Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (130 page)

Deng also had an impressive array of personal qualities that enabled him to guide China's transformation. It is doubtful that anyone else then had the combination of authority, depth and breadth of experience, strategic sense, assurance, personal relationships, and political judgment needed to manage China's transformation with comparable success. What, then, is the nature of the transformation that Deng helped guide?

From the Center of Asian Civilization to a Single Nation of the World

During imperial times, China was never a global power or even an active participant in global affairs. It was a regional Asian power. In the “Chinese world order” that guided China's relations with other countries before the Opium War, the smaller political entities around China's periphery paid ceremonial tribute to the emperor of the “Central Kingdom,” China. These other political entities thereby acknowledged the superiority of Chinese civilization over the surrounding areas. In exchange, China agreed that these political entities outside China could remain autonomous and live in peace.
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Rarely did a Chinese emperor take any interest in extending China's reach beyond the Asian mainland. For a brief time during the fifteenth century, Chinese emperors did allow the construction of oceangoing vessels, and Admiral Zheng He led seven voyages overseas that stretched as far as the Middle East and the east coast of Africa. But subsequent emperors not only prohibited such lengthy voyages; they also prevented the building of oceangoing vessels. For them it was difficult enough to manage affairs within China's long borders without linking China to lands beyond its shores. In 1793, when the British envoy Lord McCartney arrived in China and proposed the opening of trade, Emperor Qianlong famously replied, “We possess all things. I . . . have no use for your manufactures.”
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Later, after the Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856–1860, European powers forced China to grant them access to a number of ports along the coast, but the Chinese government took virtually no initiative to extend its
reach beyond its land borders in Asia. China as a nation did not adapt effectively to the challenge as the Industrial Revolution brought new power to Western nations. Because of China's weak response, stronger imperialist powers from the West dominated relations with China and even dominated industry and trade along the China coast.

Mao, at the time of the Korean War, ended the role of imperialists by closing the country to contact with the West. After that time, China began to play a role in the Communist world and for a brief time in the 1950s and 1060s played a part in the affairs of the third world. Its role in the Communist world greatly declined after it broke off relations with the Soviet Union in 1960. Before 1978 the Chinese government still had only limited involvement in affairs beyond its borders. For a long period during the Cultural Revolution, for example, China had only one ambassador abroad, stationed in Egypt.

Although Mao had begun to open China to the West after the clashes with the Soviet Union in 1969, and the People's Republic did take over the China seat in the United Nations in 1971, during Mao's lifetime China was open barely a crack. After Mao died, Hua Guofeng was receptive to efforts to open the country, but it was left to Deng Xiaoping to open the country and lead China to take an active part in international affairs. It was not until Deng's era that government leaders had both the vision and the political strength to overcome the sour memories of the imperialist era and develop a lasting and positive new pattern of relations with other nations whereby China was a part of the new world order that had emerged after World War II.

Under Deng's leadership, China truly joined the world community, becoming an active part of international organizations and of the global system of trade, finance, and relations among citizens of all walks of life. China became a member of the World Bank and of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). China began to play an active role in World Health Organization activities, as well as the endeavors of all important international organizations in every sphere. And although it would take nearly a decade after Deng stepped down before China was admitted to the World Trade Organization, preparations for China's entry began under Deng.

During the early years of China's participation in international organizations, as China was learning how these organizations actually functioned, China was still a very poor nation, and China's efforts first focused on defending its own interests. It was left for Deng's successors, who realized the benefits of the international system for China, to begin to think about what
China could do as a stakeholder in the international system and global institutions to strengthen those organizations. Before China joined institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, some participants worried that China's participation would be so disruptive that they would have trouble functioning. In fact China's participation has strengthened those organizations even as it has represented its own interests; it has abided by the rules of the organizations.

When Deng became preeminent leader in 1978, China's trade with the world totaled less than $10 billion; within three decades, it had expanded a hundredfold. At the same time, China was encouraging the United States to accept a few hundred Chinese students; by a decade after Deng's death, an estimated 1.4 million students had studied abroad and some 390,000 had already returned to China.
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By 1992 the nation had already come a long way toward playing an active role in global intellectual conversations as well as in the global trading system. The basic breakthrough was achieved during Deng's period as paramount leader.

During Deng's era, to adjust to its new global role, China went through wrenching internal changes that Chinese leaders called
“jiegui,”
or linking tracks, drawing on the term used in the 1930s for the linking together of Chinese railways of different gauges. In the 1980s Chinese used the term to describe the adjustments that China was making to take part in international organizations and in global systems of all kinds.

In the early years after 1978, when China was beginning to link up with international organizations, it greatly expanded the specialized organizations that were in effect a buffer in dealing with the outside world. Foreign enterprises in China were located in special areas like the special economic zones (SEZs), and the overall system for dealing with foreign enterprises erected artificial walls that kept foreigners from close contact with China as a whole. Foreigners in China worked with special foreign affairs offices located in local governments, in universities, and in large companies. Foreign affairs service bureaus, for example, handled domestic employees who worked for foreigners. To capture more foreign currency, which China was desperately short of, foreigners were encouraged to spend “foreign-exchange certificates” (which they received in exchange for their homeland's currency) at special “friendship stores” where they could buy goods made abroad that ordinary Chinese were not allowed to purchase. State trading firms handled much of the buying and selling of goods with foreigners, and a large proportion of foreigners who bought Chinese goods did so at the semi-annual Canton trade fair. The
Chinese Foreign Ministry played a large role in supervising Chinese government activities dealing with foreigners at these specialized “go-between” institutions, which were staffed by Chinese officials trained in foreign languages and familiar with foreign practices.

