As the man who led China from isolation, backwardnessand chaos to modernization and unprecedented prosperity, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping would have left a glowing legacy had it not been for his iron- fisted intolerance of any challenge to his rule. The 18-year dizzying transition from an archaic centrally- planned economy to feverish modernization and Deng's 'open door' policy changed inexorably the world's most populous nation. He also left China with the searing image of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and a succesor whose tenure is in doubt. Although Deng held no official positions since 1990 except the chairmanship of China's Bridge Association, he wielded enormous power. Even rumors of his deteriorating health sent stock markets plunging in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Despite official assertions that succession was firmly in place with President Jiang Zemin at the helm, there wes no certainty Deng's proteges would retain their posts for long. The fear of a vicious power struggle and serious instability remained, potentially threatening the modernization drive. Jiang, also Communist Party chief, placed supporters in key party, military and government positions during the last two years as Deng's health deteriorated and labor unrest, official corruption, inflation and soaring crime hit dangerous levels. Deng's last public appearance Feb. 9, 1993 during the Lunar New Year festivities showed a weak, frail figure seemingly unable to speak coherently. The Foreign Ministry continued to insist he was in good health for a man of 91 while spates of rumors put him at death's door.
China's Public Security Ministry even took the unusual step of setting up a telephone hotline to denounce people of spreading such political rumors. Deng was above all else a survivor, rebounding after two purges under the late Communist Party leader Mao Tse-tung to become only the second long-term leader of Communist China since its birth in the 1949 revolution. He shaped the nation's destiny as much if not more in just over a decade than Mao managed in three. An innovator who disliked ideologues, he brought capitalism back to China and explained it as a 'socialist market ecconomy.' He shrugged off the collapse of the Soviet Union and stubbornly clung to communism as the country's salvation. Despite economic and social pragmatism, he most feared instability and crushed any political dissent. 'Don't be afraid to spill blood,' he was quoted as saying before the Chinese army fired on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, in scenes flashed on television screens worldwide. Western countries which treated China like a pariah in the aftermath and many Chinese forgave him after he heralded a remarkable economic boom in early 1992 with a barnstorming trip to southern China and a call to liberate minds and state coffers from the old ways. Since then, economic growth has soared an average of more than 13 percent annually, increasing numbers of newly-affluent Chinese are sampling life in the fast lane and heads of state have been innundating Beijing, all seeking access to the vast and potentially lucrative market -- giving Deng a status among Chinese shared only by Mao. Relinquishing his last official posts in late 1989 and early 1990, Deng remained the emperor behind the curtain. He resigned in November 1989 as head of the party's Central Military Commisssion, and stepped down as chairman of the powerful State Military Commission. He had previously retired from the party Politburo, Central Committee and Central Advisory Commission. Although favoring younger, liberal leaders, he betrayed them and took refuge with old Marxist hardliners when threatened. To preserve his supremacy, he twice sacrificed hand-picked moderate heirs-apparent -- Hu Yaobang in 1987 and Zhao Ziyang in 1989. And while personally honest, he turned a blind eye as greedy officials, their families, and anyone with power -- from Deng's relatives on down -- used their new economic freedom to enrich themselves. After his reemergencce from the turbulent cultural revolution in the late 1970s, the spectacle of the 4-foot-11 (150-cm), chain-smoking Deng shaking hands with U.S. presidents and giving peasants private cars and Coca-Cola gave him a benevolent image. That was tarnished by Tiananmen. Born into a landlord family in the southwestern province of Sichuan on Aug. 22, 1904, Deng's birth name was Kan Tse-Kao. He was a brilliant student and by 16 had finished high school and arrived in Paris as an overseas student. He soon became caught up in the debate over China's future after the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. He left school, worked in a factory and joined the China Socialist Youth League. Among his associates was Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai), later the revered premier. In 1924, the diminutive revolutionary joined the Chinese Communist Party and changed his name. Deng was a common family name, and Xiaoping means 'small peace.' When the party called home its members, Deng returned to a