Less Theory, More Production

By Patricia Blake

Deng discredits Mao and wins acceptance of his pragmatism

The television cameras panned slowly across the palatial auditorium of the Great Hall of the People, where 10,000 Communist Party faithful had gathered to celebrate the results of the momentous plenary session of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Suddenly the crowds faded away and the screen belonged to a pair of diminutive figures seated on the dais. Dressed in identical white sports shirts, they smiled happily and acknowledged the waves of applause. One was Senior Vice Chairman Deng Xiaoping, the country's de facto ruler and the obvious director of the extravaganza. The other was Hu Yaobang, 66, the newly proclaimed Chairman, whose elevation Deng had long labored to achieve.

The occasion was a great leap forward for Deng, his shrewd brand of pragmatism and his plan to question the legacy and reduce the influence of Mao Tse-tung, the party's Great Helmsman, who died in 1976. Although his power is still not supreme, Deng was able to shunt aside Mao's hand-picked successor to the chairmanship, Hua Guofeng, 61, who was accused of creating a "personality cult" around himself, committing "leftist errors" and opposing the policies advocated by Deng. Relegated to the positions of lowest-ranking Vice Chairman and junior membership in the Politburo, Hua was also obliged to resign as head of the Central Committee's Military Commission, which runs the army, a key post that was taken over by Deng.

Hua's ouster was formal proof that Deng had succeeded in his four-year struggle to shift the balance of power in the Peking leadership and win wide-based acceptance for his program to speed up China's economic growth. To fight Hua and his supporters, Deng had carefully put together a coalition of his own composed of thousands of officials who had been ignominiously disgraced--like Deng and Hu themselves--during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, returning from exile only after Mao's death. Under Deng, this group has sought to free China from the rigid constraints Maoism had imposed on industrial and technological development and on the modernization of the military. The gradual elimination of diehard Maoists from the party, government and military bureaucracies, and the conviction last November on treason charges of Mao's widow Jiang Qing, the leader of the "Gang of Four," greatly aided Deng.

Having defeated Hua, Deng took on Mao. The Central Committee's 27,000-word resolution, the product of a year of internecine argument and six complete rewrites, was a devastating critique of Mao's leadership and policies during nearly all of his 39-year reign. Though the resolution credited Mao for performing "indelible meritorious service in founding and building up our party," he was accused of committing "theoretical and practical mistakes concerning class struggle in a socialist society." Mao's worst errors, which caused China "the most severe setbacks and heaviest losses," came during the Cultural Revolution. The resolution stressed the innocence of the victims of Mao's mass purges, including, not surprisingly, Deng Xiaoping.

When Deng was brought back to power by the late Premier Chou En-lai in 1975, he tried to solve the problems Mao had caused in industry, agriculture and other sectors of the economy, according to the document. But Mao "could not bear to accept systematic correction of the errors of the Cultural Revolution by Deng" and "confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy." Thus Mao purged Deng a second time. Whom did Mao then choose to lead the "movement to criticize Deng Xiaoping" at the darkest moment of Deng's career? Hua Guofeng.

In spite of the victories Deng scored at the Central Committee meeting, New York University Sinologist James Hsiung argues that Hua's survival as a Vice Chairman and the resolution on Mao were both the result of compromises. Concludes Hsiung: "The Deng group will still have to work with the Hua forces." Seton Hall University's Winston Yang points out that several members of the Politburo are not in Deng's group. Says he: "It may be assumed that the policy debate between Deng's pragmatists and surviving Maoists will go on."

Hu suggested as much in his first speech as Chairman when he said that the climb ahead would be as "long and tortuous" as the scaling of China's famous Mount Tai. Indeed, the platform presented on the final day of the meeting charted a course that was strikingly ambitious for a country that has only recently begun to emerge from more than three decades of repression. The program called for a legal system that guarantees the rights of the people, protection of religious freedom and the extension of democracy under party control. However these lofty reforms work out, the program also stressed Deng's more down-to-earth priorities of modernizing the economy and introducing a measure of private enterprise. In foreign relations, China reaffirmed its commitment to help the Third World. Last week in another area of foreign policy, Foreign Minister Huang Hua led a high-level mission to New Delhi. The trip, the first since the 1962 Chinese-Indian border war, was an attempt to establish friendlier relations.

On the other hand, the official news agency Xinhua declared last week that China might have to use force against Taiwan if the U.S. persisted in supporting the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which authorizes U.S. commercial and cultural relations with the Chinese Nationalist government in Taipei. Last month President Reagan said he intended to uphold the measure. Criticizing Reagan's stand, Xinhua said that relations between Peking and Washington were at a "crucial turning point."

Despite the flurry over Taiwan, Washington was encouraged by the week's news out of China. Said one State Department expert: "The more the modernizers and the reformers strengthen their position, the better it is as far as we are concerned. It can only produce a stronger China and stronger relations between the U.S. and China in the years to come."

For 40 years he has marched in lock-step with his more celebrated mentor, engaged in the same skirmishes, succumbed to the same defeats. Last week he shared in the same triumph. China's new Chairman, Hu Yaobang (pronounced Who Yow-bong), is the obliging alter ego for Deng Xiaoping, the country's real strongman. A shade shorter and ten years younger than the 5-ft. 2-in., 76-year-old Deng, Hu has the same resilience, explosive energy and quick intelligence. At the same time, Hu is a demanding administrator who can be relied on to carry out the orders of his chief and champion.

Born to a peasant family in south-central China, Hu joined the Communist Youth League (C.Y.L.) at the age of 14, and was admitted into the Communist Party in 1933. He first attracted Mao's attention during the legendary 1934 Long March in the civil war against the Chinese Nationalists, when the Communists retreated 6,000 miles through eleven provinces before reaching Yanan in Shaanxi province. Though Hu never finished primary school and had to teach himself how to read, Mao assigned him to increasingly important jobs in the C.Y.L. in the 1930s. In 1941 Hu met Deng while they were both serving as political commissars with the army. Following the defeat of the Nationalists, Hu rose to become head of the C.Y.L. while his mentor, Deng, was a Vice Premier in the new Communist government.

When Mao launched his devastating Cultural Revolution in 1966, Hu was one of its first victims. With Deng, he was branded a "capitalist reader." Both men were stripped of power for nearly a decade. Hu was sent to a re-education camp, where he was obliged not only to tend cattle but to eat and sleep with the sheep and horses.

When Deng emerged from exile in 1975, he got Hu out of the stables. But after Hu prepared a report charging that the government was misusing China's leading scientists as field workers, he was again purged. His report was damned as "a big poisonous weed."

Following Mao's death in 1976, Hu once again was brought back to power by Deng. Since 1980, he has managed the party's everyday affairs as Secretary-General of the Central Committee. Lately, the press of work has reportedly forced Hu and Deng to give up playing bridge, their favorite game.

Little is known about Hu's family, even in China. He is believed to be married and to have three grownup children, all of whom are said to live the same kind of spartan life that he has led for years. --By Patricia Blake. Reported by Edwin M. Reingold/Peking and Bing W. Wong/Hong Kong

With reporting by Edwin M. Reingold, Bing W. Wong

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