Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (127 page)

In Zhuhai, Deng held a meeting ostensibly for military planning that turned up the heat under Jiang Zemin. He repeated the message he gave in Wuhan: “Whoever is opposed to reform must leave office. . . . Our leaders look like they're doing something, but they're not doing anything worthwhile.”
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The meeting Deng attended in Zhuhai on “military planning” was chaired by Qiao Shi, one of the six members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Since Qiao Shi was in charge of domestic security matters, it was appropriate for him to call such a meeting. But Qiao Shi was also regarded by many as having the qualities needed to be a top leader and as a potential rival to Jiang Zemin, so this meeting had the potential to be about China's leadership. Even more ominously for Jiang, attending the meeting were President Yang Shangkun, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC); General Liu Huaqing, another vice chairman of the CMC; and Yang Shangkun's half-brother General Yang Baibing, who was head of the PLA Political Work Department and secretary general of the CMC. Although all these officials were concerned with security, they also all agreed with Deng about the need to speed up reform.
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The Zhuhai meeting is not mentioned in books on the southern tour published in mainland China, nor is it noted in the official chronology of Deng's life,
Deng Xiaoping nianpu.
This omission is understandable, for Communist Party leaders do not want inner-party tensions to be revealed in public. But news of the meeting leaked from participants and from observers in Zhuhai and was, in effect, confirmed by the reactions of Jiang Zemin in the weeks following the meeting. The strong representation of military leaders made it clear that if necessary, the high-level military brass was willing to support a new leader.

Jiang Zemin Responds

Jiang Zemin, eager to get precise news of the Zhuhai meeting, persuaded Jia Qinglin, first party secretary of Fujian, to give him a tape of the meeting; not long thereafter it was announced that Jia Qinglin had been appointed to the Politburo. And although it was not customary for Jiang to phone Deng on New Year's, on February 3, 1992, five days after Deng left Zhuhai, Jiang Zemin phoned Deng to wish him a happy New Year. As Jiang later acknowledged, the phone call was no accident.
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Jiang thereafter began to tilt more boldly toward reform.

Deng arrived in Shanghai on January 31 for three more weeks of vacation, when at a more leisurely pace than in the SEZs he viewed Pudong's development
and edited the draft of his speeches in Shenzhen and Zhuhai.
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He also toured the recently completed Nanpu Bridge and the construction site of the huge Yangpu Bridge.
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While repeating his “self-criticism” for not making Shanghai an SEZ earlier, he also suggested that by starting now, Shanghai could use its advantage as a latecomer to learn from Guangdong's experience, allowing it to do things even better.

Meanwhile, a team of writers, under the direction of Zheng Bijian, a former secretary to Hua Guofeng and Hu Yaobang, prepared a systematic summary of Deng's speeches in Shenzhen and Zhuhai. They first received a preliminary summary of 20,000 to 30,000 characters prepared by Guangdong officials from the trip and then boiled it down in successive drafts to 7,000 characters by going through several drafts with Deng. The report, which had a more official ring than Deng's original pithy comments during the tour, was completed before Deng left Shanghai.
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Chen Yun was in Shanghai while Deng was there, but Deng did not arrange a meeting with him. President Yang Shangkun and Shanghai Party Secretary Wu Bangguo, however, went in person to pay their Chinese New Year's respects to Chen Yun.
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A seasoned leader like Chen Yun had no trouble understanding all the political nuances of Deng's efforts. He also knew that Deng's efforts to speed up reform enjoyed strong support within the military and that plans for the development of Pudong had the enthusiastic backing of the Shanghai Party Committee.

For over a decade, Deng, so busy with his work, had never gone shopping, but one morning, he visited Shanghai's No. 1 Department Store, which boasted the highest sales of any retail establishment in China. There he could see the brisk sales of a wide range of consumer goods. The scene stood in striking contrast to the meager offerings of bare basics on the shelves that had greeted customers only fourteen years earlier, when his reforms began, and it could have only reinforced his pride in China's progress.
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With the help of his daughter Deng Rong, he bought some pens as presents for his grandchildren.

When Deng boarded the train to return to Beijing, he had reason to hope that the southern journey was accomplishing its purpose and that Jiang Zemin would now speed up growth and reform.
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Indeed, from February 20, the day Deng departed Shanghai for Beijing, until March 6, staff members of the
Shenzhen Daily
were sufficiently optimistic about Deng's ultimate victory that they dared to publish a series of eight articles on the southern tour.
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Although Beijing propaganda leaders tried to prevent copies of these articles
from making their way to Beijing, they could not stop copies of the paper reaching audiences throughout China, including in the capital.

By mid-February, several days before Deng returned to Beijing, Jiang Zemin was already saying publicly that he supported Deng's calls for further reform.
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From the reports he had received from Zhuhai, Jiang realized that Deng was determined to remove him if he did not boldly promote reform and opening. Jiang could see from Deng's visit to the south that he had attracted a great deal of support from key leaders in Beijing and from local leaders. Later Jiang acknowledged that by then he had concluded that Deng's views would prevail and that he, Jiang, would be wise to support them.
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When Zheng Bijian's summary of Deng's speeches in the SEZs was completed, Jiang Zemin obtained the Politburo's approval for circulating the draft to small groups of top officials. The summary was less provocative than Deng's spontaneous comments on the ground, but it was nonetheless strong and direct. When party leaders became aware of the public attention paid to Deng's trip in the south and read the report, they realized that despite his age, Deng was exerting himself on a determined crusade and that his base of support was rapidly expanding.
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Leaders in Shanghai, Guangdong, and elsewhere who wanted to move faster toward open markets, increasingly optimistic about the outcome, rallied behind Deng. Even without Deng's southern journey, the gradual easing of foreign sanctions and the conservatives' success in reducing inflationary pressures would have led Chinese leaders to increase growth targets. But Deng's tour and its success in converting Jiang Zemin enabled the change to begin sooner and continue at a faster pace than otherwise would have been possible.