faction- torn China, stopping first in Moscow for further study. During the 1930s and 1940s, Deng served as a political commissar in the communist armies fighting the Japanese and Nationalist Chinese. He cemented ties with Mao and was with him in the legendary 'Long March' of 1934-1935, an 8,000-mile trek to escape Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. The communist army hid in Yanan, a mountainous village in Shaanxi Province, after the march. It was there Deng met and married a student who had quit her studies in Beijing to travel to Yanan -- Fu Chiung-ying, later known as Cho Lin and then Zhuo Lin. Zhuo Lin, who eventually bore Deng three daughters and two sons, stayed with Deng through his life, but rarely appeared in public. After the 1949 revolution, Deng the guerrilla became Deng the rising star. He soared quickly in the party and government during the 1950s. Summoned by Mao to Beijing in 1952, Deng was named a vice premier and a year later became minister of finance. Mao propelled Deng through the party hierarchy. By 1956 he was one of its most powerful men -- a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, China's most elite rulers, and party general secretary, overseeing all Politburo policies. more
During a summit meeting in Moscow with Nikita Khrushchev, Mao pointed at Deng and said: 'See that little man there? He is highly intelligent and has a great future ahead of him.' Deng oversaw the anti-rightist campaign in 1958, when intellectuals were persecuted for speaking freely in Mao's short-lived 'Hundred Flowers' campaign. It was not the last time Deng would use such tactics to serve his own ends. But Deng and Mao clashed when Mao's hasty 1957-1958 Great Leap Forward failed to achieve lofty social and economic goals. The disastrous campaign produced famines that starved millions by 1962. Deng became a chief advocate of limited free enterprise instead of political exhortations to boost production. 'A donkey is certainly slow, but at least it rarely has an accident, ' Deng said in calling for careful planning over hell-bent efforts like the Great Leap. In his most famous economic quote, hesaid, 'Whether cats are white or black, they are all good cats so long as they catch mice.' Support for Deng's views increased, alarming Mao, who feared a takeover by technocrats lacking political fervor. Mao also complained Deng slighted him publicly, treating him 'like a dead ancestor.' Mao retaliated with the Cultural Revolution. Vilifed as a 'capitalist roader,' Deng publicly criticized himself in 1966. Young Red Guards paraded him through Beijing on a jeep wearing a dunce cap. They denounced his addiction to bridge. Deng spent two years in Beijing in solitary confinement and then was shipped with his wife and stepmother to an unheated military school near Nanchang in southeast China. He worked in a tractor factory, raised chickens and tended a vegetable patch. The rest of his family also suffered. His brother was hounded to suicide. His eldest son, Deng Pufang, then 22, was forced out a college dormitory window by Red Guards, crippling him for life. In 1973, Deng was rehabilitated at the recommendation of Chou En-lai, a bid to revive China's stalled economy. A year later he re-entered the Politburo. Deng attempted to consolidate his power base but was not yet strong enough to oppose Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, and her three radical associates, collectively known as the 'Gang of Four.' When Chou died in January 1976, Deng delivered the memorial service eulogy and then disappeared. In April, the Gang of Four blamed Deng for instigating riots in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and stripped him of all his posts. As Mao lay on his deathbed and with Jiang Qing wielding increasing power, Deng fled to southern Guangdong Province, where old associates protected him. Mao finally died in September. October, the Gang of Four were arrested and the Cultural Revolution had ended. A new era began and a rehabilitated Deng embarked on his campaign to end utopianism and Maoism. He rehabilitated associates, removed Mao from his deified pedestal and replaced Mao's supposedly hand-picked successor, Hua Guofeng, and other Mao cronies with his own allies. Deng's followers passed a new legal code and launched a campaign to separate government from party politics, streamline China's vast bureaucracy and encourage limited free enterprise in agriculture and light industry. The task was herculean -- modernize a vast, underdeveloped nation with more than 1 billion people by the year 2000. Ultimately, however, the successes were overshadowed by Deng's own inability to modernize politically. more
deng xiaoping 2ndadd x x x modernize politically
