Abstract:On 17 May 1996, in a crypt at Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing, a private memorial was held by Ding Yilan to commemorate the deaths in the Cultural Revolution of her husband Deng Tuo, Liu Ren, Wu Han, and later of Liao Mosha. The date was the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Cultural Revolution and the suicide death of Deng Tuo. Mourning for Deng Tuo had been forbidden at his death when Ding Yilan was ordered to have the body cremated under a false name in a distant crematorium. Mourning ceremonies at the tenth and 20th anniversaries were impossible. In 1996 when it seemed that she might not live until the 40th anniversary, she decided time was running out. With no possibility of public commemoration because of the known disapproval of the Central Party authorities, Ding Yilan, in failing health, had arranged a private memorial for Deng Tuo and the other two members of the Three Family Village, with 40 invited guests. She included Liu Ren, the second secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The legacy of the colonial administration of Hong Kong, viewed from the majority of constituencies in Britain, is chiefly formed from the characteristics of the territory on the eve of retrocession. This, it will be noted, is in sharp contrast to the views formed by both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and many Chinese observers. The British prefer to emphasize personal freedoms, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the efficiency of government, the competitiveness of business, the preeminent status in international trade, the suppression of corruption, the quality of the engineering infrastructure, and the improving health and welfare provisions as essential characteristics of their legacy.Their Chinese counterparts are much more likely to hark back to the bad old days of national humiliation and imperialist exploitation, seeking to draw the attention of all compatriots to the historical significance of reunification.

With the end of the Deng Xiaoping era, China is struggling to define its future. Ongoing socioeconomic changes, impelled by Deng's reform since 1979, pose an unprecedented challenge to the post-Deng political leaders in terms of how to govern an increasingly open and economically prosperous but tension-ridden and potentially unstable society. This question also concerns many Chinese intellectuals and has actually become a new locus of intellectual political thinking. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that expanded economic freedom would foster the demands of political liberalization, the view prevailing in current Chinese intellectual circles is that of so-called neoconservatism.1 This term is loosely used to label a body of arguments calling for political stability, central authority, tight social control, role of ideology and nationalism.2 Such calls are also made by the government, but neoconservatism distinguishes itself from the official statements by defending the current political order from somehow different approaches and with very different rhetoric.