Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (120 page)

On the morning of August 17, 1989, while still at Beidaihe, Deng summoned Yang Shangkun and Wang Zhen to tell them that he planned to pass his remaining position as chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) on to Jiang Zemin in November at the Fifth Plenum.
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Party leaders understood that this move would represent the transfer not only of control over the military, but also of overall responsibility for China.

After Deng and others had returned from Beidaihe, on September 4, Deng summoned the top party leaders—Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Qiao Shi, Yao Yilin, Song Ping, Li Ruihuan, Yang Shangkun, and Wan Li—to his home to discuss his retirement plans. Deng began the meeting by reminding them that, as he had often declared in the past, one of his final responsibilities would be to establish a mandatory retirement system, so that aged officials would automatically pass on their responsibilities to younger leaders. Deng expressed the view to his assembled colleagues that the lack of a mandatory retirement age had been a critical weakness in the system, not only in Mao's later years but in imperial days as well. (Some of his critics might have added that they admired his decision to retire and it would have been even better had he done it a few years earlier.) Deng said that if he were to die while still holding his position, his loss might create international difficulties; it would be better to pass on the position while he was still healthy. Even so, he felt he could continue to play a role in meeting those foreign guests whom he knew personally.

Deng directed that at the next party congress, scheduled for 1992, the Central Advisory Commission should also be abolished. The commission, then headed by Chen Yun, had been established as a temporary institution “to take advantage of the wisdom of the generation of revolutionary leaders.” Deng announced that when he retired at the Fifth Plenum in November, the party retirement procedures, like those for other parts of the government,
should be kept simple.
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Deng then gave his valedictory message: it was important for both the Chinese public and foreigners to understand that Chinese leaders remained committed to reform and opening to the outside world. His successors should maintain the authority of the party center and the State Council, for without it, in times of difficulty, China would not be able to solve its problems.
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Deng added an injunction to his successors about how to respond to continued Western sanctions and possible attacks: “First,” he said, “we should observe the situation coolly. Second, we should hold our ground. Third, we should act calmly. Don't be impatient. It is no good to be impatient. We should be calm, calm, and again calm, and quietly immerse ourselves in practical work to accomplish something—something for China.”
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Later, on the same day that he met with senior officials, Deng sent a personal letter to all Politburo members with the following message:

The core leadership headed by Comrade Jiang Zemin . . . has been working very efficiently. After careful consideration, I should like to resign my current posts while I am still in good health. . . . This will be good for the Party, the state, and the army. . . . Since I am an old citizen and a veteran party member who has worked for decades for the communist cause and for the independence, reunification, development, and reform of the country, my life belongs to the Party and the country. After my retirement I shall continue to be devoted to their cause. . . . As the reform and opening to the outside world have only just begun, our task is arduous and our road will be long and tortuous. But I am certain that we shall be able to surmount all difficulties, and that one generation after another will advance the cause pioneered by the first generation.
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Deng was determined to continue the scientific exchanges and flow of new technologies into China. Knowing that Americans of Chinese ancestry had strong patriotic sentiments and would keep their ties to China despite foreign sanctions following the Tiananmen tragedy, Deng invited Nobel Prize winner Lee Tsung-Dao to visit Beijing. Press releases about Deng's conversations with Lee, on September 16, amounted to a public announcement of Deng's retirement. Deng knew that ever since June 4, the public had been on edge, worried about the fate of the country. He also remembered that when Mao had pulled back after the difficulties of the Great Leap Forward and rumors
began to spread that he was sick or dead, pictures appeared in the press purportedly showing Mao swimming in the Yangtze. Similarly, no matter how concerned Deng was about China's difficulties after June 4, in the pictures taken with Lee Tsung-Dao, Deng conveyed a carefree, reassuring image to the world. Photos released to the public show Deng standing in the water off the beach at Beidaihe. And in a well-publicized interview, Deng told Lee: “Recently I began to swim for an hour every day in the sea at Beidaihe. I don't like indoor pools; I like to swim in an expansive natural setting.” He confessed that recent events in China had been sobering, but he went on to say, “I am certain that after the recent disturbances, China will be even more successful in its drive for modernization and in reform and opening to the outside world.”
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Deng's underlying message came through loud and clear: he remained optimistic about China's future, and despite the criticism from foreign politicians, China still had a door through which international science and technology could enter.

At the Fifth Plenum on November 7, Deng passed the chairmanship of the CMC to Jiang Zemin. Yang Shangkun became first vice chairman, with his half-brother, Yang Baibing, replacing him as CMC secretary general. The Politburo commended Deng for his great contributions to the second-generation leadership.
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After the plenum ended on November 8, Deng arrived at the Great Hall of the People to pose for pictures with his former colleagues. One by one, they came forward to shake his hand. He then returned home for a retirement banquet with his family, prepared by his cook of thirty years. Two days later, the
People's Daily
featured the letter that Deng had sent to Central Committee members: “I thank our comrades for their understanding and their support. I sincerely thank all of you for accepting my request to retire. I sincerely thank all my comrades.”
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The Berlin Wall fell on the day of Deng's retirement, but in China his retirement passed without incident.

