1. Western scholars still need to review, in a constructive spirit, why so much of their work on the Mao era, even when the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were not hidden matters, was both factually wrong and contrary to common sense. John Fairbank did publicly confess that he had been grossly wrong in his evaluations of Mao's rule. Harry Harding has also provided leadership for a self-examination of the field on several occasions, including in his,“Reappraising the Cultural Revolution,” The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. IV, No. 4 (Autumn 1980)Google Scholar and “From China with disdain,” Asian Survey (10 1982), pp. 934–958Google Scholar;

2. The collapse of Communism and the sudden end of the Cold War has challenged the social sciences to explain how just such imperceptible, historical processes can culminate in dramatic instant change. The diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis writing about the sudden and unexpected end of the Cold War notes that in the physical world change does not necessarily come about gradually: “Metal fatigue reveals its effects all at once: bridges do not collapse gradually, nor do airplanes decompress unhurriedly. Faults in earthquake zones lock themselves into place for decades at a time, releasing accumulated strains rarely but, when they do release them, very dramatically.” See Gaddis, John Lewis, ‘Tectonics, history, and the end of the Cold War,” Occasional Paper, Mershon Center, Ohio State University, 1992, p. 3Google Scholar; And so it is at times with change in social and political systems. The strains in China may have been there for decades, and hence the explanation of cause becomes tricky because the relationship between the long-run imperceptible processes and the immediate dramatic events is hard to fathom.

3. The basic nature of the Chinese political process is wonderfully revealed by the contrast between the introduction of the modern print media and television. Chinese political culture quickly and comfortably incorporated newspapers and magazines because they rein-forced, first, the Chinese tradition that politics is an insider's game at which the public can only get a glimpse and must guess about, and secondly, the longstanding Chinese preference for government by an intellectual elite. The print media also brought the negative consequence of exaggerating more than ever the gap between words and deeds, between ideas and realities, basic to Chinese politics, as leavened by intellectuals. In contrast, television ran into trouble, first, because it is the Chinese tradition for leaders to work behind the scenes and not out in the open. China has no tradition of orators. Secondly, as the Gulf War dramatically illustrated, television confronted the Chinese authorities with an unsolvable dilemma: if CCTV used foreign footage of the fighting it would lose all control over what the Chinese public was shown, but if it used only Chinese material it would have nothing visual to show. Censorship and the screening of ideas becomes exceedingly difficult with television. For an excellent analysis of the difficulties the Chinese have with television, see Wang, L. Sophia, “The Chinese television coverage of the Persian Gulf War,” unpublished manuscript, Joan Shorenstein Barone Center, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 06 1992Google Scholar;

4. Dennis, and Bloodworth, Ching Ping, The Chinese Machiavelli (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), p. 75Google Scholar;

5. In the run-up to the 14th Party Congress Deng did seek an image boost by publishing Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese Condition which contained 88 articles, 64 by Deng and only 24 by Mao. Also at the time, Deng's face appeared on a huge poster in Shenzhen and the exhibition at the Beijing Military Museum had a large painting of Deng and Mao together, a theme repeated in other displays. Boston Globe, 10 August 1992, p. 9. David Shambaugh's contribution utilizes the large number of Chinese books which praise Deng's theories.

6. The mood of alienation and profound depression about China's prospects which was pervasive among Chinese intellectuals both before and after Tiananmen is sensitively and accurately captured by Link, Perry in Evening Chats in Beijing (New York: Norton, 1992)Google Scholar;

7. On Deng's relations with Hu Yaobang see: Franz, Uli, Deng Xiaoping (Boston: Har-court Brace Jovanovich, 1988), pp. 141, 236 ff.Google Scholar; and Salisbury, Harrison, The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992), ch. 47Google Scholar; On Deng's relations with Zhao Ziyang see: Shambaugh, David, The Making of a Premier: Zhao Ziyang's Provincial Career (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984)Google Scholar; Lam, Willy Wo-Lap, The Era of Zhao Ziyang (Hong Kong: A.B. Books, 1989)Google Scholar; Wei, Zhao, The Biography of Zhao Ziyang (Hong Kong: Education and Culture Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Franz, , Deng Xiaoping, pp. 273–76Google Scholar.

8. Deng initially established the Central Advisory Commission as a way of getting the Old Guard to retire, but instead it became an institutional base for maintaining their power, and so Deng had to abolish it at the 14th Party Congress.