Even as Jiang was beginning to come around to Deng's point of view, the national press lagged behind in publicizing Deng's trip and Deng's message. On February 20, the day before Deng returned to Beijing, the conservative bi-monthly
Contemporary Trends of Thought (Dangdai sichao)
, in a last-ditch effort to promote the cautious planners' views, published an article by Deng Liqun that undoubtedly reflected the views of Chen Yun. The article stated that the major danger was not from the left but from the right. “People who stubbornly cling to their liberal beliefs are using anti-leftism as a pretext to oppose the Communist Party leadership and the socialist system. . . . Unless we fight back . . . the result of course would be a disastrous proliferation of all kinds of anticommunist ideas.”
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But the tide had turned. After this article appeared, the voices of the conservatives grew weaker as Jiang Zemin and his colleagues began to prepare
the public for their endorsement of Deng's call to accelerate growth. On February 21, the day Deng returned to Beijing, a
People's Daily
editorial, drawing on Zheng Bijian's summary, was entitled, “Be Bolder in Reform.”
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The editorial still made no mention of Deng's southern tour, which had already dominated the Hong Kong media for a month. A week later, however, on February 28, high officials in Beijing released Document No. 2, based on Deng's speech a week earlier, and distributed it to a broad group of high-level party officials. Like most official documents, it was carefully written and well-organized, but lacked the vehemence and freshness of Deng's original talks. Titled “A Notice about Passing on and Studying Comrade Deng's Important Talks,” it was circulated to all members of the Central Committee and selected other groups, such as the two thousand students and faculty at the Central Party School.
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By the March 9–10 Politburo meeting, when all fifteen members of the Politburo met to discuss Document No. 2, opinion had jelled to support the document. Deng had pushed hard, building on his base of support by local officials. He had made use of the Hong Kong press and mobilized PLA supporters. But he also was also riding a wave of good news about the economy. Not only was inflation under control, thanks to Chen Yun's efforts, but industry had begun to grow, exports were strong, and foreign countries were beginning to relax their sanctions. The climate for expansion had greatly improved.

At the Politburo meeting, President Yang Shangkun began the discussion by forcefully backing the document, and Jiang Zemin followed by expressing full support for Deng's efforts and admitting that he had been too lax in promoting reform.
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The Politburo unanimously endorsed the basic message of Deng's trip to the south—accelerate the pace of reform and opening—and agreed that the message would be the centerpiece of the 14th Party Congress to be held at the end of that year. Deng later agreed that Document No. 2 would be the final document in his three-volume
Selected Works.
The essence of his advice was no surprise to those who had followed Deng's words and deeds: be bolder in reform and opening to the outside.

From the March Politburo meeting on, the approved summary of Deng's statements on the southern journey became the new guideline for official policy. On March 11, the day after the Politburo meeting and almost two months after Deng had begun his southern journey, the New China News Agency (Xinhua) finally officially broke the news to the public about Deng's southern journey, and offered an accompanying editorial stating that people
needed to be more daring in reform and opening. It took until March 31, however, before the
People's Daily
would finally fall into line, publishing its own detailed report of the trip.

The Changed Atmosphere

As news of the trip was fully reported and policies began to change, Deng's talks became known as the
nanxun tanhua
(talks from the southern tour). The term
nanxun
was used in imperial times to refer to the grand inspection tours of emperors to the south (to the Yangtze River area, not as far south as Deng went). But in order to remove the connotation that Deng was acting like an emperor, the trip was officially given a more neutral term,
nanfang tanhua
(talks from the south).

Conservative officials, aware of the widespread support for Deng's message, reluctantly approved the documents reporting Deng's message. At the annual meeting of the NPC that opened on March 20, the overall political atmosphere among the delegates reflected the forward momentum created by Deng's southern journey.
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Intellectuals and military leaders took advantage of the changed mood to mount criticisms of leftism in their respective units. On March 23, Yang Baibing announced that the army would protect and support reform, a clear warning to those who dragged their feet.

In late May, the party center issued Document No. 4, designed to implement Deng's policies. The document announced the opening of five inland cities along the Yangtze River as well as nine border cities, and stated that all thirty provincial and prefectural capital cities would enjoy the same privileges as the SEZs.
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In the several months after the southern journey, Deng did not meet with Jiang to tell him how to conduct further reform and opening, nor did he express clear support for Jiang. Indeed, Jiang Zemin reported that he felt Deng was still testing him, and that the implicit threat remained: if Jiang did not fully support reform, Deng, with the backing of the military, might try to have him replaced by Qiao Shi.

Jiang was determined to pass Deng's final examination. In public appearances during the spring, Jiang became a strong advocate of further reform and opening. And he carefully crafted a speech that he delivered on June 9 to the graduating class of senior provincial-and ministerial-level students at the Central Party School.
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In his speech—entitled “Deeply Understand and Implement
Comrade Deng Xiaoping's Important Spirit, Make Economic Construction, Reform and Opening Go Faster and Better”—Jiang Zemin both presented a comprehensive overview of what was required to implement the spirit of Deng's southern journey and summarized Deng's contributions since the 1978 Third Plenum. Jiang said that they should accelerate the pace of reform, reaching a growth rate of as high as 9 to 10 percent a year. (At the time, the official goal in the five-year plan, as presented by Li Peng at the NPC meeting, was still 6 percent a year.) Jiang said they should move boldly, taking lessons from the advanced practices of the capitalist countries; there was no need to discuss whether the reforms were called capitalist or socialist. Moreover, Jiang packaged these ideas under a term he expected Deng would welcome: a “socialist market economy.”
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