Su Zhu (16 February 1921 – 20 August 2008), better known by the nom de guerre Hua Guofeng, was Mao Zedong's designated successor as the Paramount Leader of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China.

A regional official in Hunan between 1949 and 1971, he became the head of the party leadership in the province during the latter stages of the Cultural Revolution. Hua was elevated to the national stage in early 1976, and was known for his loyalty to Mao. Upon Zhou Enlai's death in January 1976, Hua succeeded Zhou as Premier of the People's Republic of China. After Mao's death, Hua took on the titles of Chairman of the Communist Party of China and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, to the surprise and dismay of Jiang Qing and the rest of the Gang of Four. Hua is the only leader to have simultaneously held the three highest offices of the PRC - leading the Party, State Council, and the Central Military Commission.

Hua brought the Cultural Revolution to an end and ousted the Gang of Four from political power by staging their arrests in Beijing. He attempted moderate reforms and reversing some of the excesses of Cultural Revolution-era policies. However, because of his insistence on continuing the Maoist line, he was himself outmaneuvered a few years later by Deng Xiaoping, a pragmatic reformer, who forced Hua into early retirement. As Hua faded into political obscurity, he continued to insist on the correctness of Maoist principles. He is remembered as a largely benign transitional figure in modern Chinese political history.

Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung  listen (help·info), and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution. He was the architect and founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949, and held authoritarian control over the nation until his death in 1976. His theoretical contribution to Marxism–Leninism, along with his military strategies and brand of policies, are collectively known as Maoism.

Mao rose to power by commanding the Long March, forming a Second United Front with Kuomintang (KMT) during the Second Sino-Japanese War to repel a Japanese invasion, and leading the Communist Party of China (CPC) to victory against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. After solidifying the reunification of China through his Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Mao enacted sweeping land reform, by using violence and terror to overthrow the feudal landlords before seizing their large estates and dividing the land into people's communes. During the years when Mao was China’s 'Great Helmsman', a range of positive changes came to China. These included promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, doubling the school population, providing universal housing, abolishing unemployment and inflation, increasing health care access, and dramatically raising life expectancy. In addition, China's population almost doubled during the period of Mao's leadership (from around 550 to over 900 million). As a result, Mao is still officially held in high regard by many in China as a great political strategist, military mastermind, and savior of the nation. Maoists further promote his role as a theorist, statesman, poet, and visionary, while anti-revisionists continue to defend most of his policies.