Chapter XXIII: Spiraling Out of Control
The Gang of Four took power on a platform promising to continue the revolution Mao had started. Hongwen had managed to gain the support of the military and thus outmaneuvered Jiang Qing to become President of China. Qing was still put in charge of economic policy to appease her and her supporters, but that arrangement couldn't last forever.
The first order of business was consolidating Hongwen’s power. Some members of the military still feared that Hongwen and Qing would put them in chains just as they had done to the moderates who opposed them. Hongwen’s strategy to rid the military of these dissidents was to turn around and start a war with Vietnam in 1979. In addition to helping him unite the country behind him. Furthermore, the ploy would secure China’s position against the ever encroaching American, Indian, and Russian spheres of influence. The invasion of Vietnam would to the surprise of no one start under flimsy circumstances. Two miles north of the Vietnamese border a military cargo plane was shot down. The crew “miraculously” survived but the Chinese government blamed the Vietnamese army for the attack. Vietnam at the UN to the shock of no one condemned Hongwen and Qing as liars attempting to start a war.
Chinese soldiers crossing the border (1979).
Hongwen and Qing decided to prove Vietnam right. Chinese soldiers on October 14th, 1979, fired upon Vietnamese soldiers who were guarding the border against a possible Chinese incursion. The PLA started the skirmish undeniably but unlike the rest of the world the Chinese people heard a different story. From the state propaganda machine, the Chinese people were indoctrinated with a constant stream of propaganda that claimed that the Vietnamese government was orchestrating a genocide against the poor peasants of Cambodia and had butchered Chinese soldiers on the border. The next day on the 15th of October Chinese missiles ripped through the dark sky and within an hour Hanoi war burning. The sight was horrifying to American and Soviet observers. But to those who lived through the Vietnam War this was nothing new and just like before they were going to fight like hell. But despite the wishes of the world the fire of determination that burned inside of the citizens and soldiers of Vietnam could not defeat the invasion. Despite heavy fighting in the jungles of Vietnam the sheer size of the PLA was unmatched for the Vietnamese Army. Within a month Hanoi would fall to the PLA and the scene would cement the terror that was about to come.
The PLA quickly moved down South towards the new capital of Saigon where President Tôn Đức Thắng had retreated too. But his time on Earth would not be for much longer as on March 10th, 1980, he would pass away from cardiac arrest while hiding in a bomb shelter. His successor Trường Chinh wouldn’t last long as President. In fact, while the PLA was temporarily bogged down due to the guerrilla warfare the Khmer Rouge that had been overthrown in 1978 was making moves in Cambodia. On March 24th, 1979, Pol Pot, with Chinese support ordered a new offensive to regain control of Cambodia.
But first was Hongwen’s Purge of April 1st. The purge was aimed at dissidents in the military who attempted to resist the Gang of Four’s power internally by supporting the moderates led by Hu Yaobang. The Gang of Four used the temporary stalling of the PLA advance as a pretext to either imprison them or execute them. On April 1st, 1980, Hongwen gave a televised address to China that declared the dissident officers were collaborators with the Vietnam government and blamed them for the deaths of PLA soldiers in Vietnam. Soon after loyal soldiers arrested and executed 30,000 soldiers and officers in a purge that like Stalin’s four decades before faced little resistance due to its popular support amongst the People’s Militias and radical officers in the military.
Soldiers arresting an alleged collaborator (1979).
In Cambodia most Vietnamese soldiers had been taken out of the country to defend against the PLA leaving the view remaining ones easy targets for the Khmer Rouge. Combined with Chinese air support the Vietnamese Army was routed. The Khmer Rouge’s rapid advance shocked Western and Eastern observers who were shocked by the fact that one of the most insane dictatorships was about to be back in power. At this point the USSR and the US gave military aid to Vietnam in order to stop the advance of the PLA. Just five months after the UN (backed by the US and her allies) recognized the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia they turned around and recognized the Vietnam backed government as the legitimate government of Cambodia. Not that it mattered as Ustinov and Jackson could only watch in horror as the madhouse known as China expanded its empire through her red imperialism.
