Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (39 page)

On July 23, two days after Deng's speech, the
People's Daily, Red Flag
, and the PLA newspaper
Jiefangjun bao
announced his new assignments in an editorial that stated, “This meeting's decision to return Deng to his positions inside and outside the party embodies the hopes of the broad masses of party members and the public.”
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The outpouring of emotion at Tiananmen Square on April 5, 1976, and the discussions at the Central Party Work Conference confirmed that this was no exaggeration. The first time Deng appeared in public after returning to work was on July 30, at a soccer match between mainland China and Hong Kong. As the loudspeaker announced his entrance into the Worker's Stadium, Deng received an extraordinarily lengthy standing ovation.
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The public clearly felt secure under his steady hand and, based on his achievements in 1975, hopeful.

The participants at the 11th Party Congress, held August 12–18, 1977, welcomed Deng back, but some Maoists were uneasy with his return, and there was not yet a clear consensus on how to view Mao's legacy or on what concrete policies to pursue. Party leaders, trying to paper over differences and convey unity, resorted to slogans that affirmed the legacy of Mao and spoke in general terms about the goal of modernization. The Cultural Revolution was declared over, but its value was affirmed; the revolution led by the proletariat would continue to criticize rightism even as China sought new technology from abroad. In small group meetings, some members expressed dissatisfaction with Hua's leadership, as reflected in his four-hour-long speech that used platitudes to gloss over differences. To be sure, these criticisms were excluded from the written record of the congress.
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Deng accommodated to the political atmosphere by repeating platitudes that would reassure those who still clung to Mao. In his brief closing address on August 18, Deng said that the congress “ushers in a new period in the development of our socialist revolution and socialist construction. We must revive and carry forward the mass line.” But he also tried to create some room for flexibility. He added, “We must revive and carry forward the practice of seeking the true path from facts, the fine tradition and style which Chairman Mao fostered.”
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By including Mao's “true path,” Deng confirmed his loyalty to Mao, but his emphasis on “seeking the true path from facts” gave him room to adapt policy to the needs of the current situation and to argue that concrete messages from Mao did not automatically apply to all situations.

Deng also provided reassurance that he would work under the leadership of Chairman Hua. Using a military analogy, Deng said he would look after the “rear services,” and his listeners understood that this meant he would be assisting the commander, Hua Guofeng. In particular, he would take charge of science and education “to help Chairman Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying.”
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Deng would not threaten the leadership of Hua Guofeng, at least for the moment.

Deng Micromanages Science, Technology, and Education

A few weeks after the party congress, Deng, in an address to Ministry of Education officials, said, “Although I realized it would be a tough job to be in charge of scientific and educational work, I volunteered for the post. China's four modernizations will get nowhere … if we don't make a success of such work.”
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Deng was ready to continue the work he had begun in 1975, with the help of Hu Yaobang, to win back the goodwill of scientists. In 1977, to a
visiting Chinese-American scientist, Deng remarked that if he were not soon “called to meet Marx” (in the afterlife) he intended to work on science and education for ten years. He said that he hoped to see a few results within five years, more within ten years, and major transformations within fifteen years.
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Deng realized that China badly needed to raise the average literacy rate as well as the public's knowledge of science and technology, but he focused his attention at the high end: on basic research to achieve scientific breakthroughs that would drive the other three modernizations in industry, agriculture, and national defense. In his view, “China must catch up with the most advanced countries in the world.”
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Deng met again and again with the Chinese-American Nobel prize winners Lee Tsung-Dao, Yang Zhenning, and Samuel Ting. The central question was always the same: What can China do to raise its level of science? Deng had an almost magical faith in the role that science would play in China's renewal, and he approved projects accordingly. When asked why he wanted China to spend so much money on a nuclear accelerator so early in its modernization effort, he replied that China must look ahead to develop Chinese science.

In 1957 Deng had been Mao's right-hand man in implementing the attack on intellectuals, but he did not instinctively dislike them as Mao did. Mao, who denigrated them as “bourgeois intellectuals,” time and again found ways to humiliate them and to send them to be educated by performing physical labor. Deng never had an opportunity to study at a university, but he had once been on track to receive a higher education and made his best effort to enter a French university. His wife had studied physics at China's premier university, Peking University, and three of his five children had also studied physics at Peking University, and one studied medicine and the other art because she was considered too sickly for the demanding program in science. Moreover, Deng had come to see that the attacks on intellectuals had devastated Chinese science and technology, which would be essential for China's modernization. After he returned to work in 1973, Deng never again attacked intellectuals as he did in 1957. Other leaders sometimes talked of “bourgeois intellectuals,” but not Deng. Science, Deng said, had no class character: it could be used by all classes and by all countries despite their different political and economic systems.

Deng soon laid out his agenda for upgrading China's scientific level:

We should select several thousand of our most qualified personnel within the scientific and technological establishment and create conditions
that will allow them to devote their undivided attention to research. Those who have financial difficulties should be given allowances and subsidies. Some now have their children and aged parents living with them, earn well under 100 yuan a month, and must spend a lot of time doing housework. They can't even find a quiet place to read in the evening. How can this state of affairs be allowed to continue? The political requirements set for these people must be appropriate; they should love the motherland, love socialism, and accept the leadership of the party.... We must create within the party an atmosphere of respect for knowledge and respect for trained personnel. The erroneous attitude of not respecting intellectuals must be opposed. All work, be it mental or manual, is labor.
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Deng thought it was a terrible waste to send young intellectuals off to do physical labor when they should be advancing Chinese science. Although he did not use the term, in fact he believed in a meritocratic elite. He sought to attract the best and the brightest and to provide the conditions that would allow them to achieve the most for China.