For help, Deng turned China to the West and particularly the United States. In December 1978 he cemented the decision to form long-awaited diplomatic relations with Washington. A month later, Deng, Time Magazine's new man of the year, flew to the United States for an eight-day triumphant journey. He toured the country, appeared at a Texas rodeo wearing an oversized cowboy hat and left America speaking of an 'unforgettable friendship.' Many of his economic methods smacked of capitalism, but Deng remained a Marxist at heart as he led his nation on the search for what he called 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.' He allowed the 'Democracy Wall' movement's freer speech in 1978- 1979, but crushed it when criticism was directed at him. He nodded to periodic campaigns against 'decadent Western influences,' but vowed China's door would never again be closed to the world. Five years after he introduced sweeping agricultural reforms that changed the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants, Deng turned his attention to the cities in 1984. Scrapping the 35-year-old Soviet-style centralized planning system, he gave unprecedented autonomy to industrial managers, called for the growth of more private enterprise, hiked wages and freed prices on thousands of commodities. In his later years, Deng attempted to set an example for older officials by retreating to the 'second line' to make room for younger, more vigorous officials. He withdrew from his vice premiership in 1980, but remained very much in charge. From the second line, he orchestrated a purge of Maoists from the party and military. At a watershed party congress in late 1987, he persuaded old hard-liners to join him in retiring from active party positions and left what he believed was a stable coalition. He remained China's most powerful man. With his ever-present white spittoon at his feet, the gravelly voiced Deng met scores of visiting world leaders in Beijing's vast Great Hall of the People. And he remained chairman of the party military commission, leaving him commander in chief when Tiananmen Spring came in 1989. By 1989, a decade of breakneck growth and reforms had left China with unwelcome consequences -- record inflation, rampant official corruption and widening income gaps. Chinese were restive. Even Deng was no longer revered. His eldest son, Deng Pufang, was linked to a trading company engaged in shady dealings. The family of his heir-apparent, Zhao Ziyang, was viewed as corrupt. When college students streamed into the streets to protest, occupying Tiananmen Square, Chinese from all walks of life joined them in the biggest anti-government protests since the 1949 revolution. They disrupted Deng's final foreign policy triumph -- a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev and called on Deng to retire. As supporters once hung glass bottles in Beijing to call for Deng's return during the Cultural Revolution -- Xiaoping is a homonym for small bottle -- now protesters smashed symbolic bottles in the streets. Deng called out the army which crushed the protests June 4 by firing on the unarmed civilians, leaving hundreds dead. Three weeks later, Deng was shown on television congratulating military leaders for suppressing the 'counter-revolutionary rebellion.' 'Their real aim was to overthrow the Communist Party and topple the socialist system,' he said. Deng turned to his longtime hardline allies for support. Economic and political reformers were arrested, exiled or silenced, and China was left rudderless. The bloodbath at Tiananmen flashed on television sets around the world, repelling the West. With the future of his economic vision in doubt, Deng relinquished his last official posts in late 1989 and early 1990, giving up the military to his third chosen heir, Jiang Zemin. Although Deng appeared less often in public, he remained China's most powerful man, and remained the manipulator behind the curtain. When he saw his reforms were still stalled by 1992, Deng launched a barnstorming in south China that jumpstarted the economy. In an interview with Time Magazine in November 1985, just before he was named its Man of the Year for the second time, Deng waxed prophetic. 'I don't want people to honor me. Never. 'I don't deserve that,' he said. 'Because what I do is nothing other than what reflects the wishes of the Chinese people and the Communist Party members.' focus-story-bottom ---
Copyright 1997 by United Press International. All rights reserved. ---
China has announced that its paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, has died at age 92 of complications from Parkinson's disease and a lung infection. The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, issued a statement early Thursday morning in Beijing saying Deng died at 9:08 p.m. (8:08 a.m. EST) and that all Communist Party organs have been informed of his death. As the man who led China from isolation, backwardness and chaos to modernization and unprecedented prosperity, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping would have left a glowing legacy had it not been for his iron- fisted intolerance of any challenge to his rule. The 18-year dizzying transition from an archaic centrally- planned economy to feverish modernization and Deng's 'open door' policy changed inexorably the world's most populous nation. He also left China with the searing image of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and a succesor whose tenure is in doubt. Although