Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (49 page)

The first part of the conference was held from January 18 to February 15, with a five-day break after January 26 for the Spring Festival. It was convened by the party Propaganda Department and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
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By the time the concrete plans for the conference had been completed, there was general agreement among the elite leaders that “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Judging Truth” had won out over the “two whatevers.” Hu Yaobang had just become head of the Propaganda Department, and Wang Dongxing, the leader of the more conservative forces, had undertaken a self-criticism. Those in charge of planning for the conference were largely cosmopolitan liberal leaders in the propaganda field. At a plenary session opening the conference, Hu Yaobang described the purpose of the conference: to review propaganda work over the past three decades and to outline how the party should support the greater opening of the country and implementation of the four modernizations. Hu praised the great progress that had been made in liberating thought following the fall of the Gang of Four—two years of progress that had been aided in recent months by the
leadership of Deng, who had advocated seeking the true path from facts. Hu Yaobang also explained that during this first part of the conference, which would last until mid-February, the participants would be divided into five small groups.
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During the second part, a larger group of more than four hundred leaders of propaganda units from all over the country would make plans to implement the consensus reached during this first part.

Hu Yaobang selected as chairmen of the small groups mostly liberal, open-minded intellectuals who worked at newspapers and in universities, think tanks, and propaganda departments. Although some of the participants, such as Wu Lengxi and Hu Sheng, were more conservative in their thinking, four of the five section leaders—Hu Jiwei, Yu Guangyuan, Wu Jiang, and Zhou Yang—had played active roles in the earlier discussion on “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Judging Truth,” which was an indirect attack on the rigidities of Maoist orthodoxy, and the fifth member, Tong Dalin, was a liberal close to Yu Guangyuan.
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Although two of the most senior officials present, Zhou Yang and Lu Dingyi, had held the highest positions in the propaganda apparatus at the time of the 1957 anti-rightist campaign, they later expressed serious regrets about this campaign against intellectuals and subsequently became strong advocates of greater freedom. Participants at the conference came from all over the country, and following the meeting in Beijing, many local areas held their own similar conferences.
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As the conference began, Democracy Wall was in full bloom. But whereas Xidan Democracy Wall was a mass movement with no formal organization or planning, the Conference on Theoretical Principles was carefully orchestrated from start to finish. In addition, the poster writers and onlookers at Xidan were casual strangers who met one another occasionally at the wall, but the 160 participants at the Conference on Theoretical Principles were carefully selected party members who interacted almost daily for a month. Their talks were more polished and reflected broader understanding of party history and world developments than the postings at Democracy Wall. Even so, the two venues had common roots: the heartfelt desire to create a more open intellectual atmosphere in the new era. There were other connections between the two venues. Wang Ruoshui, a deputy editor of
People's Daily
and a participant at the Conference on Theoretical Principles, was assigned to report on the happenings at Xidan Democracy Wall; after going there to observe, he reported back to conference participants that Democracy Wall seemed vital and peaceful, and that the posted comments seemed sincere.
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Other participants at the conference conveyed similar views based on their observations at Democracy Wall.

In guiding the Conference on Theoretical Principles, Hu Yaobang made an effort to retain the support of both Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping. He cleared his speech at the opening plenary session with Hua Guofeng and in it praised the successes achieved under Hua's leadership. Deng was busy planning his trip to the United States and the attack on Vietnam, but on January 27, the day before he was to depart for the United States, when Hu reported to Deng plans for the conference, Deng told him that no one had yet clarified what kind of democracy was appropriate for China and that careful thought should be given to this question. Deng told Hu Yaobang to organize twenty or thirty staff members to help clarify the relevant issues and to prepare an essay of twenty-to thirty-thousand characters on the practice of democracy to be delivered on the sixtieth anniversary of the May Fourth demonstrations. Deng said the essay should show that socialist democracy would surpass bourgeois democracy.
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The atmosphere at the Conference on Theoretical Principles was epitomized by the treatment of Wu Lengxi, the former editor of
People's Daily
who had been a critic of “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Judging Truth.” Wu was ordered to write a self-criticism, and when his first self-criticism was judged insufficient, he wrote another. Liberals were gaining in power but they used the same techniques of criticism and self-criticism to achieve unity that had previously been used to support the radical cause. Participants at the conference reminded Wu that Deng Xiaoping had clearly told him on August 23, 1978, that the editing of volume 5 of Mao's
Selected Works
should express the spirit of “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Judging Truth.” Wu confessed that because he had not wanted to damage Mao's reputation, he had supported the “two whatevers.” He acknowledged that he should do more to “liberate his thinking.”
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Participants responded eagerly to Hu Yaobang's opening speech at the conference, which encouraged them to liberate their thinking and to speak without inhibition.
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The new mood burst the boundaries of restraint, allowing unprecedented levels of candor in criticism of party affairs. Participants were free to criticize past errors of the Maoist period and to consider a broader range of ideas as new boundaries for what was acceptable were drawn. Wang Ruoshui, deputy editor of
People's Daily
, powerfully argued on behalf of more freedom in a talk examining the question of how Mao and a small group of
his followers could lead the entire population to the disastrous Great Leap Forward; he pointed to the attack on intellectuals in 1957 that had left them terrified to speak out and therefore unable to prevent Mao from committing horrible errors. A professor of philosophy at People's University went so far as to call the Gang of Four a “fascist dictatorship.” Yan Jiaqi, later head of the Political Science Institute of the CASS, recommended limited terms of office for all officials to prevent a recurrence of such disasters.
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From the beginning of the conference, however, some of the participants were worried that they might get in trouble if the political tides turned and the top leaders became more conservative. One participant said that unlike the 1957 “hundred flowers” period, there should be legal guarantees so that people will not be punished for speaking out.
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As usual at such conferences, printed summaries of the sessions were distributed to top leaders who did not attend the sessions, and as they read the reports, several high-level leaders complained that the theorists at the meeting had gone too far. At the same time, Hong Kong and foreign journalists began writing about “de-Maoization,” which put pressure on Chinese leaders to demonstrate that they were not guilty of this charge. Some Chinese leaders even feared that China's theorists were in danger of following the path of Khrushchev, whose de-Stalinization program had weakened the Soviet party's authority.
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Indeed, senior party officials began to complain that the views expressed at the conference were dangerously close to criticizing virtually everything that had occurred during the Mao era. Some veterans who had held important positions in the Mao era worried that they too might be tarred with the growing criticism of Mao, and some began to raise questions about whether Hu Yaobang and others at the conference were being “revisionist,” anti-Mao, and anti-party.