9. Although it was far from a scientific sample survey, a 1990 graduate student exercise of interviewing Chinese students studying in America revealed that nearly one quarter of them expected that the Chinese public's response to the announcement of Deng's death would be widespread “smashing of little bottles,” and over one half believed that there would be general joy. Needless to say, the Chinese students in America are disproportionately dissidents who are particularly angered at what happened on 4 June 1989.

10. The details of these events are covered in David Shambaugh's article.

11. Since the Tiananmen massacre some Chinese intellectuals in their efforts to discredit Deng have made a point of identifying both epigrams as Mao's creations. Of course Mao himself got the first slogan from Zhang Zhidong and a long line of Confucian scholars.

12. These and other details of the economic reforms are analysed in Barry Naughton's contribution to this issue.

13. F, Anne. Thurston has captured the emotional state of Cultural Revolution survivors in Enemies of the People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987)Google Scholar.

14. Much of the best work in Chinese political economy points to the extent to which successful enterprises and communities disregarded official policies as they maximized their private interests. See in particular, Solinger, Dorothy J., From Lathes to Looms (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Perry, Elizabeth J. and Wong, Christine (eds.), The Political Economy of Reform inPost-Mao China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Walder, Andrew, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)Google Scholar;

15. Salisbury, , The New Emperors, p. 28Google Scholar;

16. In the more legalistic West, officials are motivated to supervise their subordinates closely because supervisors can be punished for the mistakes of their subordinates, whereas under the principle of rule by men in China there has been more tolerance for human failings.

17. See his article in this volume.

18. On Deng's childhood, see: Salisbury, The New Emperors, ch. 4; Shanbi, Han, Deng Xiaoping pingzhuan (An Analytical Biography of Deng Xiaoping) (Hong Kong: East-West Culture Co., 1988), Vol. I, pp. 23–42Google Scholar;

19. Salisbury, , The New Emperors, p. 27Google Scholar; Salisbury's respondents must have been reporting the local folklore for there could not have been many villagers who had vivid memories of the boyhood of an 88-year-old man.

20. At 16 Mao also went away to school, but it was to live with his mother's family andat a school at which he was by far the oldest student. Deng lived with a tutor whom his uncle had selected for him, and did not really attend a school with other students.

21. There is some clinical evidence that Chinese who for a long time had to deny their family origins for fear of political mistreatment did develop, in a number of cases, serious emotional problems. Their reactions are somewhat like that of aggressively upwardly mobile Americans who have tried to hide their humble origins. This was the tragic story of James Forrestal who from the time he entered Princeton sought to deny his humble, Catholic background and who consequently led a lonely, career obsessed, friendless life which culminated in suicide. For a psychologically well-informed biography, see: Hoopes, Townsend, Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal (New York: Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar;

22. Deng had three wives. The first died while giving birth to a child that did not survive. A cloud surrounds the story of the ending of his second marriage which Deng has never sought to clarify. At the time of the Ruijin affair when Deng was being “struggled against” for alleged anti-Party actions, his wife, Jin Weiying, “divorced” him and “married” Li Weihan who was at the time Deng's superior and the person leading the attack on him. Li Weihan in his memoirs, as quoted by Han Shanbi, observed, “… in March [1933], a struggle was launched in Jiangxi against the so-called ‘Luo Ming Line in Jiangxi’ as represented by Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zetan, Xie Weijun and Gu Bo… I repeatedly demanded that they make self criticisms.… This was a major mistake in my life.” (Shanbi, Han, Biography of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. I, pp. 126–131.Google Scholar) Another version is that Deng gave up his wife in order to be reinstated in the Party, which if true would make him a “pragmatist” of the highest order. According to Jiang Zhifeng, a former high ranking mishu who left China after Tiananmen, Li bluntly told Deng, “‘You give up your wife to me, and I will see to it that she will be happy and your life and position will be saved’… Deng was an exceptional hero who knew better than to keep a woman at the cost of his chance to rise to the top.” Zhifeng, Jiang, Wangpei chujing de Zhongnanhai qiaoju (The Last Card of the Game of Zhongnanhai) (San Francisco: Minzhu Zhongguo Shu Lin, 1990), p 43Google Scholar;

23. Rong, Deng, “Zai Jiangxi de rizi li” (“Those days in Jiangxi”), Renmin ribao (People's Daily), 22 08 1984, p. 4Google Scholar; Zhuo Lin's father made a fortune by becoming the leading producer of smoked hams in South-west China. Salisbury suggests that the “Pu hams” were in China what Smithfield hams are in Virginia. Zhuo Lin gave up her family name of Pu after leaving home, but in spite of her revolutionary activities she apparently remained on good terms with her family.

