than as a fully developed market-reform program.

China After Mao

Mao's death removed the leader who had dominated CCP politics for decades, but it did not erase the institutions, personnel, policies, and political language of the Mao era.

The country still faced the consequences of the Cultural Revolution: disrupted education, politicized administration, leadership purges, weakened professional institutions, and unresolved questions about how Mao's legacy should be judged.

The immediate post-Mao problem was therefore both practical and ideological: how could the party restore regular government without appearing to repudiate the revolution that gave it legitimacy?

Hua Guofeng's Succession

Hua Guofeng emerged as Mao's immediate successor in 1976 and held the posts of CCP chairman and premier.

He had risen rapidly during Mao's final years and possessed the advantage of having been publicly associated with Mao's succession arrangements.

Hua's government moved quickly against the Gang of Four and attempted to restore political order while preserving broad continuity with Mao's legitimacy.

After the Arrest of the Gang of Four

The October 1976 arrest of Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen removed the most prominent surviving radical faction associated with the Cultural Revolution.

A nationwide campaign then sought to expose, criticize, and investigate supporters of the Gang of Four.

Recent scholarship shows that this process also removed significant numbers of Cultural Revolution-era officials and helped reopen positions for veteran cadres who had been purged earlier.

Scholarly reference: The China Quarterly — “Dethroning the Mao-era Elite, Clearing the Way for Reform”.

Continuity and Change Under Hua

Hua is sometimes portrayed simply as a defender of Maoist orthodoxy blocking reform. That is too simple.

Under Hua, the leadership promoted economic modernization, restored many officials, passed a new constitution in 1978, expanded international economic contacts, and supported large investment plans.

At the same time, Hua's political legitimacy depended heavily on continuity with Mao, creating tension between administrative reconstruction and the need to protect Mao's authority.

The Problem of Mao's Legacy

Post-Mao leaders faced an unusual problem: they needed to criticize the Cultural Revolution without delegitimizing the revolution, party, and state associated with Mao.

An immediate total repudiation of Mao could threaten the CCP's historical legitimacy, while unquestioning adherence to Mao's final policies could block institutional repair.

This tension shaped the language of nearly every major political dispute between 1976 and 1978.

The “Two Whatevers”

In early 1977, official political language became associated with the principle later known as the Two Whatevers: upholding policy decisions made by Mao and following instructions attributed to him.

The formula strengthened Hua's claim to legitimate succession but also exposed a political weakness: if Mao's last decisions were treated as binding, it became harder to rehabilitate leaders Mao had removed or reverse policies identified with the late Cultural Revolution.

Opponents therefore challenged not only individual policies but the idea that Mao's past words should automatically determine present decisions.

Scholarly reference: The China Quarterly — post-Mao competition between the “Two Whatevers” and “Seek Truth from Facts”.

Deng Xiaoping's Rehabilitation

Deng Xiaoping had been purged for a second time in 1976 after the Tiananmen/Qingming political crisis.

In 1977, the leadership restored Deng to major party, state, and military positions.

His return did not instantly make him formal head of the party or government. Instead, his influence grew through revolutionary seniority, administrative experience, military connections, alliances with veteran cadres, and his ability to define a new policy agenda.

Deng's Power Without the Top Formal Title

Deng's later description as China's paramount leader can obscure the institutional reality of 1977–1978.

Hua remained CCP chairman and premier, while other senior leaders such as Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian, Chen Yun, and later Hu Yaobang also shaped the transition.

Deng's rise was therefore a shift in effective political influence inside a collective senior leadership rather than accession to a single supreme constitutional office.

The Eleventh Party Congress of 1977

The Eleventh CCP Congress in August 1977 declared the Cultural Revolution formally concluded while preserving much of Maoist political language.

The congress also marked the reentry of previously purged veteran officials and the gradual reconstruction of party institutions.

It was a transitional congress: the radical decade was declared over, but the reform-era political line had not yet been fully established.

Restoring Education and Expertise

One of the clearest signs of post-Mao change was renewed emphasis on education, science, and professional competence.

Years of disrupted schooling and politicized admissions had created shortages of trained specialists.

