China’s Late ‘Paramount Leader’ Left Family a Rare Legacy: Safety

One still sells her mediocre paintings for a living. Another continues his advocacy on behalf of the disabled. Yet a third holds on to her high-level bureaucratic post.

Despite the history of this nation, which is littered with the bodies of the heirs of fallen emperors and senior statesmen, life has apparently carried on as usual for the five children of Deng Xiaoping, China’s late “paramount leader.”

Since his death Feb. 19, speculation has been rife about the fate of the Deng clan without the protection of its powerful patriarch, who ruled one-fifth of the world’s population for almost 20 years.

But through a confluence of disparate events--from Deng’s long incapacitation to the imminent hand-over of Hong Kong--the future of his offspring, in the near term at least, seems safe and stable, analysts say. That is exactly the image that Beijing wants to cultivate for the country as a whole in a year of historic change and scrutiny.

Communist hard-liners will probably not dare touch the Deng family for fear of alarming the international community, on alert as China gets ready to repossess Hong Kong from the British on July 1, experts say. Deng’s handpicked successor, President Jiang Zemin, who is trying to cement his position at the top, has a vested interest in seeing his mentor’s two sons and three daughters prosper.

Moreover, whether through circumstance, their own personal inclinations or the quiet discouragement of their father, none of Deng’s scions now commands a high political profile that could be perceived in the Chinese power structure as a threat.

“As long as the Deng heirs lie low and don’t do something egregious, they should have nothing to fear,” said Roderick MacFarquhar, who teaches contemporary Chinese history at Harvard University. “Until the Hong Kong takeover, nobody in the Beijing leadership wants to be seen rocking the boat. Any drastic action against the Deng family . . . would certainly fall into that category.”

The result is that even the youngest son, Deng Zhifang, a businessman implicated in a series of shady dealings, appears to remain shielded from harm.

Indeed, life has the potential to be more than comfortable, if low-key, for the younger Dengs, who range in age from 46 to 56.

The family four years ago reportedly held interests in more than a dozen Hong Kong companies with a combined worth exceeding $2 billion. Sources also say that the Chinese government has exempted the Dengs from secret regulations limiting the amount of time that survivors of top officials can enjoy such perks as a driver, preferential slots in good schools and housing like the spacious courtyard home, near the Forbidden City, where Deng’s widow still lives.

“Their life will be fine,” said Yao Fei, a spokesman for China’s State Council, or cabinet. “We all thank Deng Xiaoping for his policies.”

In large measure, speculation surrounding the House of Deng reflects China’s preoccupation with the taizi, or “princelings,” of its ruling elite. Chinese history is studded with absorbing tales of palace intrigue against a ruler’s heirs, whose fates often herald great political change.

In the third century BC, after the first emperor of a unified China died--in search of an elixir of immortality--two scheming aides are said to have forged an edict ordering his eldest son and a favored general to commit suicide. The aides then installed another son on the throne and ruled through him until he, in turn, was poisoned by one of them.

Less redolent of period melodrama is the fate of Mao Tse-tung’s family.

After the death of the “Great Helmsman” in 1976, his wife, Madame Mao, was imprisoned. She went on trial as a member of the reviled Gang of Four--accused of attempting to seize power--and ultimately hanged herself. A nephew was also arrested for abuses of power during the Cultural Revolution, a notorious period of repression and tumult in China. Mao’s highest-profile daughter, the editor of the Liberation Army Daily, one of China’s most influential newspapers at the time, disappeared from public view.

But the situation with the Deng family differs. Whereas Mao’s successors--including Deng--repudiated his Cultural Revolution, Jiang Zemin has pledged “unswerving” adherence to Deng’s economic reforms. Thus, there is no need to demonstrate a shift in policy by attacking his family, analysts say.

Also, all but one of the five Deng children pursued jobs outside of politics, so they pose no major threat to Jiang or other party leaders. Even the exception, daughter Deng Nan, a vice minister of the State Science and Technology Commission, has avoided overt involvement in high-level Communist Party politics, although she may have influenced her father behind the scenes.

One theory suggests that Deng himself may have checked his children’s political ambitions to safeguard their survival after his death. “Deng was smart,” said one Western diplomat based here. Without high political profiles, the former first family “can just fade away.”

By many accounts, their influence and visibility had already begun to wane during the long period of Deng’s physical decline. In the 1980s, an investment firm headed by his eldest son was shut down by the government amid allegations of profiteering. Since then, Deng Pufang, partially paralyzed after falling--or being shoved--out of a window in the Cultural Revolution, has confined himself to charitable work as president of the Chinese Federation for the Disabled.

Likewise, the youngest, Deng Zhifang, was the chief executive of a Hong Kong firm implicated in a major corruption scandal in 1995. Many believe that his family ties barely saved him from arrest. The chairman of the company received a suspended death sentence.

Son-in-law He Ping, married to Deng’s daughter-cum-spokeswoman, Deng Rong, resigned last year as the director of armaments for the People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest. He Ping’s company, the Poly Group, is under investigation in the United States in connection with illegal shipments of thousands of AK-47 rifles.

“Deng’s children have already had problems predating the old man’s death in regard to their business ventures,” said Stanley Rosen, a Sinologist at USC.

During the paramount leader’s final years, rumors swirled that the government had ordered Deng’s family to keep silent about his health. On the eve of his death, the Beijing leadership disbanded his personal office, partly because, some contend, Deng Rong had built it into a budding personal power base.

But to some extent, the Deng brood’s lowered profile now protects them. So does the presence of their 81-year-old mother, Zhuo Lin, some say. “It’s important to remember that the mother is still around,” one Western official said. “You can bet that people answer her phone calls.”

If the new Beijing leadership revises its official view of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and blames Deng for the incident, “then his family could suffer,” Harvard’s MacFarquhar said. Also, if the current government drive against official corruption uncovers more questionable practices by the family, then they may be vulnerable.

But for now, experts say, they can expect to live quietly.