Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (72 page)

PURSUE POLICIES THAT HELP ACHIEVE LONG-TERM GOALS
. Once Deng won widespread support for pursuing the four modernizations, he could then win public support for policies that helped realize that goal. Specialists were trained and hired, and older, less trained people were replaced by younger people who were better trained. Deng fought to reduce the bloated bureaucracies, both civilian and military, that were sapping resources needed to promote investment in China's modernization. Reducing the size of the military and civilian bureaucracies took a great deal of Deng's time because of powerful resistance from those who did not wish to retire. Deng also realized that many new programs had to be introduced step by step. He knew that raising educational standards, for instance, would take many decades and that he had to set benchmarks for the realization of each of the goals.

Aware that the elimination of state enterprises immediately, before new jobs were created, would create massive social and even political problems, Deng decided to postpone eliminating large numbers of noncompetitive state enterprises until more jobs were available. Realizing that the forced retirement of seniors who had fought in the revolution would create massive protests, he willingly used substantial portions of his limited budget to provide
benefits to those who agreed to retire, including providing housing, recreation centers, and for some high officials, even continued use of official cars. Once these difficult transitions were complete, he began to establish a regular system with a mandatory retirement age.

Deng greatly expanded the opportunities for promising young people to receive better training, raised the status of scholars, and allowed young intellectuals to return to the urban areas from the countryside. He quickly set up training programs to allow some 4.45 million “specialists,” who had been working without proper qualifications, to receive supplementary training. Personnel exchange centers (
rencai jiaoliu zhongxin
) were established and encouraged to obtain the résumés of educated personnel so as to facilitate their reassignment to places where they were most needed.
⁹

Deng was willing to allow transitional measures, but he kept the long-term goals in mind. In 1981, when Chinese universities again began graduating classes after the Cultural Revolution, Deng continued the system of government placement of graduates, whereby university graduates were directed to take particular jobs in critical positions. Not until the end of the decade, when the number of graduates increased, did Deng allow some leeway for graduates to choose their own future employment.

Deng did not believe that it was possible in 1978 to foresee which institutions would be most suitable for a modernized China. So he commissioned think tanks, under Zhao Ziyang, to study the introduction of fundamentally different systems in various localities. If the trial was successful, he encouraged others to see if the same results could be repeated elsewhere.

UNCOVER EVEN THE UNPLEASANT TRUTHS
. Deng believed that it was important to learn how things really were. Having been at the center of the Great Leap Forward, a tragedy exacerbated by exaggerated reporting, Deng always sought to confirm his information through several channels before deciding if it was true. Even then, he remained skeptical and welcomed opportunities to see things for himself. Deng especially listened to a select group of officials like Yang Shangkun and his office director Wang Ruilin, who would report things as they truly were. He also listened carefully to foreigners who relayed their observations of China.

Deng not only avoided overblown language about what he thought China could achieve in the long run; he also sought to dampen the unrealistic expectations of local officials and of the public at large about what could be achieved in the short term. In addition, he accepted the advice of specialists
that China should not try to leapfrog into large heavy industry sectors and should instead concentrate initially on light industry.

BE BOLD
. As the Chinese expression goes, Deng was ready to “move heavy things as if they were light” (
juzhong ruoqing).
Chen Yun, like Liu Bocheng, the military commander with whom Deng had worked for twelve years, had a reputation for being very cautious, “moving light things as if they were heavy.” Chen Yun considered details, especially in economic matters, far more carefully than Deng did. But in Deng's view, generals who insist on gathering all the information about their enemy before they go into battle will sometimes lose their chance to strike. Deng did spend a great deal of time analyzing the potential consequences of his decisions, but on important issues, he was often ready to push ahead boldly even before all the facts were known.

PUSH, CONSOLIDATE, AND PUSH AGAIN
. Deng believed that on issues where he encountered serious resistance, the most effective approach was to exert some frequent pressure, then wait for things to consolidate, and then push again.
¹⁰
In easing aside Hua Guofeng, for example, Deng applied pressure in several stages, allowing others to adjust before he pushed again. During the early 1980s, too, he believed it was not yet time to restore normal relations with the Soviet Union, but he made small advances in that direction and waited until the Soviets were overextended and thus willing to normalize relations on China's terms.

STRENGTHEN UNITY, MINIMIZE DIVISIONS
. The China that Deng inherited was suffering from deep internal strife. The destruction of landlord families in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the frequent vicious political campaigns culminating in the Cultural Revolution left many “I live, you die” enmities. Moreover, the struggles had taken place within individual villages or work units, which meant that the victims or the children of the victims would often work side by side with their former assailants.

One of the most fundamental issues Deng faced on assuming office was how to dampen the passions of the families and friends of victims who were looking for opportunities to “settle accounts.” He frequently used the bully pulpit to encourage people to let bygones be bygones and to get on with their work. He also frequently used the phrase
bu zhenglun
(let's avoid quarrels). He sidestepped many contentious issues by saying that solutions to the difficult
problems could be left to the next generations, who would be smarter and thus better able to solve them. He also fully supported Hu Yaobang's efforts to undo the damage done during the Cultural Revolution by restoring the victims' honor or compensating those who had suffered material losses.

AVOID PUBLICIZING PAST GRIEVANCES
. Deng directed that the Cultural Revolution should be discussed publicly in general terms, but that one should not go over details that would highlight personal wounds and expose, and quite likely revive, old enmities. Those officials who had been wrongly criticized during the Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated, but Deng advised bringing them back without fanfare so as to avoid stirring up old quarrels.

