1999 (42 page)

The conventional wisdom says that China's reformers cannot continue to permit economic freedom without significantly altering its totalitarian political system. Many experts say that if farmers and factory managers are given the freedom to act in the marketplace, they will demand freedom to act in the political realm as well. If the party's authority to control the economy is limited, its authority to control the people will be weakened, too.

As is often the case with great leaders, however, Deng has looked over the heads of the experts into a future he can see but they cannot imagine. It is true that what he is doing has never been done in a communist nation. But it is by no means clear that it cannot be done. In the end, if the conventional wisdom about Deng's reforms is proved wrong, it will be for one simple reason: they work. Deng is gambling that, power and ideology aside, China will not turn its back on a good thing.

Some in the West feared that China had done exactly that in 1987 when Deng was forced to remove his chosen successor, Hu Yaobang, as head of the Communist Party. Hard-liners blamed Hu for demonstrations in China's big cities by students who wanted more political and academic freedom to match the new economic freedoms. Hu was faulted for failing to maintain rigorous ideological discipline, and Deng himself responded to the demonstrations by promising to strike back ruthlessly against those who encouraged any more like them.

Deng's actions drew sharp criticism from Western editorial writers who expressed their disappointment that he had apparently reversed what they had believed was a promising march toward a new, democratic China. These critics showed a total lack of understanding of Deng's goals and predicament. The source of his authority is the Communist Party. He needs that authority to govern China. Deng realizes that his reforms must not strain the party's authority to the point where it strikes back again and deals him a mortal blow—or, even worse, loses its capacity to maintain order. And while some Western superhawks would like nothing better than to see China convulsed by another revolution, such a development would cause untold deaths and plunge China, and Asia, into turmoil.

By the end of 1987 the reformers were again firmly in control, and it was clear many had underestimated Deng. His reforms may not be popular with the aging hard-line conservatives in the government, but they are popular with the people, many of whom for the first time since the revolution are finding they have enough income to afford luxuries, such as televisions and refrigerators, that were unimaginable in Mao's China. More money in circulation has caused some corruption and inflation. Tensions may develop
between the countryside and the cities as a result of the industrial sector's inability to produce enough to satisfy increased consumer demand. All these problems can be dealt with without reversing the overall course of the reforms. But what can never be reversed are the Chinese people's new expectations for the future. One of the unhappy lessons of history is that those who have never tasted prosperity and freedom can live indefinitely without them. But once people have them, they will not give them up without a fight. The political turmoil Deng has unleashed through his reforms is nothing compared to what will happen if they are quashed by Beijing's hard-liners.

When Deng relinquished operational control over China's government to Zhao at last year's party congress, many Western observers commented condescendingly about how extraordinary it was for a communist leader to step aside gracefully and voluntarily, leaving younger, carefully groomed successors behind to carry on his policies. They failed to recognize that this is extraordinary under any form of government, including democracies. De Gaulle put down his apparent successor Georges Pompidou; Churchill put down Eden; Adenauer put down his own able Finance Minister, Ludwig Erhard, so cruelly that Erhard once broke into tears when he described to me one of Adenauer's slights. Japan's Shigeru Yoshida was a rare exception. He carefully prepared men such as Ikeda, Fukuda, and Sato to serve after he had left the scene. As a result Japan has been ruled for nearly a quarter century according to Yoshida's conservative, pro-Western principles.

In such situations it is not only the system that matters. It is also the leader. The West is known for orderly, solemn transfers of power that can nonetheless leave policies in complete shambles. In authoritarian and totalitarian governments there can be forcible ousters of leaders, such as the removal of Habib Bourguiba as President of Tunisia last year, that leave basic national policy unchanged. In stepping aside as he did, leaving behind him both the men and the policies he wanted to leave, Deng performed a deft political miracle.

Like Japan's Yoshida, Deng did not feel threatened by able men under him in government. Instead he considered it the ultimate triumph for a leader's policies to be carried on after his death by
well-prepared successors. He is still in good health today. But as an awareness of his own mortality looms larger, Deng has come to the paradoxical realization that the key to a leader's immortality is to be humble enough to recognize that other men can, and must, fill his shoes. Deng will be remembered for many remarkable achievements during his career. But history has few examples of strong leaders who face up to their mortality instead of being forced to do so by others. His simple statement “I am stepping down before my mind becomes confused” is an eloquent demonstration of his greatness.

The ouster of Hu Yaobang, his lifelong friend, must have caused Deng great anguish. Zhao was his second choice, but he is an extraordinarily good one. He is a tough, intelligent economist and technocrat, but he is also colorful, even charismatic. At a cocktail reception during last year's party congress he was assuring Western journalists that the impeccably tailored Western-style suits he and his colleagues were wearing were not imported. To prove his point he grabbed the lapel of a top official standing nearby and turned it over so that everyone could see the label that said “Made in China.”

Zhao has enthusiastically embraced Deng's reforms and has even taken some promising new steps forward, giving small factories more freedom, permitting peasants to buy and sell their government land leases, and, probably most important, adopting new guidelines for keeping the Communist Party out of day-to-day government. Many antireform hard-liners have been put out to pasture. But others who believe that Deng's pace of reform was too quick remain. Until Zhao fully consolidates his power he will continue to look to Deng to mediate disputes with conservatives. The unanswered question is who is the one among many who has the strength and vision to replace Deng when he finally leaves the scene. In a communist country only one can be the leader. Whether that leader is Zhao will depend upon how successfully his skills as a political tactician match those he has already exhibited as an economic one.

