Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (20 page)

With Mao's “three directives” as cover, warrior Deng, boldly swinging his broad sword and axe
(dadao kuofu)
, set out to eliminate chaos and to put the country on a path to modernization. The problems he faced were monumental. Like leaders of other countries after a civil war, he had to unite the perpetrators and victims of the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy was stagnant, planning was in disorder, and statistical reports were unreliable. Agricultural production was not enough to feed the population, let alone produce industrial crops like cotton and flax. Transportation systems had broken down, keeping resources in one locality from reaching the industrial producers in other localities. The military, overstretched from the countless political struggles and its limitless responsibilities running civilian work units throughout the country, had neglected training and fallen far behind possible adversaries in terms of military technology: China simply was not prepared for armed conflict. And because Chinese intellectuals had been decimated during the Cultural Revolution, virtually no technical specialists had been trained for an entire decade. Deng thus lacked the trained manpower needed to guide the work on the four modernizations.

Since 1941, Mao had used “rectification”
(zhengfeng)
campaigns to bring unity to the Communist Party. The campaigns were a powerful weapon for attacking those who were not sufficiently committed to Mao's personal leadership and what he stood for. During lengthy inquisitions, the victims were required to give detailed protestations of loyalty that would convince colleagues of their sincerity. Psychological pressures on those being criticized were enormous, and the results were ugly: some were killed or sent to engage in physical labor, and others, unable to stand the intense pressure, committed suicide. The discipline gained through such rectification during the 1940s
and early 1950s had been critical for enabling the Communists to defeat the Guomindang during the civil war and unify the country. The rectification campaigns after 1956, however, were so severe that they had alienated many intellectuals and party members who previously had been loyal.

The term Deng used in 1975 to describe his efforts to achieve unity was
zhengdun
(consolidation), a term long used in the Chinese Communist military that Zhou Enlai had adapted in 1972 to describe an initiative similar to Deng's. Among soldiers,
zhengdun
described how after a battle or a campaign, the surviving troops in various units would regroup to prepare for the next battle. A key part of regrouping was identifying and empowering a new leadership team in each unit, to replace those who had been injured or killed. During consolidation, errors in the previous battles were criticized but the main focus was on rebuilding the supply lines and reorganizing the leadership to face the next battle.

In 1975, in carrying out consolidation, it was not easy to prevent lower-level officials from reverting to the more vicious attacks they had come to know during the rectification campaigns—especially when they found opportunities to settle accounts with those who had earlier destroyed their friends and relatives. Deng sought to end the cycle of retribution in political campaigns of the previous twenty-five years; he continued to reiterate that the purpose was not to settle old scores but to regroup to prepare for a new round of challenges.

The key to organizing an effective national government, Deng believed, was not changing laws and rules but locating and empowering a team of leaders in every administrative unit. To provide capable direction based on good grassroots information, it was essential that, at each level, officials would choose able and reliable leaders for the next level below. In Deng's view, for organizational reliability, a team of leaders was better than a single leader, no matter how able. Something might happen to one leader, but if there were a small team, then others would be ready to take over if problems arose. Ideally, these leadership team members would not only be able to provide overall leadership when needed but would also develop specialized knowledge in the areas to which they were assigned—for example, industry, culture, or political-legal work. In larger units as many as seven or eight leaders might constitute the team, in smaller units perhaps only two or three. The leaders would be given great leeway in how they went about their work as long as they met the goals set by the next higher-level units.

During his work in 1975, Deng made identifying team leaders in units
throughout the country a top priority. Until October 1975, Deng enjoyed Mao's full support in this effort, which at times included clamping down on former revolutionaries and replacing them with experienced officials who had been attacked during the early years of the Cultural Revolution. In late 1974 and 1975, Mao supported the rehabilitation of more than six hundred leading senior officials.

Taking a long-term view, in late 1975 Deng began to improve the educational system so that at some point in the future, new officials would be chosen based on their knowledge and ability to manage, not just on whom they knew. By necessity, this was a distant dream. The system Deng inherited in 1975 was in shambles and many of the most able officials had not had any opportunity to study. Their experiences were so varied that even standardized tests could not be useful. It would take another decade before schools and universities would produce enough graduates so that one's level of education could be a useful criterion for selecting team leaders, even for mid-level units. Instead, for many years the government had to continue to rely primarily on personal evaluations for the selection of officials.

For the official chosen or not chosen, the stakes were high. Those chosen received not only employment but also perquisites and honor, as well as improved job prospects and the possibility of better housing and education for their families. Moreover, given the divisive legacy of the Cultural Revolution, the process of selecting team officials was contentious. To make the system more meritocratic, Deng would have to start at the top with proven senior officials who would choose team leaders, who in turn would pick those at the next level down, all the way down to the lowest levels. Deng began his consolidation with the military.
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Consolidating the Military

