What would Deng Xiaoping think of China if he were alive today?
Deng’s guiding philosophy of the centrality of economic development is rarely mentioned now, and has become secondary to national security
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What
would Deng Xiaoping think of China if he were alive today? That
question has lingered in my mind ever since I joined tens of millions of
Chinese on August 22 in marking his 120th birth anniversary.
The question is as relevant and important as it is sentimental and rhetorical.
Today’s
Chinese owe so much to the diminutive reformist leader who ended
China’s self-imposed isolation and unleashed reforms in the late 1970s
to allow private entrepreneurship to flourish and open the country up to
foreign investment, paving the way for China’s economic lift-off.
Now
that China is at a crossroads again, amid widespread concerns over the
direction of the country and the state of its economy, remembering Deng
has taken on a special significance.
Deng, who died in 1997 at
the age of 92, would have been heartened but unsurprised to see that
China’s economy has become the world’s second largest, as the country’s
successive leaders vowed to carry the torch and honour his legacy.
On
August 22, Chinese President Xi Jinping led senior officials in an
elaborate ceremony to pay tribute to Deng and lavish praise on the chief
architect of China’s reform and opening up, also a great
internationalist who made major contributions to world peace and
development. They vowed that they would continue to advance the cause
Deng initiated and apply his theory to real-world problems.
But he would have been dismayed to find that some key tenets of his theory had already been discarded and forgotten.
Acutely
wary of the devastating consequences of Mao Zedong’s ultranationalist
policies, including class struggle, Deng came up with the phrase bu
zheng lun, or “let’s dispense with theoretical debate”, putting paid to
the constant debate over socialism vs capitalism, the use of Western
technology or the development of the private economy – so as to focus
the Community Party’s attention on actually growing the economy.
Following
the bloody crackdown on student demonstrations in 1989, China was at a
crossroads again, with resurgent ultra-leftist sentiment threatening to
derail Deng’s policy of reform and opening up in the name of national
security and guarding against Western influence.
Deng then
launched the legendary “southern tour” of 1992, when he repeatedly said
that pursuing economic development should remain the party’s central
task for at least 100 years. Such a pragmatic approach ensured China’s
rise to become the world’s second largest economy in merely 30 years.
Alas,
the ideological struggle and fervour, those constant themes of Mao’s
era that Deng tried very hard to bury, are back with a vengeance.
Deng’s
guiding philosophy that pursuing economic development should be the
party’s central task is rarely mentioned 30 years on, and has become
secondary to national security.
His
mantra of “seeking truth from facts”, epitomised by the folksy saying
“it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches
mice”, has long been upended. Instead, China’s politics and policymaking
process these days are driven by ideology, which has caused
considerable concerns among foreign investors and private businessmen in
the country.
On China’s international relations, the leadership
has long abandoned another of Deng’s dictums, “hiding one’s strength and
biding one’s time”, instead openly clashing with the United States and
its allies across ideological lines and over values.
The
leadership’s supporters have argued that the time has arrived for China,
now one of the world’s largest economies, to flex its muscles and
protect its interests robustly on the international stage, not least
because the country is already the elephant in the room, and not to
mention the fact that Washington no longer sees Beijing as weak and poor
but as its fiercest competitor or the biggest threat in the world.
While
this may be true, Deng would not have approved of the new narrative
driven by hubris, which sounds certain of the West’s irreversible
downward trajectory, as popularised by the refrain, “The East is rising
while the West is declining”.
The catchphrase brings to mind a
similar _expression_ uttered by Mao, who declared in the 1950s that “the
East wind is prevailing the West wind”, implying that the forces of
socialism would overwhelm those of capitalism.
Such
an ideology-driven world view will most likely see China losing friends
and alienating people around the world, particularly in Western
countries.
Let’s be honest. When Deng adopted the open-door
policy to steer the country onto the right track, China opened up
essentially to Western countries which have brought in investment and
technology.
Now that China, the world’s largest trading economy,
is a top trading partner to 120 countries, Western countries still
account for a large portion of investment and trade.
At a time of
unabated Western chatter about decoupling from China, Beijing is wisely
seeking deeper integration into the world economy as a counter move.
Over the past year, China has signalled a conciliatory approach towards
its Western trading partners to defuse trade tensions and reassure the
private sector at home.
But China’s leadership faces growing
scepticism at home and abroad partly because the country’s public
discourse still seems hijacked by the ultra-leftist narrative that is
fixated on guarding against foreign influence in the name of national
security and patriotism.
Deng, a pragmatist who was purged three
times, repeatedly warned that the party should primarily guard against a
ultra-leftist tendency, even as it should stay vigilant against veering
right.
Nothing would please Deng more if his successors would
heed his warning and shift the focus back onto growing the economy and
achieving China’s modernisation.