By the end of June Saigon had fallen to the PLA and Trường Chinh officially surrendered to the Chinese government. Shortly thereafter he was found dead in his prison cell from what the Chinese government called a suicide via hanging but most international observers agreed that he was killed by the PLA. Soon after his death the Vietnam government was put under the Maoist-Wangist “Revolutionary People’s Council” which was ran by hardline radicals who were Chinese puppets. Despite suffering a stunning amount of deaths the war whipped up a nationalist frenzy in China. The 100,000 dead Chinese soldiers were heralded as soldiers who struck a blow against Russian imperialism and saved a fellow Marxist regime from revisionist tyranny. With this, Hongwen made further moves to implement his new ideology. With the war ending in a Chinese victory he began to build his personality cult.
Wang listing the enemies of the Chinese government (1985).
In his address to over a million people in Beijing he outlined his ideology that would have consequences he wasn’t expecting or prepared for. His ideology could best be described as “Communist Nationalism.” During his speech he decried those opposed to Chinese culture, particularly Buddhism, Tibetans, and Muslims in the Xinjiang region, moderates who wished to “crush the Maoist revolution,” imperialists, and the international bourgeoise that he alleged was out to destroy China. Furthermore, he outlined the state as the main force of society. In his Communist Nationalism the state government was society’s savior and therefore had to be obeyed unconditionally. To Hongwen the individual had no place in China and the only concern was the future, not the present. The example Hongwen and the propaganda apparatus always used was ‘if you build a factory in the woods there’s short term environmental destruction but the peasants have jobs, they have food in their bellies, and China is made stronger.’
Furthermore, Hongwen infused Maoism with a moderate form of North Korean Juche, in which he built himself up as an angelic figure who unlike Deng and Guofeng sought to free China and fellow revolutionary republics from capitalists and revisionist leaders. Hongwen announced that China would only trade with who he claimed to be anti-imperialist powers. These included Iraq, Albania, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the IRS. Of course, Yugoslavia and the IRS knew that trading with China would be the best way to destroy their international relations. Both nations refused and promptly went to other non-insane nations to trade with. Hussein would later pull out his support for China soon after the Treaty of Vienna was signed and instead aligned with Israel, South Africa, the Kingdom of Egypt, and India who offered much more diplomatically and military. The announcement only crippled the fragile Chinese economy as foreign investments, already very few and mainly from non-aligned countries who saw industrial potential in China decided to pull out. Furthermore, foreign aid grinded to a halt as the government decided to inspect and eventually reject large quantities of foreign aid due to the possibility of “capitalist subversion.”
With Hongwen’s vision of communism set in stone next was his grand economic plan. His first great project was to begin the construction of several megaprojects. The most notable was the Qinling Bunker Complex in the province of Shaanxi. Over 30,000 Chinese workers built the massive complex, that was in the mountains of Qinling. The goal of the Qinling Bunker Complex was to provide a base of operations in case of a war with either the US or USSR who the military agreed were the only powers that could successfully capture Beijing. The complex was supposed to survive bunker buster bombs and served as the main base of operations for the military. Over the next three years workers dug and blowed through thousands of tons of rock and soil to dig out the labyrinth of tunnels that were at minimum forty feet underground. In some cases, some reached even four hundred-forty feet underground. The workers worked all day and all night to complete it in the demanded three years as poorly trained workers were only afforded five hours of sleep, three hours of free time, and only one day off. Needless to say, but the construction was accident prone as falls, accidents with heavy machines, cave ins, accidental explosions, and falls were very common. So much that an estimated seven hundred people would die during the construction. But when it was all said and done the Qinling Bunker Complex was frankly stunning. Not just in what it stood for propaganda wise or even construction wise. But for what it stood for internationally.
