(17 of 17)
That may be too much to hope for, at least anytime soon. The history of China in the 20th century has been one of repeated upheavals, of which Deng's own career is a prime example. But there is at least a chance that Deng will bequeath to his nation an economic system working well enough that his successors will not want to reverse it, and thus that China will also gain a measure of the political stability it has so long and so disastrously lacked. If so, the inventive energies of the Chinese, which gave the world tea, paper, movable type, gunpowder and the first functioning bureaucracy, would be freed to carve out a unique role for the nation. China would enter the modern world on its own terms rather than on any dictated by Western capitalists, Soviet Marxists or anyone else. And Man of the Year Deng Xiaoping would expand what he alone among world leaders already seems to possess: a secure place in the history books to be written in the next century. --By George J. Church. Reported by David Aikman/Washington, Richard Hornik/Peking and James O. Jackson/Moscow