Deng strongly supported restoring academic standards, technical expertise, research institutions, and a more regular educational system.

The Restoration of the National College Entrance Examination

In 1977, China restored competitive national higher-education entrance examinations after the Cultural Revolution-era admissions system had heavily emphasized political and work background.

The restored examination became a powerful symbol of the return of academic testing and professional training.

It also opened university access to large numbers of young people whose education had been interrupted during the Cultural Revolution.

Science, Technology, and Modernization

Science and technology were increasingly described as essential to national modernization.

Scientists, engineers, professors, and other specialists regained institutional importance after years in which expertise itself could be politically suspect.

This restoration of professional authority did not remove CCP political control, but it altered the balance between ideological mobilization and technical competence.

The Four Modernizations

The modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology had been articulated before Mao's death, especially by Zhou Enlai.

After 1976, the Four Modernizations became the principal framework for national development.

The phrase allowed reformers to present new priorities as fulfillment of an existing socialist modernization program rather than as abandonment of socialism.

The 1978 Constitution

The Fifth National People's Congress adopted a new constitution in March 1978.

It replaced the shorter 1975 Cultural Revolution-era constitution and reflected the unsettled nature of the transition: it preserved strong party leadership and some Cultural Revolution language while also restoring more regular state institutions.

Cambridge scholarship describes it as both a break from radical disorder and an incomplete return to predictable institutional rule.

Scholarly reference: Cambridge University Press — post-Mao structural reforms and the 1978 Constitution.

Hua's Modernization Program

Hua supported a large modernization drive emphasizing heavy industry, energy, imported technology, and ambitious investment.

His plans retained much of the centralized, state-led investment logic of earlier development strategies, although they made greater use of foreign technology and international economic exchange.

Later reformers criticized some projects as overambitious and financially unbalanced.

Learning from Foreign Technology

Post-Mao leaders became increasingly willing to import foreign equipment, management knowledge, and technology.

Delegations traveled abroad to study industrial economies, and foreign contacts expanded rapidly.

This did not initially mean adoption of a capitalist political system. The objective was to strengthen a socialist state through modernization.

Deng's 1978 Foreign Travel

Deng's 1978 travel helped dramatize the new emphasis on learning from economically advanced countries.

His visit to Japan in October, associated with the ratification of the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship, exposed senior Chinese leaders to advanced industrial production and technology.

Japanese official records describe the October 1978 trip as the first visit to Japan by a top PRC government leader after normalization.

Primary-source background: Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — China-Japan relations in 1978.

The Truth-Criterion Debate

In 1978, a major ideological controversy developed around the proposition that practice should be the criterion for testing truth.

The debate challenged the idea that policy could be justified simply by quoting prior authoritative statements.

Because the dispute concerned how political truth itself would be established, it became a struggle over the legitimacy of changing Mao-era policy.

“Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth”

An influential article appeared in Guangming Daily on May 11, 1978 and was reprinted in People's Daily the next day.

Later scholarship shows that the article emerged from a broader network involving the Central Party School and reform-oriented political actors rather than from one isolated author acting independently.

Deng publicly embraced the broader principle of seeking truth from facts and using practical results to judge policy.

Scholarly references: The China Quarterly — “The 1978 Truth Criterion Controversy”; Journal of Chinese History — “Seeking Truth from Facts”.

Hu Yaobang and Cadre Rehabilitation

Hu Yaobang became an important figure in the rehabilitation of officials and intellectuals persecuted during earlier political campaigns.

Rehabilitation involved restoring reputations, jobs, party membership, or institutional standing to people who had been condemned during the Cultural Revolution and, in some cases, earlier campaigns.

This process changed the composition of the party leadership and created a constituency for institutional normalization.

Reversing Cultural Revolution Verdicts

The post-Mao leadership gradually overturned many political judgments from the Cultural Revolution.

These reversals were not only acts of personal justice. They restored experienced administrators, scientists, teachers, military officers, and party officials needed for modernization.

Political rehabilitation therefore became part of state reconstruction.

