Hua guofeng biography of michael
Hua Guofeng was most famous for being the successor to Mao Zedong as the leader of China after Mao's death....
Hua: Man briefly at China's helm
By Michael Bristow |
Hua was briefly in the spotlight, but is now seen as an obscure figure |
Those reforms turned China into a world power, said Dr Steven Tsang of the UK's Oxford University.
Hua Guofeng briefly ruled China as the successor to Mao Zedong but was pushed aside as a prelude to reforms that led to an economic boom.
Hua, who has died aged 87, "might have only been in power for a short time, but what he did was very significant", Dr Tsang told the BBC.
When China's great revolutionary leader Mao Zedong died in 1976, the country was in tatters after 10 years of in-fighting during the Cultural Revolution.
Mao had launched the political campaign a decade earlier to change the way Chinese people lived and thought. It resulted in chaos.
But even Mao's death did not bring an end to the campaign. His loyal supporters - most notably the Gang of Four - wanted it