this day in history

1977 DENG XIAOPING BACK IN POWER

The disgraced deputy Prime Minister of China, Deng Xiaoping, is to return to Chinese Government.

The Chinese Communist Party conference has restored him to the offices of Vice Premier of the State Council, Vice-chairman of the Central Committee, Vice-chairman of the Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army.

He was dismissed from his posts after the leftist Gang of Four blamed him for the uprising in Tiananmen Square in April last year after Premier Zhou Enlai’s death.

Since the death of Chairman Mao last September the Gang of Four has sidelined Mr Deng and attempted a programme of radical reform.

But Mao Tse Tung’s named successor as CCP chair, Hua Guofeng, has been purging the Party of extremist influences such as the Gang of Four.

The Gang of Four was formally expelled from the CCP at a meeting of the Central Committee’s Third Plenum last weekend.

The Gang includes Mao’s fourth wife, Jiang Qing, former vice premier and politburo member Zhang Chunqiao, former factory worker Wang Hongwen and Shanghai intellectual Yao Wenyuan.

The official CCP newspaper, The People’s Daily, last week accused the group of trying to “rebuild” the Communist Party, excluding senior officials and creating a “mass organisation”.

Chinese authorities now regard “pleading the Gang’s innocence” as a “counter-revolutionary act”.

A party official in Kiangsi who defended the group recently was “denounced for his crime” at a meeting of 4,000 people.

Premier Hua has also identified far-left tendencies in party leaders of 13 of China’s 29 administrative regions and removed them from power.