Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China Read Online Free PDF Page A

from 1969 to 1973, no one who had held high positions had thought more deeply about what went wrong with China's old system and what needed to be done than Deng Xiaoping.
     
    In 1978, Deng did not have a clear blueprint about how to bring wealth to the people and power to the country; instead, as he confessed, repeating a widely used saying—he “groped for the stepping stones as he crossed the river.” 3 But he did have a framework for thinking about how to proceed.
     
    He would open the country wide to science, technology, and management systems, and to new ideas from anywhere in the world, regardless of the country's political system. He was aware that the new dynamos of Asia—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—were growing faster thanany countries ever had. But Deng realized he could not simply import an entire system from abroad, for no alien system could fit the unique needs of China—which had a rich cultural heritage but was also huge, diverse, and poor. He realized what some free-market economists did not, that one could not solve problems simply by opening markets; one had to build institutions gradually. He would encourage other officials to expand their horizons, to go everywhere to learn what brings success, to bring back promising technology and management practices, and to experiment to see what would work at home. He would help pave the way by developing good relations with other countries so they would be receptive to working with China.
     
    To provide order during this rebuilding, he believed there was only one organization that could manage the process—the Communist Party. The most experienced leaders available in China in 1978 were the party leaders who had risen to levels of responsibility in the 1950s and early 1960s. They needed to be brought back and young people had to be trained overseas and bring back the best ideas, the best science, the best technology, from anywhere. Bringing in new ways would be terribly disruptive. Even the Communist Party would have to change fundamentally its goals and its methods of operation.
     
    As the paramount leader, Deng did not see his role as coming up with new ideas. He saw his job as managing the disruptive process of devising and implementing a new system. He would have the ultimate responsibility and he needed to make sound judgment calls. He would need to select a core of coworkers who could share responsibility for guiding the system and he would have to set up quickly an organization so they could work together effectively. He needed the best information he could get about what was actually going on in the country and what was happening abroad. He needed to provide hope without raising expectations that were unrealistic, as Mao had done in 1958. He would have to explain the situation to his officials and to the public and pace the changes so that people could accept them and the country would not split apart. Although he had considerable power, he knew he had to be sensitive to the political atmosphere among his colleagues if they were to implement what he directed. He needed to allow a measure of stability in employment and daily life even as the system underwent fundamental changes. In short, Deng faced a tall order, and an unprecedented one: at the time, no other Communist country had succeeded in reforming its economic system and bringing sustained rapid growth, let alone one with one billion people in a state of disorder.
     
    The Man: Deng Xiaoping
     
    Despite Deng's diminutive stature, once he became the preeminent leader, when he appeared in a room he had a commanding presence that made him a natural center of attention. More than one observer commented that it was as if the electricity in the room flowed to him. He had the concentrated intensity of someone determined to resolve important matters. He possessed the natural poise of a former wartime military commander as well as the self-assurance that came from half a