The now abandoned Qinling Bunker Complex (2011)
To nearly every nation it stood as a symbol of Chinese insanity. The complex did a comprehensive job of destroying any village within a thirty-mile radius, with thousands of villagers being forced to leave at gun point to prevent any spies from gaining intel on the complex. Of course, this didn’t prevent spies as the US and USSR still managed to find soldiers who were willing to talk. And the information was too good not to share with the news. For all of 1983 the US and USSR media mocked the complex as a testament to the failures and irrationality of Maoism. The specific story in question was the numerous electrical failures the plagued the complex. Thanks to the government poorly training the workers in charge of the electrical grid. In the end it would cost another $100 million to properly electrify the complex over the next decade. Furthermore, Wang Dongxing while giving a tour to the press would become one of the many victims of the faulty construction when while showing the media crew an elevator it’s wire suddenly came loose and fell two hundred feet where Dongxing’s remains were found. The newsreel became one of the most famous pieces of lost media not in just China but the world. Indian media oligarch Gulshan Kumar who bought up hundreds of old newsreels and archives from the Gang of Four era found the video and while soon enough it found its way onto Kaleidoscope.com and instantly went viral in not only China and India but anywhere with an internet connection.
It was from the Qinling Bunker Complex that one of the most important yet forgotten crisis took place. In India the Maoist Naxalites had been engaging in a rebellion against the Indian government since 1967 in the Red Corridor of India, a hotbed of communist rebellion. Under the Gang of Four the situation only worsened as Hongwen increased funding for the Naxalites by 70%. Hundreds of millions of dollars in guns and explosives flowed from the Himalayas to the Red Corridor as the civilian death toll mounted. Indira Gandhi, who after the instability of the unity government that was united not on policy, but their hatred of Gandi authoritarianism was elected in 1980 on a platform of returning order to India and standing up to the Gang of Four.
The Naxalite Insurgency would remain a headache for India until the early 2010s.
As thousands were killed in what was India’s equivalent of the Years of Led tensions grew as Gandi ordered 70,000 soldiers to guard the Himalaya Mountains to prevent the smuggling of weapons from China. In retaliation the Chinese government accused the Indian government of funding pro-Tibetan rebels in Tibet, a charge not exactly untrue in the future but for now it was untrue. As the Indian Army began their offensive into Naxalite territory the more weapons, they found that were responsible for the deaths of so many valiant young soldiers. Tensions increased dramatically when a group of Naxalite smugglers were caught by Indian soldiers and immediately killed. The problem was that they were in Chinese territory when they were fired upon. Soon after Hongwen ordered 200,000 soldiers to the Chinese-Indian border in a show of force. Gandhi in response promised if a single Indian unit was attacked that the Chinese government would pay in equal blood, a statement that exacerbated the situation. Of course, that was nothing compared to what happened next. On November 14th, 1984 Indira Gandhi was leaving the Lok Sabha when three Naxalite terrorists fired upon her with AK-47s. Her security detail retaliate but by the time they were killed Gandhi had suffered three gunshot wounds to the abdomen. She would survive but her near assassination would nearly spark the deadliest war in Asian history.
The INC, Janata, and BJS parties were all calling for blood and in the streets of Delhi, Calcutta, and Bombay Indian civilians burned flags and effigies of the Gang of Four. In China Hongwen had gone to sleep thirty minutes earlier but Jiang Qing had not. With her being the de facto leader of China, it was a miracle from God himself that war did not break out. Qing decided that the best course of action was to show zero sympathy and tell the Indian ambassador that Gandhi was getting what she deserved.
At this point acting Prime Minister Sanjay Gandhi, who much like Qing was completely, inept, sadistic, evil, and incapable of leading a country properly decided to demand China end their support for the Naxalites or face “the wrath of a thousand Gods.” A comment that spooked Qing into mobilizing the air force in case of a nuclear strike, which she claimed that Hongwen had ordered her to do. At this point both the Indian and Chinese militaries began to fear a possible war. In India the military attempted to convince Gandhi not to escalate the situation and prayed that he’d listen. In China the rational elements of the PLA began to plot a coup if Qing decided to order an attack on India. At 3:00 AM their worst fears nearly came true when a small skirmish occurred on the border of the Arunachal Pradesh province. Both sides claim the other side shot first but no matter who shot first thirty Chinese soldiers and twenty-two Indian soldiers were killed. Qing had her excuse. Qing now began to prepare the PLA for war and the military panicked. Chen Xilian was not excited about a possible war with India.
