Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (137 page)

During the Cultural Revolution, Li was kept on by Zhou Enlai to serve as first deputy head of the
yewuzu
, with overall responsibility for the economy. From 1966 to 1970 the economic disruptions were so severe that no party meetings were held to discuss annual or multiyear economic plans; Li's job was to keep the economy functioning despite the political disruptions. After 1970, however, Li Xiannian was able to revive the planning process. Li was acceptable to the senior officials, for he had been a senior official under Zhou Enlai and he did not rise because of the Cultural Revolution. Yet he was also acceptable to those who rose during the Cultural Revolution, for he had also worked closely with them as a member of the
yewuzu.
In 1975, when Deng was in charge of the country but still on a leash from Mao, Li played a key role in helping Deng gain control over the railroads and the steel industry. At the end of 1975 when Mao began to harbor doubts about Deng, Li joined wholeheartedly in the criticisms of Deng. But in 1976 when the criticism against Deng expanded, Li was also criticized and in Mao's last months, from February to September 1976, Li voluntarily stepped aside so that Hua Guofeng could lead the daily work of the government.

Immediately after Mao's death, Hua Guofeng sent Li Xiannian to talk with Marshal Ye Jianying about how to respond to the Gang of Four. And after Deng's removal from early 1976 until 1978, when he held the post of vice premier under Hua Guofeng, Li was in charge of the daily work of the government. During these years, he played a central part in decisions to import chemical fertilizer and artificial fiber plants and, beginning in 1978, in arranging further imports of foreign factories with
members of the “petroleum faction.” In mid-1978 Li Xiannian, working under Hua Guofeng, played key roles in developing the ten-year economic vision, making arrangements for delegations to travel abroad, and importing large numbers of foreign factories and assembly lines. At an economic conference in the summer of 1978, to which Chen Yun was not invited, Li Xiannian kept Chen Yun informed.

After the Third Plenum, when Chen Yun complained about the careless and overly optimistic planning by Hua Guofeng, Li Xiannian, as the responsible official under Hua, was implicated. He managed to keep his position, but he was placed on the defensive. He undertook a self-criticism for his overly optimistic assessments and passed on overall responsibility for guiding the Chinese economy to his former mentor, Chen Yun, who had helped nurse him back to health in Xinjiang more than two decades earlier. In March 1979, Li Xiannian and Chen Yun sent a joint letter to the party center asking that a new Finance and Economics Commission be established under the direction of Chen Yun, with Li as his deputy.

No matter how much Li cooperated with Deng, he could not completely shed his past thinking or his personal connections with those leaders who had remained in office during the Cultural Revolution. Many of the reforms introduced after 1978 were, inevitably, critical of the policies that Li had supported during the Cultural Revolution and of the organizations in which he had worked. He had, for example, supported the Dazhai and Daqing models that Deng and other reformers considered inappropriate for the era. His relations with Zhao Ziyang, who was pushing ahead with an agenda to open markets far more widely, were at best awkward. But his special relations with Chen Yun, as his rescuer in the 1930s, and with Deng, whom he had assisted during the difficult days in the Dabie Mountains—along with his seniority, adaptability, and general competence—were sufficient to allow him to remain in a high position. Among the post-1978 reformers, he was relatively conservative. Also, Li did not fully support Deng in pushing aside Hua Guofeng. His views were closer to those of his old superior Chen Yun than to those of Deng. Like Chen Yun, Li never visited the SEZs, even though he had supported the establishment of a ship-demolition facility in Shekou, which became a small corner of the Shenzhen SEZ.

Li was flexible enough to join Deng's reform team, but he was not a full-fledged dedicated reformer himself. Even so, he had seniority, knowledge, and experience useful to Deng and the more committed reformers, and he did not challenge their leadership.

