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April Fifth Movement (1976)

Around Qingming 1976, Beijing citizens mourning Zhou Enlai in Tiananmen Square turned protest against the "Gang of Four." Crushed on April 5 as a "counterrevolutionary incident." Rehabilitated in 1978 as "revolutionary action."

Time

Late March – April 5, 1976 (crackdown: April 5)

Place

Tiananmen Square, Beijing; also Nanjing, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou

Decision-makers

Mao Zedong (acquiesced); Hua Guofeng, Wu De (cleared the Square); the "Gang of Four" as protest targets

Background: Zhou's death and the Gang's power

On January 8, 1976, Zhou Enlai died. The "Gang of Four" suppressed mourning — no black armbands, no memorial halls. In February, Nanjing saw "the Premier's last words" leaflets. From late March, Beijing citizens spontaneously laid wreaths at the Monument to the People's Heroes — mourning Zhou, venting fury at the Gang.

With Mao gravely ill, the Gang (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Hongwen) and Deng Xiaoping fought bitterly. Mourning Zhou became political speech: pro-Zhou/Deng, anti-Gang.

Who decided

Mao Zedong gave supreme approval; the Politburo characterized it; Mao Yuanxin was the messenger. April 4 evening: the Politburo (Hua Guofeng, Wu De) labeled it "a counterrevolutionary counterattack" by an underground "Petőfi Club" (unproven). Mao approved clearing wreaths and arresting "counterrevolutionaries." April 7: the Politburo appointed Hua Guofeng first vice-chairman and premier, stripped Deng Xiaoping of all posts. April 8: Yao Wenyuan's editorial branded it counterrevolutionary.

Who decided

Mao Zedong gave the supreme approval; the Politburo made the characterization; Mao Yuanxin was the key messenger. Key decisions:

• January 1976: under Mao's instruction ("mourning is false, restoration is real" — attributed, unverified), Gang-controlled media suppressed coverage of Zhou Enlai's death commemorations.
• April 4 evening: the Politburo met on the Tiananmen movement. Hua Guofeng (vice-premier and public security minister) said some writings "directly attacked the Chairman"; Beijing party chief Wu De blamed Deng Xiaoping's long preparation. The Politburo concluded: most mourned the premier, but a minority attacked the center, with an underground "Petőfi Club" organizing — "a counterrevolutionary counterattack." (The "Petőfi Club" was the Politburo's characterization, not a proven organization.)
• Mao Yuanxin reported to Mao; the decision to clear wreaths, slogans and arrest "counterrevolutionaries" from April 4 night won Mao's approval.
• April 7: after Mao Yuanxin's report, Mao judged Deng Xiaoping's case had changed in nature. That night the Politburo appointed Hua Guofeng first vice-chairman and premier, and stripped Deng Xiaoping of all posts (party membership retained).
• April 8: Yao Wenyuan's People's Daily editorial branded it "a counterrevolutionary political incident manufactured with premeditation, plan and organization by a tiny handful of class enemies."

Detailed timeline

Build-up (late March – April 3). Wreaths multiplied to 200+. Poems and elegiac couplets covered the Monument's base, targeting the Gang ("Qin Shihuang's feudal age is gone forever").

Peak (April 4, Qingming). Up to a million gathered (unverified). That night Party chief Wu De ordered the wreaths cleared, enraging the crowds.

Crackdown (April 5). Tens of thousands faced militia and police; that evening the Beijing Garrison beat and arrested protesters. Wu De broadcast that Tiananmen was a "counterrevolutionary incident."

Verdict (April 6–7). On April 7, on Mao's proposal, the Politburo stripped Deng Xiaoping of all posts ("linked to the counterrevolutionary incident") and named Hua Guofeng First Vice-Chairman and Premier.

Rehabilitation (1978). In November 1978 the Beijing committee declared it "revolutionary action." Deng returned.

Who executed

Chain: Politburo → Beijing joint command → militia, police, garrison. April 5 night: 10,000+ militia, five garrison battalions, 3,000 police cleared the square with wooden clubs and belts — dozens injured, 200+ detained, no deaths reported. Key figures: Hua Guofeng (urging), Wu De (ordered the militia in), Wu Zhong (field commander).

Who executed

Execution chain: Politburo decision → Beijing Revolutionary Committee joint command → militia, police, garrison troops.