A year after Deng passed the baton to Jiang, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew similarly named his own successor, Goh Chok Tong. Thereafter, Lee exercised great restraint so as not to interfere with the work of his successor, but he said that he remained the “goalkeeper” and if problems arose, he would feel responsible to do whatever was necessary to maintain Singapore's success. Similarly, Deng told Nobel Prize winner Lee Tsung-Dao: “My chief desire is to retire completely, but if there are disturbances, I shall have to intervene.”
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After he passed the mantle to Jiang, Deng no longer had responsibility for giving final approval on important matters. At eighty-five, he was moving
more slowly, his hearing had further deteriorated, he rested more, and he had trouble maintaining the intense concentration for which he had been famous until two or three years earlier.
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After June 1989 Deng did not dominate the political scene by framing the issues, setting overall policy, gaining compliance, making the final decisions, or controlling what went into the media. But he did continue to have crucial meetings with important foreigners, and on the big questions of overall strategy, he could still exert influence—a power that he was prepared to use fully if the need arose.

Keeping the U.S. Door Open

Immediately after the June 4 incident, President George H. W. Bush tried to do something no American leader had yet done with a Chinese Communist leader—he tried to telephone Deng Xiaoping. Bush also immediately announced the suspension of military sales and high-level official contacts with China. He offered humanitarian and medical assistance to anyone in China who had been injured in the Tiananmen tragedy. On June 5, Bush also met with Chinese students living in the United States to offer them political asylum and show his support for the suffering of their fellow students in China. Yet in contrast to U.S. public opinion, and especially the newspaper editorials that supported severe sanctions, Bush said that he did not want to punish the Chinese people for the actions of the Chinese government. Knowing the difficult history between the United States and China, Bush wanted to avoid any confrontation that would make it more difficult to restore a healthy U.S.-China relationship in the future. Continued contacts, he declared, would in the long run strengthen pressures within China calling for greater freedoms. Several years later, when reflecting on the events of 1989, Bush said, “Had I not met the man [Deng], I think I would have been less convinced that we should keep relations with them going after Tiananmen Square.”
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The timing of Bush's term as head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing (from September 26, 1974, to December 7, 1975) had proved fortuitous: Bush had taken up his assignment soon after Deng had replaced Zhou Enlai in meeting with foreign leaders and he left Beijing just as Deng was again pushed aside by Mao. James Lilley, Bush's China specialist who became ambassador to Beijing after Bush became president, observed that Bush and Deng “established an unusual chemistry in the 1970s based in part on each man's perception that the other would be a future leader of his country.”
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In fact, Lilley concluded that when Mao, Zhou Enlai, Nixon, and Kissinger were passing from
the scene, Deng and Bush sustained the working relationship between the two countries that the earlier leaders had built. Their relationship was relaxed and friendly: on December 6, 1975, at the farewell luncheon that Deng gave in Bush's honor as he departed Beijing to head the CIA, Deng joked with him: “Have you been practicing your spying here in China?”
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Bush believed in personal diplomacy, and he would send Deng occasional notes; Deng did not reciprocate these personal approaches, but he was always ready to meet with Bush in person.
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The relationship between the two men had continued after Deng became the preeminent leader. When Deng traveled to the United States in January 1979, he had requested a private meeting with Bush in Houston, during which Deng told Bush of his still-secret plans to attack Vietnam. While Deng was in Texas, Bush also invited him to his mother's home. Later, when President Reagan would try to formalize relations with Taiwan, Deng and Vice President Bush helped keep the relationship between the United States and the mainland on track. Indeed, when relations between the two countries grew very tense, a Deng-Bush meeting had enabled the two countries to turn a difficult corner, thus opening the way for the August 1982 communiqué that stabilized relations.
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Later, when Bush decided to run for president, his wife, Barbara, traveling in Asia, was sent to Beijing to tell Deng personally of her husband's intention. And in February 1989, Deng gave Bush a frank account of the improvements in Sino-Soviet relations as China prepared for Mikhail Gorbachev's visit.
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Some years later when Bush was asked on TV who was the greatest leader he had ever met, after first replying that no one in particular stood out, he added that Deng Xiaoping was a very special leader.

Yet in June 1989, when Bush tried to phone Deng, Deng would not accept the call. It was not the practice of Chinese leaders to answer phone calls from foreign leaders. Therefore, on June 21, 1989, Bush sent Deng a handwritten note:

I write this letter with a heavy heart. I wish there were some way to discuss this matter in person, but regrettably this is not the case. First, I write in a spirit of genuine friendship, this letter coming as I'm sure you know from one who believes with a passion that good relations between the United States and China are in the fundamental interests of both countries. . . . I write you asking for your help in preserving this relationship that we both think is very important. . . . I ask you . . . to remember the principles on which my young country was founded. Those
principles are democracy and freedom. . . . Those principles inevitably affect the way Americans view and react to events in other countries. It is not a reaction of arrogance or of a desire to force others to our beliefs but of simple faith in the enduring value of those principles and their universal applicability.
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Bush went on to explain that that as president of the United States he could not avoid imposing sanctions. “When there are difficulties between friends, as now, we must find a way to talk them out. . . . Sometimes in an open system such as ours it is impossible to control all leaks; but on this particular letter there are no copies, not one, outside of my own personal file.”
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In his letter, Bush proposed that he send a personal envoy to Beijing.

The day after Bush sent his letter, he received a response from Deng Xiaoping saying that he was prepared to receive a special emissary. Bush—aware that the U.S. public would be upset at the dispatch of an envoy so soon after June 4—kept the mission secret; even the U.S. embassy in Beijing was not informed. (China, for its part, had no difficulty keeping the visit secret.) U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger flew to Beijing, where they met Deng on July 2. Just before the meeting, Deng had told Li Peng and Qian Qichen that in their meetings with the Americans, they should only talk about principles, not specifics; China wanted to improve relations with the United States, but the Chinese leaders were not afraid of the Americans or of sanctions. Diplomats should keep this in mind.
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