Changing of the Guard

In a sweeping reshuffle, Hua steps aside for a new Deng team

"A new generation of leaders for China." That was the common catch phrase around Peking last week as 3,500 members of the National People's Congress arrived for an eagerly awaited 14-day session in Peking's cavernous Great Hall of the People. The congress usually gathers once a year, but this meeting was far from ordinary. The delegates, elected and representing all of the country's 29 provinces, regions and special municipalities, convened to ratify a series of leadership changes that would mark the passing of the old revolutionary guard from government office, though not from party power. It was expected to be the most sweeping peaceful reshuffle in China since Mao Tse-tung took over in 1949, and it involved an unprecedented number of top officials: the Premier himself, five Vice Premiers and a number of ministerial appointees.

The function of the huge congress was more formal than real. It was to rubber-stamp decisions already made by the party's leaders and carefully advertised in advance. Still, every effort was being made to make it a showcase event and to prepare the country for the changeover. The congress was also expected to consider new laws on marriage, income tax and foreign investment, and was likely to approve a measure limiting the length of time one individual can hold any given public office. In a highly unusual gesture of openness, the foreign press was invited to attend some of the sessions. TIME's Peking bureau chief Richard Bernstein reports:

Premier Hua Guofeng grandly declared that the congress this time "will not be routine but will have great significance." It was ironic that Hua was the one to make that statement. Among the more sensational advance reports on the congress's actions was that Hua, who is also Chairman of the Communist Party, would formally be relieved of his government duties as Premier and replaced by former Governor of Sichuan province Zhao Ziyang, 62. That was likely to be the most dramatic step taken to accomplish the ambitious goal of transferring government power from one group to another. Along with the resignation of Hua, who, at 60, is himself relatively young, will come the voluntary departure from their government posts of some half a dozen old revolutionaries. The group includes the mastermind of the whole set of changes, Senior Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, 76, effectively the country's most powerful leader.

"It's Deng's big show," said one Western diplomat on the eve of the congress. "He wants to unveil his team for the future, and he wants everybody there to see it happen." For Deng, indeed, the National People's Congress promised to be a climactic moment. Since late last year, the canny Vice Premier, who has survived numerous upheavals in and out of power for the past 30 years, has been bringing to the central government a team of tested provincial leaders, most of them in their early 60s. Deng's aim is to see power firmly placed in the hands of trusted associates who will carry out the ambitious modernization programs he has charted for the nation.

Deng, along with Hua and the other retiring Vice Premiers, will keep his powerful position in the Communist Party, which remains the seat of ultimate authority in China. But by bringing in a younger, more vigorous team, Deng is clearly hoping to bring more efficiency and energy to China's government ministries. In the same way, he has also been trying to weed out the inefficient, lazy and corrupt officials who snarl the middle levels of China's huge bureaucracy.

In a high-level crackdown last week just before the congress convened, Petroleum Industry Minister Song Zhenming was ousted after being blamed for an offshore oil-rig accident last November in which 72 people were killed. The incident occurred when a drilling rig that was being towed to a new location in stormy seas, apparently against technical advice, collapsed. In an "obvious deception," the People's Daily charged, Song had blamed the disaster on the weather instead of bad judgment. Some foreign analysts suspect that the rig disaster could serve as a handy pretext to purge the Petroleum Ministry. A so-called "oil clique" that included Song had concentrated on petroleum at the expense of a more diversified energy policy favored by Deng.

Even before the congress opened last week, the new officials had quietly taken up the day-to-day operations of their posts. All are close associates of Deng's. The best known is Premier-designate Zhao, who enjoys a national reputation for his innovations with free markets, bonuses and a relatively liberal system of local autonomy in Sichuan, China's most populous province. Wan Li, 64, former head of Anhui province--and, as it happens, a reputed bridge partner of Deng's--will become head of the state agricultural commission.

The most delicate part of the changeover was the removal of Hua, who is two years younger than the 62-year-old man who will replace him. Some analysts, in fact, think that some serious quarrels could yet break out between Hua and Deng's proteges. The Deng forces have lately taken to making oblique attacks against Hua in the press. Most of the old Maoist programs that are now being discredited, for example, were ardently supported by Hua, the last major leader who owes his power directly to the patronage of Mao. A recent Central Committee directive against excessive displays of photographs of government leaders seemed aimed, at least in part, at Hua. His is the only picture, aside from Mao's, that hangs prominently in most public places.

Over the past few months, Hua has been noticed meeting with military commanders, who are also suspected of being unhappy with Deng, in part because of the low priority being given to modernization of the military establishment. Thus while the Deng forces seemed supreme as the congress opened, they had yet to prove that they could avoid the sort of factionalism in the party that has bedeviled China's leaders so often in the past.

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