Word: deng
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When Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping decreed an "open door" policy for foreign capital and technology a few years ago, he somberly warned his people that "the penetration of bourgeois ideas is inevitable." Sure enough, leggy beauties now glide along sleek runways in Peking modeling the latest Pierre Cardin fashions. Not far away, well-heeled tourists tuck into French cuisine at Cardin's elegant new Maxim's de Pékin. Even in rustic glades, jeans-clad teen-agers blast out punk rock from ubiquitous cassette players. Free enterprise has also brought in its wake less innocent forms...
...first victims of China's newest and most novel political campaign. For the past month authorities have been waging a war to eliminate "spiritual pollution," a deliberately vague term that embraces every manner of bourgeois import from erotica to existentialism. According to Communist Party Propaganda Chief Deng Liqun, spiritual pollution includes "obscene, barbarous or reactionary materials, vulgar taste in artistic performances, indulgence in individualism" and statements that "run counter to the country's social system." Ostensibly aimed at those with a taste for capitalist pleasures, the purge has begun to descend on any artist or intellectual who seems...
...paper began running a stream of self-criticisms, in which Zhou repented of "betraying the party and the people's trust." Finally, the two editors who had countenanced Zhou's original article were ousted, even though their antileftist sentiments had not long ago been embraced by Deng himself...
Neither the direction nor the duration of the campaign against spiritual pollution can be predicted. Some observers in Peking suggest that Deng may be punishing "rightists" in order to protect himself against attacks from the left; others suspect that the current campaign, like others before it, may have already moved further and faster than was intended. With the government seesawing between its commitment to progress and its loyalty to doctrine, nobody knows which is the safest position to assume. As one typically contradictory press commentary declared last week: "Mao's thought was essentially correct. This can be seen from...
...anticrime campaign is a more subtle reflection of the maneuvering to shore up Deng. Genuinely popular, the drive has as its official purpose simply eradicating a growing number of violent crimes. Every day, public bulletin boards are plastered with new execution notices, while grim truckloads of prisoners are driven back and forth to draw attention to the severity of their sentences. The campaign is said to have been directly inspired by the need to protect Deng, physically and politically. A rumor has it that an attack upon Deng's motorcade occurred in August near the seaside resort of Beidaihe...