Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (98 page)

In early 1989, after the death of the Panchen Lama (another Tibetan religious leader) with the second-largest following among Tibetans, there was a brief moment of hope. The Dalai Lama, in his role as religious leader, was invited to go to Beijing for the memorial services. Beijing's assumption was that the Dalai Lama was generally more flexible than the Tibetan exile community and that Deng and the Dalai Lama might be able to begin some useful
discussions during his visit. But the exile community in Dharamsala, recognizing that Beijing leaders were trying to pull the Dalai Lama closer to Beijing, convinced the Dalai Lama that he should not attend. After this refusal, Deng and later his successors gave up trying to work with the Dalai Lama and the gridlock continued. Some observers felt that the Dalai Lama missed a great opportunity to make progress in bridging the gap. Since then, although the Dalai Lama has sent representatives from time to time for discussions in China, neither side has yielded on the basic points of contention.

By the middle of the 1980s a tragic cycle had emerged that continues to this day: The Dalai Lama's popularity abroad emboldens local Tibetans to resist, leading to a crackdown by Beijing. When foreigners learn of the crackdown, they complain, emboldening Tibetans to resist, and the cycle continues. But the Tibetans and Han Chinese both recognize there is a long-term change that began with the opening of Tibet to outside markets in the mid1980s and the input of economic aid to Tibet: an improvement in the standard of living and a decline of economic autonomy. In the 1950s outsiders settling in Tibet were mostly Han party officials and troops sent in by Beijing. After the mid-1980s settlers from the outside were overwhelmingly merchants who went to take advantage of economic opportunities generated by inputs of Chinese economic assistance to Tibet; many were members of Hui or other minorities from nearby poor provinces. Almost no outsiders settled in Tibetan villages but by the late 1990s, outsiders were already threatening to outnumber Tibetans in Lhasa.
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With more Tibetan youth learning Mandarin and receiving a Chinese education to further their careers, both Tibetans and Chinese see that the long-term trend is toward Tibetans absorbing many aspects of Chinese culture, and becoming integrated into the outside economy, while not giving up their Tibetan identity and loyalty.

Since Deng sent Hu Yaobang to Tibet in 1980, there has been no serious effort to reach a positive agreement between Tibetans and Beijing. The gridlock remains between Tibetan exiles determined to establish a greater Tibet that possesses genuine autonomy, and leaders in Beijing convinced that economic growth and expanded Tibetan participation in Chinese schools and culture will draw Tibet toward greater integration into the national economy and culture. The standoff between foreigners who want to help Tibetans gain more autonomy and Beijing leaders, who feel increasingly optimistic about their power to block such efforts as China rises, also continues.

When Deng returned to work in mid-1977, he worked with Marshal Ye Jianying and other senior officials to lay the groundwork for modernizing China's military. Yet scarcely a year later, this effort was postponed when Deng concluded that China's national security was under serious threat and the country had to begin immediate preparations for military action in Vietnam. When the war with Vietnam ended in March 1979, Deng judged that the risk of imminent military conflict was sufficiently low that he could continue to hold off on large-scale investments in modern military hardware and concentrate instead on the civilian economy. Deng did resume, however, the improvements to the military that he had begun in 1975: downsizing the forces; bringing in new, better-educated recruits; and strengthening overall discipline and training. This way, by the time he retired, China would have not only a stronger economic base but also a smaller, better-trained military force, one better prepared to use the modern weaponry that would be acquired after he left the stage.
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In 1977, Deng remained publicly deferential to Hua Guofeng, who was chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). But in fact, Marshal Ye and Deng, vice chairmen of the CMC, were in charge of China's military affairs. Hua had once been minister of public security, but aside from modest service with the guerrillas during World War II, and as a political commissar in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) after the Lin Biao affair, he had not served in the military and was unprepared for military leadership. He did not compare with Deng or Marshal Ye in terms of military experience, knowledge, or the respect accorded them by high-level military officials. So when
Hua was officially pushed aside and Deng became chairman of the CMC in June 1981, it merely gave official recognition to the man who, with Marshal Ye, had in fact been leading the military since mid-1977.
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There was no change in military policy.

Deng was forthright in recognizing the problems that China faced in its military. Deng said, “None of us, including the veteran comrades, is sufficiently capable of directing modern wars. We must recognize this fact.”
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Deng knew that China had fallen far behind in military technology and needed to adapt its strategies to cope with its main adversary, the Soviet Union. He knew that the assignment of military officials to civilian positions in the Lin Biao period had diverted attention from military issues.

What troubled him about military affairs during his eighteen months out of power was not that the Gang of Four had built up a solid following, for only in the Political Department under Zhang Chunqiao had they established real roots. What troubled him during his years out of office was that two years of valuable time that could have been used to restructure and improve the PLA had been wasted. During 1976 the military leaders whom Deng and Marshal Ye had put in place in 1975 could not reach Deng and Ye's earlier goal of reducing the number of personnel in the PLA by 26 percent by the end of the year; instead, the number of personnel was reduced by only 13.6 percent.
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After Mao's death, Deng spoke frankly about the problems of the PLA that had arisen on Mao's watch, even if he blamed them not on Mao but on Lin Biao.

