Word: chou
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...long as Chou remained alive, even gravely ill on a hospital bed, the policies pursued by Teng Hsiao-ping bore the stamp of the Premier's authority. For many world statesmen?notably including Henry Kissinger?Chou personified what they would like China to be: reasonable, flexible, nonaggressive (see obituary, page 30). With the Premier's death, China lost half of the remarkable team that symbolized the People's Republic both to its own people and to those outside. Now only Mao remains, mentally alert at 82 but frail, slack-jawed and slurred of speech...
Teng has impressive credentials as a wily politician and a pragmatic administrator. Yet he lacks the almost spiritual aura enjoyed by Mao and Chou as architects of the New China. Moreover, Teng does not enjoy a large power base of his own. His leadership depends on the approval of the aging chairman and the apparent consent of factions within the party whose often bitter quarrels were effectively stilled by Chou...
Teng's rehabilitation in 1973, a move that had to be approved by Mao, attests to Chou En-lai's determination to rebuild the governing hierarchy in the wake of the Cultural Revolution's devastations. But clearly Teng's ascent to the pinnacle of China's huge bureaucracy is equally due to the fact that he is a tough, shrewd and talented administrator?just the kind of man needed by Chou and Mao to help pull the bureaucracy back together...
After his visit to Peking in December, Henry Kissinger was asked what he thought of Teng. "Teng* and I get along fine," Kissinger replied. "Teng is a different man than Chou Enlai. He's more bureaucratic. He's more direct. He's more pragmatic. Teng is extremely intelligent...
Things obviously have changed since the two first met, when Kissinger reportedly referred to Chou's heir apparent as "that nasty little man." Ruthless and arrogant, the tiny (4ft. 11-in.) Vice Premier is considerably different in style from his urbane predecessor. He lacks Chou's subtlety and sinuous charm, not to mention his manners. In the middle of a conversation, he will often expectorate noisily into a handy spittoon. "You must forgive me," he may say. "I am just a country...