Word: deng
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While the economic outlook in most Pacific countries is bright, the political climate is less certain. In many East Asian nations, businessmen face perplexing questions: What will happen in the Philippines if the ailing Marcos should die or be forced out of office? Will Deng Xiaoping, the 80-year-old Chinese leader, live long enough to solidify his reforms? Will the North Korean terrorists who killed 16 South Korean officials in a bombing in Burma last year strike again...
...Deng is determined to change all that. Just last week, the authoritative Economic Daily announced that the number of commodities subject to planned output targets would be slashed from 120 to 60 in the industrial economy, and from 29 to ten in the agricultural sector. Thus many more goods can now fluctuate according to the law of supply and demand. Until this month, state-owned factories were forced to hand over all their profits to the state. Now the plants simply pay a progressive tax on profits and then use the remainder for incentive and welfare schemes or direct reinvestment...
...hoping that a rise in demand will prompt an increase in supply, so that prices that rise sharply at first will eventually be brought down again. Nonetheless, many Chinese fear that their bureaucrats, however liberal-minded, lack the experience to handle the subtleties of the free-market system. Deng has warned his countrymen that for all the success of his agrarian reforms, "urban reforms need greater courage...
...Saturday's document categorically declared that "socialism does not mean pauperism, for it aims at the elimination of poverty." But many politically "conservative" Chinese, who still believe that penury is a virtue, may feel that the new brand of socialism sounds suspiciously like capitalism. In the highest echelons, Deng has been supported by Premier Zhao Ziyang and General Secretary Hu Yaobang, but has evidently run into some stiff resistance over the pace of his program from the three other members of the influential Politburo Standing Committee: President Li Xiannian, former Planning Czar Chen Yu and Marshal Ye Jianying...
...moment, nothing seems likely to stop Deng and his reforms. After a People's Daily article last week voiced the widespread fear that his open-door policy admitted all kinds of "dirty things," the ever resourceful leader had a typically pungent response. "It doesn't matter if someone gets dirty," he said, "just so long as he washes himself more often." -ByPicolyer...