Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (28 page)

Zhou Enlai returned from his December 1974 talks with Mao with renewed hope of reviving higher education. During that meeting Zhou Enlai had yielded in allowing candidates proposed by the Gang of Four to lead China's ministries for culture and physical education, but he was prepared to fight to enable his candidate Zhou Rongxin to lead education, and received Mao's agreement. Zhou Rongxin, no relation to Zhou Enlai, had mostly been involved in party work, but he had studied at the anti-Japanese university in Yan'an and in 1961 had served briefly as a vice minister of education. In this position, Zhou Rongxin had begun making plans for genuine university education, but Mao did not approve and his plans were aborted the following year.

After his appointment as minister of education in January 1975, Zhou Rongxin again began planning to restore higher education.
⁵⁰
To reduce the risk of Mao's opposition, he was careful to reiterate the importance of theoretical study, which included Marxism-Leninism and Chairman Mao's directives on education. But he also pursued genuine reform. From May through September the Ministry of Education, under Zhou Rongxin's direction, sponsored many public forums to discuss educational matters. In addition, the ministry published the journal
Educational Revolution Bulletin (Jiaoyu geming tongxun)
in which Zhou Rongxin gave voice to those with genuine experience in higher education.
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He dared to say that in their one year of university study, workers, peasants, and soldiers could not learn as much as students who had previously studied there for three years. He also boldly asserted
that the workers, peasants, and soldiers studying at university who would simply return to their rural cooperatives could not fill China's need for trained officials and for scientific and technical specialists.
⁵²

Deng Xiaoping fully supported Zhou Rongxin. In a talk on September 26, 1975, Deng declared that all countries that modernized, no matter what their social system, required skilled people with high levels of education and training, and that Chinese universities had fallen to the level of high schools elsewhere. During the previous year, when a visiting delegation of U.S. university presidents had cautiously told Deng that in their view Chinese higher education had serious problems, Deng replied, to their surprise, that he completely agreed with them and said he wanted them to convey their views to other party officials as well.
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At a rural work forum from September 27 to October 4, Deng once again spoke out about improving China's institutes of higher learning. He said that to meet Mao's goal of achieving the four modernizations, China would need officials who had received a higher education. He also explained that the primary responsibility of the university was to educate and that in order for the faculty to teach well, their status would have to be improved.
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Years later, such comments would seem like common sense, but given the political climate of the time, Deng was courageous; he risked incurring Mao's wrath.

In 1975 Deng went so far as to suggest that students should be allowed to go directly from high school to university without the usual two-year interruption for physical labor. Actually, Chinese-American Nobel laureate Lee Tsung-Dao had suggested this to Zhou Enlai when they met in October 1972 and even Mao had approved of the idea when Lee Tsung-Dao raised it with him on May 30, 1974. In November 1975, however, this notion, then called “Premier Zhou's directive,” was attacked as part of Deng's supposed efforts to bring back “bourgeois officials” and to carry out a “rightist reversal of verdicts.”
⁵⁵
While Mao remained alive, Deng was not able to achieve his goal of allowing universities to resume normal operations.

Meanwhile, with Deng's encouragement, Zhou Rongxin began drawing up a document to guide educational policy. A third draft was completed on November 12, after the criticism of Deng had begun. Yet the essential core of the document remained unchanged: persons trained from 1949 to 1966 would have the value of their educations affirmed (they would not be disparaged as “bourgeois intellectuals”); high-level specialized training was to be resumed; the amount of time spent in high school and university training would be increased; and overall educational standards were to be raised. Two
days later, on November 14, Zhou Rongxin was summoned to a Politburo meeting where he was bitterly attacked for his proposals.
⁵⁶

The criticism of Zhou Rongxin was even more severe than the criticism of Deng. In December 1975 Zhou Rongxin was subject to continuous criticism until he fell ill and had to be taken to the hospital. Even so, he was taken from the hospital and subjected to more than fifty additional criticism sessions. Finally, at a criticism meeting on the morning of April 12, 1976, Zhou Rongxin fainted and before dawn the next day, at age fifty-nine, he passed away.
⁵⁷
For a time, Chinese educational reform also died.

