On February 7, 1977, the "People's Daily" and "People's Liberation Army Daily" newspapers and "Red Flag" magazine (the so-called "Two Newspapers and One Magazine") jointly published the editorial "Study the Documents and Hold the Main Line". This article, drafted by the Central Theoretical Study Group, proposed "Two Whatevers": "We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made; and we will unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave". This represented the guiding ideology during the reign of Hua Guofeng.

The "Two Whatevers" made it clear that Hua Guofeng had crystallized the ideology of Mao's later years. At the same time, Hua Guofeng put forward the policy of "grasping the main line in governing the country". "Grasping the main line" here meant holding firm to class struggle, criticizing the Gang of Four, and fully implementing the Counterattack the Right-Deviationist Trend of Historical Revisionism movement. "Governing the country", on the other hand, was about maintaining Mao Zedong's policies to "Learn from Daqing in Industry" and to "Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture". However, the "Two Whatevers" posed difficulties for Hua Guofeng's political career. He both wanted to show loyalty to Mao Zedong, but also to criticize the Gang of Four, who had taken the Maoist ideological line. This created great contradictions, and many injustices happened as a result.

In addition, the Hua Guofeng line also created obstacles to ending the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement, and causing many stumbles along the way to educated youth returning to the cities. All of these things kept China stagnating where it had been since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In Yang Jisheng's book "The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution", he describes Hua Guofeng's quandary thus: "He became the representative of the first political force, that is, the force whose future looked shortest… Hua Guofeng had hoist himself with his own petard, and could no longer make any difference in the world."

References: Yang Jisheng, "The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution"; ibid., "Political Struggles During the Age of Reform in China"; Liu Xiaomeng, "A History of China's Educated Youth: The Great Wave (1966–1980)"