The gap between certain senior party officials, on the one hand, and the outspoken people at Democracy Wall and the Conference on Theoretical Principles, on the other, was proving too large to bridge.
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Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, and others who had supported Deng at the Third Plenum in December 1978 began to express fears that the criticism of the party was going so far as to threaten their ability to maintain discipline and order. Hu Yaobang, sensing the growing danger of a conservative reaction, warned conference participants that the criticisms by some individuals had exceeded the bounds of good judgment and loyal party behavior. At a journalists' conference in the Propaganda Department on February 28, Hu Yaobang said that although
Mao had made errors, “we must objectively acknowledge the great contributions of Chairman Mao.”
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These comments, however, were not enough to stop the party conservatives from continuing to criticize him and the conference.

Conference on Theoretical Principles, Part Two

On March 16, the day Chinese troops left Vietnam after a month-long war, Deng addressed a meeting of party leaders. Now that his visit to the United States and the attack on Vietnam were behind him, he could refocus on basic domestic political issues. He assured participants that general conditions were good for national stability and unity, but he warned that there were some worrisome threats. Consequently, it was necessary to firmly hold high the banner of Mao Zedong. Otherwise there was a danger, he warned, that the party itself would be attacked, which would denigrate the People's Republic of China and mar an entire period of Chinese history. In order to preserve stability and unity, Deng insisted that the party set aside for now the evaluation of some historical issues, such as the Cultural Revolution. The newspapers, cautioned China's paramount leader, should give this issue careful attention.
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Having read the reports of the small group sessions at the first part of the Conference on Theoretical Principles, Deng agreed with the other party leaders who complained that the party theorists had gone too far in criticizing Mao and the party. Just as Mao after the campaign to let a hundred flowers bloom in 1957 felt that intellectuals had gone too far in their criticism, so Deng in 1979 felt intellectuals had again overstepped. But learning the negative lesson from Mao's 1957 counterattacks, Deng did not want to overreact and lose the support of intellectuals. Meanwhile, those who supported Democracy Wall and the spirit of the first part of the theory conference complained privately that the summary reports, written under the supervision of conservatives Deng Liqun and Hu Qiaomu, had exaggerated the level of criticism of the party in order to provoke Deng Xiaoping into breaking with those who wanted a more democratic discussion.
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Deng Xiaoping was especially upset at Wang Ruoshui, deputy editor of
People's Daily
, who not only criticized Mao, but also allowed his views to be published in Hong Kong. Like other high-level officials, Deng insisted that differences of opinion among party leaders were not to be made public.

To help prepare his speech for the conference, Deng turned again to Hu Qiaomu, who had attended the first part of the conference. Deng's meeting with Hu Qiaomu, Hu Yaobang, and others on March 27 to go over the draft of his speech took place two days after the posting of Wei Jingsheng's essay on democracy that had so alarmed senior party officials. Although Deng wanted to allow more freedom than during the Mao era, he also wanted to establish principles that would draw a firm boundary about what kinds of political commentaries were acceptable and unacceptable. He told Hu Qiaomu, Hu Yaobang, and the other drafters of his speech that four basic principles should be presented to clarify the boundaries of freedom.
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Although his speech was prepared within only a few days, it not only set the tone for part two of the conference, but also served for decades as the guide for deciding whether or not a given article or book or movie was politically acceptable.

Four Cardinal Principles, March 30, 1979

In his influential major address, Deng laid out the four cardinal principles
(jiben yuanze)
to draw the line between what was acceptable and what was unacceptable. Writings should not challenge: (1) the socialist path, (2) the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) the leadership of the Communist Party, and (4) Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Deng continued to acknowledge that in some areas China could learn from the capitalist countries. He also recognized that a socialist country can make serious errors and suffer setbacks, such as those caused by Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. But he denied that China's problems stemmed from socialism; in his view, they resulted instead from the long pre-Communist history of feudalism and imperialism. China's socialist revolution had already narrowed the gap with the capitalist countries and would continue to do so. Moreover, a dictatorship of the proletariat would continue to be needed to counter forces hostile to socialism and to socialist public order—including counter-revolutionaries, enemy agents, and criminals—even as China allowed the practice of “socialist democracy,” which remained essential for modernization. Like modernization, Deng said, democratization could advance step by step.
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