Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
8
The arrest of the Gang of Four led to widespread celebration in China,
not so much because the Chinese people knew a great deal about each
member, but because it seemed to portend a final stop to the endless
and exhausting mass movements that Mao and the radicals so loved
to promote. In the summer of 1977 all four members were expelled
from the party. Meanwhile, Deng Xiaoping was making a comeback.
In early 1977 he was allowed to go back to Beijing, and he quickly
emerged as the party's dominant personality, effectively shunting
Hua Guofeng aside. It simply did not matter any more that Mao had
apparently designated Hua as his successor; people were fed up with
Mao and his antics. Deng was soon leading the charge against the
radicals and moved, along with the fellow moderate Hu Yaobang, to
purge the party of its extremists. The pendulum had swung the other
way, and now the radicals who had joined the party during the heady
days of the Cultural Revolution were subject to summary expulsion.
Deng and his supporters then launched an enormously popular
program of reform in China.
Deng detested the personality cult that Mao and his devotees had
fostered, and he quickly dismantled it. Huge statues of Mao were
