On China (58 page)

This led Deng to tell me about a letter he had just received from Bush proposing the visit of a special envoy to brief him on the forthcoming U.S. summit with Gorbachev and to review the Sino-American relationship. Deng accepted the idea and connected it with the Fang discussions as a way to find an overall solution:

The “package deal” was described by Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in his memoirs:

After a further exchange on the modalities of Fang’s possible exile, Deng ended this part of the conversation:

I expected Bush to welcome the demonstration of Chinese concern and flexibility, but I doubted that the pace of improving relations could be as rapid as Deng envisaged.

A renewed understanding between China and the United States had become all the more important because the growing upheaval in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe seemed to undermine the premises of the existing triangular relationship. With the Soviet empire disintegrating, what had become of the motive for the original rapprochement between the United States and China? The urgency was underlined as I left Beijing the evening of my meeting with Deng and learned, at my first stop in the United States, that the Berlin Wall had fallen, shattering the premises of Cold War foreign policy.

The political revolutions in Eastern Europe nearly engulfed the package deal. When I returned to Washington three days later, I reported my conversation with Deng to Bush, Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker at a dinner in the White House. As it turned out, China was not the principal subject. The subject of overriding importance for my hosts at that moment was the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall and an imminent meeting between Bush and Gorbachev—set for December 2–3, 1989, in Malta. Both issues required some immediate decision about tactics and long-term strategy. Were we heading for the collapse of the East German satellite where twenty Soviet divisions were still stationed? Would there now be two German states, albeit a non-Communist East German one? If unification became the goal, by what diplomacy should it be sought? And what should America’s attitude be in foreseeable contingencies?

Amidst the drama surrounding the Soviet collapse in Eastern Europe, Deng’s package deal could not receive the priority it would have elicited in less tumultuous times.

The special mission I discussed with Deng did not take place until mid-December, when Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger visited Beijing for the second time in six months. The visit was not secret as the July trip had been (and at this point, still remained) but was intended to be low-profile to avoid congressional and media controversy. However, the Chinese side engineered a photo op of Scowcroft toasting Qian Qichen, provoking considerable consternation in the United States. Scowcroft would later recount:

The incident demonstrated the conflicting imperatives of the two sides. China wanted to demonstrate to its public that its isolation was ending; Washington sought to draw a minimum of attention, to avoid a domestic controversy until an agreement had been reached.

Inevitably, discussion of the Soviet Union occupied much of Scowcroft and Eagleburger’s trip, though in quite the opposite direction from what had become traditional: the subject now was no longer the military menace of the USSR, but its growing weakness. Qian Qichen predicted the disintegration of the Soviet Union and described Beijing’s surprise when Gorbachev, on his visit in May, at the height of the Tiananmen demonstrations, asked China for economic assistance. Scowcroft later recounted the Chinese version of these events:

The Chinese leaders put forward their “package” solution to Scowcroft and linked the release of Fang Lizhi to the removal of American sanctions. The administration preferred to treat the Fang case as a separate humanitarian issue to be settled in its own right.

Further upheavals in the Soviet bloc—including the bloody overthrow of Romania’s Communist leader, Nicolae Ceauşescu—bolstered the sense of siege in the Chinese Communist Party. The disintegration of the Eastern European Communist states also strengthened the hand of those in Washington who argued that the United States should wait for what they saw as the seemingly inevitable collapse of the Beijing government. In this atmosphere, neither side was in a position to depart from its established positions. Negotiations over Fang’s release would continue through the American Embassy, and the two sides would not reach a deal until June 1990—over a year after Fang and his wife first sought refuge and eight months after Deng had put forward his package proposal.
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In the meantime, the annual reauthorization of China’s Most Favored Nation trade status—required for “nonmarket” countries under the terms of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which made Most Favored Nation treatment conditional on emigration practices—was transformed into a forum for congressional condemnation of China’s human rights record. The underlying assumption of the debate was that any agreement with China was a favor, and under the circumstances repugnant to American democratic ideals; trade privileges should thus be predicated on China’s moving toward an American conception of human rights and political liberties. A sense of isolation began to descend on Beijing and a mood of triumphalism on Washington. In the spring of 1990, as Communist governments collapsed in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, Deng circulated a stark warning to Party members:

At the close of the dramatic year, Deng chose to carry out his long-planned retirement. During the 1980s, he had taken many steps to end the traditional practice of centralized power ending only by the death of the incumbent or the loss of the Mandate of Heaven—criteria both indefinite and inviting chaos. He had established an advisory council of elders to which he retired leaders who were holding on to lifetime tenure. He had told visitors—including me—that he himself intended to retire soon to the chairmanship of that body.