Reassessing the 1976 Tiananmen Incident

The April 1976 demonstrations had been officially condemned during Mao's final months and used to justify Deng's second purge.

During the transition, the incident was reassessed and eventually treated as a legitimate expression of popular mourning and opposition to radical politics.

Reversing the verdict weakened the political case against Deng and symbolized the broader reassessment of late Cultural Revolution politics.

The Central Work Conference of November–December 1978

Before the Third Plenum, senior officials met in an extended Central Work Conference.

The meeting widened discussion beyond the initial economic agenda and became a forum for reassessing political verdicts, leadership questions, and the party's priorities.

By the end of the conference, Hua's political position had weakened and reform-oriented senior leaders had gained substantial influence.

The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee

The Third Plenum met in December 1978 and is conventionally treated as the principal political turning point opening the reform era.

It shifted the party's emphasis away from repeated class-struggle campaigns and toward socialist modernization and economic development.

It also strengthened commitments to restoring regular institutions, improving the legal system, correcting past political judgments, and expanding the authority of leaders associated with the new course.

Scholarly references: Cambridge University Press — the Third Plenum and the Dengist period; Cambridge University Press — reform, legal system, and party rule.

What the Third Plenum Was Not

The Third Plenum should not be described as a formal coup in which Deng immediately took every top office.

Hua remained CCP chairman and premier after the meeting, and important policy disagreements continued.

The plenum mattered because it changed the dominant political line and leadership balance, not because one man instantly acquired every formal title.

From Class Struggle to Economic Development

The most important ideological change was the reordering of national priorities.

Economic modernization became the central task of party and state work, while continuous mass political mobilization lost the privileged position it had held during the Cultural Revolution.

This shift made experimentation in agriculture, enterprise management, foreign trade, technology transfer, and incentives politically easier.

Restoring Socialist Legality

The post-Mao leadership also emphasized rebuilding courts, laws, administrative procedures, and predictable institutions.

The Third Plenum called for strengthening socialist democracy and legality within continued CCP rule.

This was institutional normalization, not adoption of multiparty liberal democracy.

Chen Yun Returns to Economic Leadership

Chen Yun, one of the CCP's most experienced economic planners, regained major influence during the transition.

He supported reform but emphasized caution, macroeconomic balance, fiscal discipline, and a continuing role for planning.

His approach became an important counterweight to overly rapid investment and demonstrated that the reform coalition contained differing views about the pace and scope of market mechanisms.

The Rise of Deng Xiaoping

By the end of 1978, Deng had become the central political figure associated with the new direction.

His authority rested less on one formal title than on revolutionary prestige, alliances among senior leaders, military influence, control of key policy debates, and support for rehabilitation and modernization.

Cambridge scholarship emphasizes that Deng's power was still not absolute and that Hua and Cultural Revolution-era officials retained significant positions.

Scholarly reference: Cambridge University Press — Deng’s rising but not absolute power in 1978.

Development and Political Legitimacy

The reform turn also changed the basis on which the CCP increasingly sought public support.

After the Cultural Revolution, revolutionary mobilization had lost much of its credibility for many people.

Improved living standards, economic performance, institutional stability, and modernization therefore became more important sources of political legitimacy.

Rural Experiments Before National Reform

Important rural changes did not begin only after a central order from Beijing.

Farmers and local officials in several regions experimented with contracting production responsibilities to smaller groups or households as they sought better incentives and higher output.

These local experiments later became important evidence for national reformers.

Xiaogang and Household Contracting

Xiaogang village in Anhui became the best-known symbol of early household contracting.

Villagers divided collective production responsibilities among households in 1978 while still committing to state and collective obligations.

The later national household responsibility system should not be reduced to one village, but Xiaogang illustrates how reform could emerge from local experimentation before full national endorsement.

Anhui and Sichuan Reform Experiments

Provincial leaders in Anhui and Sichuan supported experiments that increased local and household incentives and gave producers greater control over output.

These experiences helped demonstrate that agricultural reform could raise production without dismantling the socialist state.

Figures such as Wan Li and Zhao Ziyang became associated with successful local reform strategies that later influenced national policy.

