Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (126 page)

Everywhere in Guangdong, Deng was surrounded by admiring, grateful fans. Although initially, in 1982–1983, he had not defended the SEZs, by 1984 he was praising them when they were under heavy attack from the conservatives in Beijing. It is said of the residents of Guangdong that if they have a green traffic light, they go
ahead; if they have a yellow traffic light, they go ahead, only faster; and if they have a red light, they simply go around it. In 1992, however, the Cantonese were worried about the red and yellow lights coming from Beijing and badly wanted to see some green lights. Deng was now supporting their cause, further opening and rapid growth; in turn they became cheerleaders for the cause he was promoting on his southern journey.

Following official guidance from Beijing on arrangements for a “family vacation,” Deng had taken only one reporter and one photographer, and he held no press conferences. Yet by the time he started touring Shenzhen, an estimated fifty to sixty photographers had gathered to watch him enjoying his “family vacation”; many even brought tape recorders to ensure that they caught every word.
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Deng, brimming with enthusiasm as he viewed the skyline of the tall buildings, then still rare in China, inspected the new technologies, in which he displayed a detailed interest, and listened to briefings by local officials. Officials told Deng that Shenzhen, which in 1984 had an average annual per capita income of 600 yuan, had raised this to 2,000 yuan by 1992. He could only have felt cheered by the prospect that such momentum would help realize his dreams for faster growth. While traveling to spur future growth, Deng enjoyed the rich harvest from the seeds he had planted with his reform and opening policies.

Large numbers of ordinary citizens, tipped off through leaks about his arrival, were waiting when Deng exited factories and office buildings. As he descended from Shenzhen's fifty-three-story World Trade Center, where he had viewed scenes of the vast new construction from the revolving restaurant at the top, an especially large crowd gathered to clap and cheer.
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Although he had acquired a well-deserved reputation for not being talkative, Deng was, with the help of his daughter Deng Rong—who repeated loudly into his ears what his deafness would not allow him to hear directly—fully engaged in conversations with local officials and appreciative onlookers. To many officials in Beijing, Deng was viewed as a stern commander, but the crowds in Shenzhen cheerily greeted “uncle Deng”
(shushu hao)
(and, for younger people, “grandpa Deng,”
yeye hao
), whom they found warm, witty, approachable, and eager to soak in all the latest developments.

In the privacy of the car, however, Deng furiously criticized the conservatives back in Beijing. He asked the accompanying officials, all of whom were sympathetic with his purpose, not to repeat in public what he said in private. But even in public, he expressed his fear that the leftist policies could have
dire consequences and even destroy socialism.
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He cautioned: “China should maintain vigilance against the right but primarily against the left.”
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In frank talks with local officials, Deng countered his critics who said that the SEZs were capitalistic and controlled by foreigners by saying that only a quarter of the investment came from foreigners. Moreover, Deng said, China had political control over all foreign-owned firms, so it could be certain that they served Chinese interests. Instead of worrying about the current level of foreign involvement, Deng advised, China should increase foreign investment and form more joint ventures: foreign firms pay Chinese taxes and provide local workers with jobs and wages.
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Sessions with local officials and retired uncle Deng were far more casual than the Beijing party meetings Deng had taken part in. Deng was relaxed and informal, and as he made humorous comments, local leaders often chimed in. Deng was giving one of his last lessons, urging officials to be bolder and to try harder. He repeated the lessons he had been giving everywhere: continue reform and opening, keep a lean government, train young people, talk less, and do more. On the bus returning to his guest house after visiting the World Trade Center, Deng repeated many of his basic points: Planning is not the same as socialism, and markets are not the same as capitalism. There is planning under capitalism and there are markets under socialism. Socialism is not poverty. In following the socialist path, everyone can become rich, and toward this end the places that get rich first should turn over more taxes, which then can be used to assist less-developed areas. But the situation cannot be equalized too quickly—people should not “eat out of the same pot”—for this would destroy the people's enthusiasm. Deng again urged his listeners to experiment, to take risks, and to not be afraid of making mistakes; when you make them, just correct them.
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Deng exhorted Shenzhen to catch up within twenty years with the four little dragons of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. “Society in Singapore,” he said, “is quite orderly. They manage things very strictly. We ought to use their experience as a model. And we ought to manage things even better than they do.” After being briefed about graft and corruption in Shenzhen, Deng replied, “You have to use a two-fisted approach. With one hand, you grab reform and opening. With the other, you grab every kind of criminal behavior. You have to have a firm grip with both hands.”
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On January 23, after five days in Shenzhen, Party Secretary Li Hao told Deng of his plans for reorganizing, redistricting, and expanding the legal system. Deng, as if he were still in charge of the country, declared that he approved
of all these ideas and encouraged Li to carry them out boldly. Although many officials back in Beijing were critical of Shenzhen for moving ahead too rapidly, Deng's parting words to Li Hao were “speed up growth and reform.” Li Hao's reply? “We'll definitely speed things up.”
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Deng's next stop was Zhuhai, and the first party secretary of Zhuhai, Liang Guangda, came to Shenzhen to escort the Deng family and the provincial officials during the hour-long boat ride across the mouth of the broad Pearl River to his city. As the boat passed by the remains of a Qing dynasty customs house, Deng again passed on the essence of his departing message: China had been humiliated by the foreign imperialists, but that era had passed: “Those who are backward get beaten. . . . We've been poor for thousands of years, but we won't be poor again. If we don't emphasize science, technology, and education, we will be beaten again.”
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Guangdong party secretary Xie Fei and Liang Guangda were fully aware of Deng's concerns about the growing economic inequalities; they knew he had long urged that those who get rich first should help others along. During the boat trip, Deng was told that the bustling Pearl River delta area was already doing a great deal to help the poorer mountainous areas in the northern and western parts of the province. Deng replied that the progress since the reform and opening was due to the creativity of local people, who were willing to experiment, and the ability of the government to notice what was working and pass the ideas on to the rest of the country.
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Just as Macao was smaller and less bustling than Hong Kong, so Zhuhai, adjacent to Macao, was smaller and less bustling than Shenzhen. From Zhuhai's revolving restaurant at the top of its twenty-nine-story trade center, as in Shenzhen, Deng and his family gazed at the tall buildings under construction. Deng warmed to the crowds in Zhuhai just as he had in Shenzhen. In one factory in Zhuhai, observers estimated that Deng shook more than one hundred hands; on the streets he was restrained by police to keep him from mingling with the crowds and shaking even more hands.

