Deng Xiaoping : Transformation of China

Deng Xiaoping was very bright from a very early age. His family line had many smart people who passed the imperial examinations conducted in China for working under the imperial government. At a very early age, Deng Xiaoping received Confucian training. Being very bright, he was selected for a scholarship programme in France, where Chinese students worked part-time and studied in French local schools, so that they could gain advanced knowledge and bring them back to China. It was here that Deng Xiaoping, started to learn about communism. He joined the Chinese Youth League who were a youth-side of the newly found Chinese Communist Party. Many students of the Chinese Youth League were to become Chinese leaders in the 1949 government. He then moved to Moscow, where he joined another university. After Moscow, he moved to Shanghai and worked with the underground party work of the Chinese Communist party. He met his future wife in Moscow, and then married her when they met again Shanghai. She was to die shortly after becoming pregnant.

After the world war, civil war broke out in China between the Guomindang (the Nationalist right wing government) and the Communists. This lasted from 1949 to 1952. Deng played a crucial role in the war. He gained significant military experience in this war and his leadership helped Communists to win the war. As every region was conquered, some people were left behind to transition the local government to a Communist government. This transition involved transforming the agriculture, education, governance, culture, development (laying railway tracks) and so on.

After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over the rule of China, they started to work on socialising China. Deng Xiaoping was at the center of it all. He was the vice-premier of China at that time while Zhou Enlai was the premier of China. Deng got to learn from two of the greatest leaders — Mao and Zhou. Deng Xiaoping expertly handled foreign affairs with the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward (the Second Five Year plan) from 1958 to 1962, and Deng implemented this plan. It was a reform to transform China from an agrarian country into a fully socialist country. It was a great failure, which led to huge criticisms of Mao and Deng (and the CCP in general). Mao then launched the Cultural Revolution whose goal was to preserve Chinese communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Mao Zedong Thought (known outside China as Maoism) as the dominant ideology in the CPC. Mao charged that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society with the aim of restoring capitalism. He insisted that revisionists be removed through violent class struggle, to which China’s youth, as well as urban workers, responded by forming Red Guards and “rebel groups” around the country. All the capitalist elements both within the government, and outside of it were squashed — either killed or sent to do Hard Labour for re-education. Mao criticized Deng for the failure of the Great Leap forward and put him under house arrest. When the tensions with the Soviet Union started to rise, Mao sent a lot of CCP leaders (including Deng) to the country side, to “organize local resistance”. A lot of people believed that the Soviet threat was used as an excuse to exile high ranking officials who were seen as a threat to Mao Zedong.

Deng Xiaoping and his family went through a lot of struggles when he was exiled. During his exile, he was re-educated in Mao’s philosophy, and used to do manual labour in a nearby factory. Slowly, as time went on, due to many factor’s including Mao’s old age, he was slowly started to think about his replacement, and Deng was one of the serious candidates that he was considering. After many letters from Deng to Mao, finally in January 1973, Deng was slowly restored to the party in Beijing, and Deng slowly started taking up major responsibilities.

In 1971, Mainland China replaced Taiwan in the Chinese seat at the UN, and in 1973, Deng Xiaoping became the first Chinese to address the UN General Assembly. In the presentation, Deng, relayed Mao’s words, that the Soviet Union and the US were scheming together, and that China wanted the developed countries of the second world and the developing countries of the third world to unite against the Soviet Union and the USA. This speech was a huge success in the UN assembly, especially among the developing countries.

In 1975, with the support of Mao, Deng set out to reform the entire leadership of the country. He set out to build a group of leaders for each major department of the government — agriculture, military, transportation, etc, as he thought a group of leaders was better than a single strong leader. He started out with the reform of the military. As a result of the cultural revolution, the entire military was in disarray. The technology was outdated and the military leaders were lazy, arrogant and were misusing power. Deng set out to remove factionalism among the military, and then started downsizing to reduce expenses, which could then be used for research and training.

