Eager to Advance

By John Greenwald

For six days during the fall, the drama of succession unfolded inside the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Peking. At stake were the future of China's political leadership and the fate of its economic reforms. By the end of the Communist Party conference, 131 senior officials, mostly in their 70s and 80s, had agreed to step down from high positions. That spate of resignations, the biggest party shake-up in nearly a decade, prepared the way for the rise of a new generation of leaders who will guide China into the 21st century.

The carefully planned changes were part of the quiet revolution now taking place throughout China. In factories, on farms and in government offices, ambitious and reform-minded young men and women are steadily moving up. They are frequently better educated than their elders and eager to use their skills to get ahead. Over the next 20 or so years, they will help determine whether Deng Xiaoping's vision of an economically advanced China succeeds or fails.

The highest-ranking new technocrats are Li Peng, 57, widely seen as China's next Premier, and Hu Qili, 56, heir apparent to the powerful post of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Both men were elevated last fall to the party's policy-setting Politburo. Li, the adopted son of former Premier Chou En-lai, is a Soviet-educated engineer who speaks Russian and has served as minister of the Chinese power industry. Hu, a fluent English speaker, runs the party's day-to-day activities.

While such officials as Hu and Li will set China's policies in future years, young professionals like Tang Yigai, 37, will be charged with making them work. Tang, a husky man who speaks rapidly, is vice director of economic research for the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. He was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. "People did things they now regret," he recalls. "It was not a good time."

Turning to books for relief following the 1960s upheaval, Tang was fascinated by the work of economists, from Karl Marx to Milton Friedman. After graduating in mathematics from Xinjiang University in 1976, Tang became the first student in China since the Cultural Revolution to receive a master's degree in econometrics. He passed up a rare chance to study abroad and decided to take a government job. Says he: "I come from a very poor part of China, and I wanted to help my country develop."

Pan Weiming, 36, followed a zigzag route to his job as senior deputy director of Shanghai's propaganda bureau. A wiry and energetic man, Pan tilled rice and ran a small pesticide plant in the Jinggang mountains of central China during the Cultural Revolution. At 28 he enrolled in Peking University, where he studied Chinese literature and was elected chairman of the student union. Returning to Shanghai after finishing school, Pan joined the city's propaganda department and rose quickly. "Living with peasants for eight years," he reflects, "I saw how poor and backward our country was. The poverty shook us up and made us determined to change China's face."

The scars left by the Cultural Revolution have made some young Chinese nervous about speaking out, fearful that they could become victims of some future political shift. Wang Liping (not his real name) saw his father, a university professor, forced to spend eight years as a lathe operator during the Cultural Revolution. Wang avoids drawing attention to himself, but he wants to travel to the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in management studies. He then hopes to combine teaching with consulting. Meanwhile, Wang realizes that much of his education still cannot be put into practice: "What we have learned about job design and work structure," he says, "would be meaningless in most Chinese factories."

Wang's classmate Ma Biao (a pseudonym) worked on a farm from 1966 to 1968 before graduating from college in 1970. After a decade of factory work, Ma enrolled in a small Western-style management school, where he now studies. Like Wang, he has developed doubts about the practicality of his instruction. Says Ma: "The methods are not very useful because they do not tell you how to manage when the power remains above you. Also, they do not tell you how to deal with the party secretary in the plant, since he still keeps much authority."

As they advance in their careers, members of Ma's generation will have to cope with such frustrations and misgivings. Nonetheless, there are growing signs that younger Chinese leaders strongly support Deng's reforms. Says Economist Tang: "The new policy is very necessary because during the Cultural Revolution the economy became very poor. Now we must build it up. That is very important." --By John Greenwald. Reported by Robert T. Grieves and Richard Hornik/Peking

With reporting by Reported by Robert T. Grieves, Richard Hornik/Peking