Deng encountered massive resistance in his efforts to promote an educational and scientific elite. When he complained about the treatment of intellectuals, Deng was shrewd enough not to talk about the role of Chairman Mao, who in fact was ultimately responsible for those policies; instead he focused on the Gang of Four. Deng said China must avoid the Gang of Four's destructive habits of being a “hat company,” that is, one that puts “hats” (political labels) on intellectuals, and a “stick company,” that is, one that uses sticks to beat intellectuals.
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Before Deng returned, many conservatives still argued that the educational policies in Communist China's first seventeen years (1949 to 1966) should be criticized as “bourgeois.” On the eve of Deng's return to work, at the June 1977 Ministry of Education's All-China Higher Education Admission Work Forum
(Quanguo gaodeng xuexiao zhaosheng gongzuotanhui)
in Taiyuan, Shanxi, participants had engaged in lively debates over whether to base future policy on Cultural Revolution policies or on earlier ones—and ended the discussion by choosing the Cultural Revolution policies as their guide.
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Deng clearly had plenty of work to do.

As Deng aged, he began to reduce his work schedule, but in 1977, when he returned to work at age seventy-two, Deng was energized and threw himself into his work. Deng ordinarily dealt with broad issues, and he was a micromanager
only when he considered an issue to be of the highest priority. In 1977–1978 he considered science and education to be that important. When he initially addressed the task, he said, “Over the next eight to ten years, we should bend all our efforts to educational work. For my part, I intend to pay close attention to it, keeping an eye on the leading comrades in the educational departments.”
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Deng made the rounds of party leaders in various regions, attacking the radicals' views of intellectuals and making concrete suggestions for how to cultivate a new appreciation of their potential to help China move forward. For several days beginning on July 27, within a week after the end of the plenum that officially gave him responsibility to work in the area of science, Deng held a series of talks with the president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fang Yi, the vice president of the academy, Li Chang, and Minister of Education Liu Xiyao in which he laid out his agenda to speed up China's modernization in the sciences. Deng said plans thus far were insufficient. They should draw up a list of China's most knowledgeable scientists in various specialties and make sure that they were given adequate facilities and living conditions so they could concentrate on their work. The 1964 and 1965 graduates who still did not have appropriate work should receive better assignments.
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In addition, Deng continued, Chinese scholars who go abroad to study should be given incentives to return, and if they decline to return, they should still be considered patriots and invited to come back and give lectures. Scholars should collect textbooks from abroad to update their teaching materials, which must be concise and to the point. And the Ministry of Education should make a list of the schools with the highest standards and ensure that students with the highest entrance exam scores attend them. Deng also said that defense scientific work must be part of the overall planning for science, and officials should not be afraid if there were some duplication with other science work.
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Commander Deng, the micromanager, had taken charge, and as he explained to the officials who would carry out his orders in these areas, “We don't want to fire empty shells.”
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Despite Deng's energetic presentations, opposition remained strong enough that at the Forum on Science and Education Work, at which some thirty famous scientists and educators met from August 3 to 8, 1977, Deng felt it necessary to attack again the prevailing assessment that education was a “bourgeois” failure. No longer would practical technicians be extolled at the expense of theorists. As Deng envisioned it, some scientists could be selected from productive units, but most of the pioneers
on the cutting edge of science and technology would have to come from the universities. In order to produce good scientists, elementary schools should build a strong basis in math and foreign languages. Universities, meanwhile, should reduce the number of factories they operate and increase their laboratories.
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Deng believed that some of China's most capable young people should go abroad for advanced study, and he made efforts to establish programs for Chinese to study abroad. He expressed confidence that China—which had invented the compass, the printing press, and explosives—had plenty of smart people. But China had fallen far behind and must now learn from the West. To learn from abroad, China could buy written materials from other countries (for Chinese textbook development), send scholars to study overseas, and invite foreign scientists to visit China.

By September, after two months of pushing the Ministry of Education officials to take action, Deng was still frustrated. Mao had once commented that in the military the troops were afraid of Deng. Now Commander Deng aimed his big guns at the Ministry of Education: “The Ministry of Education should take the initiative. So far you have not done so.... You are overcautious and afraid of making further ‘mistakes’ if you follow my advice.... We need to have specific policies and measures.... You should work freely and boldly and think independently instead of always looking over your shoulder.... Those comrades who are in favor of the policies of the party center should get on with the job, and those who aren't should switch to other lines of work.”
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Deng added that the ministry needed some twenty to forty people “about the age of forty whose duty it is to make the rounds of the schools.... Like commanders going down to the companies, they should sit in on classes as pupils, familiarize themselves with the real situation, supervise the implementation of plans and policies, and then report back … we can't afford to be satisfied with idle talk.”
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By advocating policies fervently supported by the scholarly community, Deng won back some of the goodwill among intellectuals that he had lost in 1957 as a leader of the anti-rightist campaign. This goodwill was important for Deng's public image, for many of these same intellectuals drafted documents and wrote speeches for the Propaganda Department and the media. Even though they worked within the limits set by the political leaders, they still had opportunities to subtly shape the documents and speeches that appeared in print and on radio and television. It did not hurt for Deng to have their support.