Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (71 page)

Deng could engage in relaxed conversation with his office director Wang Ruilin, but his relations with Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang remained more formal and he rarely saw them alone. They had considerable freedom to run
their offices as they saw fit. Deng learned their views through the written documents they forwarded to him, supplemented by comments from Wang Ruilin.

Deng did occasionally meet informally with senior veterans closer to his own age, like Yang Shangkun, Wang Zhen, and Bo Yibo, all of whom he had known for several decades. The high degree of personal trust among this small group of confidants enabled Deng to get more confidential estimates of the prevailing political atmosphere and personnel issues. Deng had an especially close relationship with Yang Shangkun, who was also from Sichuan and had been in charge of the party General Office when Deng was general secretary. Yang served as Deng's trusted go-between in dealing with the military. Deng also maintained less formal relations with his personal speech-writers and document drafters, especially Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun, with whom he enjoyed an easier give-and-take than with Hu Yaobang or Zhao Ziyang.

Deng devoted considerable time to preparations for the annual party plenums, for they helped forge a common perspective among the more than two hundred regular members of the Central Committee and the over one hundred alternate members. He gave even more time to the preparation of party congresses, held every five years, for they helped forge a consensus among even greater numbers of delegates who planned for a longer time period. For the planning of such major meetings, Deng did work with Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang to lay out his agenda of major issues to be covered, then allowed them to work with Hu Qiaomu and others in overseeing the drafting of documents and speeches. For Deng's major speeches, even after delivery there was usually another round of editing to tailor his speeches for the long-term historical record and to include them in his
Selected Works.

Like other top officials, Deng generally spent a few weeks during the coldest months of January and February visiting warmer climates. During the summer, too, he would go to coastal Beidaihe, where top-level officials gathered for relaxation and informal conversation. But for Deng, these “vacations” were, of course, also opportunities to deal with party business. In 1984, for example, he spent his winter vacation in Guangdong and Fujian, the site of the experimental zones, to affirm their achievements and declare them models for coastal development (see
Chapter 15
). And in 1988, 1990, 1991, and 1992, Deng visited (among other places) Shanghai, where he promoted plans for speeding up the city's development.

In his advanced age, Deng found several ways to conserve his strength. He conducted most business through written documents, avoiding taxing meetings.
Most of his phone calls were handled by Wang Ruilin. Deng required no oral briefings before meetings with foreign dignitaries, although his staff would see that he knew about some of the latest activities of the visitors. If not meeting visiting dignitaries, Deng usually ate his meals at home with his family; after supper he generally relaxed and watched TV with his children. He closely followed the news, but he also took an interest in sports, and once or twice a week he invited in people for dinner and bridge. But he did not engage in much idle conversation with his bridge partners, or even with his family.
⁶
Deng had a well-earned reputation, even within his family, for not being very talkative (
bu ai shuohua
).
⁷
Especially in his later years, Deng managed to conserve his strength so that when he met outsiders, they found him alert, lively, even intense.

When Deng gave speeches that did not require formal presentations, he could make organized presentations without notes. Typically, his only note was the topic of the speech and the group he was addressing. After he turned eighty in 1985, Deng backed away from giving lengthy speeches that required careful writing, editing, and presentation. With only a few exceptions, such as the talks from his 1992 southern journey, his speeches were no longer crafted into long symbolic documents.

Outside his immediate family, who considered him lovable, benign, and fun, Deng was not an intimate person. Colleagues and others had enormous respect for him, but they did not love him as they loved Hu Yaobang or as some loved Zhou Enlai. They knew that in a crunch Deng would do what he thought was best for the country, not necessarily what was good for those who served him. Indeed, some felt that in contrast to Zhou Enlai or Hu Yaobang, Deng treated people as useful tools. By never returning to his home village after he left at age sixteen, Deng made it clear that his personal commitment was to China as a nation, not to any locality, faction, or friend. Unlike Mao, Deng was not devious or, with only rare exceptions, vindictive. Underlings saw him as a stern, impatient, demanding but reasonable taskmaster, and they maintained a respectful distance. He was a comrade for the overall cause, not a friend whose loyalty went beyond organizational needs.
⁸
Mao had mercurial changes of mood, but Deng, as paramount leader, maintained a steady demeanor and consistent approach to governance.

Deng's Guidelines for Governing and Reinventing China

As a military leader during twelve years of warfare, Deng valued authority and discipline. Later, as a high civilian official participating in governing the
country, Deng valued national authority because he knew how difficult it had been for Chinese leaders in the century after the Opium War to maintain the authority necessary to rule the country. As a leader in the 1950s Deng had experienced the godlike power of Mao Zedong, and he had seen what such authority could achieve. But Deng also saw how difficult it was to accomplish anything when authority dissipated as it had during the Cultural Revolution. As preeminent leader, he knew that rules alone would not make people follow him. China was not yet a country in which citizens had internalized a general respect for the law, in part because they had long seen leaders change laws at will. Deng, like his fellow Communist leaders, believed that citizens needed to be “educated” in schools and in lifelong propaganda to understand why they were expected to behave in certain ways. But the “education” needed to be supplemented by a certain awe toward the highest leaders and a vague fear of what might happen to them and their families should they dare to flout that authority.

Deng knew he could never inspire the awe that Mao once did, but he was sensitive to what could be done to preserve his own authority. By the time he had become paramount leader, he was already enjoying personal respect based on his half-century of experience as a party leader, his training by Mao and Zhou Enlai for possible successorship, and his ability to make good decisions for the country. Until 1981 the image of Mao had remained so powerful that to maintain his own authority, Deng had to show his reverence for the Chairman. But by 1981, after Deng had gained acceptance that Mao's main teaching was to “seek the true path from facts,” and after the resolution on party history that acknowledged Mao's errors since 1958, Deng could maintain his authority even when he was departing from Mao's views on specific issues.

