65

a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice" was one of
his widely quoted aphorisms. On many occasions he said to me,
"Reality is our teacher;" practice overrode theory by
implication, even--or perhaps especially--Marxist theory.

"I am neither a conservative nor a reformer," he said to
me in 1987. "I seek truth from facts." Deng was a pragmatist
whose goal was economic progress and political stability. He
was a reformer, he said in the same conversation, with respect
to economic and technological reform but a conservative in the
sense of opposing political instability.

Shortly after President Carter normalized relations with
Beijing, Deng paid a visit to Washington and invited me to
call on him. Exile had not mellowed him; he was feisty. He
looked forward to implementing major reforms, he said, free of
the impediments of the Gang of Four (and perhaps of Mao). He
was restoring United States relations as the centerpiece of

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Chinese foreign policy. Deng deplored the collapse of the
Shah of Iran and Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. He urged
a stronger American policy; in any event, China would resist
Soviet expansionism. Because Vietnam had become a Soviet
tool, China would "teach it a lesson."

Many senior officials of the Carter Administration
thought Deng was bluffing. But I recalled Zhou's
pronouncement, "Our word counts," and also Deng's remark when
I had reminded him of Mao's reference to the "empty cannons"
of ideological rhetoric. "My cannons," said Deng, "are always
at least half-full." Shortly after Deng's return to China,
the Red Army invaded Vietnam to teach its lesson.

I saw Deng the next time in Seattle, the last stop of his
American journey. I was there as a sports fan to watch the
American national soccer team in its effort to qualify for the
1982 World Cup. I sent Deng a note that I did not feel right

67

being in the same city without seeing him and offered a brief
courtesy call. He replied that I had called on him in
Washington, and courtesy required him to call on me. And to
the extraordinary displeasure of his security personnel, he
carried out this pledge, walking from his hotel to where I was
staying and [in the process] creating a monumental traffic
jam.

We next met in April 1979 in Beijing. Hua Kuo-feng was
still Secretary General of the Communist Party. He and Deng
received me separately for long meetings in the Great Hall of
the People. The contrast was striking. Both put forward
detailed programs of economic reform. But for the only time
in dealing with Chinese leaders, philosophical and practical
disagreements were made explicit. Hua sought to spur
production by traditional Soviet methods: emphasizing heavy
industry; improvements in agricultural production based on

68

communes through increased mechanization and use of fertilizers within the framework of a ubiquitous Five Year Plan.

For his part, Deng passionately rejected all these orthodoxies. The people, he said, needed to be given a stake in what they produced. Therefore, consumer goods had to have priority over heavy industry, whatever orthodox textbooks alleged. The ingenuity of Chinese farmers had to be liberated which meant that communes, step-by-step, would be abolished; the Communist Party needed to become less intrusive, and government would have to be decentralized. The conversation continued over lunch where five tables seated ten each. Deng spoke in a conversational tone as he elaborated on his ideas about introducing modern technology to China, sending tens of thousands of Chinese students abroad ("we have nothing to fear from Western education"), ending once and for all the abuses

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of the Cultural Revolution, and of the challenge of striking a
balance between centralization and decentralization in a vast
country of huge population and significant regional
differences. I noticed that, while Deng had not raised his
voice and was addressing his remarks to me, the tables around
us had fallen silent. The other Chinese present were sitting
at the edge of their seats, not even pretending not to be
listening in on the old man as he outlined his vision of their
future (Deng was already close to 80). "We have to get it
right this time," concluded Deng. "We have made too many
mistakes already."

Soon after, Hua faded into some minor position. Over the
course of the next decade, Deng implemented what he had
described at the lunch in 1979, bringing about more permanent
and fundamental changes than even those who had destroyed
ancient China. I would meet with Deng once a year for

70

extended conversations until he retired from his formal
positions in 1990. The meetings would generally begin with a
discussion of the international situation, but reform was the
dominant theme. In September 1987, Deng described the changes
he was planning in the Standing Committee of the Politburo as
part of the effort to bring younger people into leading
positions. Given the resistance he was meeting, it would
probably take ten years to complete the process of
rejuvenation. To set an example, Deng said he intended to
give up all but one of his formal positions. "So you can rest
at ease" that the process will continue, concluded Deng.

Deng stressed that since the scale of the Chinese effort
was so unprecedented, there would be ups and downs; mistakes
would undoubtedly be made. Both courage and prudence were
needed to deepen and accelerate structural reform. This would
be accompanied by political structural reform which was,

71

however, far more complicated since it involved the vested
interests of millions. The "division of work" between the
Communist Party and the government needed to be revised, and
that meant that many party members would have to change jobs
as managers took over responsibility from party secretaries.
Such massive changes were possible only if the basic authority
were maintained; otherwise the chaos of the Cultural
Revolution would surely return.

In 1988, Deng elaborated on his political reform. He was
now ready to transfer power from the party to the government.
The Communist role would be limited to "guidance on
philosophical issues." When I asked for an example of a
philosophical issue, Deng replied: "For instance, if we are
considering an alliance with the Soviet Union." Given Deng's
rancorous distrust of the Soviet Union--extraordinary even
among his already quite sufficiently wary associates--this

72

example was hardly an imminent contingency and, in the nature
of things, not an issue likely to recur frequently. Deng's
ultimate achievement is that, ruling in the name of Communism,
he launched a process which redefined a specifically Chinese
version of Communism.

On this occasion, too, Deng chided me gently for having
predicted in print that China would be a great power by the
second decade of the 21st century. I underestimated the
problems, he said; 2050 was a more realistic estimate. Part
of Deng's motive was probably to discourage any ideas of
applying balance-of-power principles to China.

My last meeting with Deng was in November 1989, four
months after Tiananmen Square, for a discussion followed by
lunch. Nothing had changed, he said; he was still the
reformer he had always been. He was defending reform, he
implied, not Communism. "In this country," he said, "if

73

stability is lost, it will take decades to regain." Deng had
difficulty understanding, he averred, why the United States
had raised no ideological issues when China was strictly
Communist but was interfering in domestic affairs now that
China was rapidly becoming a socialist market economy. He
offered a package deal for resolving the human rights issues
then on the table--the release of a dissident who had sought
refuge in the American Embassy and new consideration for some
who had been imprisoned in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square
upheaval--and for a resumption of a Sino-American political
dialogue.

The offer was not taken up immediately by the Bush
Administration which was concentrating on an imminent summit
with Gorbachev at Malta and was then deflected by the fall of
the Berlin Wall. By the time the dialogue was resumed, it
foundered because Deng had become more cautious and preferred

74

to move step-by-step rather than as a package deal. At the
same time, American human rights goals had became more
ambitious.

This article does not attempt a final assessment of
Deng's historic role, having primarily emphasized my
encounters with him and his predecessors. But these do permit
a number of conclusions.

Deng considered the ultimate purpose of his life to be
reform. For that, he struggled--and suffered--with courage
and imagination. Paradoxically it was the passion for reform
which shaped his attitude toward the events which fall under
the heading of Tiananmen Square. To American observers, they
seemed a flowering of democracy. But Deng saw less glory in
demonstrations by students whose fathers had besieged his
residence when they had been students and who had thrown his
son out of a window, maiming him for life. Believing that he

75

was obliged to choose between political and economic reform, he opted for the latter, albeit with heavy-handed methods.

Unquestionably, he has improved the life of the Chinese people. And having achieved the reform to which his life was dedicated, he retired to permit successors to implement his legacy. The reform he sought did not aim at pluralistic democracy. At the same time, Deng was too wise not to understand that the changes he wrought had a momentum independent of the intentions of their originator. Clearly Deng's revolution is irreversible. Whatever happens, China cannot return either to the state-controlled economy or to the rigid political conformity of the Mao period. At the same time, Deng's economic reforms and the market economy they have spawned will require growing constitutionalism--that is, predictability--even if pluralistic democracy is not established. The relative position between provinces and

76

central government may well fluctuate as it has throughout
Chinese history. Alterations in leadership and institutions
can affect emphasis not direction which history will record as
Deng's legacy to his ancient people.

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10

worked, by punishing the transgressor against order. Since
the United States had expanded and prospered under democratic
institutions, concord was expected to result nearly
automatically from the worldwide spread of democracy. The
balance of power as practiced in Europe was decried as either
irrelevant or dangerous; equilibrium was less significant than
a moral and legal consensus.