Starting in early 1990, Deng began a gradual withdrawal from high office—the first Chinese leader to have done so in the modern period. Tiananmen may have accelerated the decision so that Deng could oversee the transition while a new leader was establishing himself. In December 1989, Brent Scowcroft proved to be the last foreign visitor to be received by Deng. At the same time, Deng stopped attending public functions. By the time of his death in 1997, he had become a recluse.

As he receded from the scene, Deng decided to buttress his successor by leaving behind a set of maxims for his guidance and that of the next generation of leaders. In issuing these instructions to Communist Party officials, Deng chose a method from Chinese classical history. The instructions were stark and succinct. Written in classical Chinese poetic style, they embraced two documents: a 24-character instruction and a 12-character explanation restricted to high officials. The 24-character instruction read:

The 12-character policy explanation followed with an even more restricted circulation among the leaders. It read:

Against whom and what? The multiple-character statements were silent on that issue, probably because Deng could assume that his audience would understand instinctively that their country’s position had grown precarious, both domestically and even more so internationally.

Deng’s maxims were, on one level, an evocation of historic China surrounded by potentially hostile forces. In periods of resurgence, China would dominate its environs. In periods of decline, it would play for time, confident that its culture and political discipline would enable it to reclaim the greatness that was its due. The 12-character statement told China’s leaders that perilous times had arrived. The outside world had always had difficulty dealing with this unique organism, aloof yet universal, majestic yet given over to occasional bouts of chaos. Now the aged leader of an ancient people was giving a last instruction to his society, feeling besieged as it was attempting to reform itself.

Deng sought to rally his people not by appealing to its emotions or to Chinese nationalism, as he easily could have. Instead he invoked its ancient virtues: calm in the face of adversity; high analytical ability to be put in the service of duty; discipline in pursuit of a common purpose. The deepest challenge, he saw, was less to survive the trials sketched in the 12-character statement than to prepare for the future, when the immediate danger had been overcome.

Was the 24-character statement intended as guidance for a moment of weakness or a permanent maxim? At the moment, China’s reform was threatened by the consequences of internal turmoil and the pressure of foreign countries. But at the next stage, when reform had succeeded, China’s growth might trigger another aspect of the world’s concern. Then the international community might seek to resist China’s march to becoming a dominant power. Did Deng, at the moment of great crisis, foresee that the gravest danger to China might arise upon its eventual resurgence? In that interpretation, Deng urged his people to “hide our capacities and bide our time” and “never claim leadership”—that is to say, do not evoke unnecessary fears by excessive assertiveness.

At its low point of turmoil and isolation, Deng may well have feared both that China might consume itself in its contemporary crisis and also that its future might depend on whether the leaders of the next generation could gain the perspective needed to recognize the perils of excessive self-confidence. Was the statement addressed to China’s immediate travail, or to whether it could practice the 24-character principle when it was strong enough to no longer have to observe it? On China’s answer to these questions depends much of the future of Sino-American relations.

What Kind of Reform?
Deng’s Southern Tour

I
N JUNE 1989, with the Communist Party leadership divided on what to do, the Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, appointed by Deng three years earlier, was purged over his handling of the crisis. The Party Secretary of Shanghai, Jiang Zemin, was elevated to head the Communist Party.

The crisis confronting Jiang was one of the most complex in the history of the People’s Republic. China was isolated, challenged abroad by trade sanctions and at home by the aftermath of nationwide unrest. Communism was in the process of disintegrating in every other country in the world except North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam. Prominent Chinese dissidents had fled abroad, where they received asylum, a sympathetic ear, and freedom to organize. Tibet and Xinjiang were restive. The Dalai Lama was feted abroad; in the same year as Tiananmen, he won the Nobel Peace Prize amidst an upsurge of international attention to the cause of Tibetan autonomy.

After every social and political upheaval, the most serious challenge for governance is how to restore a sense of cohesion. But in the name of what principle? The domestic reaction to the crisis was more threatening to reform in China than the sanctions from abroad. Conservative members of the Politburo, whose support Deng had needed during the Tiananmen crisis, blamed Deng’s “evolutionary policy” for the crisis and pressured Jiang to return to traditional Maoist verities. They went so far as to seek to reverse seemingly well-established policies such as the condemnation of the Cultural Revolution. A Politburo member named Deng Liqun (also known as “Little Deng”) asserted: “If we fail to wage a resolute struggle against liberalization or [against] capitalistic reform and opening up, our socialist cause will be ruined.”
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Deng and Jiang held exactly the opposite view. The Chinese political structure, in their perception, could be given a new impetus only by accelerating the reform program. They saw in improving the standard of living and enhancing productivity the best guarantee of social stability.