Some in China Cling to Deng’s Capitalist Coattails

Deng Xianyan runs his fingers over a bottle of Deng family liquor as he mulls the legacy of his famous cousin, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

“He unleashed the creativity of a billion Chinese people,” the 52-year-old company president says of the man known as the father of China’s modernization. “Even having a couple of extra chickens before Xiaoping came along was enough to brand you a hated capitalist.”

Throwing in a little sales pitch for a business that has seen sales rise 30% from the attention surrounding today’s commemoration, he adds, “We owe him a great deal and hope that spirit of gratitude is appreciated by customers of our top-quality liquor.”

Hooch-making relatives aren’t the only ones basking in Deng’s reflected glory more than seven years after his death. Other Chinese, including those in the upper reaches of the Communist Party and in the halls of commerce, continue to invoke the diminutive revolutionary to justify pet projects, innovative policies and sacred cows.

Deng’s bold reforms during the 1980s liberated China’s economy, foreign policy and thinking after decades of economic mismanagement and political turmoil epitomized by the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

On the road into Guangan, Deng’s hometown in Sichuan province, a huge red banner calls on Chinese to follow the principles of the “paramount leader” and his successor, former President Jiang Zemin.

The pairing is significant. The aloof Jiang hopes to elevate his own standing by associating himself with the far more popular Deng, analysts say, as Jiang angles for power from his position as the head of China’s military.

In Zhongnanhai, the high-walled Beijing compound where China’s top leaders live and work, Jiang’s rivals use Deng to justify their more moderate line. Insiders say allies of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are spreading the word that China’s increasingly confrontational stance toward Taiwan and Japan -- policies associated with Jiang -- is a potential disaster that departs from Deng’s enlightened principle of regional peace and prosperity.

“There’s a big move to refocus attention on Deng’s theories of diplomacy,” said one party member who declined to be identified. “Jiang purposely took advantage of nationalism after the 1990s without fully understanding what he’d unleashed.”

The Communist Party has its own reasons for hitching its propaganda star to Deng: For one, he arguably saved the party from its own excesses.

By systematically reversing many of Mao Tse-tung’s sacred ideas, Deng, starting in the late 1970s, freed Chinese intellectuals to think again, entrepreneurs to build wealth and diplomats to expand national influence on the world stage.

“His theories helped China recover its common sense,” said Liu Zhiguang, a professor at the Marxism Research Institute of Beijing University.

In appreciation, the party has for months been revving up the 100th-anniversary hoopla with a blizzard of song contests, books, stamps, documentaries, calligraphy exhibitions and photo exhibits. One television producer recounts being told -- not asked -- by propaganda officials several months ago to prepare at least four programs centered on Deng, a drill repeated throughout the country. China watchers say the pageantry is set to match or exceed that surrounding Mao’s 100th birthday celebration in 1993.

Although Deng made some brilliant moves, he also made at least one huge mistake, presiding over the decision to open fire on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that politically set China back by years and left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead. And even as he led China’s modernization drive, Deng was no liberal, continuing throughout his life to support the Communist Party’s political monopoly.

The party remains largely silent on Tiananmen. Deng’s hometown museum devotes only two oblique sentences to it: “China faced a severe trial in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, when political storms occurred both at home and abroad. Led by Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communists survived these severe tests.”

Analysts say this follows a pattern long seen throughout Chinese history of papering over mistakes, amid concerns here that any criticism of Deng will reflect on the party as a whole and on people still alive associated with the decision.

Even as public figures jockey to ally themselves with Deng, at least one has tried to improve his position by putting down Deng.

Li Peng, the former prime minister known overseas as the “Butcher of Beijing” for his Tiananmen role, this month published an essay in the monthly party journal Seeking Truth that placed much of the blame on Deng for “resolutely backing” the decision to fire on the protesters.

Many Chinese feel genuine affection toward Deng as much for reasons of style as substance. Compared to the imperious Mao, Deng was modest and down-to-earth. “Mao once said Deng was gentle but firm, like a needle in cotton,” said his cousin Deng Xianyan. “When confronted politically, he could turn into a bull.”

Deng’s close family ties proved a refuge when his long career hit bottom three times -- once in 1933 and twice during the Cultural Revolution at the hands of Mao -- even as he tried to help those who suffered during the downturns for their association with him.

“Since I was his relative, students would come from Beijing during the Cultural Revolution and make us kneel on stools wearing a dunce cap with a sign around our neck that said “corrupt, bankrupt landlord,” said Dan Wenquan, another Deng cousin, who runs a restaurant in Guangan. “A little later he wrote us a letter and gave us money, apologizing because we’d been affected by him.”

Not everyone is so delighted with Deng in a country where opportunities remain limited for 700 million farmers and 300 million lower-class urban residents. At a bench in a pagoda-like pavilion in Beijing’s Ritan Park, Li Shuwen, 64, sat watching her grandson play with a fishing pole.

“Sure, a lot of people have gotten rich from Deng’s reforms,” the retired factory worker said. “But even more people have lost their jobs. You need wooden doors, metal gates and two locks against the thieves. You’re constantly worrying someone might kidnap your grandson. There’s so much stress and pressure. How can you call this progress?”

Even as many of Deng’s policies remain controversial, he showed a talent for communicating that helped China bridge some of the huge contradictions it faced.

In justifying China’s U-turn from central economic planning to increased private initiative, Deng proclaimed that it wasn’t important whether a cat was black or white, as long as it caught mice. It’s glorious to get rich, he said, adding that growing wealth in China’s coastal areas would eventually spread to the rest of the country -- a prediction some are still waiting to come true.

His sayings have resonated with relatives, especially back at the family liquor company in his hometown, where the late leader’s comfortable family house is now part of a tourist park complete with golf carts and piped-in music featuring songs from “The Lion King.”

The company walks a fine line in openly advertising Deng family liquor given party prohibitions on commercializing national icons, so it has to rely primarily on word of mouth.

That said, each liquor box features a black and white cat logo, and the company advises customers to drink in three distinct gulps, rather than a single shot, to represent the “three ups and downs” of Deng’s career.

One bottle is the shape of a raised thumb in honor of the thumbs-up gesture Deng made when asked how market reforms were going in the southern city of Shenzhen.

“One of Xiaoping’s slogans was, ‘Let some of the people get rich first,’ ” said Yang Qingshan, the company’s marketing guru. “Our slogan is, ‘Let some of the people drink first.’ ”

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Bu Yang in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

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In stories after September 1, Los Angeles Times style changed: Beijing University is called Peking University.

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