Thus (the statement by Mao and Nixon in the Shanghai
Communiqué of 1971 that they would jointly oppose hegemony in
Asia (a year later extended to the world) was a far more
significant departure from the Wilsonianism dominant in the
United States than from Chinese traditions. Even when not
spelled out in detail, resistance to hegemony implies a policy
of balancing power, of preventing any one nation from
marshaling the resources and manpower of a continent under its
own rule. The unspoken but unavoidable implication was that

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China and the United States were engaged in counterbalancing

Soviet power in Soviet alliance with China

The unorthodox nature of Nixon's approach becomes evident
when contrasted with the more traditional response of the
State Department. In early 1970, when American-Sino contacts
were still being conducted through the respective embassies in
Warsaw, the Chinese proposed that an American envoy visit
Beijing. The State Department submitted a memorandum to the
White House proposing an agenda for such a mission, moving
from the procedural to the technical: diplomatic immunities,
communications, transportation; settlement of the financial
claims of each side; and the lifting of trade and travel
restrictions. The only substantive issue raised was Taiwan
for which the department offered neither a solution nor even a
reading.

TOTAL P.02

23

of easy chairs. Bookshelves overflowing into piles on the
floor and what looked like manuscripts bound with string
covered the walls. Books were also piled on tables. On my
first few visits, a simple wooden bed stood in a corner. The
all-powerful ruler of the world's most populous nation wished
to be perceived as a philosopher-king who had no need for the
trappings of power or any traditional symbol of majesty.

Mao would rise to greet me from out of the central easy
chair, a female attendant standing close by (and, on my last
visit, holding him up) for by the time I met him, he had
already suffered several of the strokes which eventually would
disable him. He would fix upon his visitor a smile both
penetrating and slightly mocking as if to warn that it would
be futile to attempt to deceive this specialist in human
weakness and duplicity. Since barbarians always ran the risk
of missing the point, Mao would occasionally emphasize the

24

impossibility of tricking him with an anecdote--for example,
at our meeting of November 12, 1973:

> The president of South Yemen approached me. He said he wanted to sever diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. He asked me my opinion. I was not taken in and replied that he must be prudent. Now they are tied very closely to the Soviet Union.

Even when Mao's physical condition became progressively more impaired, he exuded more concentrated will power and determination than any leader I have encountered, with the possible exception of Charles de Gaulle. Mao moved only with difficulty, and his ability to speak worsened from meeting to meeting to the point where, during our last conversation, aides needed to write down what the sounds he uttered might mean, and he would either nod or shake his head before the translation could proceed.

Despite these handicaps, Mao conducted conversations in the form of a Socratic dialogue. Eschewing the soliloquies

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Mao: I believe in that. And that is why
your recent trip to the Arab world was a
good one.⁴

The cumulative effect of Mao's tangential observations
was to convey the mood and to indicate the route of march
while ostensibly leaving the tactical decisions in Zhou's
control. When, in February 1972, Nixon tried to draw him into
a discussion of specific countries, Mao replied:

> These should be discussed with the Premier
> [Zhou Enlai]. I discuss the philosophical
> questions.

That actually was only true when Mao wanted to separate
himself from a discussion, the outcome of which was as yet
uncertain, as was the case during Nixon's visit. Once the
Shanghai Communiqué had established a framework for Sino-
American relations, Mao's utterances grew increasingly
concrete and, if necessary, quite brutal. In November 1975,

⁴China-II (1974) book, Tab K, pp. IV-185-186.

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And later in the conversation, when President Ford asserted, "I always say it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable"--a pronouncement which utterly stumped the interpreter, it being linguistically impossible to make that juxtaposition in Chinese--Mao brought the subject to a close: "Why would you always say that?" (Had he understood the phrase, he would no doubt have objected even more strongly.)

Mao's conversations with us were divided into two subjects: increasingly precise elaborations of his views regarding a common international strategy, and more elliptical references to China's internal conditions. On international affairs, he followed a geopolitical and insistently nonideological approach. One of his first observations to Nixon was:

> ...People like me sound a lot of big cannons. For example, things like "the whole world should unite and defeat

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imperialism, revisionism, and all
reactionaries and establish socialism."

He laughed uproariously at the implication that anyone might
have taken seriously a slogan which had been scrawled for
decades on every public placard in China. With similar glee,
Mao volunteered that he preferred dealing with conservative
Western leaders such as Richard Nixon, Edward Heath, or
Georges Pompidou because the conservatives were more
suspicious of the Soviet Union while their leftist opponents
were sentimental, unrealistic, and vulnerable to Communist
peace offensives.

It was fortunate for Sino-American relations that the
Nixon Administration was Mao's first American interlocutor.
Almost any conceivable alternative group--let alone the
McGovernite Democratic Party of the late 1960s and early
1970s--would have been reluctant to base the relationship so

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explicitly on strategic and geopolitical considerations. At the time of the 1972 Nixon visit, we were still treating Taiwan as the legitimate government of China and did not recognize Beijing as the capital. We were also at war with North Vietnam, then ostensibly China's ally and beneficiary of its economic assistance as well as some military aid. Mao wasted no time unraveling these complexities. Taiwan would not be permitted to stand in the way of Sino-American rapproachment and nor would Indochina. "The issue [of Taiwan] is not the important one," Mao said off-handedly in the first few minutes of his meeting with Nixon as if he were lubricating a social chat with some self-evident observation.

"The issue of international relations is the important one."

And Mao quickly put to rest the nightmare legacy of the Korean War of possible Chinese intervention in Vietnam which had

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obsessed and constrained every American administration in
Indochina for a decade:

> At present, the question of aggression
> from the United States or aggression from
> China is relatively small...You want to
> withdraw some of your troops back to your
> soil; ours do not go abroad.

In subsequent conversations, Mao elaborated the general
comments he had made to Nixon. In November 1973, he invited
me to a nearly three-hour tour d'horizon of the international
situation. Combining queries with allusions and alternating
bonhomie with mocking challenge, Mao would sketch his
conception of global containment of the Soviet Union in broad
strokes. He would identify the countries which could
contribute to this task and analyze what was needed to
strengthen them as if no constraints on the application of the
national interest could ever arise.

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In Mao's view--subsequently largely born out by events--
the Soviet Union was not a real, but a mock, superpower. It
had "stretched its hands too far," and its industrial capacity
would not be able to sustain its global ambitions. Hence
Moscow was therefore sure to lose the geopolitical struggle,
provided only that the countries around the Soviet periphery
cooperated in thwarting Moscow's designs and did not let
themselves be defeated one-by-one. It was the Chinese version
of containment.

Mao: Their ambitions are contradictory
with their capacity.

Kissinger: That may be true.

Mao: Beginning from their Pacific Ocean,
there is the United States, there is
Japan, there is China, there is South
Asia, and westward there is the Middle
East, and there is Europe, and the Soviet
forces that are deployed along the lines
through Siberia way up to the Kurile
Islands only account for one-fourth of
their forces.

Zhou: East of the Urals.

Kissinger: A little closer to one-half.
Two-fifths maybe.

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**Mao:** Excluding the Middle East, that is. The Middle East would be counted on the other side....

...They have to deal with so many adversaries. They have to deal with the Pacific. They have to deal with Japan. They have to deal with China. They have to deal with South Asia which also consists of quite a number of countries. And they only have a million troops here-not enough even for the defense of themselves and still less for attack forces. But they can't attack unless you let them in first, and you first give them the Middle East and Europe so they are able to deploy troops eastward. And that would take over a million troops.

**Kissinger:** That will not happen. I agree with the Chairman that if Europe and Japan and the US hold together--and we are doing in the Middle East what the Chairman discussed with me last time--then the danger of an attack on China will be very low.

**Mao:** We are also holding down a portion of their troops which is favorable to you in Europe and the Middle East. For instance, they have troops stationed in Outer Mongolia, and that had not happened as late as Khrushchev's time. At that time they had still not stationed troops in Outer Mongolia, because the Chienpao Island incident occurred after Khrushchev. It occurred in Brezhnev's time.

**Kissinger:** It was 1969. That is why it is important that Western Europe and China and the US pursue a coordinated course in this period.

**Mao:** Yes.

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Kissinger: Because in that case, nobody will be attacked.

