Hu Yaobang: New Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party
AT THE SIXTH PLENUM of the Eleventh Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in June 1981, Hua Guofeng, Mao Zedong's designated successor, was forced to resign his posts as party chairman and chairman of its Military Affairs Commission. Hua was replaced as party chairman by Hu Yaobang, a protege of Deng Xiaoping, China's de facto leader and party general secretary, and as Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission by Deng himself. Meanwhile, Hua was demoted to a junior party vice-chairman, and Zhao Ziyang, another Deng protege and Premier of the State Council, was promoted to party vice-chairman. In ranking order, the changes have created the following lineup in the powerful Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP Central Committee: Hu Yaobang, He Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Li Xiannian, Chen Yun, and Hua Guofeng.1 Thus, Hua was dropped from first to seventh in the party hierarchy. Hua's demotion and Hu's promotion were the products of a compromise between the Deng faction and the Maoists. It is still unknown whether Hua retains some sort of residual power; probably his party vice-chairmanship like his former party chairmanship is a nominal position. The results of this plenum are: a tripartite leadership with Hu running the party, Zhao running the government, and Deng running the army; the formal end of the Maoist era; abolition of lifetime tenure for the party chairmanship; and the discontinuance of the concentration of party and military power in the hands of one man. Now Hu, as Deng's heir apparent, plays a leading role in China's decision-making process, although Beijing continues to emphasize collective leadership.
China's 12th Central Committee: Rehabilitated Cadres and Technocrats
programs to make all socioeconomic and political structures congruent with the implementation of the "four modernizations." One of the most important components of this post-1978 reform is the effort to "revolutionize" the existing Chinese bureaucracy by promoting the educated, the professionally competent, and the young. For recruitment, appointment, and promotion, the regime promises to use such non-political objective criteria as age, education, and job competency, while publicly criticizing the Maoist practice of exclusively emphasizing political criteria. As Hu Yaobang recognized publicly, it is obvious that the "success of the four modernizations largely depends on whether the existing cadre corps can achieve four transformations-"to be "revolutionized, young, better educated, and professionally competent."' The bureaucratic reform, however, affects most directly the vested interests of 20 million Chinese cadres, the group on which the regime must rely for effective implementation of any policy. To make the matter more complicated, the middle-aged cadres whom the present leadership are trying to promote to key positions may not share the same values and experiences as the elderly top leaders.2 Cadres between 40 and 45 come from the generation that the Cultural Revolution (CR) affected most. Many of them were actively involved in the Cultural Revolution either as low ranking cadres or college students, and this background tarnishes their political reliability in the eyes of the present leaders.
Speech at the Third Session of the Fifth National Peoples Congress September 7 1980.
In this presentation to the Third Session of the Fifth National Peoples Congress focus is on the work of the government. Every effort has been made to ensure that both the national economic plans and the budgetary plans for this year and next year are practicable. To realize them will still require cooperative effort on the part of Chinas workers and peasants. The last session of the Fifth National Peoples Congress was held more than a year ago. Since then the focus has been progressively shifted to socialist modernization. There has been continued effort to deal with the political and social problems remaining from the past and to further consolidate and promote a political situation of stability and unity. The economy of China has taken on a fairly new look in the past year as a result of the process of readjustment restructuring consolidation and improvement. The major sectors are progressing towards balance. In addition there has been some improvement in this last year in the conditions for scientific research which yielded a number of important results. Further progress has also been made in the development of socialist democracy and the socialist legal system. Finally in the past year or so China has actively developed friendly cooperation and expanded economic scientific technological and cultural interchange with many countries. 5 points are presented for the deliberations of this session of the Fifth National Peoples Congress: 1) mapping out a long-term program; 2) carrying forward the structural reform of economic management; 3) eliminating bureaucracy and improving government work; 4) promoting socialist democracy and strengthening the socialist legal system; and 5) ensuring that the leadership of governments of all levels becomes younger more educated and professionally more competent.