The Democracy Wall Movement

Beginning in late 1978, citizens in Beijing posted essays, petitions, poems, and political arguments on walls in the capital, especially an area that became known as Democracy Wall.

The movement expressed demands ranging from rehabilitation and legal rights to deeper political reform.

Cambridge scholarship dates the movement's beginning to wall posters in November 1978, with its high point in early 1979.

Scholarly reference: The China Quarterly — Democracy movement after 1978.

Wei Jingsheng and the “Fifth Modernization”

Wei Jingsheng became one of the best-known Democracy Wall activists.

He argued that democracy should accompany the official Four Modernizations and described it as a Fifth Modernization.

His writings went beyond the reform leadership's intended political limits by directly challenging authoritarian party rule.

The Limits of Political Opening

Some senior reformers initially tolerated unofficial debate because it weakened remaining Cultural Revolution radicals and supported criticism of dogmatism.

That tolerance had limits. By 1979, activists who challenged the CCP's monopoly of political power faced increasing restriction, and Wei Jingsheng was arrested.

The early reform era therefore combined institutional liberalization in some fields with firm limits on organized political opposition.

Reform Did Not Mean Immediate Westernization

The reform leadership sought foreign technology, investment, education, and management experience, but it did not adopt the political institutions of Western liberal democracies.

The governing objective was to modernize socialism under CCP leadership.

This distinction is essential for understanding both the scope and limits of Deng-era reform.

The 1978 Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship

China and Japan signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship on August 12, 1978, and it entered into force in October after ratification.

Deng visited Japan for the exchange of ratifications.

The treaty expanded diplomatic and economic foundations for China's growing engagement with advanced industrial economies.

Primary-source background: Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — 1978 Japan-China relations.

Normalization with the United States

In December 1978, the United States and People's Republic of China announced that they would establish diplomatic relations effective January 1, 1979.

The United States recognized the PRC government as the sole legal government of China while maintaining unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.

Normalization greatly expanded China's diplomatic and economic access to the United States and reinforced the broader opening to the outside world.

Primary-source references: U.S.-PRC Joint Communiqué announcement, December 15, 1978; U.S. Office of the Historian — normalization of relations.

Taiwan and the Continuing Cross-Strait Division

U.S.-PRC normalization did not place Taiwan under PRC administration.

The Republic of China government continued to govern Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and territories under its control.

The diplomatic shift changed international recognition patterns while leaving the underlying cross-Strait political and territorial division unresolved.

Deng's 1979 Visit to the United States

After diplomatic normalization took effect, Deng visited the United States in January 1979.

The trip symbolized China's new external orientation and included meetings with President Jimmy Carter as well as visits to American industrial and technological sites.

It reinforced Deng's public association with modernization and opening.

The Transition Was Not Finished in 1978

Later memory often treats December 1978 as a clean dividing line between Maoism and reform.

In reality, Hua remained in important posts, collective agriculture still dominated the countryside, state planning remained central, private enterprise remained highly restricted, and the leadership had not yet designed the full reform program of the 1980s.

The Third Plenum created a new direction and political permission for experimentation; it did not instantly create the later reform economy.

How Do We Know?

Historians reconstruct the transition using party communiqués, speeches, National People's Congress documents, newspapers, internal theoretical debates, diplomatic archives, provincial reform records, memoirs, biographies, and later institutional histories.

The political slogans of the period—Two Whatevers, Seek Truth from Facts, emancipation of the mind, and Four Modernizations—were not merely rhetoric. They defined competing claims about who possessed authority to change policy.

Later reform-era accounts often present 1978 as an inevitable breakthrough. Contemporary evidence instead reveals uncertainty, competing coalitions, local experimentation, and multiple possible directions.

Think Like a Historian

Did Deng Xiaoping create the reform era, or did he rise because China was already changing?

Deng was crucial: he gave political protection to rehabilitation, expertise, empirical policy evaluation, and economic experimentation, and by late 1978 he had become the dominant advocate of the new line.

Yet reform also depended on Hua-era institutional recovery, veteran cadres, Chen Yun and other senior leaders, provincial innovators, farmers experimenting with incentives, intellectual debates, international openings, and widespread exhaustion with Cultural Revolution politics.

The strongest interpretation treats Deng as the central political strategist of a broader transition rather than as a solitary architect acting on an unchanged system.

Historical Significance

The post-Mao transition redirected the People's Republic away from Cultural Revolution-style continuous political mobilization and toward modernization, institutional rebuilding, and policy experimentation.

It rehabilitated experienced cadres and experts, restored education and law, reopened China to foreign technology and diplomacy, encouraged early rural reform, and shifted the CCP's central work toward economic development.

It also established the political pattern of the Deng era: substantial economic and institutional change under continuing one-party rule.

The transition therefore opened the reform era without predetermining every reform that followed.

Key Takeaways

Hua Guofeng formally succeeded Mao and played an important role in ending radical Cultural Revolution politics.

Hua's government combined Mao-era continuity with modernization, rehabilitation, institutional reconstruction, and greater international engagement.

Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated in 1977 and gained influence without immediately becoming formal head of party or government.

The Two Whatevers defended Mao-based policy continuity and Hua's succession legitimacy.

The truth-criterion debate challenged automatic reliance on past authoritative statements and strengthened the principle of seeking truth from facts.

Competitive university entrance examinations and technical education were restored as expertise regained importance.

The Four Modernizations became the principal framework for development.

The 1978 Constitution reflected both institutional normalization and unresolved Mao-era continuities.

The Central Work Conference weakened Hua's political position and broadened the reform agenda.

The December 1978 Third Plenum shifted the party's central emphasis from class struggle toward economic modernization.

The Third Plenum was a political turning point, not an instant transition to a market economy or a formal Deng dictatorship.

Local rural experiments in Anhui, Sichuan, and elsewhere helped create the foundation for later national agricultural reform.

The Democracy Wall movement revealed both the opening and the political limits of the transition.

China expanded international engagement through the 1978 treaty with Japan and diplomatic normalization with the United States.

By 1979, Deng had become the principal political figure associated with reform and opening, while the detailed reforms of the 1980s were still developing.

Key Terms

Hua Guofeng: Mao's immediate successor as CCP chairman and premier, whose tenure combined continuity with early post-Mao reconstruction and modernization.

Two Whatevers: the formula associated with upholding Mao's decisions and instructions as authoritative guides after his death.

Deng Xiaoping: veteran CCP leader rehabilitated in 1977 who became the central political figure associated with reform and opening.

Seek Truth from Facts: the principle that policy should be evaluated through practical reality rather than dogmatic reliance on past formulas.

Truth-Criterion Debate: the 1978 political-intellectual controversy over whether practice should be the standard for judging truth and policy.

Four Modernizations: modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology.

Third Plenum: the December 1978 meeting of the Eleventh CCP Central Committee conventionally treated as the political opening of the reform era.

Boluan Fanzheng: a later shorthand for correcting disorder and restoring normal political, institutional, and legal arrangements after Mao-era upheaval.

Democracy Wall: the Beijing wall-poster movement beginning in late 1978 in which citizens debated political reform, rights, and the legacy of the Cultural Revolution.

Fifth Modernization: Wei Jingsheng's argument that democracy should be added to the official Four Modernizations.

Household Responsibility System: the later national rural-reform system in which farm households contracted production responsibilities while land remained collectively owned.

Reform and Opening: the broad post-1978 policy orientation toward economic reform, experimentation, modernization, and expanded international engagement.

Continue the Story

The Third Plenum established a new political direction, but the practical content of reform still had to be worked out.

During the 1980s, agricultural decollectivization accelerated, special economic zones opened, foreign investment expanded, state enterprises gained new incentives, private and collective businesses grew, education and science were rebuilt, and living standards began to change rapidly.

Economic reform also generated new political questions about inflation, corruption, inequality, intellectual freedom, and the relationship between economic decentralization and political authority.

Next Lesson: Reform and Opening in the 1980s
Examine the household responsibility system, special economic zones, township and village enterprises, foreign investment, enterprise reform, education and science, political reform debates, changing living standards, and the tensions produced by rapid economic transformation.