Prelude to Mao's Dismissal of Deng, Fall 1975

In his later years, Mao spent less time on the details of governing and more time indulging his interests in literature and history, albeit with an eye to their relevance to current politics. Before his eye operation on July 23, 1975, Mao, scarcely able to see, had others read to him. Beginning on May 29, 1975, a classics professor from Peking University, Ms. Lu Di, came to read him classic stories and to discuss them with him. On August 14, she recorded Mao's views on the Chinese classic story of the righteous rebels in
Water Margin
, including his view that their experiences had contemporary relevance.
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Mao's views were passed on to Yao Wenyuan, who seized the opportunity to join Jiang Qing in criticizing Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping for behaving like the rebel leader Song Jiang, a capitulationist who had lost his revolutionary fervor.
⁵⁹

At a meeting of the Political Research Office on August 21, Deng Xiaoping, sensing trouble and trying to keep it under control, announced that the discussion of
Water Margin
was strictly a literary issue, to be discussed only in literary circles.
⁶⁰
But Mao had a different view and allowed the discussion to get broad public attention. Mao was already concerned that Deng, like Zhou, was eager to recall many senior political figures who would then turn their backs on the Cultural Revolution. It would be difficult to stop Mao's suspicions from escalating.
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The question of how Deng might treat Mao's reputation after his death was too sensitive to discuss directly; they brought it up indirectly, by discussing how Khrushchev had savaged Stalin's reputation. Deng's critics warned that he could end up being China's Khrushchev. If Deng removed Mao's rebels under the guise of “opposing factionalism” and allowed bureaucrats to return, might they not seek revenge—against both
Mao and those rebels who had attacked them—by sullying Mao's reputation?

Jiang Qing, always looking for a chance to attack Deng that would appeal to Mao, pounced on the opportunity presented by Mao's description of
Water Margin
. From August 23 to September 5, a series of articles appeared in
Guangming Daily, People's Daily, Red Flag
, and other papers, warning against the negative example of the rebel leader Song Jiang in
Water Margin
. Jiang Qing also began speaking out more forcefully against Deng and others who had been making changes. On September 15, she used a large political conference on the Dazhai agricultural model to deliver an hour-long diatribe in which she drew analogies from
Water Margin
and complained that some high officials were trying to push Mao aside.

Mao, however, who since the fall of 1974 in his effort to achieve stability and unity had generally restrained Jiang Qing, felt that she had misused the conference on rural issues and had gone too far in her comments. When Nancy Tang showed him a copy of Jiang's speech, Mao declared that it was “bullshit”
(fang pi)
and “way off the mark”
(wenbu duiti)
, blocked its publication, and announced that Jiang Qing should quiet down.
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Many high officials suspected that Mao had been growing uncomfortable with the continued criticism of former revolutionary rebels and the return of so many senior officials, but for the moment the
Water Margin
campaign trailed off.

Meanwhile, on September 20, 1975, Zhou Enlai, feeling the pressure from the
Water Margin
campaign, locked himself in a small hospital room before surgery and reviewed the entire transcript of the records about an event when as an underground worker in 1931 he was suspected of allowing information to be passed to the Guomindang.
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As he went into the operating room Zhou said to his wife, Deng Yingchao, “I am loyal to the party. I am loyal to the people. I am not one who surrenders.” She passed his remarks on to Wang Dongxing to deliver to Mao.
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It seems that Zhou, like Mao, would spend his last months filled with concern about his reputation in the party.

The Clash over Tsinghua University, Fall 1975

After his successful eye operation on July 23, 1975, Mao began reading documents that he had not been able to read before. As he read, he became increasingly concerned that Deng was moving too fast, going beyond what was necessary to restore order.
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By October, Mao had begun to focus on Tsinghua University, which had been dear to his heart since 1969 when he had declared it, along with Peking University and six factories, a national model. During 1975 Mao had restrained himself as Deng criticized one group after another that Mao had supported earlier in the Cultural Revolution; in the case of Tsinghua
University, however, Deng had gone too far.
⁶⁶

Although none of Deng's generation of top political leaders had graduated from university, Deng and many bright Communists of his era, like Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang, but unlike Mao, were instinctively comfortable with intellectuals and believed deeply that their help was essential to modernization. Deng knew Mao's sensitivities about “bourgeois intellectuals,” but in late 1975, having gained confidence by retaining Mao's support as he consolidated in other areas, Deng charged boldly into the lion's den—into Tsinghua University—even though he knew Mao had a special attachment to the place.