After the military, Deng started out to reform the railways with the help of the railway minster Wan Li. Accidents had gone up, the conductors were very lazy, the rules were not followed, and overall, just like the military, the railways was also in disarray. Deng started out with just one province. In those days, to implement a national policy at a local level, sending a work team with troops to local provinces was the norm, so that the policy could be implemented by force if needed. Work teams consisting of Wan Li, started visiting a lot of problematic areas and started fixing the issues with the railways.

I am of the opinion that people should constantly change. If people do not learn from their mistakes, accept feedback from others, and more importantly, gauge their shortcomings and accept self-feedback, and change. themselves, then they don’t grow. One important element of the Chinese government, that I find interesting is the self-criticism that ministers had to write whenever they made a huge mistake. No one (not even Deng himself) was exempt from this. Whenever the government officials made a mistake, they had to write a self-criticism of themselves and then submit it, which would then be approved. This is a remarkable aspect of the Chinese government, in my opinion, and other governments should follow similar practises.

In 1975, Deng set up the Political Research Office, which was quite similar to the White House. The objective of the Political Research Office was to work on theoretical ideas, to provide overall strategy and draft public announcements. Deng, with the use of the PRO, started work on improving science and research, social sciences, art and culture and higher education. Despite his efforts, despite seeing positive results in a matter of months, the Gang of Four and eventually Mao, started criticising Deng. Finally, by January 1976, Deng was removed from all positions of responsibility. Hua Guofeng was his replacement.

On 8th January, 1976, Zhou Enlai, whose health had been deteriorating over the past year, died. The mourning for Zhou Enlai was restriced severly by the government led by Mao, because Mao saw him as a counter-revolutionary. This sparked widespread anger as people thought that Zhou was a great leader and that he should be honored a lot more. This led to the Tiananmen Incident which was a mass gathering and protest that took place on 5 April 1976, at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The incident occurred on the traditional day of mourning, the Qingming Festival. Some people strongly disapproved of the removal of the displays of mourning, and began gathering in the Square to protest against the central authorities, then largely under the auspices of the Gang of Four, who ordered the Square to be cleared.

The event was labeled as counterrevolutionary immediately after its occurrence by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and served as a gateway to the dismissal and house arrest of then–Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, who was accused of planning the event, while he insisted that he came to Tiananmen Square only for a haircut. The Central Committee’s decision on the event was reversed after the Cultural Revolution ended, as it would later be officially hailed as a display of patriotism in 1978.

On September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong died, after having suffered multiple heart attacks in the year. A period of mourning was arranged for him. Deng and his allies were all excluded from Mao Zedong’s funeral and mourning events. The Gang of Four, were soon rounded up and arrested for their crimes, and the general public were very pleased at this. Hua started establishing himself as Mao’s successor, but he still wasn’t ready to bring back Deng. It took him some more time to welcome Deng back, and in January 1976, Deng started playing an active role in the party again, but it would take Hua another 6 months to trust Deng and give him major responsibilities. The pressure was mounting on Hua to bring back Deng, and finally on July 7, 1977, Deng was formally welcomed back to the party and he got back all the positions that he held before. Deng became #3 in the party, and started focussing on Science, Technology and Education. He started where he left off. Deng, even though was involved in the major decisions on foreign policy, did not want to participate in the day-to-day discussions on foreign policy, but instead wanted to focus majorly on improving Science, Technology and Education. Deng felt that China was lagging on this front by at least 2 decades, and wanted to ramp up work on this.