In the late 1980s, however, China's relations with the outside world had already begun to expand rapidly beyond these specialized institutions. Foreigners' travel was no longer restricted to certain areas, and more Chinese firms could deal with foreign firms directly. The practices that began with the SEZs and spread to fourteen coastal areas in 1984 had started to spread to the entire country. So many foreigners were coming to China that the specialized “foreign affairs offices” could no longer manage all their affairs; the specialized institutions for dealing with foreigners mostly remained, but their activities were more often limited to routine official data collecting.

Before Deng stepped down, Chinese institutions of all kinds began to link their tracks, to adapt to foreign practices. Firms that were involved in international trade had to learn foreign legal, accounting, and organizational methods.
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Universities and high schools that sent their graduates abroad began to create training programs to prepare their students for the entrance examinations and other procedures required to gain admittance at foreign institutions. Chinese athletic coaches began to focus on preparing the best athletes for competition in international sports contests. Tourist facilities built to meet international standards spilled over to handle both domestic and foreign travelers. Products initially produced for export were increasingly made available to domestic consumers. And just as the United States after World War II expanded its academic and research institutions to underpin its role as a global power, so too under Deng did China's academic and research institutions expand greatly, deepening Chinese understanding of world affairs.

Deng advanced China's globalization far more boldly and thoroughly than did leaders of other large countries like India, Russia, and Brazil. The process has continued after the Deng era, but the basic breakthroughs were achieved by the time Deng stepped down.

Rule by Party Leadership Teams

Although the Chinese Communist Party had begun the transition from a revolutionary party to a ruling party in 1956, Mao soon led it once again into revolution. By contrast, after 1978, with the return of senior officials, the
dismissal of revolutionaries not suited for governing, and the recruitment of new leaders, Deng guided the transition to a party that focused on governing the country.

The U.S. system of separating the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government was devised by leaders concerned about an excess concentration of power. The system devised by Mao, but fundamentally revised by Deng and his colleagues, was created to deal with the opposite problem—providing unified leadership in the midst of chaos, confusion, deadlocks, inaction, and widely varied local areas. Deng and his colleagues also believed, unlike the Americans, that basing final decisions on the overall political judgments of top leaders would serve the interests of the country better than basing them on the evaluations of an independent judiciary in which laws determine what actions are permitted. They believed that a system that allows a legislative body to make laws without having the responsibility for implementing them is not as effective as concentrating law-making and implementation in one body.

The United States was formed by independent states that retained independent powers. China for centuries had been a centralized government with control over regional governments. Mao had further centralized these powers so that they extended deeply throughout the country. But Deng pulled back on the governing structure that tried to penetrate everywhere. Instead of setting tight rules that local areas had to follow, he established a system in which governing teams, selected by the next higher level, were given considerable independence as long as they managed to bring rapid growth.

The core governing structure in Beijing that Deng established is, as under Mao, centered around the Politburo and the Secretariat. It is linked to local areas through a network of party leadership teams
(lingdao banzi)
that is present in every locality and at every level of every major office of government. Each leadership team is responsible not only for directing the work of the Communist Party at its level, but also for overseeing the government office (or economic or cultural unit) under it. The team is expected to make judgments about broad overall issues and see to it that work within its jurisdiction makes an overall contribution to the four modernizations.

The higher levels of the party pass down rules for how the leadership teams should conduct their work and they send down endless numbers of directives to each level. They also hold meetings with lower levels, sometimes by inviting the lower-level leaders to attend higher-level meetings, but also by sending higher-level officials on inspection tours of the lower levels. When officials
at the higher level consider an issue very important, they can and do intervene. But it is difficult for them to monitor all developments at the lower levels, so the team ordinarily has considerable freedom in guiding the work at its level.

The key leverage that Beijing has over the provinces is the power to appoint and dismiss the members of the leadership team. Team members commonly serve a term of several years, but they can be dismissed at any time by leaders at the next higher level. The several members of a party leadership team are given responsibility for different sectors and are judged not only by how well they manage their respective sectors, but also by how well the entire team and the unit it supervises perform. In Deng's era and in the decades after Deng, those judgments were based overwhelmingly on how much the team contributed to China's overall economic growth. Over the years, secondary criteria have become more important for judging the performance of the teams, criteria that include the training of the next generation of officials, environmental protection, managing disturbances, and responding to emergencies.
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Like Deng, Deng's successors believe that a sense of commitment to the overall goals of the nation can be achieved by the proper selection, training, and supervision of officials. Because officials at the next level down have a great deal of freedom over how they do their work, the selection and training of the members of a team are done with considerable care. At each level, younger officials judged likely to excel because of their overall intellectual ability, reliability under stress, mature judgment, ability to work well with colleagues, and dedication to serving the party and the country are picked for special training, mentoring, and testing.