China Battle of the Octogenarians

"The knives are out. If Deng died tomorrow, this place would be a real mess." With those blunt words, a senior Western diplomat in Peking summarized the view of China watchers around the world about the country's new power struggle. Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping appears to be in trouble, and his vaunted economic reforms may also be imperiled.

The question of whether Deng is still in charge was first raised in January, when his protege and handpicked successor, Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, was abruptly ousted after being blamed for disruptive student demonstrations in December. Deng immediately spread the word that he had favored both Hu's ouster and a crackdown against the students, who were demanding more democracy.

The wily Deng, 82, seemed to be using his lifelong tactic of playing off the major political factions against one another in order to stay on top. After Hu's removal, the Chinese press continued to hold Deng up as the leading opponent of "bourgeois liberalization" -- the adoption of Western values that was the main sin of both Hu and the students. Deng, according to a party document made available to Western reporters last week, had been an early critic of the ex-party chief's six major "errors," one of which was that he encouraged too much buying of consumer goods. But China watchers are wondering if Deng is still leading the crackdown or, like Hu, has become a victim of it. Says one Peking intellectual: "At the very least, Deng's recent moves have been forced and involuntary."

The man emerging as Deng's leading rival is another octogenarian, Peng Zhen, 84, chairman of the National People's Congress and a Marxist of the old school. Peng, a contender for top party posts in the early 1960s, was purged in 1966. He is reported to be bitter that he has never been elevated by Deng to the party's top echelon. However, he has turned the Congress, once a legislative rubber stamp, into a center for opposition to Deng's reforms.

Understanding political changes in China is always difficult, and Western diplomats hope to learn more about Deng's status during a visit to Peking this week by Secretary of State George Shultz. The signs of Deng's declining influence have been proliferating in recent weeks. The Chinese leader's public statements have become few and Delphian, and though he is frequently quoted in the press, most of the citations are from speeches he made at least four years ago.

The first hard evidence that Deng was slipping came on Feb. 16, when major Chinese newspapers published a 1962 speech he made attacking Mao Tse-tung for both his one-man rule and his disastrous economic policies during the Great Leap Forward of 1958-60. Some observers took this as an attack on Deng's own leadership. Said one Asian diplomat: "I can't believe Deng wanted that old speech to be printed. It is too easy to interpret as an attack on himself."