China Finally Looking to Life After Deng

She may be just an interpreter, but Deng Rong has long been considered the most powerful person in China.

That’s because she is reputedly the only one who can make sense of the slurred speech of her father, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, on whose words the country’s direction has long depended.

But recently, in the most significant sign so far that the ailing patriarch’s influence is finally waning and that the post-Deng transition has begun, his children have been scrambling to defend themselves from political snipers as they realize that their father’s political influence can no longer protect them.

Deng Xiaoping, who turns 92 this month, hasn’t been seen in public since a shaky appearance during a Chinese New Year festival in January 1994. Although he has given up all formal titles, the very existence of the country’s paramount leader, the architect of its economic opening, has been considered a cornerstone of the leadership’s stability.

But little by little, the elderly statesman has become distanced from policymaking as his health reportedly has worsened. A source close to his medical team said he has “moments of lucidity” but that his pronouncements during those moments are being given less attention.

*

Recently, his personal office was shut down. And as for the country’s decision-makers hanging on his every utterance: “He has as much power as they are willing to attribute to him,” said the source.

These days, that power appears to be fading as control shifts to the designated heir, President Jiang Zemin. No one is talking about closing the door to economic liberalization that Deng flung open with a flourish in 1992. But Jiang favors a more cautious approach to the freewheeling reforms Deng advocated.

In another sign that the post-Deng era has begun, Jiang is replacing Deng’s directive that coastal areas should “get rich first” with policies that transfer wealth inland to peasants left behind by the new market-oriented economy. Jiang also favors more cautious growth, and the gradual phase-out of state-owned enterprises, over the sink-or-swim reforms that Deng advocated.

“The most influential part of Deng Xiaoping is his spirit,” said economist Hu Angang, who helped craft the more conservative policies backed by Jiang’s team. “The transfer of power has been completed.”

But the Deng clan believes that reports of the patriarch’s political death are premature.

In an unusual move to protect his father’s legacy, the leader’s son Deng Pufang recently defended Deng’s economic policies and handling of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on student protesters. In a speech to the Chinese Federation for the Disabled on July 9, Deng Pufang extolled the benefits of his father’s economic programs and lashed out at those “negating Deng Xiaoping’s political line,” according to people who were at the gathering.

Deng Pufang, a paraplegic since being forced to jump from a window by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, is the president of the organization.

Speaking for 40 minutes from his wheelchair, he broached the taboo topic of the 1989 protests, fending off critics who would pin responsibility for the unpopular crackdown on his father and saying that “some people didn’t understand” the incident.

An unofficial transcript of the younger Deng’s remarks circulated in Beijing, but it wasn’t until more than two weeks later, on July 25, that the speech was officially published in a small newspaper, China Social News. The printed version did not contain most of the controversial sections.

A spokesman for the foundation, Jeffrey Shen, said the article was “an accurate reflection of what Mr. Deng said” at the meeting. He added, “The speech was only for the staff of the Disabled Federation, not for the general public.”

*

Deng Pufang’s choice of that forum to make a political stand might have been an attempt to head off an official reassessment of his father’s record, say observers, as well as a bid to protect the clan after the patriarch--and his protection--is gone.

The jockeying foreshadows the answer to the question that sweeps Beijing’s back alleys along with rumors of Deng’s imminent demise: What will happen after he dies?

“They [Deng’s children] realize there will be pressure to reconsider the whole Tiananmen Square verdict. There are enough people in the central leadership still around who would profit by that,” a Western diplomat said. “There are a lot of people who don’t like the way the kids have capitalized on their dad’s position.”

Indeed, since the beginning of the year, newspapers have avoided stories about the family’s doings. Not that there has been nothing to report: Deng Rong, the child who interprets for her father, won an award for her international best-seller, “My Father, Deng Xiaoping.”

Her husband, He Ping, serves as president of the Chinese army’s Poly Group Corp. and heads the army’s armament department but has reportedly been sidelined from his job at Poly. The firm was recently accused of involvement in the illegal sale of 2,000 automatic rifles to the United States.

Deng Zhifang, the second son, resigned from the board of Shougang Concord Grand Holdings Ltd. earlier this year after the company was linked to a corruption scandal, although he has not been charged personally.

While Deng’s family may lose its protection, the patriarch’s economic policies are expected to survive--though perhaps not as he envisioned.

Jiang has already revoked some privileges of Deng’s pet “special economic zones” in an attempt to slow and stabilize haphazard economic growth.

“The gap between the coastal and inland provinces is growing, and the result is that many state-owned enterprises can’t afford to pay their workers,” said economist Hu, whose share-the-wealth economic models are gaining favor. Recently, the government’s economic czar, Zhu Rongji, said that 7.5 million workers at state-owned enterprises will not be paid their full salary. “This can cause instability,” Hu said.

Unemployment, inflation and unrest--especially in urban areas--are the government’s main fears, Hu said. In July, workers from a state-owned enterprise in a Beijing suburb gathered in front of the Beijing city government building to protest that they hadn’t been paid.

*

After a few hours, they were dispersed “without too much interference” by police wearing riot gear, according to one observer, but not before they demonstrated the potential threat of urban instability.

Hu assessed the way to a smooth post-Deng transition. “Deng’s policy had two steps,” he said. “First, some areas should get rich. Now the rest of the country should get rich, with the help of the government.

“The second step is not a negation of the first but a continuation of it,” he said. “It is the end of the strongman period and the beginning of the institutional era.”