But it remains highly doubtful that China, having come this far along Deng's promising new road, will ever turn back. Like people, nations can learn from their mistakes. China embarked on its
experiment in partial economic freedom only after its experiment in total economic planning exploded, or rather sputtered out, in its face. During Deng's years as a disciple of Chou and Mao, China was dead in the international water, humiliatingly dependent on Soviet largesse. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Deng realized that the people of China were being kept from reaching their potential at home and China was being kept from reaching its potential on the world stage. One of Mao's and Chou's greatest legacies is that they finally brought China into the twentieth century by turning it toward the West. The legacy of their successor will be that he unbound China from the ideological strictures of the past and prepared it for international leadership in the future.

Deng came to power as an old man with young ideas. His principal rivals were not the younger men below him but the other octogenarians around him. They feared the end of the China they knew; he welcomed and encouraged it. They cherished the ideals of the revolution in which they and he had fought; he knew that those ideals would turn to ashes in a billion hungry mouths unless fundamental changes were made in the Chinese system. In the sixteenth century a French scholar nearing the end of his life wrote despairingly, “If youth but knew, and old age only could.” At eighty-four, Deng knew, and Deng could. The combination was explosive, and it has sent a fifth of the world's people hurtling toward new prosperity and world leadership.

Too many naive observers in the West persist in looking at Deng and seeing a Chinese Thomas Paine, a democratic revolutionary whose long-range plan is to bring an end to communist rule. Deng's actions have indeed been dramatic, even inspiring. But Deng is a reformer, not a revolutionary. As a communist he does not want a capitalist China or a democratic China, but he is not a prisoner of his ideology. Above all he is a nationalist who wants a strong China that has the economic and military power it needs to pursue foreign and trade policies that will make it a superpower in the twenty-first century.

While Deng's explicit goal was not more political freedom, if the economic reforms work political change could follow. The change must be gradual and sure—fast enough to keep up with the people's expectations, but not so fast that the existing political structure
cannot cope. Deng himself said it best: “If I could enable people to improve their lives gradually, then I think the policy itself is a sure guarantee of its continuity.” The key to success is time. Given enough time, what today seems so new to the Chinese will take on the appearance of normalcy; younger leaders who have been exposed to the reforms, and who benefit from them, will become advocates of continuing and expanding them. The success of Deng's vision will give freedom a good name. China will realize that it has nothing to fear from freedom and everything to gain.

For Deng's reforms to survive, the United States and the West must play a central role. China's economic development depends upon a stable world economy and consistent, friendly relationships with its trading partners in the industrialized world. If the West lets China down—by slowing the pace of its investments in China, by lashing out at China in the form of protectionism, or by failing to pursue enlightened foreign policies in the Pacific region—China's economy will be harmed, and antireform elements within China will be helped.

The concern over the Soviet threat which brought us together in 1972 may not be enough to keep us together in 1999. If that is our only motive for friendly relations we leave our fate in the hands of the Soviets. Our common security interests brought us together. If the threat recedes, our common economic interests can keep us together. If we want China to sustain its orientation toward the West we must give the Chinese a sustained economic stake in good relations with the West. Beijing's pro-reformers must be able to show their skeptical colleagues that China will profit from Deng's new policies more than it would from a return to the Soviet model and the Soviet fold.

The Sino–U.S. relationship will last into the twenty-first century, and strengthen with each passing year, if the United States proves to be a dependable friend. Our relationship is healthy and strong, but we must work to keep it that way. It cannot withstand being neglected or taken for granted. But in surveying all we have accomplished in the first sixteen years, we can be justifiably hopeful about what remains to be done.

Before 1972, there was no trade between the United States and China, no tourism, no academic exchanges, no technological and cultural exchanges, no military relations. Today, bilateral trade is about $10 billion a year. Over 250 U.S. companies have offices in China, and Americans have invested $1.5 billion there. Of the thirty thousand Chinese students now studying abroad, fifteen thousand are in the United States. A quarter of a million American tourists visit China each year. A modest program of military relations, including some sales of defensive arms to China, is under way. Young American diplomats now covet postings in Beijing, Shanghai, and Canton, and young Chinese diplomats cherish assignments in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles.

Through these and other developments, China is coming to know America and America to know China. Between two societies that once seemed so different, so threatening, so unbridgeably alien to each other, a web of understanding and interdependence is being formed that will help cushion the inevitable jolts that occur from time to time in the relations among all friendly nations.

The foundation of a lasting Sino–U.S. relationship has been laid. We must now build upon it.

Our first priority must be to redouble our efforts to increase bilateral trade. The current levels are more than we dreamed possible when we first opened the door to China. But it is still far too little. Our trade with Taiwan's fifteen million people is ten times as great as with the PRC's one billion.

Because a large percentage of its exports consist of textiles, China is all too vulnerable to protectionist sentiment in the United States. In spite of our trade deficit with our Asian trading partners, including China, President Reagan deserves great credit for resisting demands that he raise trade barriers. He must continue to do so, as must his successor. Protectionism is a viscerally satisfying quick fix, but it is always counterproductive in the long run. Japan, which is the primary target of the protectionists, has an economy which is so strong that it could probably absorb new U.S. trade restrictions. But they would have a devastating impact on China's developing economy and conceivably on the strategic balance in Asia and the world. If the open door to the West closes, China would again be forced to knock on the gates of the Kremlin.