Before the coup was enacted Xilian decided to try one last time to convince Hongwen to pull out of a war with India. When Hongwen picked up he was unaware of the events that had unfolded.
Xilian, after recovering from the shock and horror of Hongwen not even being in charge of the nation at the time told Hongwen Qing was about to start a war with India, which Hongwen immediately became angry about. Sure, he didn’t like Gandhi or her son but he knew that unlike Vietnam bullying India was the definition of a bad idea. Hongwen ordered the military to stop mobilizing and called for peace with India. The air force was grounded and the standoff fizzled out when Hongwen pulled the PLA from the Indian border, instead positioning them fifty miles away. Sanjay Gandhi was soon replaced by his mother who commanded the nation from her hospital bed.
In the aftermath of the Himalaya Crisis Hongwen had two groups that he needed to keep in line. Qing’s faction and the Naxalites. The latter was easy, all he had to do was threaten to cut off their funding if they kept targeting high level government officials, which the Naxalites agreed not to with the exception of one man. Qing was harder though. She had been extraordinarily lucky that Xilian hadn’t launched a coup and started a civil war and that war with India was averted. At this point Hongwen knew that Qing had to go. He had already been angry about her slow and bloody progress on the Great Mao Dam on the Brahmaputra River and her refusal to play ball with the military. Those could be remedied but with Qing purposely keeping Hongwen in the dark, going as far as to tell the military that Hongwen was giving her direct orders from Manchuria.
Qing had outlived her usefulness and Xilian and Hongwen planned to get her out of his way. On December 5th, 1984, Hongwen ordered a purge of Qing and her supporters from the military and state apparatus. Using the propaganda machine Qing’s disobedience was revealed to the public and she was instantly decried as a traitor to the Chinese government and an enemy of the PLA. By the time the broadcast was aired Qing had already been killed. A PLA death squad was sent to her home in Beijing and almost immediately her security detail fired at the intruders. In retaliation the entire house was massacred, and her death was framed as a suicide. The Red Guards and the PLA cleaned the Politburo of the Qingists who refused to swear loyalty to the Hongwen regime. At first there was talks of resistance to the purge amongst Qing’s allies but when Hongwen promised amnesty for anyone who denounced Qing and turned to his side the Qingist resistance collapsed. Qing’s allies that did resist were easily captured and sent to forced labor camps.
With Hongwen’s greatest threat removed he had finally consolidated his power. Qing was replaced with Mao Yuanxin, the nephew of Mao Zedong. Yuanxin was loyal to Hongwen out of convenience as he wanted to continue the legacy of his uncle and knew that being loyal to Hongwen was the best path to power.
Shortly after the purge Hongwen decided to initiate his “Glorious Revolution” which would see the unpatriotic, the reactionaries, the “blind" (those who followed Islam or the Dalai Lama), and those opposed the glory of China destroyed once and for all. The kickoff of the Glorious Revolution was ordered by Hongwen on January 20tht, 1985. Coinciding with Cianci’s second inauguration Yuanxin ordered the Naxalites to take out one of the leading critics of China. The Dalai Lama. The day before Hongwen decried the Dalai Lama as a reactionary slave trader whose only goal was to destroy the revolution that had made China “great.”
While on a walk in McLeod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama was residing in two men asked him for help as one of their wagon wheels broke. The Dalai Lama accepted without hesitation and as he picked up vegetables that had fallen from the wagon two men came from an ally way and fired at the Dalai Lama and his bodyguards. The two men that asked for help ran for cover behind the wagon and pulled out their own guns, shooting at the Dalai Lama until they ran out of bullets. A minute later they fled into the mountains as seven men laid dead in the street including the 14th Dalai Lama. The Glorious Revolution had the spark that it needed to begin, and the world could only watch.