In 1977 Deng's combination of responsibilities—in the military, science, technology, education, and foreign affairs—made it natural for him to focus on upgrading science and technology in the military. Two years earlier, he had advocated elevating education and training to the level of national strategic importance, but at the time he did not have the chance to implement it. Now, at a CMC forum on August 23, 1977, Deng repeated the message and underlined its importance. By elevating education and training, he meant not only teaching discipline and politics, but also making military leaders understand what would be required to improve their specialized technical knowledge and to carry out military exercises in preparation for battling an enemy with modern technology.
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In 1977 Deng and Marshal Ye were heirs to a group of Chinese military leaders, led by Peng Dehuai, who had tried in the 1950s to create a more professional military but had never received the full mandate from Mao to achieve this goal.
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Peng Dehuai had hoped to receive technological help from
the Soviet Union. Deng understood the West's reluctance to share cutting-edge military technology, but he maintained the hope that he could at least obtain civilian technological help from the West that would indirectly aid military modernization and, without giving up Chinese independence, even receive some military technology.

To achieve their goal of creating a professional military that would gradually acquire modern equipment, Deng and Marshal Ye first needed to replace those who had grown “lax, conceited, extravagant, and lazy,” develop a system for retiring aged officers, and provide a framework for downsizing. Meanwhile, they also needed to prepare for a great expansion of military training and new military exercises to ensure that the leaner military could operate effectively in battle.
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Deng and Marshal Ye aimed to select a team of officials in each unit who were committed to remaking the PLA into a more modern force. Deng wanted to recruit young people with higher educational levels, including some college graduates, who could better absorb the new technology as it was developed. To select these promising young people, he introduced recruitment standards that included performance on written examinations.

Military academies would be central for upgrading training. These academies, Deng said, should employ outstanding teachers who not only had high academic qualifications, but also were willing to familiarize themselves with actual battle conditions and whose work ethic would be an example for their students.
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When he spoke to the CMC on August 23, 1977, Deng said that historically, troops had been tested in battle and promoted on the basis of their battle performance. “Now that we are not at war,” he asked, “how are we to test our officials, raise their level, and improve the quality and combat effectiveness of our troops? How else, if not through education and training?”
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Like the Meiji leaders of Japan who had concluded that modernization was not just about learning technology but also about gaining “enlightenment,” Deng realized that effective modernization of the military required new perspectives and a broad base of knowledge. Consequently, a small group of talented young recruits in the PLA were taught foreign languages and sent abroad in the first wave of Chinese young people to study overseas. Instead of studying specialized military topics, they focused on broader subjects such as management, science, technology, and international relations.

Meanwhile, downsizing the bloated, outdated Chinese military structure was a first priority. By December 1977, new plans for troop reductions had been prepared, and the CMC had approved a “plan concerning the readjustment
of the structure of the military tables of organization”
(guanyu jundui bianzhi tizhi de tiaozheng)
, which described the desired structure for a more modern military. On March 20, 1978, at a forum sponsored by the General Political Department of the PLA, Deng announced plans to transfer 500,000 PLA officers to civilian positions.
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On January 2, 1979, in his first talk to the military after becoming preeminent leader at the Third Plenum, Deng bluntly told a CMC-sponsored forum of high-level officers:

The military is in bad shape . . . the problem is not because of any particular bad person. It is because the system is bloated, and people glide over things. . . . People say that it is not convenient to get certain things done while in a single unit there are five or six tables of officers playing mahjong. . . . Our army's reputation has gotten worse. . . . Some comrades don't want to retire and become advisers. . . . I would like to set an example by becoming an adviser, but it is not now possible. I hope to become an adviser in 1985. Really, I am not kidding. What's wrong with it? You can live a few years longer. If you don't have a secretary or a car, you can still have a chair. . . . As for rejuvenating our army, some people agree in principle, but oppose it in the concrete.
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Deng's progress in getting rid of the bloating was remarkable. When Deng began the process in 1975, there were 6.1 million troops; by 1979 the numbers were reduced to 5.2 million, by 1982 to 4.2 million, and by 1988 to 3.2 million.
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The process of downsizing was interrupted in late 1978 by preparations for the attack on Vietnam, and after the attack was over, by the maintenance for several years of troops who took part in skirmishes along the border with Vietnam.

Deng's Attack on Vietnam, February 17–March 16, 1979

By the summer of 1978, the growing cooperation between Vietnam and the Soviet Union led Chinese officials to worry that the Vietnamese military might use the dry season, when they could move their motorized vehicles, to attack Cambodia. Vietnam had already overrun Laos in July 1977, and the dry season would begin in December.

Deng had been telling Americans that to stop Soviet advances one had to show a willingness to fight. Cambodia was a client state of China and if China
did not make a strong response to an invasion of Cambodia, then the Soviets and Vietnamese would gain confidence that they could expand toward Thailand and on to the Straits of Malacca, giving them access to the Indian Ocean in the west and the Pacific in the east. If the Vietnamese were to invade Cambodia, the Soviets were likely to send in more men and military equipment to assist in the invasion. Deng firmly believed that if Vietnam invaded Cambodia, China had to make a strong response.

Cambodian leader Pol Pot, who by the summer of 1978 had begun to realize the seriousness of the Vietnamese threat, asked Deng to send Chinese “volunteers” to Cambodia to resist the invasion of the Vietnamese, as Mao had done in Korea to resist the invasion of the South Koreans and the Americans. Deng was ready to cooperate with Pol Pot despite the atrocities he had committed against his own people and the vehement opposition these acts had caused in the West because Deng judged him to be the only Cambodian leader capable of offering significant resistance to Vietnam.

But Deng chose not to send troops to Cambodia; he was convinced that China would get bogged down in an expensive campaign and lose control over events in the region. Deng preferred a “quick decisive campaign,” like the one China had successfully conducted along the Indian border in 1962. With a brief thrust into Vietnam he would demonstrate that the costs to Vietnam and the Soviet Union for continued expansion would be unacceptably high.