Deng Xiaoping’s first order of business was to bring back the university entrance exams in 1977. Previously, the entrance to reputed universities was based on recommendation — proper class background and proper political thought. Deng, by bringing back the entrance exam made it a merit-based system. Although a lot of youth who missed out on proper education during the cultural revolution were unhappy, this move in the long run turned out to be a huge success. Forced labour after high school was removed, as Deng thought that it was a waste of time and students forgot what they learnt in high school by the time they entered the university. A lot of universities were reopened and their curriculum re-evaluted and restructured. Deng also made professors import up-to-date curriculum and textbooks from other countries. Deng also advocated for incentivising the return of Chinese individuals abroad so that they can share western knowledge to bring China up-to-date. In this system, Chinese people who were working abroad were also welcomed to deliver lectures to bring back knowledge from the Western countries. Deng also was thinking of ways to send the top students to the West for higher education and started to work on partnerships with other counties. Overall, Deng thought that the only way to make China competent and even surpass other countries was by producing intelligent people from within by means of proper education.

In 1870s, a group of Japanese government officials from all sectors set sail to other countries to learn about these countries so that Japan itself could grow and compete with these countries. China, in 1978, under Deng, sent officals to Japan, Hong Kong, Eastern Europe and finally Western Europe. The trip to Western Europe would turn out to be one of the three turning points for China, because the learnings from these trip were very vital, and China held a conference, to summarise the trip and how China could learn from these countries. In particular, China decided to borrow capital and technology from these countries.

The Central Party Work Conference in November, 1978, which was supposed to last for 20 days, extended to 36 days. Here, a lot of Senior Leaders openly expressed their suppressed anger. A lot of these leaders wanted a reversal of the verdicts of the Cultural Revolution and wanted all the leaders who had suffered during this time be restored. These officials also wanted the party to acknowledge the Tiananmen Square incident as a revolutionary, patriotic movement, instead of a counter-revolutionary movement, and all the officials who were wrongly punished for this incident be restored. The government, under Hua, ended up conceding to these requests in the same conference. This conference also formally acknowledged that Mao’s thought was not a static philosophy, but should be modified and adopted based on practise, evidence and facts. This conference, not only set the wheels in motion for Hua to be replaced by Deng, but it also served as a forum for high-level officials to review past errors more openly and consider new policies for the future. Large reforms on agricultural policies and food shortages were discussed. The conference also led to widespread open discussions on various topics and was a huge success. It was also recognized by the attendees that concentrating the power of the government in one single person was risky and they ought to avoid it. In the conference, Deng informally, became the prominent leader of the country without any change in his formal titles. Chen Yun, was made of member of the Politburo, and vice chairman of the standing committee. Over the next few months, Deng was to slowly grab power from Hua and Deng along with Chen Yun was to lead China in the years ahead.

At the time of this conference, in a 200 yard wall, near Tiananmen Square, in a place called Xidan, which was one of the busiest bus-stops in Beijing, posters started coming up. As word spread of the wall, more or more people openly started writing about political stuff passionately. Deng initially was in favour of the Xidan wall. However, in 3 months, the posters on the wall turned to people protesting for an open-democracy, Deng and the other party members realized that the freedom afforded to people should be limited. This turnaround of Deng Xiaoping regarding freedom and of the wall was another one of the key turning points in Chinese history. In a major address, Deng laid out the four cardinal principles to draw the line between what was acceptable and what was not. Writings should not challenge — 1) the socialist path, 2) the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) the leadership of the Communist Party, 4) Marxism-Leninism and Mao-Zedong Thought.

During the last decade, tensions with the Soviet Union and Vietnam were on the rise. There were more and more clashes in the 2 borders. Vietnam was threatening to attack Combodia, which was an ally of China. Relations with Vietnam had gone sour due to the Cultural revolution and the Gang of Four. Vietnam had allied with Soviet Union, where Vietnam received crucial supplies in its fight against the United States, and in return, the Soviet Union could freely use the Vietnamese ports. The Soviet Union, similar to how it did in Cuba, had placed its missiles in Vietnam and was ready to launch them. Unlike the United States which manage to drive out the Soviet Union with its superior armed forces, China did not have similar armed forces and couldn’t fight the Russian military. Hence, Deng visited North Korea, Myanmar and Japan to get them on China’s side. This was followed by visits to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, all of which had ethnic Chinese population who were constantly asked to revolt against the local government on radio. Malaysia, especially was dominated by the Chinese, and hence they had split into Singapore where they pushed out the Chinese so that in Malaysia, the Malayans would be the majority. Deng’s visit to all these 3 countries were a success. Deng also reestablished relations with Japan. The Japanese were sorry for their actions in the world war and Deng forgave them. In this trip, Deng achieved a lot of success, especially, taking steps to learn from Japan’s modernisation efforts. Deng, even got a lot of companies to eventually set up factories in China.

During the same time, Deng also started to work on normalisation plans with the United States. He met many officials of the United States to achieve the same. Deng maintained his firm position that China was not willing to budge about Taiwan, and China strictly wanted the US out of Taiwan, before China can start talks of normalisation. China thought Taiwan was a local issue and wanted US out of it. China also warned the US that US was trying to appease the Soviet Union and in doing so, was repeating the mistakes of Berlin. As soon as he felt that normalization was around the corner, Deng asked the US government if he could initially send 75 Chinese students to the US for higher education, and many more over the course of the next few years and the US readily agreed to this. Deng was confident that most Chinese students will return back to China because of their patriotism, but even otherwise, he still thought that they could still be an asset to China. Deng also invited a lot of US scientists to visit China and to teach Chinese people about science, modernization and technology.

After normalization with the US, in January 1979, Deng visited the United States. Here, we held serious talks with President Carter and informed him about the looming danger of the Soviet Union, and its alliance with the Asian Cuba, Vietnam. He also informed Carter that for Asian peace to hold, the US and China might form an alliance with each other along with other South East Asian countries including Japan, South and North Korea. Deng also informed President Carter about his plan to attack Vietnam, which was not a serious attack but simply a warning move. Deng also visited NASA, and also modernized factories like that of Ford and Boeing.

As Deng thought in the beginning of 1979, that it was the right time for him to seize power from Hua, he slowly started appointing leaders in key positions who would then play a key role in his administration in the 1980s. These senior leaders would then appoint the next level of leaders and this would go on until the grassroots level. Deng made sure that people chosen for a particular role were chosen solely on merit rather than class background and idealogy — in particular, Deng favoured university-educated people over people who were not so highly educated. Deng, also issued the party members to begin a re-evaluation of the party’s history, focusing on Mao’s time at the top, and its relevance now. Through this, Deng made sure to focus mostly on Mao’s positives, but also did say that Mao made mistakes during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. This re-evaluation gave Deng a chance to solidify his position at the top, by appeasing conservative Maoists, by showing that Deng was deviating too much from Mao Zedong Thought. Parallel to this, Hua Guofeng’s roles in the party were slowly reduced, his associates were removed from the Politboro and other crucial positions, and by June 1981, he was completely removed from party affairs, and the time he spent as Mao’s successor, criticized. 1981, you could say, was the beginning of the Deng Era.

Deng, unlike Mao, did not have statues or posters of him everywhere, in offices and in streets. Deng also did not encourage people to worship him like they did Mao. Deng never even held the title of “premier”. He instead chose to concentrate on the work, and do what was right for the country. Deng, conducted most of his affairs from his home office, because of his hearing disabilities. Deng, on every morning, read all the reports that were sent to him, and then he either approved them, or added comments to make changes in them. As for meetings, they were all attended by his director, with whom, Deng would send notes for the meeting. Deng was never a micromanager, but instead he focussed on a broader perspective. He only micromanaged crucial decisions, especially issues related to the military and foreign affairs. For most other issues, including the economy, he relied on expert opinion, who provided him various options, and he chose what he thought was the best option, based on his years of experience.