• April 1, 1976: a joint command of militia, police and garrison troops was set up at the square's southeast corner ("workers' militia command").
• April 2: 26 already arrested, including worker Han Zhixiong (author of the poster "Mourn the Premier with Grief, Roar Against the Monsters").
• April 5 dawn: troops, police, militia and 200 trucks removed the wreaths.
• April 5 afternoon: enraged crowds gathered at the Great Hall's east gate chanting "Return our wreaths, return our comrades!" and "Down with whoever opposes Premier Zhou!"; some stormed the Great Hall, clashing with militia and police; four vehicles were torched. At 6:30 PM Wu De's recorded speech was broadcast: "recognize the reactionary nature of this political incident." Most left.
• April 5 night clearing: Wu De and garrison commander Wu Zhong thought it too early (tens of thousands remained), but Hua Guofeng and Chen Xilian phoned urging action. At 9:30 PM 10,000+ militia, five garrison battalions, 3,000 police moved in. At 11 PM, with ~1,000 left, Wu De ordered the militia in. Troops encircled the square; militia and police wielding wooden clubs and belts violently cleared it. Dozens injured, 200+ detained, blood on the square — but no deaths reported.

Key executors: Hua Guofeng (urging from the top), Wu De (ordered the militia in), Wu Zhong (on-site commander), Chen Xilian. The "Gang of Four" did the propaganda branding (Yao Wenyuan), not the field command.

Square poetry: Tiananmen Poems

The movement left precious "square literature." Tiananmen Poems collected verses posted on the Monument, e.g. "Demons howl, I weep; jackals laugh. Shedding tears for heroes, brows raised, swords drawn" ("demons" = the Gang). Traditional forms voicing modern protest — a peak of Chinese political lyricism.

In 1978 Tiananmen Poems was published openly, millions of copies printed.

Who opposed

The movement itself was the opposition — the first public mass discontent directed at Mao himself since 1949. Mourning Zhou Enlai; "Down with whoever opposes Premier Zhou"; poems targeting Jiang Qing and Mao ("the First Emperor"); support for Deng Xiaoping. The Nanjing March 29 prelude spread it nationwide. Fully rehabilitated November 25, 1978 as "entirely a revolutionary mass movement." Its opponents were millions of leaderless masses who left poems, not organizations.

Who opposed

The April Fifth Movement's uniqueness: the movement itself was the opposition — the first time since 1949 that the masses publicly directed discontent at Mao Zedong himself.

• Mourning Zhou Enlai: Zhou died January 8, 1976; the "ten-mile farewell"; from March 19 wreaths piled at the Monument to the People's Heroes — "a mountain of flowers, a sea of poems."
• Against the "Gang of Four": "Down with whoever opposes Premier Zhou"; poems targeting Jiang Qing (as Wu Zetian).
• Pointed at Mao himself: "The age of the First Emperor is gone forever" — "the First Emperor" meant Mao. The first public pointing at Mao since 1949.
• For Deng Xiaoping: one goal was "Deng Xiaoping to power."

Nanjing March 29 prelude: after Shanghai's Wen Hui Bao attacked Deng and insinuated against Zhou, 400+ Nanjing University people marched with Zhou's portrait on March 28; posters spread nationwide by train. Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Hangzhou and Xi'an all peaked April 4.

Rehabilitation: November 12, 1978 Chen Yun called it "a great mass movement of millions mourning Premier Zhou, opposing the Gang of Four"; November 25 the central work conference fully rehabilitated it as "entirely a revolutionary mass movement."

Unlike the campaigns where no one questioned the goal, and unlike June Fourth where opponents left names — April Fifth's opponents were millions of leaderless masses who left poems, not organizations.

Impact: from "counterrevolutionary" to "revolutionary"

Harbinger of the Cultural Revolution's end. The first mass protest against the Gang during the Cultural Revolution, it prepared public opinion for the Gang's October 1976 arrest.

Deng's comeback capital. It proved where popular hearts lay. Rehabilitated in 1978, Deng rode it back to power and launched reform and opening.

Rehearsal for 1989. Its pattern — Tiananmen Square, mourning the dead, poems and posters, mourning turning to protest — replayed in 1989. But 1989's ending was far bloodier.

