CHINA: Beyond the First Euphoria

TIME correspondent finds a mix of liberality and authority

A new generation of Chinese leaders moved an important step closer to power last week when the National People's Congress, meeting in Standing Committee, promoted two provincial protégés of Senior Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping. Former Sichuan Province Governor Zhao Ziyang, 61, and former Anhui Province Party Leader Wan Li, 64, were both elevated to the rank of Vice Premier; to make room for them, two longtime holdovers from the fading era of the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung were asked to resign. Zhao in particular was singled out by Deng as the new administrator who would be "in charge of the day-to-day work of the Cabinet. "

The reshuffle was yet another consolidation of the Deng leadership group as it carries out its drive for the so-called Four Modernizations in industry, agriculture, defense, and science and technology. Indeed, that modernization drive has met with some success, reports TIME'S new Peking bureau chief Richard Bernstein, but it is complicated by crosscurrents of political uncertainties:

What do you think of our Four Modernizations?" The young factory technician looked at me expectantly over his cup of tea, and then answered his own question. "They are fine in theory," he said; "the problem is implementation. The factories are still in the hands of retired soldiers who don't know anything about running a factory. If you want to do something new, it's like hitting your head against a steel wall."

That view is probably more gloomy than most in a society that is generally hopeful about the future. Nonetheless it reflects the uneasiness of many Chinese these days. The country has gone far beyond the first euphoria of its "second liberation," when the radical Gang of Four, including Mao's widow Jiang Qing, was toppled from power and the new leaders embarked on pragmatic policies. By now, some relaxed features of life are taken for granted: the return of romantic drama to TV, glossy billboards advertising Coca-Cola and Sanyo tape recorders, and at least a superficial measure of personal ease that came with the end of militant Maoist campaigns and marches. Still, Chinese intellectuals seriously question how much such relaxation can help to truly revitalize a country that is still poor and backward.

The problem that Deng and his colleagues have most successfully confronted is the nettlesome one of succession. Two months ago at an important Communist Party plenum, Deng got rid of most of the radical holdovers on the all-powerful Politburo. Now speculation centers on whether Deng, who is 75, will voluntarily step down from his government, but not party posts, as he has been hinting. That alone would be an unprecedented gesture in a country where, as one senior official recently complained, "we generally either stay in office until we die or we do something so bad we get thrown out."