Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (138 page)

In 1950, when Deng became party secretary of the entire Southwest Bureau, Wan Li was made deputy head of the Ministry of Industry in the region, where he was responsible for expanding industrial production. At the time, there was very little industry in the Southwest, and the priorities for new industrial projects favored China's Northeast and the coastal areas. Wan Li's job was to see that the few facilities available in the Southwest were running and that the factories received their needed supplies. Wan Li developed a clear understanding of what was necessary to complete construction projects, and he proved to be a firm disciplinarian, good at mobilizing people to get the job done. After he moved to Beijing, in November 1952, he became deputy minister of construction. After 1956, while concurrently serving as vice mayor and vice party secretary of Beijing, Wan supervised major building projects in Beijing, most notably those around Tiananmen Square, including the Great Hall of the People and the Museum of Chinese History and the Musaum of the Chinese Revolution. For his success in completing these projects, he was praised highly by Chairman Mao.

Trained at a teachers' college and having taught briefly himself, Wan Li enjoyed interacting with intellectuals and was even friendly with some of the dissident scholars. Among high-level officials, he was one who favored allowing more intellectual freedom.

Deng valued Wan Li's capacity to organize and complete large projects. In 1975, after Deng assigned Wan Li to be minister of railways, Deng was pleased with Wan's success in ending the bottlenecks and ensuring the smooth flow of rail transport. In June 1977, Hua Guofeng appointed Wan Li as first party secretary of Anhui province, where the starvation was among the worst in the country. Wan Li, known to be especially sympathetic to the unfortunate, traveled around the province to observe the situation firsthand. After Deng became paramount leader, he encouraged Wan Li to implement whatever policies worked best to eradicate the starvation.

Wan Li was comfortable meeting foreign leaders and, as an accomplished tennis player, was allowed to play with foreign dignitaries like Prime Minister Robert Hawke of Australia and George H. W. Bush when he was the head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing. He also enjoyed bridge. Even before 1952 when they were neighbors in Sichuan, Deng invited Wan Li to play bridge, and after going to Beijing in 1952, they often played together. Typically, they would each have a professional bridge player as a partner and an informal trainer; though Wan Li and his partner sometimes won, Wan acknowledged that Deng won more often and was the better bridge player. They continued to play bridge together throughout the 1980s. But even when they met to play cards, they did not talk about personal matters. Deng was Wan's superior, and Wan Li never thought of Deng as an intimate friend.
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Wang Hongwen

Wang Hongwen first came to Mao's attention when Mao saw him on television in July 1967, leading three thousand Shanghai workers in a Communist struggle session. A year earlier, Wang Hongwen, then just thirty-one and a security official at a Shanghai cotton mill, had attacked those taking the “capitalist road” in his factory.
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On November 9, 1966, Wang was elected leader of the Shanghai Workers' Revolutionary Rebels General Headquarters, and within weeks he was playing a role in the takeover of the Shanghai party and government. In February 1967, he became vice head of the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, which later became the core of the restructured Shanghai government.
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By the time Mao saw him on television, then, Wang, poised and tall, was leading Shanghai's largest workers' faction. When Mao asked Shanghai party leader Zhang Chunqiao about Wang, Zhang provided Mao with a brief introduction and Mao liked what he heard.

Wang met Mao's criteria for leadership. He was young and a strong rebel leader. He was also from a peasant family, had served in the military in Korea, and was officially categorized as a worker. Zhang Chunqiao, aware of Mao's high opinion of Wang, allowed Wang to lead the delegation from Shanghai to take part in the 9th Party Congress in April 1969. Mao first met Wang when Wang led a Shanghai delegation to Beijing to take part in the October 1, 1969, National Day celebrations.
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Immediately after Lin Biao's crash on September 13, 1971, Wang Hongwen was
summoned to Beijing where he was dispatched back to Shanghai to arrest Lin's closest followers.
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Wang Hongwen did this very successfully, strengthening Mao's favorable impression of him.
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A year later, on September 7, 1972, Mao had Wang transferred to Beijing and personally received him. Mao, aware that Wang had a low-level educational background, assigned him to read theoretical works, including Marx and Lenin. Mao also suggested that Wang read the story of Liu Penzi in the
Houhan Shu
(History of the Later Han Dynasty). Liu Penzi was a cowherd who at age fifteen was suddenly catapulted to become emperor, but because he was totally unprepared, he was quickly pushed aside. The message was obvious: Wang Hongwen should study and become better prepared than Liu Penzi, and Mao would observe his development.
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On December 28, 1972, at a conference of the party committee of the Beijing Military Region, Wang was appointed to a prominent position. At that meeting, Ye Jianying and Zhou Enlai spoke of the need to help prepare Wang for a leadership role.
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Thereafter, under Mao's direction, Wang Hongwen was assigned to spend at least two hours a day reading works on Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.

