The first thing to note was a sense of grief and a hole to fill was left for so many Chinese by the death of Mao after he had effectively (and otherwise, it must be said) ruled China for a generation. Deng’s form of hole-filling by radical reform proved to be another kind of revolution for the many who had never known any system other than Maoism.
China still was (as it still is today) both relatively poor and relatively isolated in world terms but progress had been made (and would continue to be under Deng’s reforms). Mao’s and Deng’s goals weren’t really so different after all. China would be strong.
But many of the Chinese needed a rest as much as many others remained restless. Continuous revolution was not fun for everyone. Virtually every year since 1949 it must have seemed a violent major purge or at least a personal denunciation was liable to be just around the corner.
The CR was one of many of these types of occasions as my earlier posts record. Deng himself was a prime example having, himself, been purged and rehabilitated more than once. The violence of millions of Red Guards had barely subsided when Mao died, the Gang of Four instated their own purges, Hua had them arrested in turn in his best Mao imitation and the retributive purges continued even as Deng assumed control.
But Deng seemed inclined to lower the boom on terrorist government (at least on Mao’s scale) and there must have been many sighs of relief on all sides. Even the Red Guards themselves who ultimately felt betrayed by Mao (who had finally banished them to the countryside, remember) now breathed more freely.
Deng was a CCP man, though. So what did this mean? There would always be enemies of Communism that needed to be rooted out, that’s what.
Ironically some of the most prominent of these enemies of Communism turned out to be disillusioned Red Guards. One of the first acts of rebellion they became involved in if not against Communism then at least against the current system (even before Deng had had the chance to spell out how he intended to reform it) was the Democracy Wall movement that began in Beijing in 1978 and remained centred there. Many of those now involved in the movement were of course first politicised when they had become Red Guards during the CR.
Refreshingly, Deng announced his approval of the movement (Mao had done something similar, though, with his ‘Hundred Flowers’ comments – could Deng be trusted any more than Mao?) And in this case this was just before he assumed power. As had occurred with Mao, expressions of approval of an ideological movement spurred it on – they chose to again trust their at least hoped-for leadership.
Deng then brought in his reforms and the people waited to see how it would turn out. Would he ultimately welcome the democracy first sought by the May Fourth Movement in 1919? Maybe not.
Better international relations were now on the agenda. The US and China were ready for rapprochement. By 1 January 1979 they had established full diplomatic relations and later that month Deng visited President Carter becoming the first Chinese leader ever to visit the US. Deng was impressed by the technology and material conditions he witnessed on this visit. He, in turn, impressed everybody he met in the US with his vision for China and its relations with the West.
Like Mao, Deng was prepared to turn on dissenters and soon the democracy wall demonstrators that had supported his own rise to power were going too far for him. Deng had wanted four modernisations and Wei Jingsheng, for example, suggested democracy as a fifth.
Deng as readily referred to people like Wei as counter revolutionary as Mao had called Deng that. He began to suppress the movement in Mao style (if a little less violently) and the wall was soon shut down. Notably most of the wall activity had actually been conducted with due regard to the Four Cardinal Principles Deng delineated that I will refer to in a later post.
The reality was that Deng copied Mao’s legal methods in that laws that no one could possibly follow were always kept in reserve to justify any repression as and when it was desired by the leader.
Deng’s next concern in terms of dissent would be potentially brought about by the local devastating drought in Anhui province (also in 1978). Chinese agriculture was still close to a subsistence proposition in a typical year and employing most Chinese so drought was a particular concern in China. The large communes didn’t help matters. In response, local authorities, inspired by the peasants themselves, tried the system that would work and later go national. The productivity in Anhui boomed in response to this new incentivisation. Famine was averted but rolling out the scheme nationally still turned out to be a test of Deng’s power base.
Deng’s ‘capitalist roader’ tag still had the power to tie his hands regardless of how successful (and in fact saving) capitalism could be shown to be. He was finally able to squeeze the reform through, however. It also proved itself almost immediately nationwide in terms of productivity. Along with the local produce and other markets, small factories producing consumer items for market also began to spontaneously sprout up in rural areas.
The two major figures standing with Deng then were Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang and they both also favoured the market.
Foreign capitalists found they were now welcomed, too (initially principally in the SEZs). The foreigners in the zones were popular with locals because they had deeper pockets and this attracted Chinese from all over China hoping for a share of their apparent largesse. Chinese wages and standards of living were higher there but the increases eventually flowed throughout much of the Chinese economy especially in the south of the country (because most of the initial zones were concentrated there. The coastal city special areas were more evenly spread between north and south).
The youth of these zones soon began to live a noticeably more decadent and capitalist lifestyle and to lose some respect for socialism. Prostitution and other supposed signs of vice soon began to flourish there.
Deng’s response (under some pressure from the left to prove his credentials) was to begin a campaign against ‘moral pollution’. After decades of Maoism this comparatively mild effort was treated as a bit of a joke, though. In one oft repeated story a particularly zealous official involving himself in the campaign criticised somebody who possessed a book containing a picture of a western woman with a low cut dress. The woman in question turned out to be Marx’s wife. Meanwhile, investors apparently weren’t getting the joke and Deng was forced to end the scary campaign before it had really begun to assuage their fears. Nevertheless thousands of smugglers had been arrested as part of the campaign.
Deng successfully negotiated the 1997 handover of Hong Kong following the expiration of Britain’s lease with the Thatcher government despite Thatcher’s apparent misgivings, another coup for south China. He used a combination of a few threats and agreement to the concept of ‘one state two systems’ to get that happening, the latter leading to more local name-calling to the effect that he was excessively ‘rightist’. The name-callers probably never had to deal with the “Iron Lady” themselves and in fact Deng once remarked that in these discussions he was “the Iron Man meeting the Iron Lady”.
Deng’s other two notable reforms were to allow the practice of religions more freely again and to reduce the length of the working week. All in all, the economic and social reforms I’ve outlined in these last couple of posts saw Deng riding a wave of popularity by the time of the PRC’s 35th anniversary celebrations in 1984. In the next few posts I’ll focus a little more on political, party and legal reforms in the Deng era especially as it continued from here (and prospects for more).
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