24. Li, Min, “Deng Xiaoping de ‘Zhinang tuan’” (“Deng Xiaoping's ‘Brain Trust’”), Jingbao yuekan, Hong Kong (01 1992), p. 40Google Scholar;

25. For the most detailed account of Deng's years in France based on an examination of the French police records, see: Nora Wang, “Deng Xiaoping: the years in France, ,” The China Quarterly, No. 92 (12 1982) pp. 698–705Google Scholar;

26. On Deng's relations with Zhou, see: Franz, , Deng Xiaoping, pp.39–49, 71–73Google Scholar;

27. Wang, , “The years in France,” p. 703Google Scholar;

28. This was another shadowy event in Deng's life which he has never sought to clarify. The French police records suggest that they had evidence that Deng and the others might have been plotting to assassinate the Chinese Youth Party leaders in Paris because they were anti-Communists. Ibid. p. 703

29. The most detailed study of how Deng and Chen Yun reported to Mao the plotting of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi is Teiwes, Frederick C., Politics at Mao's Court: The Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in theEarly 1950s (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1990)Google Scholar; Deng's role in the Gao-Rao incident is also analysed in: Yibo, Bo, Guanyu zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Looking Back on Those Important Decisions and Events) (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1991) ch. 14, pp. 308–325Google Scholar; and Shanbi, Han, Biography of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. I, pp. 261–282Google Scholar;

30. Interview with Zhang Hanzhi, widow of Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua, July 1992.

31. Salisbury, The New Emperors, ch. 15.

32. The Report is translated in full in Teiwes, , Politics at Mao's Court, pp. 254–276Google Scholar;

33. Ibid. p. 129, as quoted fromSelected Works of Deng Xiaoping (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1984), p. 279Google Scholar;

34. Speech to the enlarged meeting of the PoliticalBureau, , 18 08 1980, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, p. 310Google Scholar;

35. Ibid. p. 310.

36. Ibid. p. 316.

37. Ibid. p. 319.

38. Ibid. p. 318. In his criticism of work-style problems, Deng brought up what might be called Mao's Cat Theory: “The relationship between a superior and a subordinate must not be the one repeatedly criticized by Comrade Mao Zedong, the relationship between cat and mouse.” Ibid. p. 314.

39. Ibid. p. 321.

40. Ibid. p. 319.

41. For an analysis of how Deng Xiaoping was able to exploit his base in the State Council to out-manoeuvre Hua Guofeng who at the time had a majority of support in the Standing Committee of the Politburo, see Fontana, Dorothy Grouse, “Background to the fall of the Gang of Four,” Asian Survey, Vol. 22 (03 1982), pp. 237–260CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dittmer, Lowell, “Bases of power in Chinese politics: a theory and an analysis of the fall of the ‘Gang of Four’,” World Politics, Vol. 31 (10 1978), pp. 26–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

42. At the 14th Party Congress in 1992 Deng again abandoned a close personal friend and political supporter when he allowed Yang Shangkun and Yang Baibing to be dropped from the Central Military Commission even though Yang Shangkun had been his “alter ego” and Yang Baibing had declared that the PLA would “provide armed escort (baojia huhang)” for Deng's reforms. It was speculated that the Yangs had accumulated too much power and too many enemies, and so “when various factions counter-attacked to bring the Yangs down, Deng Xiaoping let things take their natural course.” Zi, He, “Yang jiajiang shishi neimu,” (“The inside story about General Yang's decline in power”), Zhongguo shibao zhoukan (China Times Weekly), American edition, No. 44 (1992), p. 9Google Scholar;

43. Binyan, Liu made the point that people could not identify with Deng because of his elusive character and policy contradictions in an essay in the Ming Bao, 4 06 1992, p. 5Google Scholar; reported in Inside China Mainland, Vol. 14, No. 8 (08 1992), p. 25–28Google Scholar;

