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Though the party document calls itself the definitive reform plan for the 1990s, analysts in Beijing have doubts about how definitive it is. One Western diplomat detects a continuing struggle between those who make growth their top priority and those who want it to slow down. "I think," he says, "there are party elders lurking in the background who are not 100% disciples of Deng's economics." Because the reforms the country is pushing through are so "far- reaching in their implications," he wonders if Deng's heirs may be "playing too close to the edge."
The men who will have to implement this plan will lack the personal authority Deng has exercised for so long, and could be forced into a collective leadership, which is communist jargon for rule by committee, or even a wrenching power struggle. President Jiang, 67, is Deng's choice as successor, and he already heads the party as well as the government. But many experts do not expect him to hold on to his position. Hard-line Premier Li Peng, 65, is still a contender, but he has been ill, and was out of sight for several weeks last summer. If Jiang self-destructs, the leading role could go to either Vice Premier Zhu Rongji, 65, the economic policy chief who is a committed and pragmatic reformer, or National People's Congress chairman Qiao Shi, 68, a former overseer of the intelligence and security services who is known as a fence straddler but leans toward reform.
Even if succession were assured, there are many other uncertainties. No former communist state has subsequently managed a full emergence into a market economy. Certainly none has made the journey while under a government that still calls itself communist. Chinese officials sometimes say, without irony, that their ambition is to achieve the authoritarian and wealthy status of tiny Singapore. China's history of strongman rule goes back 3,800 years. So, with a Communist Party drained of Marxist ideology, perhaps it no longer matters what the rulers call themselves. Their subjects are united behind the central plank of their political platform: the glory is in getting rich.