Word: deng
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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LIKE MAO ZEDONG BEFORE HIM, Deng Xiaoping has been forced to abandon a hand-picked successor and loyal supporter for committing grave political errors. Deng should have the personal prestige, like Mao again, to ride out this considerable reverse. But the history of Mao's cultural revolution should warn Deng that the demotion of Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang may have started the rot not stopped...
...editorial, the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily denounced the students in the strongest possible terms, saying that their marches for university reform, elections and a free press were an "inevitable outcome" of "the spread of bourgeois liberalization." The editorial almost certainly had the full approval of Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping and the full Central Committee...
...question now: How long will the official chill on dissent last? While the repercussions may be less draconian than in the past, Deng has made it clear that Western-style democratic reform is out of the question. Indeed, some Western China watchers believe the Dengists have been extraordinarily lenient with the demonstrators, in part so that they could use the continuing disorder as an excuse to cut off political discussion...
Others see less calculation behind Peking's moves. "The Deng style of decision making is very easygoing," says Andrew Nathan, a China expert at Columbia University. "To use a metaphor from pool, he takes a shot at the setup and sees where the balls go." Peking may have quieted the restive students for a while. But it is probably only a matter of time before, once again, the dragon of democracy pokes its head through Deng's window...
Precisely how large a threat the continuing demonstrations pose to Deng's government remained exasperatingly unclear. The senior vice chairman of the State Education Commission, He Dongchang, estimated the number of student protesters who have joined the current campaign at 40,000, or only about 2% of China's 2 million college students. Indeed there is little evidence that the student demonstrations have found much sympathy with Chinese workers, as some officials had feared. Last week the Workers' Daily scathingly compared today's student protests to the rampages of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution...