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In venturing beyond the confines of Maoism over the past eight years, Deng's great undertaking has, perhaps predictably, come in for some rough challenges. Disagreement lingers between the reformers, who are experimenting at the very margins of Marxism, and conservatives wedded to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and Maoist collectivism. Communes have been abolished, central planning reduced, party and government bureaucrats replaced by technocrats. Deng's innovations, rooted in the premise of "building socialism with Chinese characteristics," have stirred apprehension among China's Old Guard that the Communist Party's dominance could eventually be endangered. How much ideology can a country shed and still be considered socialist, they ask, and how much economic liberalization can be permitted before pressures for greater political freedom arise?
Other Communist countries, notably Hungary, have tinkered with market mechanisms. Bulgaria, for instance, has allowed the establishment of a string of largely autonomous companies that offer bonuses or other incentives to workers if warranted by profits. In Poland, some 75% of farming is in private hands, as are some small restaurants and shops. But never before has a Communist state challenged the tenets of Marxist economics as fundamentally as has Deng's China. Soviet officials may complain that the Chinese have "gone too far," but such criticism leaves the reformers undeterred. Says a Chinese party leader: "We should never regard Marx's theory as some kind of immutable, sacred and inviolable thing."
Yet this does not mean that China is about to embrace capitalism full tilt. Deng and his collaborators have stretched Marxism as it has not been stretched before, but they have yet to define the political and economic structure they seek in its stead. "The Chinese are not sure where they are going," says a Western economist who has served as a consultant in Peking. "There seems to be no overall plan." Deng's goal, pragmatic to the core, is to pursue whatever makes China strong.
The reforms have also bred corruption, large-scale fraud and considerable uncertainty among segments of the population. There are signs that, faced with unexpected problems and setbacks, the Peking leadership is contemplating new approaches to redefine some of its policies. Efforts are under way to cool down a plainly overheated economy. In the ideological context, there is a tendency to describe some of the country's bolder economic strategies as "experiments."