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.

[2] Hua reversed some of the Cultural Revolution–era policies, such as the constant ideological campaigns, but he was generally devoted to a command economy and the continuation of the Maoist line.

Between December 1978 and June 1981, a group of party veterans led by Deng Xiaoping forced Hua from his position of paramount leader but allowed him to retain some titles.

[2] Born in Jiaocheng, Shanxi, the fourth son of a family originally from Fan County, Henan, Hua lost his father at the age of seven.

After having served as a soldier in the 8th Route Army for 12 years under the command of Marshal Zhu De,[3] he was appointed propaganda chief for the Jiaocheng County Party Committee in 1947, during the Chinese Civil War.

[2] Hua participated in the 1959 Lushan Conference (an enlarged plenary session of the CCP Central Committee) as a member of the Hunan Provincial Party delegation, and wrote two investigative reports fully defending all of Mao's policies.

[2] Hua was called to Beijing to direct Zhou Enlai's State Council staff office in 1971, but only stayed for a few months before returning to his previous post in Hunan.

Hua was re-elected as a full member of the 10th Central Committee in 1973 and elevated to membership in the Politburo; in the same year, he was put in charge of agricultural development by Zhou Enlai.

Hua's rising influence was confirmed by his being chosen to deliver a speech on modernizing agriculture in October of that year, which echoed the views of Zhou Enlai.

[6] Zhou Enlai died on 8 January 1976, at a time when Deng Xiaoping's reformist alliance was not yet strong enough to stand up to both the ailing Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution allies, the Gang of Four (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan).

At the same time, Hua delivered speeches on the "official line for criticizing Deng Xiaoping", which were approved by Mao and the Party Central Committee.

Following the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in July, Hua visited the devastated area and helped direct relief efforts there, while the Gang of Four was absent.

[11] Hua had summoned Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan to a meeting at Zhongnanhai, ostensibly to discuss the fifth volume of Mao's "Selected Works".

According to Hua's own recollection of events, he and Marshal Ye Jianying were the only two leaders present at the "meeting", awaiting the arrival of the members of the Gang.

[12] A task force led by Geng Biao occupied the headquarters of the party's main propaganda organs, which were considered a part of the Gang's turf at the time.

Hua Guofeng continued to use the terminology of the Cultural Revolution, but he criticized certain aspects of it, including the education reform, the revolutionary committees' activity and other excesses, blaming the Gang of Four.

He introduced an ambitious ten-year economic plan which sought to create a Soviet-style economy by increasing investments in heavy industry and energy, mechanizing agriculture and using imported technology to build new manufacturing plants.

[19] His proposal to purchase foreign equipment, services, and infrastructure through massive loans, which were viewed as reckless, impractical, and later derided as "the Western-Led Leap Forward".

Hua's economic and political programs involved the restoration of Soviet-style industrial planning[23] and party control similar to that followed by China before the Great Leap Forward.

Chairman Hua visited Derby's British Rail Railway Technical Centre to observe the development of the Advanced Passenger Train.

[30] On 10 November, the Central Work Conference was held, in which Hua attempted to move away from the CCP's emphasis on class struggle towards economic and technological development.

[31] Hua, encouraged by Ye Jianying and Party elders Chen Yun to accept the demands, gave a speech at the conference on 25 November, where he stated that the Tiananmen incident was an "entirely a revolutionary mass movement, and it is necessary to reevaluate it openly and thoroughly."

[31] Hua effectively lost power at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, after which Deng Xiaoping became the de facto leader of China with his idea for economic reform being adopted by the Party.

[32] He continued to hold some power, notably blocking additions critical of him to the "Historical Resolution" drafted by the CCP leadership to evaluate the Cultural Revolution.

[33] He was replaced as Premier by Zhao Ziyang in September 1980, while the Politburo issued a formal criticism of Hua in December, casting him as a figure that opposed modernization and sought simply to parrot Mao.

This was further reinforced by the Historical Resolution adopted by the 6th Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee on 27 June 1981, which said that Hua did too little to change things after Mao's death.

[34] He was, however, invited to the 17th Party Congress in 2007 as a special delegate and he appeared at a ceremony which was held in December 2007 in order to commemorate the 115th anniversary of Mao Zedong's birth.

[38] His funeral, which was held at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery on 30 August, was attended by the all members of the Politburo Standing Committee, as well as former President Jiang Zemin and former Premier Zhu Rongji.

[23] Hua's encouraged a local economy policy that included both planned elements and limited market freedom of the sort that Mao had previously derided as economism.

Secondly, Hua's ousting reflected a change of policies which were initiated by Deng Xiaoping according to which disgraced party members would merely be stripped of their positions, they would not be jailed or physically harmed.