44. Yibo, Bo, Lingxiu, yuanshuai, zhanyou (Leaders, Marshals, Comrades-in-arms) (Beijing: The Central Party School Publishing House, 1989), pp. 119–120Google Scholar;

45. Lewis, John W., Di, Hua and Litai, Xue, “Beijing's defense establishment: solving the arms export enigma,” International Security, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Spring 1991), p. 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

46. Pomfret, John, “Chinese army now major U.S. arms merchant,” Washington Post, 4 03 1993, p. A18Google Scholar;

47. I had the personal experience in 1974 of asking Deng Xiaoping what the population of China actually was. He replied that they did not know what it was. I said that I thought that was hard to believe, given the administrative abilities of the Party and the government, but Deng reacted as though I was innocent and naive. He patiently explained that in China local authorities report all kinds of numbers, some thinking it good to have a high number because it might give them more rations and benefits, while others would deflate their numbers because they were worried that they would be assigned higher quotas and made to pay more to the state. So according to Deng it was best not to take any government statistics seriously, and especially not to worry about what China's population figure actually was. Policy should be geared to what seems to be a reasonable figure.

48. Beijing Review, 29 June 1987, p. 15, as cited byGoldman, Merle, The Seeds of Democracy in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar;

49. An example of the self-degradation Deng was willing to suffer to get back into power was his self-criticism during the Cultural Revolution, which included such statements as: “Whenever I think of the damages caused by my mistakes and crimes to the revolution, I cannot help but feel guilty, shameful, regretful, and self-hateful. I fully support the efforts to use me as a negative example for lasting and penetrating criticism in order to eradicate the evil influence left by me over long years.…No punishment is too much for a man like me. I promise that I will never seek to reverse the verdict on me and I will never be a remorseless capitalist roader. My greatest wish is to be able to stay in the Party and I am begging the Party to assign me a tiny and insignificant job at an appropriate time… I warmly cheer the great victory of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” Deng Xiaoping's Autobiography, 5 Inly 1968. Mimeographed copy of Red Guard materials available in the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research Library, Harvard University.

50. Franz, , Deng Xiaoping, p. 256Google Scholar;

51. Ibid. p. 259.

52. The details of these events are covered in Benjamin Yang's article.

53. Mimeographed copy available at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research Library, Harvard University.

54. I have characterized what is distinctive in Chinese pragmatism in ch. Ill, The Mandarin and the Cadre: China's Political Cultures (Ann Arbor: Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, 1988)Google Scholar;

55. Evidence of Deng's personal attachment to his Two Cat theory is to be seen in the large 1984 painting by Chen Liantao, a renowned Chinese artist, of two cats, one white and one black, that hangs conspicuously in Deng's residence, and which reportedly he refused to give to his daughter, in spite of her begging for it. “Deng Xiaoping he ‘Shuang mao tu’” (“Deng Xiaoping and his ‘Two Cat Picture’”), Renmin ribao (overseas edition), 18 November 1992, p. 8.

56. For a comparison of Deng Xiaoping with the leading conservative Chinese reformers, see: Cohen, Paul A., “The Post-Mao reforms in historical perspective,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3 (08 1988), pp. 518–540CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

57. The Standard, Kong, Hong, FBIS, 6 01 1993, p. 11Google Scholar; Deng gave credence to the plot theory with his November “Three New Don'ts” (Xin san bu zhuzhang) speech in which he laid down the law of, “Do not consider revising the verdict on the June Fourth Incident, … do not tolerate bourgeois liberalization, and do not demote or replace any more of thoseleading cadres who have been affected and treated as ‘leftist kings’ (zuo wang) during the recent ‘anti-leftist’ campaign.” Ming, Yan, “Deng Xiaoping de ‘Xin san bu zhuzhang” “Deng Xiaoping's Three New Don'ts,” Zhongguo zhi chun (China Spring), No. 118 (03 1993), p. 65Google Scholar;

58. For an analysis of Deng Xiaoping's manoeuvring leading up to the 14th Party Congress and of the subsequent prospects for his hopes to have both economic progress and the Party's static monopoly on political power, see:MacFarquhar, Roderick, “Deng's last campaign,” New York Review of Books, 17 12 1992, pp. 22–28Google Scholar;

59. The case for such a future is well argued in Baum, Richard “Political stability in post-Deng China: problems and prospects,” Asian Survey, Vol. XXXII, No. 6 (06 1992), pp. 491–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar;