China after Deng: Coping Well with Succession

William H. Overholt

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 1996

Article preview: first 500 of 5,398 words total.

Summary:  China is headed in the right direction. Deng?s successors cannot achieve his stature, and the more stable and secure China remains, the faster power will devolve to a more liberal generation. As in other Asian nations, economic development will foster political liberalization, as well as a capitalist Hong Kong and an independent Taiwan. Though decentralization is stressful, China does not suffer from the structural weaknesses that undermined the Soviet Union. Corruption and human rights abuses are severe, but citizens can vote in competitive local elections and change jobs as they wish. China should be permitted to continue a liberation unprecedented in history.

William H. Overholt, author of The Rise of China: How Economic Reform Is Creating a New Superpower, is Managing Director in charge of Asian research for Bankers Trust.

Now that Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's astounding economic advancement, is about to exit the scene, it is worth asking whether the era of post-Deng politics has already begun. At 92, Deng is long past active leadership and healthy participation in decision-making. The corruption charges brought against some of his favorite cronies and the efforts of Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 1989, to put his own stamp on policy show Deng's waning influence. But the Chinese system of powerful, trusted personal secretaries means that Deng's office carries on even when the master is asleep. So long as he has a pulse, Deng is more an institution than a man, and a certain public awe shapes the political environment.

Succession has four aspects: who will be the top leader, which generation seizes the reins of power, how the government will be structured, and which direction policies will take. Who will get the top job is largely unpredictable, but whoever he is, he cannot possibly achieve the stature of Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping. This is a structural change, not just a comment on available leaders. World War II produced Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Churchill, and de Gaulle. Similarly, only the stresses of the revolution could produce leaders of Mao's or Deng's stature. The governance of China after Deng will be spread among many leaders, and their policies will depend more on broad support and the consensus of elites than individual predilection.

The standing and ideological bent of the new generation of leaders is much more ambiguous than those of the 'immortals,' the octogenarians who prove more mortal every month. The so-called third generation of Jiang, Premier Li Peng, and Vice Premier Zhu Rongji is largely made up of Soviet-style electrical engineers. But in many institutions, the more technocratic, market-oriented, politically relaxed, Western-oriented fourth generation of leaders whose members are now in their forties is grabbing power. The faster economic development progresses and the calmer China's relations with the outside world, the less the old ideological and nationalistic slogans will support the traditional third generation and the faster the center of gravity will shift toward the more liberal fourth.

China's totalitarianism has receded into what some call normal Asian authoritarianism. People can wear what they like, share opinions with their neighbors, choose their careers, change jobs, hear conflicting opinions from their national leaders, vote in competitive local but not national elections, move around the country with limited hindrance, start their own businesses, and in general do pretty much anything other than directly challenge the authority of the government. China after Deng will continue to move in the right direction. The United States should above all avoid hindering its evolution.

Twenty years ago the United States was asking what would become of South Korea after Park Chung Hee. Virtually everyone feared a return to the chaos and ideological polarization that had preceded him. Despite frightening struggles for the top position, however, the direction of Park's economic ...

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