There was a huge problem in the Guangdong province, and Deng was briefed about it. The problem was that a tens of thousands of youth in the area, were risking their lives each year by attempting to run or swim across the border to Hong Kong. This was because Hong Kong, just across the border had much better economic opportunities and living conditions. The police build a barbed wire boundary here, and caught anyone they could, and those who were caught were sent to detention centres. Deng, immediately recognized that this was not a police problem and Deng resolved to solve this problem instead by providing better economic opportunities for the local people. Special Economic Zones (SEZs) were established in Guangdong, Zhuhai, Shantou and Fujian, and they were given the autonomy to attract Foreign Direct Investment. The Guangdong and Fujian experiments were a huge success, especially Guangdong. In a few decades, Guangdong was to contribute to 1/3rd of all the Chinese exports. The highway from Hong Kong to Guangdong was to be lined with factories in both sides. Guangdong, initially, was very backward compared to the nearby Hongkong, but by the end of the Deng era, it was to become an important industrial hub. The lifestyles of the local people became much better, they learnt to be punctual, they learnt good hygiene practises, they learnt better fashion sense, they learnt to buy and use modern devices like TVs, air conditioners, etc. Overall, the Guangdong experiment was to serve as a model to the rest of China.

Like all experiments, the ones in Guangdong and Fujian were not setbacks. The biggest problem arising out of these regions was corruption due to the personal greed of some local officials and businessmen. This was brought up in Beijing, and after close inspection, Chen Yun was very much against it. This could have had serious consequences, and could even have lead to the halting of the experiments, but in time, the local officials did their best to curb the corruption and keep it at a minimum and they managed to save their projects. Deng, even though, was in favour of continuing the experiments, did not say anything out publicly, in fact he didn’t even participate in the investigations but simply read the reports and supported the experiments passively.

By 1983, it was to clear to see how Guangdong and Fujian were prospering, and with time, the criticism against the SEZs ebbed. In January 1984, Deng visited the SEZs by train to see for himself. After examining the SEZs himself and after carefully gauging the political atmosphere, Deng decided to expand the policies to other areas. Food supplies were adequate now, economic growth was rapid, exports in 1984 went by more than 200% compared to that in 1978, and in fact people who had fled Guangdong to Hongkong, were slowly coming back. By mid 1984, Deng successfully launched the project to expand these policies to 14 other coastal cities.

During these fervent times, Deng and China, would have headed towards bankruptcy, if they continued to over-estimate and over-spend due to their enthusiasm. Chen Yun played a major role in preventing this disaster, by limiting China’s spending and enforcing proper planning and estimation.

China did not had enough resources for its huge population. Hence it was spending a lot of money on exports. To limit this, the government under Deng, imposed a one-child policy (if the first child was a girl, permission was given to have a second child, with the hope that the second child would be a boy who could take care of the parents in their old age). This initially was a controversial decision, but is still in force even today.

In 1978, people in rural areas were still starving and agricultural outputs were not as much as expected. Wan Li (from the railways reform), in his province, came up with a 6 point plan, to reform agriculture, to improve agricultural output and to improve the lives of the peasants. The outline of the six point plan was to reduce the collectivization of agriculture and instead, take ownership down to the household level — specific families were responsible for working on a specific area of land, and they were supposed to produce a specified amount for the government, but beyond this basic amount, they could keep the surplus for themselves or sell it. This was a huge success in Wan Li’s province, and immediately managed to alleviate the conditions of the peasants. This, as expected, led to widespread opposition form the conservatives. Deng, the pragmatic genius that he is, silently supported Wan Li, and waited for the people to see the results for themselves, before formally supporting it in public. Eventually, this form of agricultural practises became prevalent everywhere in China, and immediately within a few years, the agricultural output grew heaps and bounds, and the conditions of the farmers improved drastically.

China replaced Taiwan in the world bank, and soon China started receiving immense help from the world bank. The world bank, with its contacts gave China, access to so many world-class economists and their expertise. China, especially under Deng, never missing an opportunity to learn, sent Chinese to the work with the World Bank’s experts, not only to consult and apply their advice, but also to learn from them. China, during this time, also had a collaboration with the World Bank, because of which China could send students to the Oxford University for one year for further learning. The people who benefitted from this collaboration would go on to serve in the Chinese economy in the 1990s.