In March 1973 Wang Hongwen, then head of the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, in effect the Shanghai government, began attending Politburo meetings, along with Hua Guofeng and Wu De, whom Mao also was observing as potential leaders.
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In May, Wang Hongwen was put in charge of planning for the 10th Party Congress, forthcoming in August 1973. At that congress, Wang Hongwen, a scarcely known youth, suddenly was catapulted into the position of vice chairman of the party, ahead of both Kang Sheng and Ye Jianying. Although Wang Hongwen made serious efforts to play the role Mao assigned him, he was not respected by other high-level party officials and by mid-1975 Mao had removed him from his major responsibilities.

Xi Zhongxun

In 1934, Xi Zhongxun, then just twenty-one years old, was already a high official under Gao Gang and Liu Zhidan in the small Communist base area in Shaanxi province that had welcomed Mao Zedong and his troops when they arrived exhausted from the Long March. Mao came to regard Xi Zhongxun as very promising, and Xi rose rapidly to become a party secretary in the Northwest Bureau. Xi remained in the Northwest throughout the anti-Japanese war and the civil war.

In 1950, when Peng Dehuai, who had been the top leader in the Northwest Bureau, went off to lead the Chinese troops fighting in the Korean War, Xi Zhongxun briefly served as the bureau's top leader, at the same time that Deng was the top leader of the Southwest Bureau. Later that year, Xi was brought to Beijing to be head of the Central Propaganda Department and in 1953, he was named secretary general of the Administrative Council (later renamed the State Council). In 1959 he became a vice premier as well as secretary general of the State Council.

In 1962, Liu Zhidan's sister-in-law published a novel about Liu Zhidan, glorifying him and describing how he had been mistreated by Mao. Mao suspected Xi Zhongxun of being behind the publication of the novel and as a result demoted him to deputy head of a factory in Loyang. Xi was psychologically wounded by the attacks and was depressed until 1978, when his case was reversed and he was allowed to leave Luoyang and take up a position in Guangdong where he played a critical role in preparing Guangdong to become the nation's experimental area and in negotiating with Beijing officials. His son Xi Jinping in 2011 was selected as the leading candidate for president of China beginning in 2012.

Ye Jianying

Mao knew he could count on Marshal Ye to unify the military after Lin Biao's plane crash in 1971 because of his ability to grasp the big picture, his good judgment, his loyalty, and his lack of personal ambition.
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He had kept the confidence of Mao ever since the Long March when he had switched his loyalty from Mao's rival Zhang Guotao. Mao said of Ye that “on big issues, he was never muddled”
(dashi bu hutu);
he played a central role not only in restructuring the army after Lin Biao's crash but in arresting the Gang of Four, assisting Hua Guofeng after Mao's death, and in the return of Deng in 1973 and 1977. Marshal Ye avoided managing things himself and preferred to pass responsibility to others. He did not express strong opinions but was ready to give advice.

A gregarious person, Marshal Ye was known for his ability to win and keep the confidence of people from widely varied backgrounds. During the Cultural Revolution, Ye chose to be on the sidelines rather than get involved in disputes; he was not in an important position at the time of the Cultural Revolution and therefore was not targeted for serious attack. Ye often said
“ban jun ru ban hu”
—serving a lord is like serving a tiger—he knew political involvement was dangerous and preferred to be on the sidelines.

Born in 1897, Ye graduated from Yunnan Military Academy. He also served with Zhou Enlai on the staff of the Whampoa (Huangpu) Military Academy when Lin Biao was a student. Ye took part in the Nanchang and Guangzhou uprisings of 1927, but of the ten military leaders selected to be a marshal in the army, he was the only one who lacked experience leading men into battle. Battle commanders did not consider him one of their own, but they respected him for his long years as a high-level military leader when he was a negotiator and adviser. Ye worked closely with Zhou Enlai during the war years from 1937 to 1949, bringing detailed knowledge of the military situation to negotiations with the Guomindang and with foreigners.

