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China Deng’s Victory

4 minute read
William E. Smith

By any measure, it was an impressive political tour de force. When a special six-day conference of the Chinese Communist Party ended in Peking last week, China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, could rejoice in a full-scale tactical victory even though he had made some compromises in the process. As expected, Deng, 81, managed to dislodge practically all of his opponents from the party leadership and replace them with younger, bettereducated and more pragmatic people of his own choosing. Six new members of the Politburo, which has now been reduced from 24 to 20 seats, and three new full members of the eleven- person Central Committee Secretariat, which is responsible for handling the party’s day-to-day affairs, will give Deng overwhelming support as he pursues his path of reform.

Before its adjournment, the 992-delegate conference also approved a draft of the new five-year economic plan, the seventh since the Communists came to power in 1949. It too reflected Deng’s modernization drive, with continued commitment to foreign investment and more trade and a renewal of efforts to stimulate production by loosening central controls. The plan calls for a restrained annual growth rate of 7%, compared with an average 10% during the past five years, a period when the Chinese economy overheated.

Interestingly, however, the meeting underscored an ideological disagreement that still exists within the party despite Deng’s success in moving China away from Maoism. At the closing session, Deng chose to appease hard-liners by emphasizing, “In our propaganda, we must firmly oppose bourgeois liberalism, that is, publicity that favors taking the capitalist road.” He continued, “We exert ourselves for socialism not only because socialism provides conditions for faster development of the forces of production than capitalism but also because only socialism can eliminate the greed, corruption and injustice that are inherent in capitalism.”

After Deng’s speech came an even tougher one by his most persistent critic, Chen Yun, 80. Chen remains an advocate of Soviet-style central planning and frequently cites numerous recent incidents of corruption, overproduction and economic dislocation to bolster his case for a restricted reform program. In last week’s speech he suggested that Deng’s rural reforms, which allow peasants considerable economic freedom, could lead them to stop growing food and turn to more lucrative industrial endeavors, like making tools, furniture, clothing or even traditional handicrafts. Chen also criticized the moderate growth rates envisaged by the new five-year plan and the regime’s reliance on market forces in regulating the economy, saying, “Market regulation involves no planning, blindly allowing supply and demand to determine production.” Finally, Chen emphasized his support of free speech within the party’s councils but added, in what may have been a veiled attack on Deng, “No individual should try to have the final say.”

The apparent contradiction between the results and the rhetoric of the conference was ascribed by one Western analyst in Peking to Deng’s “practice of not overwinning.” While Deng enjoys strong support at the top levels of the party hierarchy, many lower-ranking officials, who have no stake in the reform programs, tend to favor the Chen Yun approach. Thus Chen’s speech may have been sanctioned as a sort of minority dissent.

Meanwhile, the party is beginning to encounter criticism from people who believe that the reforms have not gone far enough, particularly in terms of political rights. The latest example of this phenomenon came two weeks ago, when an anti-Japanese protest went out of control. All summer the Chinese government had been inundating the country with anti-Japanese propaganda to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II. When some 3,000 Peking University students tried to take an anti-Japan demonstration off campus, the police stopped them with force. Later the authorities closed the university area to outsiders after students mounted banners calling for more democracy and “an end to dictatorship.”

Through his forceful personality and his seniority in the party, Deng in the past has generally been able to impose his will on the country. The question remains whether in the time left to him, he can bequeath that authority and influence to his ideological successors.

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