Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

"This is the best and most comprehensive book I know, certainly in English, on the Deng Xiaoping era. Deng’s importance will only grow with the passage of time. I think he will emerge as a truly historic figure – less dramatic than Mao, but with more lasting impact if China remains on this course. There was a need for a really serious and readable study of him, and this is a big door-stopping book but a pleasure to read. The author has an eye for anecdote, and I am surprised at how much is known about private conversations at the top of the Communist party. My assumption had been that this was a secret society that didn’t keep records, and we wouldn’t have any clue. Yes, absolutely. And a very fascinating person he is – tiny, dynamic and incredibly robust. He was of the generation that went through appalling periods in their lives. He came out of it a political exile, his family suffered terribly in the Cultural Revolution, and yet he was still able to take command when the time came, not to be derailed by personal tragedies, and to have a clear vision. And his clear vision was not to have a clear vision, or rather to eschew the crazy central planning of the Mao era when you would sit in central Beijing and try to construct a utopian dream. Pragmatism is his hallmark. All the most famous statements attributed to Deng are different expressions of pragmatism. Cross the river by feeling for the stones; It doesn’t matter if a cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice. They’re all saying: whatever it is that works, works. Let’s take a few steps back and let people get on with it. It’s remarkable how he could embrace or accept change, at least in the economic sphere, at such an advanced age. One of the most interesting things in the book is the extent to which Deng had a window onto the world. He had spent some years in France as a young man, and in 1975 he goes back to France on a brief visit. He’s impressed with what he sees as a modern industrial society, and when he comes into power he encourages other top cadres to go abroad, to France and to other places, and to learn from the power of example. I think that’s partly what makes him such an incredibly interesting figure – because he doesn’t conform to what we would like a transformational leader to be. He’s not a Mandela or a Havel, who embraces all of the things that we like. And he’s very deliberately not a Gorbachev. I think that’s interesting partly because it poses difficult moral questions. What do you say about Deng Xiaoping? Do we at some level entertain the idea that maybe he was right? You can’t approve, obviously, of the killing of innocent people, but his vision of development had something to it. If China had let the political genie out of the bottle in 1989, maybe it would have been fine, or maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe there would have been a period of political turmoil. And one which the West has difficulty dealing with. But I think it’s at least worth us entertaining that maybe they have a point. It’s important for us not to simply say we know best. Deng Xiaoping is also interesting because on an intellectual level he challenges the assumptions that the West made post 1989. It’s important to remember that [the June 4th massacre] was the same year as the fall of the Berlin wall. So for a period we said that Chinese autocracy couldn’t last, as we saw that autocracy didn’t last in Eastern Europe, and that if they are going to succeed economically, they are going to have to become a democracy. But that too has been challenged by the success of China economically. It’s hard to tell what Deng would have done, because of the contradiction you identify. It’s coming to the point where China may have to resolve the desire to retain political control and the desire to free up the economy and get growth. Or maybe it’s not such a contradiction as we in the West reckon. We had thought that you can’t have both, but maybe they’ve come up with something new. I don’t know what Deng would have done, because it’s twenty years since his last great act, the southern tour of 1992. Now we’re living in a different world, and the Chinese economy must have tripled or quadrupled in size."