The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Tangshan, China on July
28, 1976 killed at least 242,000 people (the official death
count). Some observers place the actual toll as high as 700,000.
The Great Tangshan Earthquake also rocked the seat of Chinese
Communist Party power in Beijing - both literally and
politically. Background to the Tragedy: Politics and the Gang of
Four in 1976 China was in a state of political ferment in 1976.
The Party Chairman, Mao Zedong, was 82 years old. He spent much
of that year in the hospital, suffering several heart attacks
and other complications of old age and heavy smoking. The
Chinese public and the western-educated Premier, Zhou Enlai, had
grown weary of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Zhou
went so far as to publicly oppose some of the measures ordered
by Chairman Mao and his coterie, pushing for "The Four
Modernizations" in 1975. These reforms stood in marked contrast
to the Cultural Revolution's emphasis on a "return to the soil";
Zhou wanted to modernize China's