Twilight of A Titan

IF ONE WERE TO WALK IN A CIRCLE around the courtyard of the Beijing bungalow that 90-year-old Deng Xiaoping shares with more than a dozen members of his extended family, the distance covered would add up to exactly 165 yds. Until last year China's most powerful patriarch would complete this circuit 20 times in the course of his two daily walks. He was extremely serious about his count, carefully ticking off the rounds to himself each time he finished a lap.

But now the man who survived the persecution and chaos of the Cultural Revolution to set the country on the path toward reform cannot manage even ( this modest circumambulation: he can no longer walk or stand unaided. Yet in a way the methodical tally continues, if only in the anxious timekeeping of millions of politicians, businessmen and ordinary Chinese.

Now, filtering through the mist of secrecy in which he is cloaked, reliable reports indicate that the enfeebled Deng is nearing the end of his life. He can no longer write, is almost blind and has become so hard of hearing and slurred of speech, it is said, that two of his three daughters are the only people who can interpret his words to the public. Last week his youngest daughter, Xiao Rong, conceded to the New York Times that her father's health is declining "day by day." Given that she serves as Deng's personal secretary and is traveling to New York City and Paris this week to promote her book My Father Deng Xiaoping, the unprecedented disclosure may be an opening move to influence the verdict that history will eventually render on his rule. But the fact that Xiao Rong revealed news of her father's infirmity just before the Jan. 31 celebration of the Chinese New Year, when the nation is traditionally afforded a rare public glimpse of the man, seemed primarily intended to signal something the world has been anxious to know: the time remaining until the day Deng must "go to meet Marx," as he once put it, is short.

Because Deng's stature in life has been so monumental, his absence in death cannot help reverberating long after he is gone. His has been the authority that held together the two contradictory strands of Chinese life. Even as he spurred the great leap toward a free-market economy, Deng was able to keep China's political system firmly in the hands of an ever more sclerotic Communist Party. When he finally dies, the relative strength of these competing systems will hang in the balance. "No one can replace him," explains a European diplomat. "There aren't many people who know how to move forward."

It may be an overstatement to suggest that without Deng, China will tumble into disorder. But his departure will usher in the greatest period of uncertainty since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. So pervasive is his influence that rumors of his illnesses regularly launch East Asian stock markets into stomach-churning plunges. For years the reclusive leader has proved those reports premature, quelling the buzz by appearing in public, hale and hearty as ever.