Archive supplement: from the funeral cortege to the hunt for "April Fifth elements"

A million people lined the avenue. The movement cannot be understood without January 1976. Zhou Enlai died on January 8. On the evening of January 11, as the hearse carried his body down Chang'an Avenue, past Tiananmen, toward the Babaoshan cemetery, an estimated one million Beijing residents stood waiting along the route in the winter cold — a spontaneous outpouring remembered ever since as "ten li of street seeing off the Premier." The United Nations flew its flag at half-mast for Zhou, a rare honour for a head of government who was not a head of state. Inside China, however, mourning was tightly rationed: unofficial memorial halls were forbidden, black armbands and white paper flowers were banned in many work units, and the press was instructed to keep coverage low-key. Deng Xiaoping delivered the official eulogy on January 15 — and then vanished from public view, sidelined in the succession struggle. Grief that had nowhere to go began, over the following weeks, to turn into anger. From February, a text purporting to be Zhou's deathbed testament was copied by hand and passed from person to person across the country. The authorities later declared it a forgery, and it probably was one; but its spread is itself primary evidence of where public feeling lay in the last winter of the Cultural Revolution.

Nanjing, March 29: the spark in detail. On March 25, 1976, Shanghai's Wen Hui Bao published an article attacking an unnamed "capitalist roader inside the party" who was bent on reversing the verdicts of the Cultural Revolution — a transparent reference to Deng Xiaoping, with Zhou Enlai insinuated between the lines. Nanjing answered first. On March 28, more than four hundred students and teachers from Nanjing University carried a huge portrait of Zhou Enlai and large wreaths through the streets to Meiyuan Xincun, his former residence, and crowds joined them on the way. On March 29 and 30 the city's walls filled with posters and slogans: "Whoever opposes Premier Zhou must fall," "Drag out the black backstage bosses of Wen Hui Bao." Students painted the slogans on the sides of railway carriages, and trains carried Nanjing's defiance the length of the country. One Nanjing poster supplied the movement's most quoted sentence: "China is no longer the China of the past; the people are no longer benighted; and the feudal age of the First Emperor of Qin is gone forever." The Nanjing protests were branded a "counterrevolutionary incident" and suppressed before Beijing's movement peaked — but the essential thing had already happened: word had spread that somewhere, people had stood up, and that the capital need not stand alone.

April 4–5 in the square. Qingming — the festival of the dead — fell on April 4, and it brought the mourning to its height. All day, crowds streamed to the Monument to the People's Heroes; wreaths stood banked in tiers around its base, and poems, elegies and couplets covered the monument and the surrounding pines. That night, acting on the Politburo's decision, militia and workers moved in to clear the wreaths and posters and detained people who had posted verses judged "offensive." The wreaths were trucked away and burned. It was the clearance, more than anything, that produced April 5. Crowds returning on the Monday morning found the monument stripped bare, and tens of thousands gathered in protest, demanding the wreaths back, the release of those detained, and punishment for whoever had given the order. The archive should record the whole of that day, including the part that sits least comfortably: in the course of April 5 some protesters smashed and burned a propaganda broadcast van and set fire to the militia command post on the square's eastern side. The movement's mainstream was peaceful mourning turning into peaceful protest, but those acts of violence against official property happened, and a complete record does not edit them out.

The clearance — and the blank space where the casualty figures should be. On the evening of April 5, Beijing party chief Wu De addressed the square over its loudspeakers, ordering the crowd to leave and branding the gathering a "counterrevolutionary incident." At about half past nine the floodlights illuminating the monument went out; when they came back on, militia, police and garrison troops armed with wooden clubs and leather belts were closing in from all four sides. The several hundred people still at the monument were beaten and arrested where they stood. On casualties, this page states the gap in the record plainly, because inventing precision would be a disservice to the archive. Neither official accounts nor the reporting that followed the 1978 rehabilitation confirmed any death that night, and no total of the injured was ever published. Death figures that have circulated since rest on no reliable sourcing and are not reproduced here. What can be confirmed is the character of the clearance — clubs and belts, not firearms — and that those arrested on the spot numbered in the dozens, with published sources differing and no unified official count ever released.

The hunt for "April Fifth elements." Repression did not end when the square emptied; in some ways it only began. In the weeks that followed, Beijing and cities across China investigated anyone who had posted a poem, laid a wreath, taken a photograph or simply been seen lingering in the square. Work units compiled lists of "April Fifth elements," and the consequences — detention for investigation, struggle sessions, demotion, a permanent black mark in a personnel file — fell on large numbers of entirely ordinary people; no unified national figure has ever been published, and totals in the secondary literature vary too widely to state responsibly. Hand-copied volumes of the Tiananmen poems were confiscated as "reactionary leaflets," and people were punished for copying or circulating them; Wang Lishan, the young Taiyuan worker whose poem "Swords Drawn" became the movement's signature work, was investigated. From April 8 the nationwide campaign to "criticise Deng and beat back the right-deviationist wind to reverse verdicts" purged Deng's sympathisers across the party and government. The price of April Fifth was therefore not one night of beatings in the square. It was two and a half years — until the rehabilitation — in which thousands of people lived with an unresolved political charge hanging over their files, their promotions and their families.

