Word: deng
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Such motivations are now reflected clearly in the historical record. The Tiananmen papers show the worries of Deng Xiaoping and others that they would be placed under house arrest, or even that a civil war would break out. Furthermore, these worries are more directly related to the political opposition within the party than to the students and the demonstrators. When the "Tiananmen Papers" are read carefully, we can restore history to its original color. As time passes, and as more and more people start to question what really happened during "June 4th," the publication of The "Tiananmen Papers" will help...
...make a majority submit to the needs of a powerful few. The papers reveal a Chinese leadership convinced that political will can be maintained by force. The book's editors suggest that the current leadership holds the same conviction. But China's economic openness--begun, ironically, by Deng in 1978--has surely created a challenge to the monopoly on power enjoyed for so long by so few. "Those goddamn bastards!" party elder Wang Zhen shouts at one point in the papers. "Who do they think they are, trampling on sacred ground like Tiananmen so long!? They're really asking...
...Deng: "The minority yields to the majority...
...among other things. And the papers make clear for the first time how right the protesters were. Even though the highest government post he ever held was Vice Premier, Deng and a party of "elders" still made most of the country's decisions. But though a secret deal gave him almost unlimited informal power, he frets at one point in the papers about ending up under house arrest if he eschews decisiveness for discretion...
...denouement of the papers, when Deng decides to order martial law, occurs in a debate between him and Zhao Ziyang, the reform-minded General Secretary. "Of course we want to build a socialist democracy," Deng says. "But we can't possibly do it in a hurry, and still less do we want that Western-style stuff. If our 1 billion people jumped into multiparty elections, we'd get chaos like the 'all-out civil war' we saw during the Cultural Revolution... After thinking long and hard about this, I've concluded that we should bring in the People's Liberation...