Deng held no official positions since 1990 except the chairmanship of China's Bridge Association, he wielded enormous power. Even rumors of his deteriorating health sent stock markets plunging in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Despite official assertions that succession was firmly in place with President Jiang Zemin at the helm, there wes no certainty Deng's proteges would retain their posts for long. The fear of a vicious power struggle and serious instability remained, potentially threatening the modernization drive. Jiang, also Communist Party chief, placed supporters in key party, military and government positions during the last two years as Deng's health deteriorated and labor unrest, official corruption, inflation and soaring crime hit dangerous levels. Deng's last public appearance Feb. 9, 1993 during the Lunar New Year festivities showed a weak, frail figure seemingly unable to speak coherently. The Foreign Ministry continued to insist he was in good health for a man of 91 while spates of rumors put him at death's door. China's Public Security Ministry even took the unusual step of setting up a telephone hotline to denounce people of spreading such political rumors. Deng was above all else a survivor, rebounding after two purges under the late Communist Party leader Mao Tse-tung to become only the second long-term leader of Communist China since its birth in the 1949 revolution. He shaped the nation's destiny as much if not more in just over a decade than Mao managed in three. An innovator who disliked ideologues, he brought capitalism back to China and explained it as a 'socialist market ecconomy.' He shrugged off the collapse of the Soviet Union and stubbornly clung to communism as the country's salvation. Despite economic and social pragmatism, he most feared instability and crushed any political dissent. 'Don't be afraid to spill blood,' he was quoted as saying before the Chinese army fired on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, in scenes flashed on television screens worldwide. Western countries which treated China like a pariah in the aftermath and many Chinese forgave him after he heralded a remarkable economic boom in early 1992 with a barnstorming trip to southern China and a call to liberate minds and state coffers from the old ways. Since then, economic growth has soared an average of more than 13 percent annually, increasing numbers of newly-affluent Chinese are sampling life in the fast lane and heads of state have been innundating Beijing, all seeking access to the vast and potentially lucrative market -- giving Deng a status among Chinese shared only by Mao. Relinquishing his last official posts in late 1989 and early 1990, Deng remained the emperor behind the curtain. He resigned in November 1989 as head of the party's Central Military Commisssion, and stepped down as chairman of the powerful State Military Commission. He had previously retired from the party Politburo, Central Committee and Central Advisory Commission. Although favoring younger, liberal leaders, he betrayed them and took refuge with old Marxist hardliners when threatened. To preserve his supremacy, he twice sacrificed hand-picked moderate heirs-apparent -- Hu Yaobang in 1987 and Zhao Ziyang in 1989. And while personally honest, he turned a blind eye as greedy officials, their families, and anyone with power -- from Deng's relatives on down -- used their new economic freedom to enrich themselves. After his reemergencce from the turbulent cultural revolution in the late 1970s, the spectacle of the 4-foot-11 (150-cm), chain-smoking Deng shaking hands with U.S. presidents and giving peasants private cars and Coca-Cola gave him a benevolent image. That was tarnished by Tiananmen. Born into a landlord family in the southwestern province of Sichuan on Aug. 22, 1904, Deng's birth name was Kan Tse-Kao. He was a brilliant student and by 16 had finished high school and arrived in Paris as an overseas student. He soon became caught up in the debate over China's future after the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. He left school, worked in a factory and joined the China Socialist Youth League. Among his associates was Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai), later the revered premier. In 1924, the diminutive revolutionary joined the Chinese Communist Party and changed his name. Deng was a common family name, and Xiaoping means 'small peace.' When the party called home its members, Deng returned to a faction- torn China, stopping first in Moscow for further study. During the 1930s and 1940s, Deng served as a political commissar in the communist armies fighting the Japanese and Nationalist Chinese. He cemented ties with Mao and was with him in the legendary 'Long March' of 1934-1935, an 8,000-mile trek to escape Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. The communist army hid in Yanan, a mountainous village in Shaanxi Province, after the march. It was there Deng met and married a student who had quit her studies in Beijing to travel to Yanan -- Fu Chiung-ying, later known as Cho Lin and then Zhuo Lin. Zhuo Lin, who eventually bore Deng three daughters and two sons, stayed with Deng through his life, but rarely appeared in public. After the 1949 revolution, Deng the guerrilla became Deng the rising star. He soared quickly in the party and government during the 1950s. Summoned by Mao to Beijing in 1952, Deng was named a vice premier and a year later became minister of finance. Mao propelled Deng through the party hierarchy. By 1956 he was one of its most powerful men -- a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, China's most elite rulers, and party general secretary, overseeing all Politburo policies. more