Mao Yuanxin

At the beginning of 1976, Mao Zedong's nephew Mao Yuanxin was only thirty-six years old, but he was already a provincial party secretary in Liaoning where he had aligned himself firmly with the radicals (although not with the Gang of Four). He
was easily the brightest, most knowledgeable, and experienced young relative of Mao Zedong. He was forceful and confident, and Mao already had a close relationship with him.
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Mao Yuanxin's father, Mao Zemin, a dedicated Communist and younger brother of Mao Zedong, was killed in 1943 by a Xinjiang warlord, Sheng Shicai. Mao Zedong's second son, Anqing, was mentally ill. When Mao's eldest son, Anying, was killed in the Korean War, Mao, lonely for a son, invited his high-school-age nephew Yuanxin to live with him, which he did for several years. At the time, Mao did not discuss politics with him, but he talked to him about Chinese history and classical literature. Yuanxin grew attached to his uncle but he did not get along with Jiang Qing, whom he considered hysteric and unreasonable. For several years, he did not talk to her. Yuanxin passed the entrance examination to Tsinghua University but transferred to Harbin Military Engineering University, the favorite for children of high military officers. He was still a student when the Cultural Revolution broke out and he became a leader of a rebel faction.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution Mao Yuanxin was sympathetic to the senior officials, but after Mao took him aside and explained the problems with these senior officials, Yuanxin became more radical. The first time Mao was interested in hearing Yuanxin's views on political issues was in 1968 when Yuanxin, then a twenty-nine-year-old official in Liaoning, went to Beijing at his uncle's request. Mao asked him detailed questions about the political situation in the Northeast. When his nephew responded, Mao was impressed with his detailed understanding. After 1969, when the PLA tried to unify the different factions, Mao Yuanxin developed a good working relationship with Zhou Enlai, who was supervising this effort. Indeed, Mao Yuanxin played a central role in resolving the differences between the two most powerful leaders in the Northeast, Chen Xilian and Song Renqiong

In 1973, when Mao Yuanxin was already a party secretary in Liaoning, a university applicant, Zhang Tiesheng, passed in a blank sheet of paper for his entrance examination, explaining that he had been working in the fields and did not have time to study. Yuanxin, finding the case emblematic and an opportunity to back the workers, supported him and the case received national attention. Mao Yuanxin thus had established radical credentials when Mao invited him to Beijing to serve as his liaison with the outside.

Ren Zhongyi

Although he had never lived in Guangdong before 1980 and had visited only once, Ren played such a central role in guiding Guangdong to use to the hilt its special role in experimenting with new systems that he remained there after his retirement in 1985 until his death in 2005. A committed reformer who had excelled as a provincial
leader, Ren was a natural choice to lead Guangdong. From 1978 to 1980 Ren was first party secretary of Liaoning, then one of China's most industrialized provinces and far more industrialized than Guangdong. While in Liaoning he had advocated that the province be made into a SEZ. Ren first met with Deng in 1977 before taking up his post in Liaoning, and he was one of Deng's escorts in the Northeast in September 1978 as Deng lit the sparks for reform. In a fall 1978 article in the Liaoning provincial party journal, Ren was among the first provincial leaders to endorse Deng's reform goals and to criticize the “two whatevers.” At the Central Party Work Conference in late 1978, Ren was chairman of the Northeast group, in which Chen Yun brought up historical questions that Hua had not acted on.
²⁴

For his position in Guangdong, Ren was recommended by Premier Zhao Ziyang, who had known Ren as a fellow provincial first party secretary and who shared his views about the need for reform. Because of his longtime service in Guangdong, Zhao had a special interest in developments there.

Ren was a charismatic leader who lit up a room upon entering it. Even in his last years when he walked with a cane and after several operations for cancer, he had a sparkling sense of humor. He joked that after he had his stomach removed he had
“wusuo weiju”
(literally, “nothing to fear,” with
wusuo weiju
also a homonym for having “no stomach”), and that, having lost sight in one eye, he could
“yimu liaoran”
—“understand a situation with one glance,” but literally “see with one eye.”

Born in 1914 near Tianjin, in Wei county, Hebei province, Ren held responsible positions starting in his youth. As a patriotic student at Zhongguo University in Beiping, where he studied political economy for three years, he took part in the December 9, 1935, student movement of patriotic young Chinese students opposed to the Japanese military advances. He then joined the party in 1936 and became a branch secretary with responsibility for over fifty members. He was long known as one of the more progressive intellectuals in the party. Attracted to the ideals of a new people's democracy that supported cooperation among different social classes, he was disturbed by the criticism of dedicated young intellectuals during the Yan'an period.
²⁵

During World War II, Ren joined the guerrilla forces constantly on the move along a Japanese-held railway. He later became head of the political cadre school in the sixth column of the Eighth Route Army in the Taixi region of western Shandong. He became a vice mayor of Dalian in 1949 and, at age thirty-eight, the first party secretary of Harbin in 1953. He was criticized for his rightist tendencies but was always protected by his superiors, who admired him for his outstanding leadership abilities. In the years before the Cultural Revolution, he was not only party secretary of Harbin, but also a party secretary of Heilongjiang province. During the Cultural Revolution he was “dragged out,” paraded with a dunce cap, and criticized more than five hundred times, once for over six hours, for being a rightist and the person
most willing to “take the capitalist road” in Harbin. He was sent to the countryside, where he lived for two years in a cow shed and worked as a manual laborer.