The first order of business was consolidating Hongwen’s power. Some members of the military still feared that Hongwen and Qing would put them in chains just as they had done to the moderates who opposed them. Hongwen’s strategy to rid the military of these dissidents was to turn around and start a war with Vietnam in 1979. In addition to helping him unite the country behind him. Furthermore, the ploy would secure China’s position against the ever encroaching American, Indian, and Russian spheres of influence. The invasion of Vietnam would to the surprise of no one start under flimsy circumstances. Two miles north of the Vietnamese border a military cargo plane was shot down. The crew “miraculously” survived but the Chinese government blamed the Vietnamese army for the attack. Vietnam at the UN to the shock of no one condemned Hongwen and Qing as liars attempting to start a war.
Chinese soldiers crossing the border (1979).
Hongwen and Qing decided to prove Vietnam right. Chinese soldiers on October 14th, 1979, fired upon Vietnamese soldiers who were guarding the border against a possible Chinese incursion. The PLA started the skirmish undeniably but unlike the rest of the world the Chinese people heard a different story. From the state propaganda machine, the Chinese people were indoctrinated with a constant stream of propaganda that claimed that the Vietnamese government was orchestrating a genocide against the poor peasants of Cambodia and had butchered Chinese soldiers on the border. The next day on the 15th of October Chinese missiles ripped through the dark sky and within an hour Hanoi war burning. The sight was horrifying to American and Soviet observers. But to those who lived through the Vietnam War this was nothing new and just like before they were going to fight like hell. But despite the wishes of the world the fire of determination that burned inside of the citizens and soldiers of Vietnam could not defeat the invasion. Despite heavy fighting in the jungles of Vietnam the sheer size of the PLA was unmatched for the Vietnamese Army. Within a month Hanoi would fall to the PLA and the scene would cement the terror that was about to come.
The PLA quickly moved down South towards the new capital of Saigon where President Tôn Đức Thắng had retreated too. But his time on Earth would not be for much longer as on March 10th, 1980, he would pass away from cardiac arrest while hiding in a bomb shelter. His successor Trường Chinh wouldn’t last long as President. In fact, while the PLA was temporarily bogged down due to the guerrilla warfare the Khmer Rouge that had been overthrown in 1978 was making moves in Cambodia. On March 24th, 1979, Pol Pot, with Chinese support ordered a new offensive to regain control of Cambodia.
But first was Hongwen’s Purge of April 1st. The purge was aimed at dissidents in the military who attempted to resist the Gang of Four’s power internally by supporting the moderates led by Hu Yaobang. The Gang of Four used the temporary stalling of the PLA advance as a pretext to either imprison them or execute them. On April 1st, 1980, Hongwen gave a televised address to China that declared the dissident officers were collaborators with the Vietnam government and blamed them for the deaths of PLA soldiers in Vietnam. Soon after loyal soldiers arrested and executed 30,000 soldiers and officers in a purge that like Stalin’s four decades before faced little resistance due to its popular support amongst the People’s Militias and radical officers in the military.
Soldiers arresting an alleged collaborator (1979).
In Cambodia most Vietnamese soldiers had been taken out of the country to defend against the PLA leaving the view remaining ones easy targets for the Khmer Rouge. Combined with Chinese air support the Vietnamese Army was routed. The Khmer Rouge’s rapid advance shocked Western and Eastern observers who were shocked by the fact that one of the most insane dictatorships was about to be back in power. At this point the USSR and the US gave military aid to Vietnam in order to stop the advance of the PLA. Just five months after the UN (backed by the US and her allies) recognized the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia they turned around and recognized the Vietnam backed government as the legitimate government of Cambodia. Not that it mattered as Ustinov and Jackson could only watch in horror as the madhouse known as China expanded its empire through her red imperialism.
