Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (68 page)

On February 29, the last day of the Fifth Plenum, Deng spelled out what he expected from the party—efficient administration. Sounding like a factory manager with a military background, he said, “Meetings should be small and short, and they should not be held at all unless the participants have prepared. . . . If you don't have anything to say, save your breath. . . . The only reason to hold meetings and to speak at them is to solve problems. . . . There should be collective leadership in settling major issues. But when it comes to particular jobs or to decisions affecting a particular sphere, individual responsibility must be clearly defined and each person should be held responsible for the work entrusted to him.”
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Those who knew Deng were not surprised at his determination to preserve public order. Public attacks would not be tolerated: the “four big freedoms” (to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write big-character posters), which in 1966 had given the Red Guards the right to launch their public attacks, would be abolished in the revised constitution. Deng explained what he meant by inner-party democracy: party members should speak out when they have something to say to help solve problems. Once top party leaders had listened to various views and made their decisions, the party members were to carry them out. Deng made it clear how party members who did not respond to his directives would be treated: “incompetent party members” would be removed.
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By 1980 his views had jelled; this speech remained a cogent summary of Deng's policies throughout his time at the helm.

The Inauguration: Fifth Plenum, February 23–29, 1980

At the Fifth Plenum, February 23–29, 1980, the Central Committee formally ratified the decisions made by Deng and his allies in the last weeks of 1979. The key Politburo members who supported Hua Guofeng—Wang Dongxing, Wu De, Chen Xilian, and Ji Dengkui—were officially criticized
and “resigned” from the Politburo; Chen Xilian and Ji Dengkui also lost their positions as vice premiers. Wang Dongxing and Chen Xilian were genuine radicals, but in fact Wu De and Ji Dengkui were not innately radical but experienced party leaders who had long survived by accommodating the leftist winds; their fate had been sealed by their role in the April 5, 1976, Tiananmen crackdown on those expressing respect for Zhou Enlai and Deng.

Deng's three main supporters, Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Wan Li, took over the key positions. Hu Yaobang became general secretary of the party. Although Hua Guofeng was nominally the premier, Zhao Ziyang became de facto premier and began leading the daily work of the State Council. Wan Li, meanwhile, became a de facto vice premier and head of the State Agricultural Commission, paving the way for the policy of allowing rural production to be contracted down to the household level. Formally, their positions as vice premiers were ratified at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the State Council in April and at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the NPC in August, when Ji Dengkui and Chen Xilian, having been removed from the Politburo in February, formally lost their positions as vice premiers.

The plenum in effect marked the inauguration of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang as leaders of the daily work of the party and government. A solid majority of Politburo members were now enthusiastic supporters of Deng's policies. This was important, not because of formal voting, which rarely takes place. Indeed, the Standing Committee of the Politburo rarely met. But the change in membership created a different political atmosphere at the top, and officials below quickly understood that their superiors would be pursuing a new policy direction. Accordingly, after the Fifth Plenum, lower-level officials scrutinized even more carefully Deng's and Hu's speeches and the documents they presented at major meetings, and no longer had to hedge their bets by paying close attention to what Hua Guofeng said.

The other high officials besides those at the very top who took office at the Fifth Plenum were senior party officials of proven ability who were also committed to reform. Deng excluded from key positions in his administration officials who had risen during the Cultural Revolution at the expense of experienced senior officials. For certain important positions within the military, he selected officials who had served under him in the Second Field Army, people with whom he had special relationships of trust. But otherwise, he had enough confidence in his own ability to lead party members of widely different backgrounds that he saw no need to require personal loyalty. He did
not lead a faction but rather an entire party, minus the beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution who had failed to make the transition to his rule.

Deng did not need to give specific directions to the Propaganda Department; propaganda officials at the Fifth Plenum, including the editors of the major media (
People's Daily
, the New China News Agency [Xinhua],
Guangming Daily
, and the party's theoretical journal,
Red Flag
) drew on Deng's presentations to write editorials and articles that reflected his views. Deng, long disciplined to bear weighty responsibilities and experienced in judging how his statements might be interpreted, was careful about what he said.

Signals from the top were studied very carefully by those below. When a provincial party secretary went to Beijing, it was common for him to talk first with a reliable acquaintance in the party Secretariat who kept abreast of Deng's current concerns. Each ministry and each province also had a small political research group, and one of its key assignments was to be fully conversant with the latest thinking of the top leaders and with the implications for their ministry or province. So many documents flowed down from above that it was impossible for lower-level officials to read every word carefully. Within each unit, the political research group worked to keep the unit's higher-level officials informed about which directives were most important, and to anticipate what Deng, General Secretary Hu Yaobang, and Premier Zhao Ziyang might do next. The leadership core in the unit then had a sense of what it had to do to stay out of trouble and how to appeal to the party center for resources.

The personnel changes in the early 1980s allowed Deng to manage routine work more efficiently and to move ahead with several programs that the Maoists would have either slowed or stopped. The logjam on reversing the verdict on Liu Shaoqi was immediately broken. From 1945 to 1966 Liu had been Mao's second in command, but then Mao had attacked Liu as a traitor and for having capitalist tendencies. Although Liu had passed away in 1969, his verdict was the most important one awaiting reversal. At the Fifth Plenum, Deng declared that such a reversal was not necessarily an attack on Mao. As it turned out, action on the reversal of Liu's verdict was a straw in the fresh wind; it helped prepare party members for the revised historical appraisal of Mao that would acknowledge his errors, and it facilitated the reversal of verdicts on other senior party officials who had worked closely with Liu.
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The Fifth Plenum also reestablished the party Secretariat that had been
abandoned in 1966. After it was reestablished, key members of the Politburo, those responsible for leading small groups of leaders in various sectors, kept their offices there. Indeed, the Secretariat became the premier institution for coordinating the daily work of the party. Meetings were held regularly each week, and Premier Zhao Ziyang, who had his office at the State Council, would join in to provide some coordination between the party and the government.