Ye was born in Mei county in mountainous northern Guangdong, the informal Hakka capital that produced many generals and many emigrants. Ye's grandfather had worked as a miner in Malaya, and Ye spent several months in Malaya with his
family members who were in business there. Ye was thus far more cosmopolitan than most military leaders. From 1949 to 1952, when Ye was first party secretary of the South China Bureau (including Guangxi and his native province, Guangdong), the South China Bureau was under the Central-South Bureau, headed by Lin Biao. He therefore knew personally many of the top officials who served under Lin. This special relationship served him well in keeping the loyalty of Lin Biao's close associates after Lin Biao's crash. On October 3, 1971, then, scarcely two weeks after Lin Biao's failed escape, Mao and Marshal Ye formed a new structure, “Office of the Central Military Commission,” and replaced Lin's followers with members whom they knew were loyal to Mao. The following day, Mao held a meeting of the office
(junwei ban-gong huiyi)
to launch a campaign to contain the influence that Lin Biao might have had on leaders of the PLA.
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In February 1972, Ye chaired a meeting that systematically reviewed Lin's errors and issued new directives for the armed forces. Several days after the meeting, under Ye's editorial direction, documents were released spelling out the mistakes made during Lin Biao's twelve years of leadership and the content and procedures to be used in carrying out the consolidation campaign within the PLA.
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Marshal Ye continued to enjoy the goodwill of Chairman Mao, and after Mao's death played a key role in arresting the Gang of Four. He then served as a kingmaker, a respected elder, who helped advise Hua Guofeng. He also played a key role in paving the way for Deng's return in 1977, but later did not support Deng's effort to push Hua aside. After Hua was pushed aside, Marshal Ye retired and spent his last years in his native Guangdong.

Yu Qiuli

During the Long March, Yu Qiuli traveled for 192 days with an arm that had been mangled in battle before finally reaching a medical station where it was amputated. He was known for his grit and determination, but also for his resourcefulness.
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Deng knew Yu Qiuli and his reputation for completing assignments under difficult circumstances. In 1949 Yu marched into Sichuan with the First Field Army, and at the end of 1949 he was assigned first to work in western Sichuan and then to handle logistics as head of rear services in the Southwest Military Region, where Deng was head of the region's military as well as head of the Southwest Bureau. Yu Qiuli, who remained in the military, was reassigned to Beijing shortly after Deng was transferred to Beijing in 1952. In April 1961, when Deng visited the Daqing oilfield, Yu Qiuli had already left the site, but Deng was fully briefed on his work by Yu's former right-hand man Kang Shi'en. Deng was in close contact with Yu Qiuli when they worked together on plans for the “third front”: the development of industry and military resources in China's western interior, where they would be insulated from any foreign attack. Unlike Deng who kept more regular hours, Yu Qiuli was a micromanager
who put in long hours, going over plans with work associates to make sure that jobs were completed. When problems arose, Yu Qiuli immersed himself until they were solved.

Yu Qiuli skyrocketed to national attention in December 1963 when Mao publicly called him a national hero for his role in creating the Daqing oilfield in the early 1960s. Because oilfields were generally in remote areas protected by the military and because petroleum was essential to military transport, the military was centrally involved in oil exploration and production. As the Soviets withdrew their specialists and stopped supplying petroleum in 1960, it was essential for China to develop its own oilfields. The most promising field was Daqing, in remote Heilongjiang province. China lacked the proper equipment, roads, vehicles, electricity, and trained manpower needed to develop Daqing. At the worksite, workers as well as officials lived in tents and, later, mud housing that they built. Yu Qiuli, as minister of the petroleum industry (a position he had held since 1958), personally went to Daqing where he became the local party secretary, in effect the project manager. He slept on site, and proved to be a resourceful and determined leader. In 1960 when Yu first went to Daqing, Daqing produced 9 percent of the nation's total petroleum. In 1963, after Yu developed Daqing, this ratio had shot up to 46 percent.
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