By the end of June Saigon had fallen to the PLA and Trường Chinh officially surrendered to the Chinese government. Shortly thereafter he was found dead in his prison cell from what the Chinese government called a suicide via hanging but most international observers agreed that he was killed by the PLA. Soon after his death the Vietnam government was put under the Maoist-Wangist “Revolutionary People’s Council” which was ran by hardline radicals who were Chinese puppets. Despite suffering a stunning amount of deaths the war whipped up a nationalist frenzy in China. The 100,000 dead Chinese soldiers were heralded as soldiers who struck a blow against Russian imperialism and saved a fellow Marxist regime from revisionist tyranny. With this, Hongwen made further moves to implement his new ideology. With the war ending in a Chinese victory he began to build his personality cult.
Wang listing the enemies of the Chinese government (1985).
In his address to over a million people in Beijing he outlined his ideology that would have consequences he wasn’t expecting or prepared for. His ideology could best be described as “Communist Nationalism.” During his speech he decried those opposed to Chinese culture, particularly Buddhism, Tibetans, and Muslims in the Xinjiang region, moderates who wished to “crush the Maoist revolution,” imperialists, and the international bourgeoise that he alleged was out to destroy China. Furthermore, he outlined the state as the main force of society. In his Communist Nationalism the state government was society’s savior and therefore had to be obeyed unconditionally. To Hongwen the individual had no place in China and the only concern was the future, not the present. The example Hongwen and the propaganda apparatus always used was ‘if you build a factory in the woods there’s short term environmental destruction but the peasants have jobs, they have food in their bellies, and China is made stronger.’
Furthermore, Hongwen infused Maoism with a moderate form of North Korean Juche, in which he built himself up as an angelic figure who unlike Deng and Guofeng sought to free China and fellow revolutionary republics from capitalists and revisionist leaders. Hongwen announced that China would only trade with who he claimed to be anti-imperialist powers. These included Iraq, Albania, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the IRS. Of course, Yugoslavia and the IRS knew that trading with China would be the best way to destroy their international relations. Both nations refused and promptly went to other non-insane nations to trade with. Hussein would later pull out his support for China soon after the Treaty of Vienna was signed and instead aligned with Israel, South Africa, the Kingdom of Egypt, and India who offered much more diplomatically and military. The announcement only crippled the fragile Chinese economy as foreign investments, already very few and mainly from non-aligned countries who saw industrial potential in China decided to pull out. Furthermore, foreign aid grinded to a halt as the government decided to inspect and eventually reject large quantities of foreign aid due to the possibility of “capitalist subversion.”
With Hongwen’s vision of communism set in stone next was his grand economic plan. His first great project was to begin the construction of several megaprojects. The most notable was the Qinling Bunker Complex in the province of Shaanxi. Over 30,000 Chinese workers built the massive complex, that was in the mountains of Qinling. The goal of the Qinling Bunker Complex was to provide a base of operations in case of a war with either the US or USSR who the military agreed were the only powers that could successfully capture Beijing. The complex was supposed to survive bunker buster bombs and served as the main base of operations for the military. Over the next three years workers dug and blowed through thousands of tons of rock and soil to dig out the labyrinth of tunnels that were at minimum forty feet underground. In some cases, some reached even four hundred-forty feet underground. The workers worked all day and all night to complete it in the demanded three years as poorly trained workers were only afforded five hours of sleep, three hours of free time, and only one day off. Needless to say, but the construction was accident prone as falls, accidents with heavy machines, cave ins, accidental explosions, and falls were very common. So much that an estimated seven hundred people would die during the construction. But when it was all said and done the Qinling Bunker Complex was frankly stunning. Not just in what it stood for propaganda wise or even construction wise. But for what it stood for internationally.
