Word: deng
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Last weekend's display of good will was more than just a matter of pomp and pandas. Reagan met for serious talks with each of China's current leaders: de facto Ruler Deng Xiaoping, Premier Zhao Ziyang, Party Leader Hu Yaobang and President Li Xiannian. The Chinese mentioned Taiwan again and again, but in measured tones; ultimatums were not delivered. Deng, while forswearing any explicit alliance with Washington, made it clear over the course of his 2½ hours with Reagan on Saturday that he shares the American President's fundamental distrust of the Soviets. Several trade...
Next morning before their long talk, Deng, the top leader, kidded the American some more. He took Nancy's hand. "I hope you'll come [alone] next time and leave the President," Deng said. "We won't maltreat you." She giggled, and Reagan chimed in, "It sounds like I'm the one being maltreated...
...perfected by Mao (who once declared, "Selfcriticism is like eating dogmeat: if you haven't tried it, you don't know what you're missing"). But the reformers have taken care to avoid the mass rallies, shrill tirades and media fanfare of purges past. Says a Peking party functionary: "Deng doesn't want this to develop into a movement that will create chaos and instill fear...
...remains an immovable object of orthodoxy. The staunchest Maoist loyalists are within the 4.2 million-strong People's Liberation Army, whose upper ranks have become a stagnant gerontocracy. The youngest of the nine men on the Central Military Commission is 70; three of its four vice chairmen, like Chairman Deng, have passed their 80th birthday. Even the People's Daily has been moved to complain that "some of our leading cadres are like document-reading machines, speaking rather than acting and just sitting there unless they get a push from above...
...Deng is singularly adept at accommodating his opponents without ever letting them escape his control. In particular, he has deployed some deft dialectical sleight of hand to dismantle Maoism without entirely discrediting Mao. He can hardly afford to denounce the former leader too vehemently: 50 years ago, after all, Deng was a participant in Mao's epochal Long March, and some 25 years ago he was helping Mao administer brutal punishment to hundreds of thousands of intellectuals. But since he assumed power, Deng has published his belief that "every Chinese knows that without Chairman Mao there would...