1981: The Year of the Verdicts

Abstract

On 18 June 1979 Hua delivered his ‘Report on the Work of the Government’ to the second session of the fifth National People’s Congress in which he emphasised that the leadership was indeed attempting to create a fairer and more constitutional framework for the Chinese political system. Then he dwelt on the fact that class-based divisions and ‘labels’ of the Maoist era were no longer appropriate. Landlords, rich peasants and capitalists had ceased to exist as separate classes, he said, and he also noted that ‘the work of removing the Rightist label from those designated as such has been completed, and most of those who were wrongly labelled have been rehabilitated’.