Ren's fortunes changed again as the Cultural Revolution was winding down. He was made first party secretary in Heilongjiang and then, in 1978, when the reformers were returning to high positions, he became first party secretary of Liaoning province, where he was given the task of overcoming the tide of leftism in the province under Chen Xilian and Mao's nephew, Mao Yuanxin.

Decades earlier, when Tao Zhu had headed south to lead Guangdong in 1951, he brought with him thousands of northerners who did not mix well with the locals. By contrast, in 1980 when Ren went to Guangdong, he brought a single staff assistant, Lei Yu. By 1980 localism was no longer a threat to central control. Ren Zhongyi followed the advice of Marshal Ye and made good use of the local Guangdong officials who had been recently released by Xi Zhongxun: they in turn were grateful to Ren for providing them an opportunity to provide their services. Ren was close to Hu Yaobang and defended intellectuals within the party. After he retired, he was bold enough to ask publicly why the party could not experiment with political zones, as it had with economic zones.

Ren was known for his ability to make good strategic decisions, especially in situations where there were not yet rules and one had to judge how much higher-level officials would permit. In these difficult circumstances, Ren was widely revered not only for doing what was necessary to promote reform and growth, but for accepting any criticism and protecting those under him who implemented the new procedures. Ren spent his first few months in Guangdong traveling throughout the province, observing conditions, talking with local officials, and reading reports. To promote rapid economic growth, he concentrated on constructing key bridges, roads, and electric power stations. He also encouraged officials under him to be flexible and courageous in attracting industrial investment. As he told his subordinates regarding possible political criticism from Beijing, “If something is not explicitly prohibited, then move ahead. If something is allowed, use it to the hilt.”
²⁶

Wan Li

Like Zhao Ziyang, Wan Li first came to Deng's attention in 1946, when Deng was responsible for Communist activity in the mountainous border region of Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu (Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan).
²⁷
Deng had noticed that in certain areas the troops were much better supplied with food and other necessities than elsewhere. When he investigated, he found that Wan Li had helped mobilize local people to gather grain and other supplies and transport them to the frontline troops fighting under his and Liu Bocheng's command. During the civil war, in the absence of regular rail and truck transport, Wan Li was responsible for mobilizing some 1.4 million transport workers to move weapons and supplies, some on carts pulled by donkeys or
oxen and much on people's backs or hanging from carrying poles across their shoulders. Wan Li was always a pragmatic, straightforward strong person who wanted to get things done for the good of the people.

Twelve years younger than Deng, Wan Li came from a poor peasant family in Dongping county, located in mountainous western Shandong (famous as the hideout for the rebels in the legend
Water Margin
). In 1933 after his father's death, due to his mother's hard work and sacrifice, Wan was able not only to complete local schools but also to continue his studies in nearby Qufu, at No. 2 Normal School where, in 1936, he became a member of the Communist Party.
²⁸
After graduation, he taught in a modern comprehensive elementary school, where he secretly recruited patriotic youth to join the party. Within a few years Wan Li became head of the party committee in his native county. He was slightly senior to Zhao Ziyang, who was a county party secretary in the neighboring province of Hebei, but in the same border region. There were then twenty-four Communist Party members in Wan Li's county, ten of whom had been personally recruited by Wan. Wan Li rose to be deputy party secretary of Yunxi prefecture, comprising several counties, and a political commissar of a branch district of the PLA
(jun fenqu zhengwei).
During the civil war, Wan Li served with the forces led by Deng and Liu Bocheng that later became the Second Field Army. As the Communist armies advanced westward and officials were assigned to manage the transition to Communist rule in various areas, Wan Li was briefly assigned to be deputy head of the Nanjing Municipal Finance and Economics Commission and head of the Nanjing Construction Bureau.