China made one of its most encompassing changes of its developmental paradigm between 1976 and 1980, and yet the nominal leader of the country throughout this period has remained almost forgotten – a hiatus filled by Robert Weatherley's useful book. Hua Guofeng emerges as a true child of China's poor peasantry, born in Shanxi in 1920 and raised in a single-parent household, making an early commitment to the Party and contributing modestly to the War of National Resistance against Japan and the ensuing civil war, thereby earning a local administrative post in Hunan. From there he was able to pursue a successful bureaucratic career, negotiating a slow but ultimately successful ascent from the bottom to the very pinnacle of Chinese politics. Most of the book (the first five of six chapters) is focused on this rise. Hua emerges as a true radical, assuming a vanguard role in the organization of mutual aid teams in early 1950 before this became official policy and launching advanced producer co-operatives in 1953, also supporting Mao's abrupt 1955 acceleration of collectivization. He also supported the Great Leap Forward, particularly after the Peng Dehuai purge in 1959, when he hosted Mao's tour of his native province to convince himself of the wrong-headedness of Peng's critique. Undeterred by the post-Leap depression, in 1964 Hua launched his signature project, the model irrigation plant in Mao's birthplace Shaoshan, also refurbishing Mao's primary school there and making his birthplace as a popular tourist destination.

What accounts for Hua Guofeng's spectacular rise? Four things, according to Weatherley: his steadfast loyalty to the Chairman, even leveraging this against opposition to his immediate superiors; the political vacuum created by Mao's purges (as for example the 1959 purge of former Hunan chief Zhou Xiaozhou as part of Peng Dehuai's clique); his skills as an administrator (as demonstrated by the Shaoshan project); and his ability to serve as a mediating figure between opposing camps. Though loyal to Mao he was not ideologically rigid, foresightfully warning in July 1959 against quota inflation or the resort to coercive measures. And though leftist he was not an ideological polemicist like the Gang of Four but a policy generalist with experience in agriculture and science policy. Although a political “helicopter” who rose amid the wholesale purge of his seniors during the Cultural Revolution, he was also criticized by Red Guards, and upon rising to central leadership he co-operated smoothly with Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping on the Four Modernizations, thereby falling out with the Gang of Four and incurring their Aesopian polemical imprecations. And he rose, Weatherley points out, during post-mobilization attempts to stabilize the movement, not in the conspiracy to initiate it – he was a beneficiary of the deradicalization of the Cultural Revolution.

Having climbed to the top of China's greasy pole, monopolizing the trifecta of Premier, CCP chair, and chair of the Central Military Commission, Hua's tenure proved surprisingly brief, losing effective power in just two years and the formal positions within four. Weatherley attributes his fall to four factors: (1) Hua's support base was weak and had divergent policy preferences; (2) as a beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution (and Mao's personal benediction), Hua felt obliged to continue the heaven-storming policies of radical Maoism, thereby losing the support of the moderates who had helped him dispose of the Gang. Ironically, even Hua's pledge to fulfil “whatever policy Chairman Mao decided upon … whatever directives Chairman Mao issued” was deflected by Deng's clever endorsement of Mao's earlier admonition to “seek truth from facts,” using practice as the sole criterion of truth; (3) Hua's rise had allegedly been achieved without the proper procedural sanctions; (4) Hua lacked the charismatic legitimacy of his predecessor as well as his challenger and successor, which was fundamental to leadership at this time.

The first two factors have been consensually accepted by the scholarly community and are admirably elucidated here. The latter two are, however, perhaps worth discussion. It is certainly true that Hua's rise lacked procedural legitimacy, based as it was largely on Mao's scribbled note “With you in charge I am at ease,” the existence of which remains undemonstrated, and this autocratic passing of the torch was used against him – by one who then exercised leadership without even claiming the commensurate formal positions. In other words, formal procedure is not what politics was about. Weber's concept of charisma has lost whatever precision it had in the course of its subsequent popularization, but if taken seriously is a misleading explanation of Hua's miscarried succession. Certainly Hua lacked Mao's charisma, and his rote adoption of the trappings of the personality cult only made him an object of quiet derision, but does this account for his fall? Mao Zedong had plenty of charisma, but the Chinese people had by this time had enough of it after enduring starvation in the Leap and humiliation in the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping was shrewd enough to recognize this and to base his appeal not on bold policy innovation but on a return to Party tradition, restoring the social stability that hypothetically characterized the 1950s before revolutionary utopianism took wing. To some extent Hua saw this as well – hence his arrest of the Gang, cessation of incessant campaigns, refocus on the economy – yet his Maoist legacy did not permit a clean break with his past, making him an almost tragic (if minor) transitional figure.