The changes made at the Fifth Plenum helped reduce the tensions at Politburo meetings and eased the path to widespread reform. Consolidation of the new leadership made it possible for Deng, within just a few months, to direct the dissolution of local agricultural collectives and to pass responsibility for rural production down to the individual household. The plenum also paved the way for the push in late 1980 to complete the evaluation of party history and to remove Hua Guofeng from all official positions of power.

Farewell to the Mao Era and Hua Guofeng, Fall 1980–June 1981

To date, no reliable records have been released showing exactly when Deng decided to push Hua Guofeng aside. Deng's years of experience in observing how Mao removed officials and Deng's orderly step-by-step removal of Hua's power base from December 1978 to June 1981, however, make it reasonable to assume that Deng had a strategy in place. Even if he did not have in December 1978 a precise plan for removing Hua, at least by then he had considered how he might gradually reduce Hua's authority without shocking his colleagues and without open public struggles.

In attacking high-level officials, Mao had often moved to first remove their key supporters, which isolated them and made them easier to attack. Similarly, Deng removed Hua's right-hand men in February 1980, and brought in Zhao Ziyang to perform the work of the premier. By the time Hua visited Japan in May 1980 he had little power left, but his visit there helped reassure foreigners that China was not splitting apart in a power struggle.
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In August 1980, Hua formally gave up his post of premier. Later, beginning in November 1980, at a series of Politburo meetings, despite bitter disagreements, the final decision was made to remove Hua from chairmanship of the party and the Central Military Commission (CMC), a decision that was formally announced in June 1981.

The evaluation of the history of the Chinese Communist Party, which focused on Mao, proceeded in tandem with the removal of Hua. The two efforts
had a natural link: Hua had affirmed all of Mao's policies and directives, even when Mao had committed grave errors—and these errors were coming to light in the more honest appraisal of the Mao era. The evaluation of party history began shortly after Ye's 1979 National Day speech, when Deng began a broad consultative process designed to reach a party consensus on the evaluation of Mao.
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The team that Deng set up under Hu Yaobang in the weeks after Marshal Ye's speech held its first meeting on October 30, 1979.

Deng had given the issue of how to handle Mao's legacy serious thought from at least 1956, when he was present at the 20th Party Congress in Moscow where Khrushchev had denounced Stalin. Over the years, Deng had had ample opportunity to contemplate the issue, especially during his three and a half years of rusticating in Jiangxi province during the Cultural Revolution. As a young man, he had expressed tremendous admiration for Mao, and for decades he had dedicated himself to serving Mao, only to be twice cast aside by him and subjected to humiliating public attacks. Deng's eldest son had been left paralyzed for life below the waist because of Mao's Red Guards. It would have been inhuman if Deng were not deeply resentful, and as tough as he was, Deng was very human. And yet, in his handling of the historical issue, Deng did not display any of his personal feelings.

The process of evaluating Mao was fully consistent with Deng's rational analysis of doing what was needed to retain the authority of the party, while still allowing high officials under him to depart from Mao's policies. In August 1980, when the evaluation was still in its early stages, Deng told journalist Oriana Fallaci, “We will not do to Chairman Mao what Khrushchev did to Stalin.”
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And in October 1980 when the discussions were taking place, Deng offered this guidance to the drafters: “When we write about his mistakes, we should not exaggerate, for otherwise we shall be discrediting Comrade Mao Zedong and this would mean discrediting our party and state.”
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The final document displayed enough overall respect for Mao that the authority of those who had worked closely with him, including Deng, was not endangered. Yet the resolution also had to show why those officials criticized by Mao now deserved to return to work, and to legitimatize the undoing of the high levels of collectivization and class struggle of the Mao era.

The first draft was ready in February 1980. Deng, reportedly unhappy with this early version, called in Hu Yaobang, Hu Qiaomu, and Deng Liqun to suggest that the writers (1) appraise positively Mao Zedong Thought and
Mao's historical role, (2) in the spirit of “seeking the true path from facts,” make clear Mao's errors during the Cultural Revolution, and (3) reach an overall conclusion that would help people unite and look toward the future. Of the three points, the first point was “the most important, the most fundamental, the most crucial.”
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No matter how much he had personally suffered over the years from Mao's criticisms and decisions, Deng told the drafters to make it clear that the party and the people must remain firmly committed to following Mao Zedong Thought. The return of many high-level officials who had suffered under Mao and the outpouring of criticisms of Mao on Democracy Wall meant that there was plenty of support in key circles for criticism of Mao; consequently, Deng could position himself publicly as a defender of the importance of Mao without risking a return to past policies.
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Each time he spoke out publicly, then, it was to complain that the last draft did not do enough to recognize Chairman Mao's great contributions.

On June 27, 1980, for example, Deng complained that the latest draft was too negative. Not only did he want the writers to do more to stress the positive things that Mao stood for, but he also pressed them to acknowledge that Mao's mistakes were primarily systemic and institutional. Deng accepted Hu Qiaomu's point that the drafters had no choice but to acknowledge the errors of the Great Leap Forward (in which, unlike those of the Cultural Revolution, Deng had been deeply involved). Deng insisted, however, that in dealing with the Great Leap, the drafters should begin by listing some of the positive achievements during that period and only thereafter acknowledge the weaknesses.
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