When he was named chief of the General Staff, Deng wasted no time in getting to work on what he considered the most important steps toward consolidation in the PLA: restoring discipline, downsizing, improving training, and establishing a new team of leaders in each unit. On January 25, 1975, with Mao's full support, Deng called together officials at the regimental level and above. Former political commissar Deng did not mince words as he spelled out what was wrong with the military. The PLA had become overextended as it took on civilian functions during the Cultural Revolution. In addition, many officials had become “bloated, disorganized, arrogant, extravagant, and
lazy”
(zhong, san, jiao, she, duo)
. A lack of discipline at the top, Deng said, had resulted in factionalism. Officers had become arrogant because of their power over civilians during the Cultural Revolution and many used this power to enjoy luxurious housing, expensive banquets, and lavish entertainment, as well as to shower extravagant gifts on their friends. High officials had become lazy in attending to the problems at lower levels, lax in carrying out orders, and reluctant to undertake bold initiatives.
¹¹
Consequently, the military, despite its huge size, was in a poor position to defend the country. Many military units behaved like the groups of guerrillas on separate mountaintops during the anti-Japanese struggle.
¹²

Deng, the “steel factory,” made it clear how he would treat those who disobeyed orders to end factionalism: “People guilty of factionalism,” he said, “will all be transferred out. We won't leave a single officer or enlisted man.” This threat, he made clear, included people at the very top. He vowed to “carry it out no matter how many would be involved.... We are the PLA. Our job is to fight.”
¹³
Many still involved in factionalism had taken part in Red Guard and revolutionary rebel activity, but he did not attack them for having taken part in those organizations in the past. The important thing was what they were doing now. Whatever the past battles, all those who were ready to work with their new leaders were welcome.

Fortunately for Deng and Marshal Ye, their effort to restore discipline and plain living in the military was supported by a solid majority of the eleven members on the Standing Committee of the CMC. The CMC, officially restored on February 5, 1975, provided leadership over the daily work of military affairs. The radicals on the Standing Committee (Wang Dongxing, Wang Hongwen, and Zhang Chunqiao) were completely outnumbered by the supporters of Deng and Marshal Ye.

With the support of the Standing Committee and with Mao's approval, the two leaders continued to bring back many of the 25,000 former military officers whom Deng said had been falsely accused during the Lin Biao period. Deng directed that those people wrongly accused should be allowed to return to work and receive necessary medical treatment. Investigations, he said, should be carried out quickly and without publicity.
¹⁴

Before he took on his new responsibilities, Deng had clearly been thinking about what it would take to modernize the military. On January 14, 1975, after scarcely a week in his new position, Deng directed his staff to begin working on five-and ten-year visions for upgrading military equipment and munitions.
¹⁵
The conceptual plans would address repairing and upgrading
old equipment and manufacturing missing parts, areas badly neglected during the Cultural Revolution, as well as the development of missiles and other modern equipment.
¹⁶

Like Mao, Deng bristled as he talked about the growing threat of the Soviet Union after the United States pulled out of Vietnam. He worried about the loss of public support in the United States for remaining firm against the Soviets. He worried that President Ford, who had replaced President Nixon in August 1974, lacked Nixon's deep understanding of strategic issues and his sure-footed readiness to respond to any new Soviet threat. Because the United States would not press the Soviet Union, the Soviets were left free to advance in Asia, where a million Soviet troops were already stationed not far from the Chinese border.

Knowing that the United States was the only power capable of pressuring the Soviet Union on a broad scale, Deng, in all his meetings with American officials, pressed them to take a stronger stance against the Soviets. Mao did not need to worry that Deng would be as soft as Zhou Enlai in dealing with the United States. When Deng met Kissinger in April and November 1974, he not only called attention to the Soviet Union's aggressive actions, but kept needling Kissinger for being too timid in responding to the Soviet threat.
¹⁷
In fact, Deng instructed his foreign ministry officials, particularly Foreign Minister Huang Hua, to complain to the Americans at every meeting that the United States was not standing firm enough against the Soviet Union.

The military issue that occupied most of Deng's time in 1975 was downsizing. The huge size of the military strained the budget; more than six million people were serving in the military, over 20 percent more than in 1966.
¹⁸
China needed to reduce the number of less-educated senior officers and train a new, better-educated generation of leaders to handle modern technologies. Downsizing was a critical first step for the long-range development of a modern sustainable military. But Deng knew he could not undertake a disruptive downsizing if war were imminent. Although Mao had said that war was inevitable, and Deng did not yet challenge this view, Deng did say that China could reduce the risk of a conflict occurring over the next several years.
¹⁹

No military issue aroused more serious resistance than downsizing, and a leader without Deng's military stature and toughness would have found the task nearly impossible. Every year, many soldiers who completed their terms in the military were unable to find civilian jobs. New market opportunities were not yet available and the government budget was limited.
Placement services were in shambles, too, causing groups of discharged veterans to protest that they had not been given appropriate work assignments.

The essence of Deng's approach to downsizing was to develop new tables of organization that reduced the targeted number of soldiers to be allotted to the various units throughout the military. As early as January 14, 1975, at a forum of officials from the General Staff Department, Deng announced that new tables of organization were to be drawn up. When the new tables of organization were completed, the air force and navy did not lose slots, but the army did. In addition, the number of positions for technical specialists was not reduced. In some locations troop numbers could be substantially reduced but in sensitive regions like Xinjiang, the targeted number of soldiers was increased.
²⁰
After the new tables were completed, the units were responsible for managing the concrete reductions within their units, selecting who was to be retained and who was to be discharged.
²¹
As always when dealing with controversial issues, Deng not only issued directives but also presented his rationale: he explained that with a limited national budget, the only way China could find money to invest in modern weapon systems was to cut personnel costs. Even those who worried that they themselves might be retired found it difficult to disagree with Deng's logic.