For help, Deng turned China to the West and particularly the United States. In December 1978 he cemented the decision to form long-awaited diplomatic relations with Washington. A month later, Deng, Time Magazine's new man of the year, flew to the United States for an eight-day triumphant journey. He toured the country, appeared at a Texas rodeo wearing an oversized cowboy hat and left America speaking of an 'unforgettable friendship.' Many of his economic methods smacked of capitalism, but Deng remained a Marxist at heart as he led his nation on the search for what he called 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.' He allowed the 'Democracy Wall' movement's freer speech in 1978- 1979, but crushed it when criticism was directed at him. He nodded to periodic campaigns against 'decadent Western influences,' but vowed China's door would never again be closed to the world. Five years after he introduced sweeping agricultural reforms that changed the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants, Deng turned his attention to the cities in 1984. Scrapping the 35-year-old Soviet-style centralized planning system, he gave unprecedented autonomy to industrial managers, called for the growth of more private enterprise, hiked wages and freed prices on thousands of commodities. In his later years, Deng attempted to set an example for older officials by retreating to the 'second line' to make room for younger, more vigorous officials. He withdrew from his vice premiership in 1980, but remained very much in charge. From the second line, he orchestrated a purge of Maoists from the party and military. At a watershed party congress in late 1987, he persuaded old hard-liners to join him in retiring from active party positions and left what he believed was a stable coalition. He remained China's most powerful man. With his ever-present white spittoon at his feet, the gravelly voiced Deng met scores of visiting world leaders in Beijing's vast Great Hall of the People. And he remained chairman of the party military commission, leaving him commander in chief when Tiananmen Spring came in 1989. By 1989, a decade of breakneck growth and reforms had left China with unwelcome consequences -- record inflation, rampant official corruption and widening income gaps. Chinese were restive. Even Deng was no longer revered. His eldest son, Deng Pufang, was linked to a trading company engaged in shady dealings. The family of his heir-apparent, Zhao Ziyang, was viewed as corrupt. When college students streamed into the streets to protest, occupying Tiananmen Square, Chinese from all walks of life joined them in the biggest anti-government protests since the 1949 revolution. They disrupted Deng's final foreign policy triumph -- a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev and called on Deng to retire. As supporters once hung glass bottles in Beijing to call for Deng's return during the Cultural Revolution -- Xiaoping is a homonym for small bottle -- now protesters smashed symbolic bottles in the streets. Deng called out the army which crushed the protests June 4 by firing on the unarmed civilians, leaving hundreds dead. Three weeks later, Deng was shown on television congratulating military leaders for suppressing the 'counter-revolutionary rebellion.' 'Their real aim was to overthrow the Communist Party and topple the socialist system,' he said. Deng turned to his longtime hardline allies for support. Economic and political reformers were arrested, exiled or silenced, and China was left rudderless. The bloodbath at Tiananmen flashed on television sets around the world, repelling the West. With the future of his economic vision in doubt, Deng relinquished his last official posts in late 1989 and early 1990, giving up the military to his third chosen heir, Jiang Zemin. Although Deng appeared less often in public, he remained China's most powerful man, and remained the manipulator behind the curtain. When he saw his reforms were still stalled by 1992, Deng launched a barnstorming in south China that jumpstarted the economy. In an interview with Time Magazine in November 1985, just before he was named its Man of the Year for the second time, Deng waxed prophetic. 'I don't want people to honor me. Never. 'I don't deserve that,' he said. 'Because what I do is nothing other than what reflects the wishes of the Chinese people and the Communist Party members.' ---
Copyright 1997 by United Press International. All rights reserved. ---
