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This ambivalent feeling about wealth and the means of obtaining it is just one indication of a startling transformation that is sweeping the world's most populous country, the result of a reform program that is even now being re- examined by the Chinese government. Deng, 81, and his allies are steering China through the most dramatic yet peaceful turnabout in a long, strife-laden history. The very word modernization has become a symbol of national purpose as Deng's forces strive to update Chinese industry, agriculture, science and technology, and defense--even China's way of thinking. The goal: the reshaping of the country into a prosperous and confident world power. "We are trying to compress the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution into a single decade," says Ying Ruocheng, China's best-known stage actor, who appeared two years ago in a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in a Peking theater.
At the center of the transformation is the country's aging leader, the shrewd and gritty party veteran who refers to the program of economic reform as China's "second revolution." Whether in reaction to the paroxysms of hero worship that accompanied Maoism or perhaps out of a personal sense of propriety, Deng Xiaoping has actively discouraged a personality cult for himself. His portrait does not adorn government offices, and his ancestral home in Sichuan, though well maintained, is virtually unknown to Chinese citizens. Still, the man and the "revolution" are inseparable, and Deng's personal popularity appears to be on the increase. At the time of his 81st birthday last month, the Chinese press published a freshly written song in his honor. After twice repeating the words "Xiaoping, hello," the lyrics continue: "Lands frozen in the past today are becoming fertile/ Ships grounded in the past today weigh anchor and sail/ Things lost in the past today are returning twofold."
At a long-awaited conference of the Chinese Communist Party that begins this week, Deng hopes to secure his vision by promoting some of his younger loyalists to positions of party leadership, thereby safeguarding his legacy of reform. In Peking last week, taxis and hotel rooms were in short supply as the more than 1,000 conference delegates began to arrive in the capital. At the gathering, only the fourth such meeting in the 64-year history of the Chinese party, delegates will discuss a proposed new five-year plan for national development and other topics, but the "central mission" of the conference, according to Deng, will be the advancement of younger leaders.
Accordingly, in keeping with the shake-up that has been under way throughout the country for some time, it is expected that as many as nine members of the party's so-called third echelon (see box) could be named to the 24-member Politburo, while between 30 and 50 newcomers could replace party veterans on the 210-member Central Committee. Says a middle-level official: "The changes will be part of a flowing movement rather than an abrupt one, but they will be substantial and profound." Deng, who knows full well that no program of reforms is irreversible, put it crisply when he told a group of visiting Japanese legislators, "We will guarantee the continuity of the policy currently in force in China."