A safe pair of hands at a critical time for China

Mao Zedong's successor, Hua Guofeng, was at China's helm at a pivotal period in the nation's modern history. His passing, therefore, is a significant footnote to those times. It says something about how much they have changed that his official obituary stopped short of calling him a great leader.

Hua lived long enough to see China's emergence on the world stage through Beijing's hosting of the Olympic Games. The gulf between the China of today and that of Hua's ascendancy is also defined by another event that captured world attention - the Sichuan earthquake in May, and the unprecedented openness with which the authorities handled it.

In July 1976, when Mao had already anointed first vice-chairman Hua his successor, the Tangshan earthquake killed hundreds of thousands. The full extent of the disaster took a long time to emerge. Bitterness remains about the relief effort - led by Hua as premier - and the refusal of outside help in accordance with Mao's boast that China was entirely self-sufficient. Hua himself was credited with saying Chinese people should rely on themselves.

History will see Hua as a bridge between Mao's reclusive China and the reformed, outward-looking nation of today. After Mao's death, the Politburo elected him as chief not just because he had been ordained by Mao, but also because he was an acceptable compromise in a struggle for power between the Gang of Four led by Mao's widow Jiang Qing and reformist forces led by Deng Xiaoping . Hua lacked a strong power base, which raises the question of whether Mao named him as a transitional leader. In any event, he proved an effective buffer between ultra-leftists who had risen to power during the Cultural Revolution and those who had been side-lined or persecuted in the unprecedented political campaign that had thrown the nation into chaos.

He never cultivated the political skills, ambition and toughness to prevent Deng from easing him out of power. But famously and ironically, one of his first acts, for which his brief reign will forever be remembered, was to clear an obstacle to Deng by helping the old guard orchestrate the arrests of the Gang of Four. One by one they were summoned on the pretext of attending a Politburo meeting and then promptly detained.

On his deathbed, Mao told Hua: 'With you in charge, I'm at ease.' But we will never really know why he appointed a one-time party secretary of his village birthplace Shaoshan as his most senior lieutenant. Hua did not display the ability to lead the country out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and undermined his grand vision of a modern socialist China with his policy of the Two Whatevers - upholding whatever policies Mao had adopted and abiding by whatever instructions he had given.