In questioning local residents, Deng tried to gauge how quickly the growth in the coastal urban areas was spreading to the more remote areas, and to infer what future development might mean for the people. He could already see many signs that consumer goods—bicycles, sewing machines, radios, watches, and other manufactured items—were beginning to spread to the rural areas.
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He was pleased to hear that migrants from poor areas had found opportunities for employment along the coast. He was also encouraged by reports of eager young people who had gone abroad to study but then returned
to help build their motherland. He was told that some factories, led by entrepreneurial Chinese, were already approaching world technological standards. He praised local leaders' success in using markets to further the cause of socialism, and credited socialism in turn for aiding in that success: he said that capitalism could not match the socialist system in terms of focusing on talent to make things happen quickly. He also noted that if not for the progress from 1984 to 1988, things would not have gone so smoothly in China during the difficult years from 1989 to 1992.

During the car ride from Zhuhai to Guangzhou, Deng stopped for a few minutes in the two counties just north of Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Shunde, that were flourishing from the rapid spillover of the dynamism of the SEZs to the nearby areas. After an hour-long meeting with provincial leaders in Guangzhou, Deng boarded his train to Shanghai, with a brief stop in Yingtan, located in eastern Jiangxi province.
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Upon his arrival in Yingtan, Deng was again received at the train station by local officials who briefed him about the excellent harvests of the past year and their progress in responding to the floods. Deng praised their efforts but also declared that they needed to plant more trees to prevent erosion, which causes flooding. Deng also said that officials should try to go faster, be bolder, and open up even further. At this point, Deng Nan chimed in to say that her father had been preaching this message during the entire trip. She added that her father cared a lot about Jiangxi, where he had served in the Jiangxi Soviet some sixty years earlier and where he had spent three-and-a-half years during the Cultural Revolution. In fact, during much of the trip, Deng reminisced about his experiences in Ruijin and Huichang counties in 1931.
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Deng Nan reminded her father that on February 19, 1973, after his years of “rustication” in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, the family had boarded the train to Beijing at that same Yingtan station. Now from Yingtan they boarded the train to Shanghai and by the time they arrived, the seeds for further opening that Deng planted in Guangdong were beginning to bear fruit.

The Breakthroughs

Deng had failed in 1990 and 1991 to get the country back on the fast track to reform and opening, but in 1992 he made a dramatic breakthrough thanks to the Hong Kong press and to a meeting he held in Zhuhai.

Following protocol, Deng held no press conferences, but once word got
out that he was in Shenzhen, eager Hong Kong reporters and photographers crossed the border in large numbers to cover his trip. On January 22, three days after Deng arrived in Shenzhen, the Hong Kong newspaper
Ming bao
broke the news of his visit as well as his message about speeding up reform. It also reported that Yang Shangkun was accompanying Deng in Shenzhen. Perceptive Hong Kong readers instantly perceived that Deng's trip south was more than an ordinary family outing.

The editors of leftist publications in Hong Kong, remembering that many staff members had been fired for supporting the June 4 protests, were jittery about covering Deng's visit and message. Nonetheless, the next day, January 23, they, along with Hong Kong television stations, also reported the news of Deng's trip to Shenzhen. And because Chinese propaganda officials were unable to block the reception of Hong Kong television in nearby mainland areas, millions of residents in southern Guangdong watched parts of Deng's Shenzhen visit on Hong Kong television.

Beijing propaganda officials who took the side of the cautious planners were faced with a hard choice: to ignore Deng's trip despite gradual seepage of information into southern China and elsewhere, or to acknowledge the trip while trying to weaken Deng's assault on those who took a more conservative stance on reform and opening.
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Meanwhile, Deng's allies, local officials in southern China who wanted permission to grow faster, were willing to take risks to get Deng's message out.

Given the attention that Deng had received in Shenzhen and Zhuhai, it was difficult for the conservative media managers to ignore Deng's trip, but they tried. On February 3, Beijing television showed Deng and Yang Shangkun giving New Year's greetings to Shanghai leaders, without even mentioning his trip to Shenzhen and Zhuhai or his push for more reform. On the same day, the English-language
China Daily
showed a photo of Yang Shangkun and Deng that had been taken in Shenzhen, but it did not provide a date for the picture. And on February 4, the editors of Shanghai's
Liberation Daily
, which was controlled by the Communist Party in Shanghai, cleverly managed to both avoid mentioning the southern trip and to carry a front-page article praising Deng's effort to emancipate the mind, already enshrined from the Third Plenum, which could be seen as a boost for the large new projects they sought for their city.
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But by that time, the local press in Guangdong and Shanghai was itching to spread word of Deng's trip, and with knowledge of Deng's journey so widespread in southern Guangdong, there was no way Beijing propaganda officials could prevent others from knowing its purpose.