Deng was the bold person who would try to stretch the economy as much as he could, while Chen Yun would be the person, who would him back, so that China did not overstretch their economy. In fact in 1988, when the economy was doing very well, thanks to Chen Yun, Deng took the bold step of decontrolling prices by the state and let the market decide the prices. In a few days, the price of alcohol and tobacco rose by over 200%. China was in fact not ready for this. This led to inflation, and within a few months, Deng was to retract his decision. It was one of the most costliest errors of his career. He was right in that, to move to a market economy, prices at some point needed to be released (in fact in the 1990s, Zhu Rongji would lift price controls) but in 1988, China was not ready for it yet.

China and Soviet Union — A Comparison

Although China did adapt the socialist planning system, originally introduced by the Soviet Union, China was doing far better than the Soviet Union by the 1990s. This was due to a multitude of factors. China had a long coastline, which meant that sea transport was easier and cheaper. Also, for expert help, China could call on the 20million plus pool of Chinese emigres and their descendants who in the previous 2 centuries had left Mainland China. Political factors also played a role : When in1978, China was seeking to open up and modernize, the Western forces were keen to help China, so that they could wean China away from the Soviet Union. Geography and Ethnic Homogeneity also played a role. China was largely homogeneous, in which 93% of the population came from the same ethnic group, whereas in Russia, more than 50% of them came from diverse backgrounds. China also had full control over the land they ruled whereas the Soviet Union had conquered territories, where there was still stiff resistance to Soviet rule. China, also had the advantage of learning from its neighbours — Taiwan, Japan, Singapore South Korea and Hong Kong, who had recently made the transition to become rich modernized countries. Moreover, Deng also played a key role. He took several key decisions at several points of time. Moreover, Deng maintained strong centralized control of the Communist party. Plus, Deng was also slow, in introducing new reforms, party thanks to his experiments, and partly due to the limited influence of Chen Yun.

Deng wanted to take back Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tibet, by force even if needed, before his retirement. Seeking to restore Taiwan to the mainland was an issue because the United States were selling weapons to Taiwan for its “defense”. Reagan in his political campaign, said that he will treat Taiwan with dignity, and wanted to establish formal relations with Taiwan. Tensions between USA and China rose, after Reagan got elected. The Reagan administration was continuing to sell arms to Taiwan, and this infuriated Deng. Tensions were high and Deng was refusing to budge. Deng wanted the Reagan administration to not sell more arms than the Carter administration, and in time reduce its sales, with the idea of stopping sales in the long term. Deng’s classmate, Chiang Ching-kua, who ruled Taiwan, did not want re-unification with mainland China. Finally in 1987, on his deathbed, Chiang Ching-kuo abolished the martial law, and legalized political opposition parties, thus creating the basis for democratization of Taiwan. He also allowed the residents of China to visit Mainland China. Deng said at that time, “If we can’t reunify China with Taiwan right away, we will do it in a century, if not in a century, in a millenium”.

Hong Kong was under British rule, and the residents of Hong Kong enjoyed a high quality of life and high individual freedom. The residents of Hong Kong, where however, not sceptical about the possible takeover by China in 1997. The British had an agreement to rule Hong Kong till 1997, and China wanted full sovereignty over Hong Kong after 1997. The British however, were reluctant and claimed that they had successfully ruled over Hong Kong for 150 years. After Margaret Thatcher became president, the negotiations between China and Britain started. Initially the British were reluctant to guarantee Chinese sovereignty, Britain finally ceded after China promised the following:- Hong Kong will continuo the present democratic, capitalist system, Hong Kong will retain its autonomy, and the people will still retain all of the individual freedom that they enjoyed before 1997. The British and the Chinese set-up a joint committee to ensure smooth transition, and finally 4 months after Deng’s death, Hong Kong was handed back to China and China kept its promises.

