China would benefit from Zhao's beliefs

The memoirs show that, as widely suspected, Deng Xiaoping was the one who decided to call in the troops even though he was formally not the head of state, of the party or even of the government. But he was the country's supreme leader, which reflected the abnormal state that the country was in at the time.

Deng Xiaoping made an ineradicable contribution to China after he came to power following the death of Chairman Mao Zedong. Mao had put his personal imprint on the country from the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 until his death in 1976. Under Mao, China supported revolutionary movements around the world and, within China, there was one political campaign after another with millions of deaths.

Deng himself was purged twice by Mao during the Cultural Revolution, and so had much time to meditate on what was keeping China backward at a time when other Asian societies were moving forward. And so, in 1978, he changed the country's course so that modernization became the central task of the Communist Party. Class struggle, like world revolution, was jettisoned.

When the student demonstrations erupted in spring 1989, Deng saw them as a threat to the party's monopoly on power. He did not hesitate to call in the troops to crush the peaceful protests. And when his right hand man, 69-year-old Zhao Ziyang, refused to go along, Deng got rid of him as well.

Zhao was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life, until his death in January 2005. During this period of enforced idleness, Zhao was able to ponder China's past, present and future.

Deng, when sidelined by Mao, developed a vision of China as a modern country under the control of the Communist party. Zhao, under house arrest, also thought long and hard about the country's future direction. Interestingly, his conclusion was diametrically opposed to that of Deng.

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos Respond to this email