SIDESTEP CONSERVATIVE RESISTANCE THROUGH EXPERIMENTATION
. Many conservative party leaders feared the formation of capitalist enterprises. But when the young people who had been forcibly sent to the countryside under Mao began streaming back into the cities, Deng and other officials became concerned that if they couldn't find jobs, massive social unrest would result. Due to current budget shortfalls, the government could not afford to expand employment in state enterprises. Thus in order to avoid massive unemployment, families were allowed to form “household enterprises” (
getihu
) in which the entrepreneur himself worked. Marx's statement in
Das Kapital
about a capitalist with eight employees exploiting his workers was interpreted to mean that working entrepreneurs who employed no more than seven others were not capitalists. Household enterprises sprouted “like bamboo shoots after the spring rain.” Deng, with Chen Yun's consent, said “let's see how it goes.” At first entrepreneurs were cautious about hiring more than seven workers, but as they observed the government took no action, other successful firms followed suit. Deng did not argue with them. He simply cited “
shazi guazi
” (“Simpleton's Sunflower Seeds”), the very popular toasted sunflowers produced by an illiterate farmer and his employees in Anhui. “If you put [the simpleton with his sunflower seeds] . . . out of business, it will make people anxious and that won't do anyone any good. . . . If we let him go on selling his seeds for a while, will that hurt socialism?”
¹¹
With his clever explanation for why China should try to experiment with individual households, and a well-timed shrug at the conservatives, Deng ingeniously avoided an ideological battle, encouraged more employment, and permitted larger private enterprises.

USE APHORISMS TO EXPLAIN COMPLEX CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES.
Once Deng had made a basic policy decision, he would explain it by using a popular aphorism. This shrewd but folksy touch not only made it difficult to disagree with the policy, but also made Deng himself seem personable. He was not the first high-level party leader to use the aphorisms that came to be associated with his name, but he made wide use of them. The “cat theory”—“it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mouse”—was a creative way of winning further support for diminishing the importance of Mao's ideology; it suggested that doing what worked was more important than following a particular ideology. If Deng had simply said “ideology is unimportant,” he would have provoked enormous controversy, but his “cat theory” made people smile (in fact, some entrepreneurs even made and sold decorations with the cat theme). Another saying, “some people can get rich first,” helped lower the expectations of many who hoped to get rich quickly after the reforms, and helped disarm those who might feel envious of those who prospered before the benefits of reform had reached everyone. It was also a promise that after some people became rich, the government would keep working to spread the wealth. “Groping for stones while crossing the river” was a creative way of encouraging experimentation and acknowledging that in a new situation they should not expect that all policies would work well.

MAKE BALANCED PRESENTATIONS THAT EXPLAIN UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES
. Following well-established party practice, in major policy documents Deng aimed to present his programs as a sound middle course. He often criticized extremists, both leftists and rightists, both “feudalistic” and “bourgeois” thinkers. In addition, when presenting major policies to the public, Deng found it more effective to provide an explanation rather than to issue a direct order—to talk of the general situation and of the long-range goals that required action.

AVOID FACTIONALISM AND SELECT COMPETENT OFFICIALS
. Some lower-level officials believed that it was safer to choose as work associates people with whom they shared a special connection (
guanxi
), such as the same background, locality, or educational level. Among the Beijing elite at the time, three kinds of people were said to form easy relationships with one another: (1) those who had served as officials in the Communist Youth League, (2) “princelings,” that is, children of high Communist officials who attended
the same schools, and (3) those who had served as
mishu
, office directors, for high officials. Deng, however, was prepared to work with all three kinds of people if they were competent, dedicated high-level officials, and did not promote factional activities. He encouraged others to do the same.

STUDY AND SHAPE THE
“
ATMOSPHERE
.” Deng as the paramount leader enjoyed considerable flexibility in choosing policies, but even he was constrained by the political atmosphere among the highest-level officials in Beijing. When Deng moved boldly, he wanted to ensure that other high officials would fully support him. Within limits, of course, Deng could help shape the mood through his speeches, his actions, and the people whom he supported, but even when he spoke, he usually advocated broad general principles rather than specific details. The highest-level officials, those in the Politburo, knew enough about national issues that they developed their own views about what was desirable or at least acceptable. On big issues, therefore, like the handling of Mao's reputation, rural and urban de-collectivization, departure from economic planning, and allowing foreigners to travel freely within China, Deng avoided moving before he sensed that the political climate would be fully supportive.

In keeping with democratic centralism, everyone, including high-level officials, was expected to express strong support for current policies and current leaders. It was not always easy, therefore, even for a high-level official, to discern when others developed serious doubts about current policies and leaders and became convinced that changes were needed, as they were in late 1978 with respect to Hua Guofeng and his policies. Because contrary opinions on important issues of policy were not voiced openly by high-level officials, each province maintained an office in Beijing with officials who tried to discern signs of possible changes of policy, and to sense when certain actions the province was considering would be considered correct or at least tolerated. To understand the mood, even Deng needed to rely not only on his own seasoned judgment acquired from reading all the papers that came to him, but also on listening to the small number of people who dared to speak unpleasant truths to him, like Deng Liqun, Yang Shangkun, Wang Zhen, Wang Ruilin, and his own children.

What altered the atmosphere at the highest levels remained complex and subtle for it was based on tacit understandings rather than direct open discussions. Perhaps nothing was more critical in shaping changes in the high-level atmosphere than whether or not a given policy, strategy, or leader was producing
results. If something was working, that policy or that person garnered support. If something was failing, however, people began to move away and to shun the failure. When economic results came in toward the end of each year, for example, they affected the evaluation of the current economic policy and of the officials responsible for the policy. Most high officials approved of trying experiments in certain localities, and when an experiment demonstrated success, Deng and others felt free to push for its adoption on a broader scale.