Deng embraced the notion of “inner-party democracy,” by which he meant that leaders would listen to “constructive opinions” to reduce the danger of making serious errors. But once a decision was made, party members, following “democratic centralism,” had to implement it.

Deng believed that economic growth would strengthen the authority of the party and his personal stature, and this assessment proved correct. When economic growth proceeded rapidly and smoothly, as in 1983–1984, Deng's authority was almost unassailable. But when economic problems became serious, such as in the late 1980s when China suffered rampant inflation, the public became frightened and Deng's stature suffered.

Deng never set out any guidelines for how to govern, but if one reads his
speeches, considers the comments of his underlings, and notes what Deng actually did, it is possible to summarize some principles that underlay his pattern of rule:

SPEAK AND ACT WITH AUTHORITY
. As a stern military leader for over a decade, Deng had learned to convey an air of command even when he engaged in witty conversation. Before a major presentation, he would clear his speech with other important leaders and with the guardians of orthodoxy, reinforcing his confidence that he was speaking with the voice of the party.

Once Deng announced a decision, he did not weaken his authority by admitting to errors. With foreign guests, Deng could relax, but within party circles he was cautious about putting his authority on the line, and when he did, he was decisive.

DEFEND THE PARTY
. Having seen in Moscow how Nikita Khrushchev's wide-ranging attacks on Stalin in 1956 damaged the authority of the party, Deng was determined to maintain respect for the Chinese Communist Party. He reined in criticism when he judged it would undermine basic respect for the party or his leadership. If critics attracted a large following, he responded even more vigorously. When Deng judged that praise of Western ideas such as Western-style democracy implied serious criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng was prepared to respond firmly to preserve the party's authority.

Unlike Mao, Deng did not subject his critics to public humiliation, but he was always tough with those whom he judged to be a threat to public order. He supported the death sentence for Jiang Qing and imprisoned critics like Wei Jingsheng. Party members who, despite their contributions, were critical of the party, like Wang Ruowang, Liu Binyan, or Fang Lizhi, were expelled from the party and dismissed from their positions. In the end, he allowed such people to travel abroad, but he prevented most from returning.

MAINTAIN A UNIFIED COMMAND STRUCTURE
. Deng did not believe that a separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches would work in China. He believed a single unified command structure was much more efficient and effective. China may have had the rudiments of a separation of power with the party congress acquiring quasi-legislative functions; the Secretariat, executive functions; and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection a quasi-judicial function examining
the behavior of party members. But under Deng, the strong single line of authority prevailed.

KEEP A FIRM GRIP ON THE MILITARY
. Deng, like Mao, endeavored to retain personal as well as party control over the military. When Hua Guofeng showed signs of being too close to military leaders, Deng immediately moved to block those ties. Even after giving up his other official positions, Deng remained chairman of the CMC until November 1989. Throughout his term as preeminent leader, he worked through his loyal supporter, Yang Shangkun, to guarantee the support of the military's top brass. Deng appointed true loyalists—his former subordinates in the Second Field Army—to key positions such as head of the Beijing Garrison Command. In return, they helped ensure that no dissident group would consider challenging his authority within the party.

BUILD PUBLIC SUPPORT BEFORE PROMOTING PATH-BREAKING POLICIES
. Deng tried to avoid going out on a limb to advocate policies that might arouse the resistance of many high officials and the general public. One of his most controversial moves was de-collectivizing the countryside. In 1979, Deng did not publicly support de-collectivization. He said only that where peasants were starving, they should be allowed to find a way to survive, a view that even conservative opponents could not easily criticize. Upon receiving reports that the starving peasants had dramatically increased production after they had “contracted down to the household,” Deng ensured that the successes were widely publicized. Only then, in May 1980, when a substantial number of localities reported successes and there was widespread public support for the policy of contracting agricultural production down to the household, did Deng declare his own support, and even then he did so without a big public appearance. Although he was still careful to state that the household responsibility system would be permitted only where local people supported it, Deng had every reason to expect that the practice would continue to spread rapidly.

AVOID TAKING THE BLAME
. When Deng's policies proved unpopular or mistaken, subordinates were ordinarily expected to take responsibility, just as Mao's errors were blamed on Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, and lower-level officials. In a country where discipline at the top still depended on personal authority, Deng, like many other high party officials, believed that it was sometimes
necessary to sacrifice the pawns to ensure continued respect for the king and his throne. There were some extreme situations when Deng judged it essential to put his own authority on the line to accomplish the task at hand—for example, when attacking Vietnam in 1979. But generally, a subordinate leader was expected to shoulder the blame for things that went wrong. Some of the key problems that developed with subordinates were over the question of who should accept the blame.

SET SHORT-TERM POLICIES IN LIGHT OF LONG-TERM GOALS.
Coming to power after six decades during which he had witnessed numerous changes, and leading a country proud of its 2,200 years of history, Deng found it natural to take a long-term perspective on the ups and downs of national power. Once in power, Deng did not have to face short-term elections and thus could focus on longer-term goals, such as the quadrupling of GNP between 1980 and 2000 or making the country a middle-income country by the middle of the twenty-first century. He could also offer Hong Kong and Taiwan the continuation of separate systems for at least a half-century after being absorbed into China. In making annual and five-year plans, too, Deng placed them in the perspective of his longer-term goals.