Shorenstein Reports on Contemporary East Asia
Number 14
March 1997
Robert Scalapino
Elizabeth Perry
Thomas Gold
Frederic Wakeman
Does Deng's death represent the passing of a man or the passing of an era? Professor Robert Scalapino, Robson Research Professor of Government emeritus; Professor Elizabeth Perry, Department of Political Science; Professor Thomas Gold, Department of Sociology; and Professor Frederic Wakeman, Department of History gathered to discuss Deng's legacy, the political influence of his death, and the implications for Taiwan and Hong Kong. Wen-hsin Yeh, Department of History and chair of the Center for Chinese Studies, moderated the discussion, which was followed by a question and answer session.
Scalapino introduced the roundtable by discussing Deng's background. Deng was born in a well-to-do family and went to France in 1920 when he was sixteen years old. After meeting Zhou Enlai in France, Deng came back committed to communism and committed to Marxism-Leninism. But, Scalapino suggested, Deng will probably be credited with undermining Leninism. He was an authoritarian, yet he launched China on the path of economic development.
Deng's death represents the passing of the first- and second-generation revolutionaries. Scalapino noted that the third and fourth generations taking the helm now are more pragmatic, better educated, more technologically inclined, and more cosmopolitan than the older generations. But, Scalapino said, they don't have the same reach into total power that the first and second generations did. Scalapino believes there is a chance that collective leadership will emerge � an institutionalized federal system that is not dependent solely on personalities.
Neither Mao nor Deng saw the decline of ideology, Scalapino said. Neither could envisage what economic development would do to ideology. Scalapino questioned whether China, when dealing with critical problems with its neighbors, will rely on dialogue to find solutions or rely on militant nationalism. He predicted that there will be thorny problems in the Asia-Pacific region and that China will be involved. He concluded that cautious optimism is warranted that "development with reasonable stability will continue despite the challenges at both domestic and regional levels."
Elizabeth Perry looked at the potential for popular unrest in China following Deng's death. Perry said that when evaluating China's stability, people usually think in terms of the top leadership and ask whether Jiang Zemin will stay in power. But the fate of the top leadership depends on popular forces as well. Deng's death does increase the likelihood of popular protest. Deng played a key role in suppressing popular protest. He was active in the anti-rightist movement of 1957, he clamped down on the Democracy Wall movement in 1979, and he was behind the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Because future leaders are unlikely to command the same respect as a veteran of the Long March, Perry said, they will have a difficult time dealing with future protests.
Deng's economic reforms led to new forms of popular discontent based on regional inequalities that evolved from unequal development between the coast and inland areas. National minorities make up only a small percentage of the Chinese population, Perry said, and she suggested that separatist movements among minorities might be seen as a sign of national weakness. Nationalism can be a very powerful rallying cry for minorities and Han Chinese alike, she said.
Economic autonomy may lead to demands for political autonomy, Perry noted. The growing gap between rich and poor may also fuel class-based conflicts. She suggested that we might look to the floating population as well as workers in foreign-owned enterprises and in township and village industries for signs of discontent. The peasantry is also an important social force, said Perry. In 1993, the Renshou area in Sichuan was forced to shut down because of peasant tax riots led by a demobilized soldier. This suggests that Jiang Zemin will have problems with soldiers' loyalty and combat-readiness, said Perry. Also, while the People's Armed Police is becoming more powerful, there have been suspicions surrounding their connections to drug and prostitution rings.
Thomas Gold discussed Deng's political and economic legacy. Gold said Deng should be remembered as the man who let the genie of Chinese entrepreneurship out of the bottle with the intention of letting it work the same magic on the mainland as it had in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and in Chinese communities throughout the world. We often forget that Deng withstood numerous attacks on his reform programs, Gold said. With each attack, Deng consolidated his forces and pushed his reforms forward faster and more effectively. Gold said that although Deng promulgated laws and institutions, it is unclear whether he wanted the rule of law to extend beyond the economic realm. Now people take advantage of the laws that are on the books.
Deng should be remembered for his brilliant but empirically meaningless slogan about building "socialism with Chinese characteristics," Gold said. People in China have a hard enough time defining what socialism is, he said, to say nothing of "Chinese characteristics."
Politically Deng was far from liberal, Gold said, but to sum up his career with the Tiananmen Square crackdown is a distortion of the record. The incident was evidence of Deng's limitations. According to Gold, Deng was an excellent Leninist, but a poor Marxist. He never accepted Marx's theory of dialectical materialism, which claimed that as the material base changes, so will social relations and the superstructure. This is exactly what happened as a result of Deng's reforms, said Gold.
Frederic Wakeman summarized the roundtable by looking at the perception of Deng's personality and China's future. He observed that Deng had an image of cruelty, harshness, toughness, and impatience -- strikingly different from the image the West has of Deng's heir apparent, Jiang Zemin, Deng's comments about Jiang Zemin indicate a kind of benign contempt, Wakeman said. The dying presence of the last of the revolutionary titans was a kind of gravitational force field. Now that the force field has burned off, Wakeman asked, what is going to happen? Certainly the question of Chinese nationalism will play a crucial role, said Wakeman. Deng's heirs face the unfinished business of Taiwan and Hong Kong as the main stumbling blocks of foreign policy. There is also a struggle for China to retain Chineseness in the face of global change. Deng was always determined to press ahead; he believed that economic development was a necessity. That determination is truly Deng's legacy, Wakeman concluded.
Gold said he thinks there are none. He said that Deng didn't know what he really meant when he coined the phrase "one country, two systems". The people who will govern Hong Kong during the transition have already been selected, Gold said; Deng's presence is not necessary to put a blessing on the transition or to restrain any particular force there. Wakeman agreed with Gold but wondered whether there would be any psychological or symbolic effects. He suggested that the "forces of order" may be worried about these effects.
Gold said there might be more implications for Taiwan than Hong Kong because it is a question of civil war. He said the issue of generational passing is important because Deng fought the civil war. For Deng, Taiwan's return had a sense of mission. Now, said Gold, it has a sense of nationalism. He said he doubted China would suddenly abandon the issue. Nationalism is about the only thing that has any motivating currency in China, he said.
Perry said that Deng was able to open up dialogue with Taiwan, which a weaker leader would not have been able to do. A weaker leader such as Jiang will not want to be open to charges of not being nationalistic. Thus, Jiang may be unable to make the kind of breakthroughs that Deng made.
Wakeman added that the support of the military is critical to Jiang's success. There will be a lot of pressure for him to be strong on the Taiwan issue, he said. Wakeman predicted that this could be a major issue in the early winter of this year.
Perry said that she is not as alarmist as some are about the issue of China's power. There are many signs that the Chinese military is in trouble. Furthermore, China sees its role more in Asia than in an international context. The Chinese military would like to play a more high-profile role in East Asia, she said.
Wakeman said there is a utilitarian way of posing the question: Did Deng benefit the Chinese people, or should we worry about a small number of troublemakers? This question gets to the heart of the controversy in the United States, he said. The human rights people are more concerned about Wei Jingsheng than they are about whether the average Chinese family is better off now than ten years ago, said Wakeman.
Gold said the human rights debate as currently conducted is not productive. People are talking past each other and there is no agreement. The United States is impossibly arrogant with its insistence that there is only one definition of human rights and that the Chinese are barbarians, said Gold. Naturally, China becomes defensive. Gold suggested that although he is not excusing Chinese abuses, we need to approach negotiations with more humility.
Summarized by Frith Breitzer.
