Deng’s Backers--but No Military Officers--Named to China’s Politburo

The Chinese Communist Party completed its leadership reshuffle Tuesday by approving a 22-member Politburo that includes six new members--all supporters of China’s top leader Deng Xiaoping and none of them military officers.

The Politburo appointments were announced after a brief meeting of 330 full and alternate members of the party’s new Central Committee. They are the final step in a series of moves in which Deng, over the last 10 days, has replaced aging revolutionaries with younger administrators and technocrats at the highest levels of the party.

The effect has been to leave the People’s Liberation Army, China’s fighting force of more than 3 million soldiers, with less influence over party affairs in China than at any other time since the Communist takeover in 1949. Deng has been seeking for years to create a professional army divorced from politics.

Last week, 10 members of the Politburo resigned for reasons of age, including six military officers and three others who had held army posts in the past. The six people named to Politburo positions Tuesday have spent virtually all of their careers in civilian positions.

“All of the people going up to the Politburo are backers of his (Deng’s) policies,” one Western diplomat remarked Tuesday.

Leadership Heirs

The new Politburo appointees include the two men whom Deng and his top aides, party General Secretary Hu Yaobang and Premier Zhao Ziyang, hope will take over China’s highest-ranking leadership posts within two or three years.

One of them is Hu Qili, 56, the urbane permanent secretary of the party Secretariat and protege of Hu Yaobang (who is no relation). The other is Li Peng, 57, the adopted son of the late Premier Chou En-lai, a Soviet-trained engineer and energy specialist.

Hu Qili is widely perceived here as Deng’s choice to be the next party secretary and Li is seen as the main candidate to succeed Zhao as premier. Early this month, when former President Richard M. Nixon had a series of meetings with Chinese leaders here, Hu Qili was sitting alongside Hu Yaobang, and Li sat in on the session with Zhao.

The other four new Politburo members are Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian, party organization leader Qiao Shi, and Vice Premiers Tian Jiyun and Yao Yilin. Yao had previously served as an alternate member of the Politburo.

The new leadership announced by the Central Committee on Tuesday includes the five-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, the highest organ in the party. Deng, Hu Yaobang and Zhao all kept their seats on this body, as did President Li Xiannian and veteran economic planner Chen Yun, the leading critic of Deng’s policies.

Marshal’s Seat Left Empty

No one was appointed to the seat on the Standing Committee held previously by Marshal Ye Jianying, for years the most politically influential military leader in China. Ye, who is 88 and in poor health, was among those who resigned last week.

The Central Committee also announced Tuesday the new composition of the party Secretariat, the increasingly powerful body directed by Hu Yaobang and Hu Qili that oversees the day-to-day affairs of the party.

Deng’s youth movement was evident here, too. Qiao, Tian and Li Peng, three of the new Politburo members, were also given seats on the Secretariat, along with Wang Zhaoguo, 44, a Deng protege, and Hao Jianxiu, 49, who will be the only woman on the Secretariat.

Although Deng succeeded in elevating supporters of his policies, he did not remove all sources of opposition within the party leadership.

Chen, 80, who openly defends centralized state planning and opposes China’s drift towards market socialism, kept his seat on the Standing Committee and also as head of the party’s disciplinary commission.

In addition, two ideological opponents of the reform program kept their jobs. One, Hu Qiaomu, serves on the Politburo, and the other, Deng Liqun, the former party propaganda chief, is a member of the Secretariat. Both men were associated with the 1983-84 “spiritual pollution” campaign against foreign influences.

“The reformers probably went as far as they could at this stage,” one analyst said Tuesday. “They like to whittle away at their opponents without a frontal confrontation.”

Apart from the armed forces, the biggest losers in the party shake-up were, first, women, and second, the cities on the East China coast seeking to attract foreign investment.

The changes left the party without a single woman on the Politburo. One woman, Deng Yingchao, Chou En-lai’s widow, resigned from the Politburo last week. It was widely expected that Chen Muhua, a woman serving as an alternate member of the Politburo, would be elevated, but instead she was left as an alternate. She is president of the People’s Bank of China.

At a press conference Monday, party spokesman Zhu Muzhi recalled for reporters an old saying that “women hold up half the world.” He said the fact that there are few women in top Communist Party positions is “the result of a long and historical process.” Party officials hope “to gradually reduce this situation as fast as possible,” Zhu said.

Special Economic Zones

The changes announced Tuesday also included the resignation of Gu Mu, 71, from the Secretariat. Gu was the man primarily responsible for directing China’s policies of opening up four special economic zones and, later, 14 of China’s coastal cities to foreign investment.

During the past three months, Deng has indicated an eagerness to overhaul China’s policies towards these special zones and coastal cities. It appears the regime will now try to focus its efforts on attracting foreign investment to the four largest coastal cities: Shanghai, Canton, Tianjin and Dalian.

Ironically, less than an hour after the personnel changes were made public, the official New China News Agency carried an interview with Gu, quoting him as saying that China’s policy on attracting investment towards the 14 coastal cities would not be changed.

Even after the leadership shake-up, three military leaders--Yang Dezhi, chief of the army’s general staff, Yang Shangkun, vice chairman of the Military Commission, and Yu Qiuli, director of the army’s general political department--kept their seats on the Politburo.