Hua Guofeng
2nd Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, 2nd Premier of the People's Republic of China (1921–2008)
Hua Guofeng (born Su Zhu (苏铸); 16 February 1921 – 20 August 2008; also spelled as Hua Kuo-feng) was a Chinese politician who served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and the premier of China. As the successor of Mao Zedong, Hua held the top offices of the government, party, and the military after the deaths of Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai, but was gradually forced out of power between December 1978 and June 1981, and subsequently retreated from the political limelight, though still remaining a member of the Central Committee until 2002.
Born and raised in Jiaocheng, Hua joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1938, seeing action in both the Second Sino–Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War as a guerrilla fighter. In 1948, he was appointed party secretary of Xiangtan in Hunan, which included Mao's birthplace of Shaoshan. A popular local administrator, Hua rose to become Hunan's party secretary during the Cultural Revolution, and was elevated to the national stage in the early 1970s, notably assuming control of the Ministry of Public Security in 1973 and vice premier in 1975. After the death of Zhou Enlai in January 1976, Mao elevated Hua to the positions of premier and first vice chairman of the CCP, which made him Mao's designated successor.
In October 1976, a month after Mao's death, Hua arrested and removed the Gang of Four from power with the assistance of Mao's security chief Wang Dongxing, who became one of Hua's key supporters along with vice premier and chief economic planner Li Xiannian, and Luo Qingchang, head of the intelligence services. Hua also succeeded Mao as party chairman and chairman of the Central Military Commission, becoming the first to simultaneously hold the offices of party leader, premier, and commander-in-chief, as well as the only paramount leader to hold the office of premier.
While Hua ended the Cultural Revolution's most notorious policies, such as the constant ideological campaigns, he remained generally committed to a command economy and the continuation of the Maoist line. Between December 1978 and June 1981, Deng Xiaoping and his supporters forced Hua from his position of paramount leader but allowed him to retain some titles.
“Hua Guofeng” enters the record as 2nd Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, 2nd Premier of the People's Republic of China (1921–2008). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Guofeng, Chairman and Chinese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Hua Guofeng” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Guofeng, Chairman and Chinese provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q41570. VIAF identifies the subject as 52481387. The Library of Congress control number is n81018950. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2008, 1978 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hua Guofeng” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.