By Anjan Roy
China has just celebrated the 120th birth anniversary of Deng Xiaoping, the man who is the creator of modern China. Mao Zhe Dong had founded the Communist Party of China —ubiquitously the CPC— and swept away centuries of cobwebs in the country. He was the maker of Communist China. But Mao had committed huge excesses and with his idiosyncratic ideas inflicted unbelievable costs on the country.
After Mao's death, it was Deng Xiaoping who rescued China from massive and costly mistakes of Mao. and gave a new direction to the economic development of the world's largest populated country doing away with the excesses of cultural revolution in the 1960's which led to a both political and economic mess.
IF Deng has any parallel among Indian political luminaries, it is with the life and career of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Both of them had to go into political wilderness for prolonged periods in their lifetime. But their crowning glory came when they were dragged out of retirement and they reached peaks what nobody had expected them to scale.
Deng and Rao have changed their countries at the fag end of their careers which left indelible marks and changed their countries for good.
Now XI Jinping, currently China's supreme leader, is laying claim to the mantle of Deng as a modernizer. In effect, Xi is walking in the opposite direction of Deng. Deng Xiaoping was a political giant, though rather diminutive in physical stature. XI Jinping's, on the contrary, had already completed Deng reforms in many areas. In the end, it looks as though Xi's legacy would in no way stand up to Deng's as a man who brought about radical changes in China, both in its society as well as in its economy.
eng's catholicity and open mindedness possibly could be traced to his early years in France where he was sent as part of a programme to train promising youth in the modern industrial technology. He had worked in small French factories and was exposed to the ways of a private sector economy and its attendant uncertainties.
Most critically, it is here in France that he came into close contact with Zhou En Lai, with whom he had lifelong collaboration, sometimes hidden, until latter's death. Through the vicissitudes of the Maoist regime, Zhou had mixed fortunes as Mao's whims about his close associates had swung from trust to suspiciousness.
In the lives of nations and countries, some men emerge at times who could mesmerise generations of their countrymen. Hitler could hypnotise the German nation and could carry off some of the most cruellest programmes which such a cultivated a nation like Germany allowed . Mao, must have been charismatic enough that some his most outlandish ideas were not opposed by the CPC leaders openly though many of them knew of the dangerous consequences of those on the party as also on the people.
As a supreme leader, Mao had uneasy relations with a number of senior leaders of CPC. These included both Deng Xiaoping and Zhou En Lai. At the same time, Mao was shrewd enough to know their values at different times. Zhou was indispensable for Mao to hold together the new state the Communist revolution had created. Mao knew Zhou's worth as an administrator but at the same time he had hemmed in Zhou and curbed his powers.
In case of Deng Xiaoping, Mao was even more ruthless. Deng had suffered as a result of Mao's doubts about his loyalty to the ideas of Mao. His entire family had to suffer at various times and they were not even allowed to come to Deng when he needed them most. Deng's eldest son was so persecuted that he had sought to escape from a interrogation camp and injured himself so badly he was left an invalid for the rest of his life.
Mao had made Deng to self criticise himself in public time and again and recant all his beliefs and actions. Even thereafter Mao had made him denounce himself in public. But, at the same time, he protected Deng from physical attacks and saved his life by keeping secret his locations from others, notably from the Gang of Four.
In the end, as Mao was realizing that his time was coming to an end, he nominated Hua Guo Feng as his successor rather than Deng Xiaoping. Shortly before his death, Mao formally anointed Hua as his successor by appointing him as the party chairman, as well as the head the military committee.
However, Hua was no match for Deng, although after the capture of the Gang of Four by Hua and his trusted lieutenants, Deng was rehabilitated as all the senior leaders had realised that it was Deng who could hold things together.
No doubt, early impressions matter and when Deng came to weird real deterring power, his experiences in France in his formative days came to full play. It was Deng who sent Communist party teams to European countries to have exposure to the developed capitalist countries. Their reports on return were crucial in the subsequent opening up of China to the world.
The Communist leaders had expected the capitalist west to be in decline, the workers savagely exploited and dissatisfied. What they found instead was that the standards of living of the workers were far above anything they could witness in China. Deng was a highly informed man. He had his own sources of information.. He set his own team for speeding up the reforms process with his new slogans from 1978-79. Deng knew that enough time was lost during the period of cultural revolution and after. Now it has to be the one way street for development and growth and that needed investment from western countries.
Deng already got the report that the western countries were eager to work with China and invest in their country. After one such delegation's return, the members had ambitiously stated that US industries were willing to invest $18 billion. They recommended China should agree and start negotiations immediately.
When this was submitted to Deng at a subsequent meet of the returning group, he was reported to have observed: “$18 billion, why not 81 or 181 billion. This was symptomatic of Deng's ambition and vision for China. . He always dreamt big and his work in the next two decades catapulted China to a country with high growth and modern industry. Massive constructions and housing programmes throughput the changed the face of the earlier China based on agrarian economy and small industries.
Following Deng model of open markets and open economy, China has grown far beyond what could have been conceivable in Deng's time. China is far stronger now than then as all his predecessors have continued his modernization policy with some small twists.
Today Chinese President Xi Jinping is continuing the growth process with more vigour. China is the second largest economy of the world after USA and Xi is working to make it number one in two decades. China knows it is a super power and this has led the CPC leadership led by Xi Jinping to be more aggressive.. The Chinese people and the CPC should be grateful to Deng Xiaoping that he led the Chinese nation and the CPC in the most crucial time and made it into a big power. (IPA Service)
