Mao's death, the Gang of Four and the Democracy Wall
The Succession Crisis of 1976
In January 1976, Premier Zhou Enlai died. His death triggered an outpouring of public grief that alarmed the radical left around Jiang Qing. When crowds gathered in Tiananmen Square in April 1976 to lay wreaths in Zhou’s memory, the leadership ordered the square cleared; the resulting confrontation is known as the Tiananmen Incident of 1976. Deng Xiaoping, associated with Zhou’s reformist tendencies, was blamed and purged for a second time.
In September 1976, Mao Zedong died. He had ruled China for twenty-seven years. His death opened an immediate struggle for succession. Mao’s chosen successor was Hua Guofeng, a compromise figure who lacked the political base of either the radical left or the reformist faction around Deng.
In October 1976, just weeks after Mao’s death, the Gang of Four — Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen — were arrested. Hua Guofeng acted with the support of key military commanders. The arrest marked the definitive end of the Cultural Revolution period.
The Democracy Wall
Following Mao’s death and the Gang of Four’s arrest, a brief but significant period of political openness emerged in Beijing. In late 1978 and into 1979, a stretch of wall in Beijing’s Xidan district became known as the Democracy Wall. Citizens posted handwritten political essays, poems, and opinions on topics ranging from the rehabilitation of Cultural Revolution victims to calls for more fundamental political reform. The most prominent activist was Wei Jingsheng, an electrician who posted an essay calling democracy “the fifth modernisation” — a pointed addition to Deng’s official Four Modernisations framework. Wei argued that without political freedom, economic modernisation would entrench authoritarianism rather than benefit ordinary people.
Deng Xiaoping initially tolerated the Democracy Wall because it served his political purposes: the wall’s criticisms of the Cultural Revolution undermined Hua Guofeng’s legitimacy, since Hua was associated with Mao’s legacy. Once Deng had consolidated power following the December 1978 Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, the wall’s utility was exhausted. In March 1979, Wei Jingsheng was arrested. In December 1979, the Democracy Wall itself was closed and wall posters were banned from public spaces. Wei was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The sequence reveals Deng’s attitude: political liberalisation was acceptable as a tactical tool but not as a permanent feature of governance. The episode is significant for the exam because it shows continuity with Mao-era repression of dissent alongside genuine change in economic direction.
The Gang of Four Trial
In 1980–81, Jiang Qing and her three colleagues faced a public trial. It was the most significant judicial proceeding in PRC history to date. The trial served multiple political purposes: it formally drew a line under the Cultural Revolution, associated all its worst excesses with the four defendants rather than with Mao or the broader Party, and demonstrated the new leadership’s commitment to socialist legality. Jiang Qing refused to show remorse, defending the Cultural Revolution as the correct application of Mao’s line and accusing her judges of counter-revolution. She was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Zhang Chunqiao also received a death sentence commuted to life; the others received long prison terms.
Wei Jingsheng argued that democracy was “the fifth modernisation” without which Deng’s economic reforms would fail to benefit ordinary citizens. He was arrested in March 1979 and sentenced to fifteen years in prison — demonstrating that the new leadership’s tolerance of political debate had strict limits.
The decisive turning point in the post-Mao succession was the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, held in December 1978. At this meeting, Deng Xiaoping’s reform programme was formally adopted as Party policy. The plenum shifted the Party’s focus from class struggle — the defining feature of Maoist politics — to economic modernisation. Hua Guofeng’s authority rapidly diminished; he resigned as Party Chairman in 1981. The Third Plenum is the moment historians most commonly identify as the formal end of the Maoist era and the beginning of the reform period. Deng had outmanoeuvred Hua by building alliances with veteran Party leaders who had suffered during the Cultural Revolution and who shared an interest in moving beyond Mao’s legacy.