Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (13 page)

By 1969 other Asian countries were also beginning to take off economically, including not only South Korea, but also places with ethnic Chinese
populations—Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Some Chinese, seeing how far China had fallen behind Europe, expressed doubts that the Chinese tradition was compatible with modernization. But if people who were ethnically and culturally Chinese could modernize, why couldn't China grow just as quickly?

Deng's time in Jiangxi strengthened his convictions about how far behind China was and how much it needed to change. His experiences gave him insights into the extent of the Great Leap's failure that other party leaders, who were continually reading exaggerated reports of local achievements, had difficulty evaluating. Deng Rong reports, for example, that when Pufang arrived in Jiangxi in June 1971, her father, looking for something helpful that Pufang could do, asked his fellow workers if they had any radios to repair. A worker replied that there was no way any of the workers made enough money to buy radios. Deng Rong commented that her father was sick at heart to learn that after twenty years of socialism a worker's family still could not even afford a radio.
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Other insights came by way of Deng's children's experiences. All of the children, except for Deng Pufang who was paralyzed, were sent to the countryside to engage in manual labor and to be reeducated. When Deng Rong returned to Jiangxi from her assignment in the northern Shaanxi countryside, she told her family that the rural areas still lacked toilets and pig pens. Further, all of the children reported to their parents that the peasants did not have enough to eat or wear. They described the devastation of the economy and the destruction of the party organization that Deng had worked so hard to build. Deng, obviously moved by what he was hearing, listened to his children but said nothing.
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The first friends allowed to visit the Deng family in Jiangxi were three children of Li Jingquan, who were permitted a five-day visit during the Spring Festival of 1972. Li Jingquan had served as a deputy political commissar under Deng in the Southwest Military Region and had succeeded Deng as head of the Southwest Bureau in 1952. At the time of their visit, Li's three children were working in Jiangxi, Li Jingquan's original home province. They told Deng that their father had been attacked and removed from his post and that their mother had been driven to suicide. Deng, who had always sought to learn the truth, took great interest in the details of the struggles under the Red Guards in the Southwest and in the observations about the rural area where one of the three Li children had been sent. He made almost no comment at the time except to say that the people in the countryside needed
more education.
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By the time Deng left Jiangxi, he had no illusions about the seriousness of China's problems and about the depth of change that was needed.

Deepening Family Bonds

For several years after Deng was attacked during the Cultural Revolution, his five children were all subjected to frequent criticism by the Red Guards. Deng Lin and Deng Nan were attacked in their work units, and the others were attacked in their schools. When they ventured from their home, they were likely to be recognized, detained, and verbally assaulted by the Red Guards. The family was close even before the Cultural Revolution, but when the children came under attack they bonded even more tightly, never wavering in their belief that their father was innocent and that they would endure this terrible experience as a united family. Deng was acutely aware that his children had suffered because of him. With officials outside the family, Deng remained a comrade, and party policies took precedence over personal relations. But Deng's relations with Zhuo Lin and their children were not contingent on policy; they had a deep loyalty and affection, and they were always in it together. Deng never broke off relations with any of his children, and none of them ever broke off relations with him. He also maintained close friendships with the household help—the driver, the cook, the orderly, and the director of his personal office, Wang Ruilin. Indeed, Wang Ruilin, except when separated from Deng from 1966 to 1972, served as Deng's office director from 1952, when Wang was just twenty years old, until Deng's death in 1997. He was regarded by Deng as more like a family member than a comrade.

During the Cultural Revolution, problems for the children began with the October 1, 1966, editorial criticizing the number-two person following the “capitalist road”—for although Deng's name was not mentioned, it was clear that he was the target. His three daughters immediately knew that the charges were false, and they never provided any new information to the Red Guards or anyone else that could be used as evidence against their father.
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Zhuo Lin later praised all the children for not denouncing their father even when pressured to do so.

Most of the letters Deng wrote from Jiangxi were requests that their children be allowed to visit, that they be given work assignments closer to Nanchang, and that Pufang receive the medical care he needed. Deng Rong reports
that never in his life had Deng written so many letters as he did on behalf of his children.
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The letters, which Deng assumed would be shown to Mao, also provided a way of reminding Mao that Deng was in Jiangxi and was ready to accept any assignment he was given, but the letters themselves were all about the children. There were sometimes long delays before responses came from Beijing, but eventually all of Deng's children were allowed to visit Deng in Jiangxi, for at least two weeks each. Deng Rong was allowed to stay much longer. In December 1969, first Rong and then Zhifang were allowed to stay during the agricultural winter break, but they were sent back to their rural brigades when the spring planting was about to begin. Next to visit were Nan and her husband; she was then working for the Science and Technology Commission and the two were allowed to visit for the New Year holiday season in 1971. While in Jiangxi, Nan gave birth to a girl, Deng's first grandchild. Lin, the eldest, was also allowed to visit during the New Year break. These visits were possible because Mao still felt closer to Deng than to Liu Shaoqi and other officials.

Of the five children, Pufang was best informed about higher-level political developments.
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Pufang's presence in Jiangxi gave his father an opportunity to hear more details of the students' political struggles and to get a sense of the political situation in Beijing. Later on, people who knew Deng would say that although he did not let personal emotions influence his decisions in meting out punishments for most people, he was especially severe in insisting that Nie Yuanzi be imprisoned for ten years for launching the political attacks at Peking University that culminated in Pufang's paralysis and the death of some sixty people at the university.

After the Cultural Revolution and even after Deng's death in 1997, all five children, along with their spouses and children, kept their residences in the same compound. Pufang devoted himself to the cause of the handicapped but also engaged in business. Nan went into science administration and rose to become vice minister of the Science and Technology Commission. At Deng's request his daughter Rong studied medicine in Nanchang, not far from where Deng was living, and Zhifang, who took up physics, also studied in Nanchang. Rong later served in the Chinese embassy in Washington for two years beginning in 1980, doing consular work and promoting cultural exchanges. As part of this effort, she became the family historian, led a foundation to promote exchanges with leaders of other countries, and helped sponsor concerts of Western music. For eight years Zhifang studied in the United States, receiving a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester.
He then joined a company engaged in importing and exporting technology and later branched out into real estate and communications equipment. After 1994 Deng Xiaoping was no longer mentally alert; it is reported that Zhuo Lin, upset when Zhifang was criticized for corruption, took drugs to attempt suicide. She was saved and in the end Zhifang was not punished.

By the time Deng returned from Jiangxi, in 1973, his hearing was becoming more difficult, and he did not join in regular group conversations with his children and grandchildren. He did, however, take great joy in watching the grandchildren and in watching television. To the extent he did take part in conversations with the children speaking directly into his ear, his children offered their observations and their opinions, but Rong reports that their father had sufficient confidence in his own experiences and judgments that he was rarely influenced by their opinions.
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Lin Biao's Crash and Deng's Letter to Mao

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mao regarded Marshal Lin Biao and Deng as two of the most promising candidates for succeeding him.
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Indeed, in the fall of 1965, Zhou Enlai told a confidante, Wang Jiaxiang, that Mao was considering two possible successors: Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping.
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It is understandable, then, that the two saw each other as rivals for Mao's highest blessing.

Deng Rong said that her father got along with all ten marshals except one, Lin Biao. Mao himself noticed the conflict; Deng reports that in 1966 Mao summoned him and asked him to meet with Lin Biao and to cooperate with him. Deng agreed to the meeting, but the talk failed to resolve the problems between the two; it led them to go their separate paths.
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In 1966, Mao chose Lin Biao as his “comrade-in-arms” and as his successor, thereby also ensuring the cooperation of the PLA, which Lin had led since 1959 when he replaced Peng Dehuai. Even so, in 1967, Mao confided privately that if Lin Biao's health were to fail, he would bring Deng back.
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Lin Biao, a reclusive hypochondriac after his head injury in World War II, was aware of the risks in getting close to Mao and three times he refused the position before Mao in effect ordered him to take it. Once he became Mao's “comrade-in-arms,” Lin was filled with anxiety about his relations with the mercurial Mao—and for good reason. By 1970, the ever-distrustful Mao suspected that Lin Biao might be planning to usurp power while he was still alive. Consequently, in the late summer of 1971 Mao began preparing to
push him aside, meeting first with leading military officials under Lin Biao to ensure their loyalty. In early September 1971, as Mao was returning by train from Hangzhou to Beijing, the train stopped in Shanghai. Especially cautious about personal security given his heightened suspicions of Lin, Mao did not get off the train but had Wang Hongwen, a former rebel leader who had become deputy head of the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, and Xu Shiyou, the head of the Nanjing Military Region who was close to Lin Biao, board the train. Mao secured their support and told them he would deal with the problem of Lin Biao when he returned to Beijing. On September 12, as soon as Lin Biao's son, Lin Liguo, heard that Mao was back in Beijing, the Lin family became concerned; Lin Liguo hired a pilot and their plane took off that very evening, carrying Lin Biao, his wife, Lin Liguo, and a small group of followers toward the Soviet Union. But the plane never made it to its destination; it crashed in Mongolia and there were no survivors.
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Deng first learned of the plane crash from his son Deng Pufang, who had heard the news on his shortwave radio. Yet he waited almost two months, until the news became official, before he took any action. On November 6, when the announcement of the crash reached down to county levels, Deng and Zhuo Lin, along with some eighty workers in the factory where they worked, were told to listen to a two-hour reading of the Central Committee documents concerning Lin Biao's crimes. Because he was hard of hearing, Deng was allowed to sit in the front row and to take home a copy of the documents to review. After Lin Biao's death, many assumed that Mao would soon be calling on Deng Xiaoping to assume a major position. Deng must have thought so too. Two days after he heard the official report on Lin, even though he had been told not to send any more letters to Wang Dongxing, Deng was emboldened to send off a letter to Chairman Mao.
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Deng knew well what kind of letter would be most appealing to Mao. So in addition to asking Mao to let his two youngest children live near him in Jiangxi, he wrote:

The revelations about Lin Biao were very sudden. I was shocked and angered to learn of the despicable crimes.... Had it not been for the brilliant leadership of the Chairman and the Central Committee and the early exposure and quick disposition, the plot might have succeeded.... In keeping with your instructions I have been reforming myself through labor and study.... I have no requests for myself, only that some day I may be able to do a little work for the Party. Naturally, it would be some sort of technical job.... I am longing for a chance to pay back by hard work a bit of what I owe.
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Despite the humility of his statement, Deng was aware that Mao would be unlikely to place a bold seasoned leader like himself in anything less than a high position.

For some months, Deng did not receive a reply and even when Deng did hear back, Mao had not yet made a decision as to whether or when to allow Deng to return, let alone what position he would be asked to fill. Mao was exhausted and what energy he had was devoted not to preparing his post-Lin team but to making preparations for the Nixon visit of February 1972.