The Tsinghua leaders in 1975, Party Secretary Chi Qun and Deputy Party Secretary Xie Jingyi, had arrived at Tsinghua early in the Cultural Revolution as revolutionary rebels who were part of the “worker propaganda teams.” Chi Qun, a soldier who had become deputy head of the propaganda section of the 8341 Central Guards Regiment Unit that guarded Zhongnanhai, was sent to Tsinghua in 1968 by Wang Dongxing. A committed radical, he rose to the position of party secretary of the university. His comrade-in-arms at Tsinghua was Ms. Xie Jingyi. From 1958 to 1968 Xie Jingyi had been a confidential secretary
(jiyao mishu)
for Chairman Mao, who, using the familiar term for juniors, referred to her as “little Xie”
(Xiao Xie)
. “Little Xie” rose to become one of the party secretaries of Beijing City, as well as a deputy secretary at Tsinghua. Chi Qun and Xie Jingyi, supported by the radicals, were regarded by Tsinghua University intellectuals as oppressive ideologues.

In August 1975, as Deng was expanding his targets for consolidation, Liu Bing, a deputy party secretary at Tsinghua, became more optimistic. A former subordinate of Hu Yaobang in the Communist Youth League, Liu was persuaded by Tsinghua intellectuals to send a letter to Mao that spelled out how Chi Qun was leading a degenerate “bourgeois” lifestyle and poisoning the atmosphere at the university. In his letter, Liu Bing wrote that Chi Qun did not look at documents and refused to meet people or otherwise carry out his work responsibilities. Chi Qun was often drunk and ill-tempered, cursing people, flying into a rage, and smashing cups and glasses. He was also guilty of sexual harassment. When Liu Bing consulted with Hu Yaobang about the appropriate channels to get the letter to Mao, Hu suggested that he first give
the letter to Deng. Deng promptly and courageously forwarded the letter to Mao.

Mao did not answer Liu Bing nor did he say anything about it to Deng, but Chi Qun was made aware of the letter and immediately held a high-level party meeting to criticize “those within the Tsinghua Party Committee supporting the ‘revisionist’ line,” namely, Liu Bing and his supporters. Not long thereafter, Liu Bing drafted a second letter, this time focusing on the political problems of Chi Qun. Party Secretary Chi Qun, he wrote, with the support of Xie Jingyi, was obstructing the circulation of Deng's speeches and Minister of Education Zhou Rongxin's directives. (Zhou Rongxin had announced that students no longer needed to spend one-third of their time in physical labor, that the number of peasant and worker students with low academic credentials would be reduced, and that the focus would be on educating science and technical specialists.) Deng was advised by Li Xin and others not to forward Liu's second letter because of Mao's sensitivities about his two model universities, but Deng was undeterred; he forwarded it on to Mao.
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On October 19, Mao summoned Li Xiannian, Wang Dongxing, and others to a meeting, but Deng was not included. The Chairman told them that Liu Bing's “motive in writing the letters was impure. He wants, Mao said, to overthrow Chi Qun and Little Xie. The spearhead in the letter is aimed at me … in 1968 Little Xie led 30,000 workers into Tsinghua.” Mao asked why Liu Bing had not sent the letters directly and instead sent them by way of Deng. He told them, “Tell Xiaoping that he should pay attention and not fall into the trap of being partial to Liu Bing.”
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In line with Mao's directives, on October 23 Deng chaired an enlarged meeting of the Politburo, where he passed on Mao's instructions. High officials from the Beijing Party Committee in turn passed on Mao's instructions to the Tsinghua Party Committee.