The now abandoned Qinling Bunker Complex (2011)
To nearly every nation it stood as a symbol of Chinese insanity. The complex did a comprehensive job of destroying any village within a thirty-mile radius, with thousands of villagers being forced to leave at gun point to prevent any spies from gaining intel on the complex. Of course, this didn’t prevent spies as the US and USSR still managed to find soldiers who were willing to talk. And the information was too good not to share with the news. For all of 1983 the US and USSR media mocked the complex as a testament to the failures and irrationality of Maoism. The specific story in question was the numerous electrical failures the plagued the complex. Thanks to the government poorly training the workers in charge of the electrical grid. In the end it would cost another $100 million to properly electrify the complex over the next decade. Furthermore, Wang Dongxing while giving a tour to the press would become one of the many victims of the faulty construction when while showing the media crew an elevator it’s wire suddenly came loose and fell two hundred feet where Dongxing’s remains were found. The newsreel became one of the most famous pieces of lost media not in just China but the world. Indian media oligarch Gulshan Kumar who bought up hundreds of old newsreels and archives from the Gang of Four era found the video and while soon enough it found its way onto Kaleidoscope.com and instantly went viral in not only China and India but anywhere with an internet connection.
It was from the Qinling Bunker Complex that one of the most important yet forgotten crisis took place. In India the Maoist Naxalites had been engaging in a rebellion against the Indian government since 1967 in the Red Corridor of India, a hotbed of communist rebellion. Under the Gang of Four the situation only worsened as Hongwen increased funding for the Naxalites by 70%. Hundreds of millions of dollars in guns and explosives flowed from the Himalayas to the Red Corridor as the civilian death toll mounted. Indira Gandhi, who after the instability of the unity government that was united not on policy, but their hatred of Gandi authoritarianism was elected in 1980 on a platform of returning order to India and standing up to the Gang of Four.
The Naxalite Insurgency would remain a headache for India until the early 2010s.
As thousands were killed in what was India’s equivalent of the Years of Led tensions grew as Gandi ordered 70,000 soldiers to guard the Himalaya Mountains to prevent the smuggling of weapons from China. In retaliation the Chinese government accused the Indian government of funding pro-Tibetan rebels in Tibet, a charge not exactly untrue in the future but for now it was untrue. As the Indian Army began their offensive into Naxalite territory the more weapons, they found that were responsible for the deaths of so many valiant young soldiers. Tensions increased dramatically when a group of Naxalite smugglers were caught by Indian soldiers and immediately killed. The problem was that they were in Chinese territory when they were fired upon. Soon after Hongwen ordered 200,000 soldiers to the Chinese-Indian border in a show of force. Gandhi in response promised if a single Indian unit was attacked that the Chinese government would pay in equal blood, a statement that exacerbated the situation. Of course, that was nothing compared to what happened next. On November 14th, 1984 Indira Gandhi was leaving the Lok Sabha when three Naxalite terrorists fired upon her with AK-47s. Her security detail retaliate but by the time they were killed Gandhi had suffered three gunshot wounds to the abdomen. She would survive but her near assassination would nearly spark the deadliest war in Asian history.
The INC, Janata, and BJS parties were all calling for blood and in the streets of Delhi, Calcutta, and Bombay Indian civilians burned flags and effigies of the Gang of Four. In China Hongwen had gone to sleep thirty minutes earlier but Jiang Qing had not. With her being the de facto leader of China, it was a miracle from God himself that war did not break out. Qing decided that the best course of action was to show zero sympathy and tell the Indian ambassador that Gandhi was getting what she deserved.
At this point acting Prime Minister Sanjay Gandhi, who much like Qing was completely, inept, sadistic, evil, and incapable of leading a country properly decided to demand China end their support for the Naxalites or face “the wrath of a thousand Gods.” A comment that spooked Qing into mobilizing the air force in case of a nuclear strike, which she claimed that Hongwen had ordered her to do. At this point both the Indian and Chinese militaries began to fear a possible war. In India the military attempted to convince Gandhi not to escalate the situation and prayed that he’d listen. In China the rational elements of the PLA began to plot a coup if Qing decided to order an attack on India. At 3:00 AM their worst fears nearly came true when a small skirmish occurred on the border of the Arunachal Pradesh province. Both sides claim the other side shot first but no matter who shot first thirty Chinese soldiers and twenty-two Indian soldiers were killed. Qing had her excuse. Qing now began to prepare the PLA for war and the military panicked. Chen Xilian was not excited about a possible war with India.
