Like Heat, Major Speech by Deng Envelops Beijing

The whole country has been ordered to read a Chinese document called the Important Speech of Deng Xiaoping, but on this summer-like Saturday in Beijing, hardly anyone seemed in a hurry to start.

And, if they wanted to read it, no one knew where to get a copy.

Even newly formed municipal work brigades that surfaced to help clean up debris left over from the June 3-4 Tian An Men Square violence could be seen reading kung fu novels, movie magazines, almost everything but a political document.

The weather--Beijing residents generally dislike heat--far outstripped politics as the topic of choice for conversation. The 85-degree temperature seemed a safer subject than unpleasant events in uncertain times.

“I don’t know anything about politics,” said a customer at the outdoor Fashion Sweater and Popsicle Store near Qianmen, the front gate of the city when Old Beijing was walled.

“It is very hard to understand,” he declared.

But the customer, who was buying a Popsicle rather than a sweater, knew something was coming. It would be hard not to, for the campaign to prepare everyone to read this particular speech has taken over newspapers and the airwaves, not to mention walls and railings on the street where banners herald the coming of a new political line.

The Important Speech--that’s what newspapers and television here call it--was made by Deng, China’s paramount leader, several days ago in a closed meeting. Foreign observers and citizens alike predict that most Chinese will be called to meetings in their workplaces and neighborhoods to become familiar with Deng’s every word.

“I believe that in a day or two, my boss will ask us all to listen to the speech. We will learn all about it,” said Bai, a souvenir salesman at the Summer Palace, once a Qing Dynasty royal retreat on the outskirts of Beijing.

Even though the common people seem not to have seen the speech, there is already basic instruction available on television giving hints on how to react to it.

For the past two nights, news programs showed groups of Communist politicians and officials reading the document. A camera panned slowly from face to face as each reader dutifully jotted notes and every once in a while nodded in agreement with some point.

One official or another could be heard praising the speech as “well written,” or damning student protesters as “counterrevolutionary rioters.”

For anyone who missed these reports, the newspapers repeat much the same items. The People’s Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper, featured an article Saturday headlined “The capital’s leading scientists study in an informal discussion group and conclude that Deng Xiaoping’s speech conveys the people’s wishes.”

The Beijing Daily advised everyone to “resolutely read Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s Important Speech.” The China Youth News said that “the chairman and vice chairman of the All-China Youth Federation held a meeting to discuss Deng Xiaoping’s illustrious speech.” In a preview earlier last week, the People’s Daily gave an outline of the content of the speech.

In the speech, Deng defended the assault by soldiers on demonstrators in Tian An Men Square, and his tone on this subject is fairly harsh. According to the newspaper, the pro-democracy demonstrators were an “ideological pimple” that is being “lanced by Deng Xiaoping’s words.”

1 Central Position, 2 Points

The aging leader’s speech also urged upholding of the “one central position and two basic points.” This is a bit confusing to some Chinese, because the “one central position” is their impression of the “four basic principals”--upholding the leadership of the Communist Party, upholding socialism, upholding the people’s democratic dictatorship and Mao Tse-tung Thought.

Mao, who once condemned Deng as a “capitalist roader” trying to overturn Marxism, has been dead for 13 years. Many of his ideas have been discredited, and his thought is only selectively upheld.

The two basic points are reform, which means continued decentralization of the economy, and openness, which means maintaining trade and contact with the outside world.

Try as one might, it is hard to escape politics these days. The news programs on television have been lengthened and are shown four or five times a day.

Saturday night, the rundown of national news ran like this:

First, a group of men representing “democratic parties,” which in China are docile skeletons of political movements that have long since dried up, were shown reading the Important Speech.

The scene switched to children standing at attention on Tian An Men Square. The children pledged to study harder in memory of soldiers who died putting down the student demonstrators and their supporters. Tethered red and white helium-filled balloons carried aloft banners that read, “Long live the Communist Party!”

For the third night in a row, pictures of crews cleaning and scrubbing the square were shown. Next came a typical series showing troops engaged in various martial-law activities: They stand rigid on street corners, keeping watch on the city; they water plants at the Temple of Heaven; they attend memorial services for fallen comrades.

There was a letter describing the People’s Liberation Army, which killed hundreds of demonstrators, as “lovable.”

Foreign Businessmen

Finally, foreign businessmen who stayed in China through all of the turmoil were put on the air as a display of how normal things are. One Swedish businessman concluded a deal to run tours to the Great Wall. He exclaimed: “Afraid? What’s there to be afraid of?”

It has been more than a decade since the government mounted such an all-encompassing political campaign. Some of the harsher rhetoric reminds many observers of the chaotic days of the Cultural Revolution, which gripped the country for the better part of 11 years.

On Saturday, the People’s Daily published an account of a report it said was telephoned in by pro-democracy students. The unnamed students supported the government’s decision to expel two American journalists last week.

According to the newspaper, the students called the reporters “gods of plague . . . who manipulated our hopes for more democratization.”

“They used our hot-blooded patriotism to urge us to block cars, beat, smash and loot, fire guns and kill,” the newspaper quoted the students as saying.

Time to ‘Disinfect China’

The report concluded: “Now it is time to expel them and disinfect China of this plague.”

Fang Lizhi, the dissident scientist who has taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy, came in for his share of abuse. One letter published in the official press referred to him as the “scum of the Chinese nation.”