Rehabilitated, then unmentionable. The November 1978 rehabilitation released the detainees and cleared their names; that December the Tiananmen Poems, collected and edited under the name Tong Huaizhou, were published openly by Qunzhong Press, sold in the millions, and became a whole generation's political primer — proof, for a moment, that the square's verses had won. The commemoration did not last. After 1989, Qingming offerings at the Monument came under strict control, the square itself passed under permanent guard, and mainland textbooks shrank the April Fifth Movement to a passing mention; official commemoration has effectively ceased. The result is a paradox unique among the events in this archive: a movement the Chinese Communist Party itself formally vindicated as "an entirely revolutionary mass movement" is one that, in practice, can scarcely be commemorated in public in the country where it happened. This page preserves its full record — the cortege, the Nanjing spark, the poems, the clearance, the hunt and the vindication — against that organised forgetting.

From April Fifth to the fall of the Gang of Four. The movement's consequences unfolded in two acts inside a single year. After the clearance, the nationwide campaign to "criticise Deng and beat back the right-deviationist wind" purged Deng Xiaoping's sympathisers through the party and government, while Deng himself — stripped of all posts but permitted, uniquely, to keep his party membership — waited under a kind of protective isolation. Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976. Less than a month later, on October 6, Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing arrested Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen in a single night's operation, and the Gang of Four fell. The official narrative credits the party centre's decisiveness. Popular memory has always reversed the order of causation: first, in April, millions of ordinary citizens had declared themselves in Tiananmen Square with wreaths and poems; only after that demonstration of where the public stood did the palace arrest of October become possible. Participants coined a phrase for it — "the people passed the verdict first; history carried it out." Whatever its literary licence, the phrase captures something a complete archive should preserve: April Fifth was the first occasion since 1949 on which the regime's own leadership could measure, in public and in person, the true depth of the Cultural Revolution's unpopularity.

How the rehabilitation happened: Chen Yun's six questions. The vindication of 1978 was contested, not automatic, and its mechanism deserves recording. The Central Work Conference that preceded the famous Third Plenum was originally convened to discuss economic plans. On November 12, 1978, the veteran leader Chen Yun intervened in a small-group session with six unresolved historical questions that he insisted the party must settle — among them the Tiananmen incident. The incident, Chen said in terms that were minuted and later published, was a great mass movement of millions of people mourning Premier Zhou, opposing the Gang of Four and objecting to the criticism of Comrade Deng Xiaoping, and the centre should affirm it. The intervention broke the conference open: delegate after delegate rose to demand the reversal of one unjust verdict after another, and the meeting's centre of gravity shifted from economic planning to historical reckoning. On November 14 the Beijing municipal party committee moved first, declaring the Tiananmen incident "revolutionary action." On November 25 the work conference itself pronounced it an entirely revolutionary mass movement, completely and publicly rehabilitated. Deng Xiaoping then closed the conference with his speech "Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth from Facts, Unite as One in Looking to the Future," and the Third Plenum in December launched the reform era. In the sequence of that winter, the rehabilitation of April Fifth was the first domino — the proof that verdicts of the Mao years could be overturned, without which no larger overturning could begin.

The book of the movement, and the fate of its suppressors. After vindication, the poems that had been confiscated as counterrevolutionary leaflets became a publishing phenomenon. The Tiananmen Poems appeared at the end of 1978 from Qunzhong Press, edited under the name "Tong Huaizhou" — not an individual but the collective pen name of a Tsinghua University Chinese-department editorial group, chosen as a near-homophone for "together cherishing Zhou." Working from the hand-copied and mimeographed volumes that citizens had hidden and preserved, the editors assembled hundreds of the square's poems; a great many of their authors remain anonymous to this day. The book closed the movement's unique circle — a protest that had begun in verse ended with the state itself publishing the verse as the movement's record, the nearest thing a leaderless, unorganised crowd could leave to minutes of its own meeting. Of the men who had ordered the square cleared, Beijing party chief Wu De resigned his posts in 1980 and defended the decision for the rest of his life, insisting in his memoirs that "not one person died" that night — a claim frequently cited in the casualty debate and recorded here for what it is, the testimony of a responsible party, not a finding. Wu Zhong, the garrison commander who directed the clearance on the ground, was removed and placed under investigation in 1979. As in every rehabilitation preserved in this archive, accountability stopped at the executors and at the already-fallen Gang of Four: the level at which the decision had ultimately been approved was never itself put in question.

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