Before the coup was enacted Xilian decided to try one last time to convince Hongwen to pull out of a war with India. When Hongwen picked up he was unaware of the events that had unfolded.
Xilian, after recovering from the shock and horror of Hongwen not even being in charge of the nation at the time told Hongwen Qing was about to start a war with India, which Hongwen immediately became angry about. Sure, he didn’t like Gandhi or her son but he knew that unlike Vietnam bullying India was the definition of a bad idea. Hongwen ordered the military to stop mobilizing and called for peace with India. The air force was grounded and the standoff fizzled out when Hongwen pulled the PLA from the Indian border, instead positioning them fifty miles away. Sanjay Gandhi was soon replaced by his mother who commanded the nation from her hospital bed.
In the aftermath of the Himalaya Crisis Hongwen had two groups that he needed to keep in line. Qing’s faction and the Naxalites. The latter was easy, all he had to do was threaten to cut off their funding if they kept targeting high level government officials, which the Naxalites agreed not to with the exception of one man. Qing was harder though. She had been extraordinarily lucky that Xilian hadn’t launched a coup and started a civil war and that war with India was averted. At this point Hongwen knew that Qing had to go. He had already been angry about her slow and bloody progress on the Great Mao Dam on the Brahmaputra River and her refusal to play ball with the military. Those could be remedied but with Qing purposely keeping Hongwen in the dark, going as far as to tell the military that Hongwen was giving her direct orders from Manchuria.
Qing had outlived her usefulness and Xilian and Hongwen planned to get her out of his way. On December 5th, 1984, Hongwen ordered a purge of Qing and her supporters from the military and state apparatus. Using the propaganda machine Qing’s disobedience was revealed to the public and she was instantly decried as a traitor to the Chinese government and an enemy of the PLA. By the time the broadcast was aired Qing had already been killed. A PLA death squad was sent to her home in Beijing and almost immediately her security detail fired at the intruders. In retaliation the entire house was massacred, and her death was framed as a suicide. The Red Guards and the PLA cleaned the Politburo of the Qingists who refused to swear loyalty to the Hongwen regime. At first there was talks of resistance to the purge amongst Qing’s allies but when Hongwen promised amnesty for anyone who denounced Qing and turned to his side the Qingist resistance collapsed. Qing’s allies that did resist were easily captured and sent to forced labor camps.
With Hongwen’s greatest threat removed he had finally consolidated his power. Qing was replaced with Mao Yuanxin, the nephew of Mao Zedong. Yuanxin was loyal to Hongwen out of convenience as he wanted to continue the legacy of his uncle and knew that being loyal to Hongwen was the best path to power.
Shortly after the purge Hongwen decided to initiate his “Glorious Revolution” which would see the unpatriotic, the reactionaries, the “blind" (those who followed Islam or the Dalai Lama), and those opposed the glory of China destroyed once and for all. The kickoff of the Glorious Revolution was ordered by Hongwen on January 20tht, 1985. Coinciding with Cianci’s second inauguration Yuanxin ordered the Naxalites to take out one of the leading critics of China. The Dalai Lama. The day before Hongwen decried the Dalai Lama as a reactionary slave trader whose only goal was to destroy the revolution that had made China “great.”
While on a walk in McLeod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama was residing in two men asked him for help as one of their wagon wheels broke. The Dalai Lama accepted without hesitation and as he picked up vegetables that had fallen from the wagon two men came from an ally way and fired at the Dalai Lama and his bodyguards. The two men that asked for help ran for cover behind the wagon and pulled out their own guns, shooting at the Dalai Lama until they ran out of bullets. A minute later they fled into the mountains as seven men laid dead in the street including the 14th Dalai Lama. The Glorious Revolution had the spark that it needed to begin, and the world could only watch.
Last edited:
