Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (4 page)

Military officials and revolutionary rebels had been moved in to replace the senior party officials who had been forced out, but they were unprepared and unqualified for the positions they had assumed. The military had become bloated and was neglecting the military tasks, while military officers in civilian jobs were enjoying the perquisites of offices without performing the work. The transportation and communication infrastructure was in disarray. The bigger factories were still operating with technology imported from the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and the equipment was in a state of disrepair.

Universities had been basically closed down for almost a decade. Educated youth had been forcibly sent to the countryside and it was becoming harder to make them stay. Yet in the cities there were no jobs for them, nor for the tens of millions of peasants wanting to migrate there. Further, the people who were already living in the cities, fearing for their jobs, were not ready to welcome newcomers.

Some officials were bold enough to suggest that the real cause of the problems China was facing was Mao Zedong himself, but Deng believed that a single person should not be held responsible for the failures of the previous two decades. “We are all to blame,” he said. Mao had made huge mistakes, certainly, but in Deng's view the larger problem was the faulty system that had given rise to those mistakes. The effort to gain control of the political system down to the household had overreached, creating fear and lack of initiative. The effort to gain control of the economic system had also overreached, causing rigidities that stymied dynamism. How could China's leaders loosen things up while keeping the country stable?

For more than a decade before the Cultural Revolution, no one had greater responsibility for building and administering the old system than Deng Xiaoping. During his three and a half years in the countryside from 1969 to 1973, no one who had held high positions had thought more deeply about what went wrong with China's old system and what needed to be done than Deng Xiaoping.

In 1978, Deng did not have a clear blueprint about how to bring wealth to the people and power to the country; instead, as he confessed, repeating a widely used saying—he “groped for the stepping stones as he crossed the river.”
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But he did have a framework for thinking about how to proceed.

He would open the country wide to science, technology, and management systems, and to new ideas from anywhere in the world, regardless of the country's political system. He was aware that the new dynamos of Asia—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—were growing faster than
any countries ever had. But Deng realized he could not simply import an entire system from abroad, for no alien system could fit the unique needs of China—which had a rich cultural heritage but was also huge, diverse, and poor. He realized what some free-market economists did not, that one could not solve problems simply by opening markets; one had to build institutions gradually. He would encourage other officials to expand their horizons, to go everywhere to learn what brings success, to bring back promising technology and management practices, and to experiment to see what would work at home. He would help pave the way by developing good relations with other countries so they would be receptive to working with China.

To provide order during this rebuilding, he believed there was only one organization that could manage the process—the Communist Party. The most experienced leaders available in China in 1978 were the party leaders who had risen to levels of responsibility in the 1950s and early 1960s. They needed to be brought back and young people had to be trained overseas and bring back the best ideas, the best science, the best technology, from anywhere. Bringing in new ways would be terribly disruptive. Even the Communist Party would have to change fundamentally its goals and its methods of operation.

As the paramount leader, Deng did not see his role as coming up with new ideas. He saw his job as managing the disruptive process of devising and implementing a new system. He would have the ultimate responsibility and he needed to make sound judgment calls. He would need to select a core of coworkers who could share responsibility for guiding the system and he would have to set up quickly an organization so they could work together effectively. He needed the best information he could get about what was actually going on in the country and what was happening abroad. He needed to provide hope without raising expectations that were unrealistic, as Mao had done in 1958. He would have to explain the situation to his officials and to the public and pace the changes so that people could accept them and the country would not split apart. Although he had considerable power, he knew he had to be sensitive to the political atmosphere among his colleagues if they were to implement what he directed. He needed to allow a measure of stability in employment and daily life even as the system underwent fundamental changes. In short, Deng faced a tall order, and an unprecedented one: at the time, no other Communist country had succeeded in reforming its economic system and bringing sustained rapid growth, let alone one with one billion people in a state of disorder.

The Man: Deng Xiaoping

Despite Deng's diminutive stature, once he became the preeminent leader, when he appeared in a room he had a commanding presence that made him a natural center of attention. More than one observer commented that it was as if the electricity in the room flowed to him. He had the concentrated intensity of someone determined to resolve important matters. He possessed the natural poise of a former wartime military commander as well as the self-assurance that came from half a century of dealing with life-and-death issues near the center of power. Having faced ups and downs, and been given time to recover with support from his wife, children, and close colleagues, he had become comfortable with who he was. When he did not know something, he readily admitted it. President Jimmy Carter commented that Deng, unlike Soviet leaders, had an inner confidence that allowed one to get directly into substantive issues. He did not dwell on what might have been or who was at fault for past errors; as in bridge, which he played regularly, he was ready to play the hand he was dealt. He could recognize and accept power realities and operate within the boundaries of what seemed possible. Once Mao was no longer alive to look over his shoulder, Deng was sufficiently sure of himself and his authority that with guests he could be relaxed, spontaneous, direct, witty, and disarmingly frank. At a state banquet in Washington in January 1979, when told by Shirley MacLaine about a Chinese intellectual who was so grateful for what he had learned about life after being sent to the countryside to raise tomatoes during the Cultural Revolution, Deng's patience was soon exhausted. He interrupted her to say, “He was lying” and went on to tell her how horrible the Cultural Revolution had been.

For someone who turned seventy-four in 1978, Deng was still vigorous and alert. He still took his morning break with a fast-paced half-hour walk around the garden of his home where he also kept his office. Many Chinese leaders, when seated next to their guest in comfortable chairs that were placed aside each other, would look straight ahead when they talked, but Deng liked to turn and look directly at the person he was talking with. He had an inquisitive mind and was a good listener. When he objected to the policies of foreign nations, foreign officials described him as feisty and “tough as nails.” Having observed nations pursuing their self-interest through imperialism, colonialism, and the use of military force abroad, Deng was never naïve about what to expect from foreign leaders professing goodwill. But even when they did not like what he had to say, foreign visitors, from different social positions and different parties, from large countries and small, ended up feeling
comfortable with him. They felt he was someone with whom they could do business.

Some Westerners were so impressed with Deng's directness and pragmatism that they mistakenly thought he was a capitalist at heart and that he would lead China toward a Western-style democracy. He was always ready to learn, but in the end he believed he knew better than they what was good for China and it was not capitalism and Western-style democracy.

By 1978, Deng was hard of hearing in his right ear, and it was awkward for him to take part in group meetings where various people expressed their views. He much preferred to read papers, and he spent every morning sitting by himself reading reports; his office director each day brought him fifteen newspapers and all the important reports; Deng would choose which ones to spend time on. In some ways it was easier for him to meet foreigners, for the interpreter could speak directly in his good left ear, making it natural as he exchanged views with his guests. Deng spoke Mandarin with a strong Sichuanese accent, but it was intelligible to other Mandarin speakers and did not slow him down. The responsibilities Deng faced were daunting, but it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have been much better prepared for the tasks or better suited for them by temperament and habit.

Deng had an instinctive patriotism and commitment to the Communist Party that inspired the confidence of his fellow officials. The patriotism that underlay Deng's lifelong activism had jelled at age fourteen, just when popular nationalism took hold in the country, as he took to the streets of Guang'an county where he was attending middle school. Five years later in France, disappointed with the dirty and difficult factory work assigned to Chinese and the withdrawal of the promise of opportunities to study, Deng joined the French branch of the Chinese Communist Party. He would remain a committed Communist until his death more than seven decades later.

From his five years in France and one year in the Soviet Union, Deng acquired a far better understanding of developments around the world and far more perspective on China than Mao had garnered. Deng had a chance to see industry and commerce in a modern country, and his year in the Soviet Union gave him a chance to see how the first Communist country had tackled modernization.

Already while in France, Deng had an opportunity to take part in the small groups of intellectuals considering overall strategy for the Communist youth movement. From that time on, Deng's association with the grand strategists of the Chinese revolution gave him a unique view, from “commanding heights,” of how these theories took hold and influenced events on the
ground. In France, Deng quit his factory jobs and did odd jobs around the tiny Chinese Communist Party office led by Zhou Enlai, who was six years older than Deng. Deng, known then as “Dr. Mimeograph” for his role in producing the simple propaganda pamphlets that publicized the leftist cause to Chinese students in France, became in effect an apprentice where he could observe how Zhou Enlai, already a leader among fellow Chinese youth, with experience in Japan and England, went about building an organization. Though one of the youngest in the group, Deng soon was on the executive committee of the Communist youth organization in Europe. At Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University in Moscow where the Soviets were just beginning to train Chinese for the international communist movement, Deng was selected for Group No. 7, in which the highest level of Chinese leaders were trained for the international Communist movement. At Sun Yat-sen University Deng had an opportunity to understand how the Soviets had built their Communist movement and to learn their views on how to build a movement in China.

For his entire career, with brief interruptions, Deng had been close enough to the top seat of power that he could observe from the inside how the top leaders responded to different situations. Not long after he returned to China in 1927, he was again under Zhou Enlai, in the Shanghai underground, as the party tried to devise survival strategies while Chiang Kai-shek, their former colleague, tried to wipe them out. Not only did Deng take part in the planning to create urban insurrections, but at age twenty-five he was sent to Guangxi province to lead urban insurrections. As Mao began to build up the Jiangxi Soviet base, Deng went there where as head of the party in Ruijin county, he learned how Mao was building up his rural base. On the Long March, Deng got to attend the crucial Zunyi conference where Mao began to emerge as leader. Before the Long March had ended Deng had the opportunity to become a confidante of Mao's. Not long after Mao set up his base in northwest China, Mao entrusted Deng with major responsibilities as a political commissar, providing political leadership within the military. Later in the civil war, he was given responsibility for taking over Shanghai and guiding the transition to Communist rule and was then sent to the Southwest where he was given responsibility for leading one of the six major regions of the country.

Above all, it was at the center of power in Beijing, from 1952 to 1966, that Deng had the opportunity to work closely with Mao to consider strategies for China's development and for dealing with foreign countries. Mao had identified Deng as one of his potential successors, and Deng had taken part in
Politburo meetings and after 1956 in its Standing Committee, along with the other five highest-ranking officials in the country. Deng also became a central participant in the planning and creation of a socialist structure that featured agricultural collectivization and nationalization of industry, and played a central role in land reform in the Southwest. In 1959–1961, he had played a major part in guiding the adjustments to the socialist structure after the failures of the Great Leap Forward. In short, Deng in 1978 had half a century of experience in thinking about strategies used by China's top leaders in guiding the country.

Deng was a military leader for twelve years, and even later described himself as a soldier. He was a political commissar rather than a military commander, but he was party secretary and had responsibility for approving military actions. Working closely with a military commander, he fought first in small guerrilla activities, but then in huge battles in the civil war. During the Huai Hai military campaign in late 1948, he ended up as the party secretary of the front command, responsible for coordinating half a million soldiers in one of the largest battles in military history and one of the key turning points in the civil war.