Marxist Scholar Who Helped to Cement Deng Xiaoping’s Rise to Power Dies

Hu Fuming's writing questioned the 'Two Whatevers'

Patients on stretchers are seen at Tongren hospital in Shanghai on Jan. 3, 2023. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

News Analysis

In early January, headlines around the world noted the passing of Hu Fuming, professor of philosophy at China’s Nanjing University. Hu died on Jan. 2, as COVID-19 raged in China.  He was renowned for his role in writing “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth,” a 1978 article that helped former leader Deng Xiaoping consolidate power.

On May 11, 1978, state media Guangming Daily published Hu’s article on its front page. China’s propaganda machine boasted that the article sparked a “huge shock” in China’s ideological and theoretical circles, setting off a nationwide discussion on “the question of the criteria of truth,” and marking a prelude to “liberation of the mind.”

Although Hu’s writing of the article was unsolicited, its publication was carefully planned. Hu Yaobang, China’s propaganda head at the time, carefully organized and promoted it in order to support Deng’s takeover from Mao Zedong’s successor Hua Guofeng.

Questioning the ‘Two Whatevers’

In July 1977, one year after the ending of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reinstated Deng Xiaoping to leadership positions in the Party, government, and army. However, Deng was very dissatisfied with the “Two Whatevers” political slogan advocated by Hua Guofeng, Mao Zedong’s successor.

The phrase may sound slightly comedic to Western ears. However, the “Two Whatevers” was a very serious slogan.  It referred to Hua’s statement that “we will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.”

Hu Yaobang was a close ally of Deng. In December of 1977, at the pivotal CCP meeting that marked Deng’s rise to power, Hu said “the evaluation of the Cultural Revolution depends on the actual results, and it must be tested by real-life practice, rather than relying on certain documents or someone’s speech.”

In early 1978, the CCP’s Theoretical Research Office decided to put Hu Yaobang’s opinions into writing with the title, “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth.”

Coincidentally, Hu Fuming had submitted an article on the same topic to state newspaper Guangming Daily. The Theoretical Research Office decided to combine the two articles into one piece directing criticism at the “Two Whatevers.”

Instrumental in Deng’s Rise to Power

After being reviewed and approved by Hu Yaobang, the article was published on May 10, 1978, in Theoretical Trends, an internal CCP publication. The next day, Guangming Daily published the full text on the front page under the byline of a “special commentator.” Subsequently, Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily, and the PLA Daily reprinted the article, and within days, it spread throughout the country.

The article helped Deng Xiaoping gain absolute power within the Party. After ascending to the top of Party leadership, Deng adopted the “reform and opening up” policies that saved China’s economy from the brink of collapse and ultimately allowed the CCP to sustain its regime.

State media stopped referring to Hua Guofeng as “the wise and great leader” by January of 1979, and Hu Yaobang replaced him as Party Chairman in 1980.

As the maxim “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth” came to be widely accepted by the Chinese people, it helped Marxism in China to wrap itself in the cloak of so-called “truth.”

Because of the article, Hu Fuming received many commendations and honors from the CCP. Four decades later, the CCP’s central authorities continued to praise him for his contribution. The State Council awarded him the title of “Reform Pioneer” in December of 2018, and again, the title of “Most Beautiful Striver” in September of 2019.

Marxism ‘Inflicted Untold Misery’

“Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth” claims that Marxism and Mao Zedong’s thought are the truth, saying that “Marxism is recognized as the truth because it has been proven by millions of people over a long period of time” and “Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought are powerful precisely because they are objective truths that have been tested in practice.”

Is Marxism the truth? Both Chinese and foreign philosophers, as well as world leaders, have analyzed and discussed it.

In a May 2018 article in The Strategist, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt wrote that Marxism has  “inflicted untold misery on tens of millions of people who have been forced to live under regimes waving its banner. For much of the 20th century, 40 percent of humanity suffered famines, gulags, censorship and other forms of repression at the hands of self-proclaimed Marxists.”

“It [Marxism] was all rubbish, and Marx’s theory of history—dialectical materialism—has since been proved wrong and dangerous in practically every respect,” Bildt continued. “The great 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper, one of Marx’s strongest critics, rightly called him a ‘false prophet.’”

“False prophet” refers to Marx’s prediction that when private property—which Marx believed to be the root of all evil in capitalism—is abolished, classes will disappear and mankind will have a harmonious future.

Wang Jiadian, former director of the History Institute at the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, wrote in Modern Chinese Studies that in the fifty years after World War II, in the silent contest between the free democratic camp and the camp of “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” the latter was an indisputable loser.

Hu Fuming’s Death: A Wake-Up Call

The death of the man whose influential article gave a veneer of truth to Marxism post-Mao—at a time when COVID-19 is ravaging China—should be a wake-up call.

In March 2020, during the initial stage of the pandemic, Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi wrote an article entitled “Stay Rational.” He said, “Truth be told, pandemics only come when people’s morals and values have turned bad and they have come to have a massive amount of karma.”

Li said he believes that the pandemic has a clear target.

“A pandemic like the current Chinese communist virus (or ‘Wuhan virus’) comes with a purpose behind it, and it has targets. It is here to weed out members of the Party and those who have sided with it,” Li said.

Li warned, “What people should do, instead, is to repent to the divine with all due sincerity, admit to their faults, and pray for a chance to change their ways.”