Deng sought to improve relations between Tibet and Beijing. Deng improved the economy of Tibet by giving some amount of local autonomy, Deng also tried to appease the Dalai Lama, who had fled to Dharamsala, India with his 80000 followers. Over late 1970s and the 1980s, Deng tried to bring together Beijing and Tibet, but he failed. The same cycle kept on repeating — The Dalai Lama’s popularity abroad, emboldens local Tibetans to resist, leading to a crackdown by Beijing, and when westerners learn about the crackdown, again they embolden the local Tibetans to resist and the cycle continues. Since the Deng era, there have been no major strides in restoring positive relations between Beijing and Tibet.

In Feb-March, 1979, China launched its attack on Vietnam under Deng’s order. Although a lot of high-level Chinese leaders were opposed to the attack, Deng eventually used his power to launch the attack. The attack involved approximately 200,000 Chinese and they attacked 5 provinces of Vietnam in the hope that Vietnam would start falling back from Cambodia, which they had started attacking in December, 1978. The attack was seen as a huge failure by many in the media. The attack clearly showed how much the Chinese military were lagging behind in terms of technology and expertise. However, despite all the negative feedback, the attack clearly showed the intent of the Chinese, and over the next few years, Vietnam started retreating from Cambodia, and over time, stopped pursuing the domination of SE Asia, and started making strides towards friendlier relations with other SE countries. Russia, also vary of China, stopped supporting Vietnam so much, and by 1982, China and Soviet Union started having more positive relations with one another.

Deng wanted to modernize the military, but after the Vietnam war in 1979, he realized that the risk of war was not high for at least another decade, and decided to work on the modernization of civilian industry first before concentrating on the military. As for the military, he started to scale down, fire older people and incompetant people (for the war heroes, Deng gave a job elsewhere in the government while keeping their perks). A lot of the military economy was either shut down, or asked to produce goods for the civilian economy. After 1995, China set to become a military superpower. Even though this was not planned by or guided by Deng, Deng by reducing the size of the military, and by the establishment of proper modern civilian industries, Deng had set the platform for this.

In the 1980s, in the Western Europe and in some of the Asian countries, there were widespread protests where the people sought democracy. With the rise in such movements even in China, the power and authority of the party itself was questioned. Deng sought out “political reform” to fix this. In 1986, There were Chinese students demonstrating in the streets where the students began calling for people power and for Western-style democracy. The blame for these demonstrations ultimately fell on Hu Yaobang, who was the general secretary from 1982 to 1987.

Hu Yaobang, passed away on April 15, 1989 of a heart attack. From April 15 to June 4, 1989, as the whole world watched, hundreds of thousands of young Chinese took to the streets of Beijing and other Chinese cities. Initially the demonstrators were mostly mourning for the death of Hu, but eventually it turned into more radical demands for democracy. The clashes culminated on June 4, 1989, when troops restored order by shooting unarmed civilians on the streets of Beijing. Even though, Deng was not directly controlling the daily activities of the party, Deng had enough authority and knowledge of this shooting. He had little sympathy for the demonstrators, who had benefitted from the reform and opening that he had helped to create and from the political stability that underpinned the economic growth, a stability they were now threatening. Deng sought to avoid what was occuring in Eastern Europe as political leaders were yielding to citizens demands and losing control. The incident happened at the same place as the 1976 incident, Tiananmen Square. The main demand of the students was individual freedom, more specifically — after clearing the hard university entrance examinations, the students wanted to choose their own jobs, but instead were assigned jobs based on the reports submitted by the “political guides” who lived in the students. The political guides became a symbol of government surveillance, and often the these guides were less educated than the students whom they were watching, and resorted in favoritisms and flaunted their authority to influence a student’s future.

Deng was considering his retirement from a long time. He was looking for strong characters and able people for his successors. After the Tiananmen tragedy, in the same year, at the Fifth Plenum on November 7, Deng passed the chairmanship of the CMC to Jiang Zemin, and he was to remain the head of China until 2004 when he retired. In order to gain public support for this appointment, Deng made sure to keep Jiang Zemin’s name away from the June 4 tragedy. Also, before retirement Deng made sure to enforce a mandatory retirement age for the party members.