These conversations took place in November 1973, at the very moment neoconservative critics were chastising the Nixon Administration for insufficient vigilance vis-à-vis the Soviet threat. While Mao's analysis of Soviet motivations paralleled that of the neoconservatives, he differed on the appropriate strategy. The neoconservatives, believing that the Soviet Union was preparing some ultimate apocalyptic showdown, wanted the United States to concentrate on that threat and not dissipate its strength in geopolitical contests around the Soviet periphery (which was why they did not support the administration on either Indochina or Angola). But that was exactly what Mao proposed as the best strategy to defeat Soviet expansionism wherever it reared its head. In pursuit

⁵China-II (1974) book, Tab K, pp. IV-189-190.

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of that goal, Mao sought a strategic partnership with the
United States and to demonstrate the positive benefits of
Sino-American cooperation, saying in 1975:

> Each side has its own means and acted out
> of its own necessity. That has resulted
> in our two countries acting hand-in-
> hand...So long as our objectives are the
> same, we would not harm you nor would you
> harm us.

Focused on forming an anti-Soviet coalition, Mao (and
Zhou) were solicitous about America's relations with Europe
and Japan. They urged us to calm the disputes generated by my
1973 proposal for a "Year of Europe;" in their view, the
foreseeable results of the proposed joint declarations were
not worth the disputes they generated. And they were
especially concerned about American-Japanese relations. After
years of condemning our security treaty with Japan, Mao and

⁶On the "Year of Europe," see *Years of Upheaval*, Chapter V.

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Zhou now saw in it a means to contain the Soviet Union and to protect against a resurgence of Japanese militarism.

There was, however, a difference in the situation and hence in the tactics of the two sides. China was, in fact, the most directly threatened party of the strategic triangle, and Mao knew it--despite his bravado that China was immune to pressure and implacable in the defense of its principles. Nor did he miss the inevitable implication of the Nixonian approach to foreign policy that we would resist changes in the global balance of power at the side of China if necessary, whatever the tactical maneuver in the interim.

And the different geopolitical as well as domestic situation of each country did dictate different tactical approaches to the common challenge. Under direct threat and with little scope for diplomatic maneuver, Mao treated the Soviet Union as an implacable enemy to be confronted verbally,

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politically, and militarily at each opportunity. The Nixon and Ford Administrations, governing a society shocked by a decade of civil unrest, had to have as their top priority restoring confidence in the purposes and design of our foreign policy. Though we shared Mao's interpretation of Soviet motives, if the Soviet Union were, in fact, to engage in expansionism, we would resist. At the same time, a demonstration of having gone the extra mile to rally domestic support and to sustain the crises would be needed--but equally not until then.

Our policy was driven as well by a strategic rationale. If we had cemented ourselves into the posture of implacable hostility toward the Soviet Union that Mao advocated, our diplomacy would have lost all flexibility and much of our ability to lead our allies. Our international position--and our security alike--required us to maneuver in a way that

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39

brought us closer to each of the Communist giants than they were to one another. Since we considered China the weaker and the more threatened, we tilted our policy toward Beijing while steering clear of the rigidity that would fuel a resurgence of the Vietnam peace movement in the United States and undermine our capacity for a firm foreign policy. We were determined to reserve final decisions for actual, not conjectural, challenges.

Mao, who understood our design far better than our domestic critics, could not be expected to be enthusiastic about the application of Chinese statecraft to China. He would surely have preferred to be on the side of the strategic triangle that had the greater options. But he was experienced enough to understand that we had our own strategy in pursuing parallel objectives.

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Characteristically, Mao seemed to believe that we had an option other than cooperating with China. We might be tempted, he told me, to get rid of Communism once and for all by embroiling the two Communist giants with each other and then turning on the victor. Our means for doing so, in Mao's thinking, were to encourage a Soviet attack on China followed by American pressure on an exhausted Soviet Union. In Mao's words:

> Let them get bogged down in China...And
> then you can poke your finger at the
> Soviet back. And your slogan will be
> peace: to bring down the Socialist
> imperialisms for the sake of peace....

The aged revolutionary who had never known a period
without struggle--and who was emotionally so dependent on it
that he was ever contriving upheavals even after victory--
would not have believed (or lost respect for us if he came to
believe it) had I told him the American reality after Vietnam

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and Watergate (and maybe at all times): it was all we could
do to mobilize the American people in defense of the global
equilibrium; to encourage a Soviet attack on ~~China~~ with
which we were ostensibly seeking to improve relations, to be
followed by American pressure against the Soviet rear, was too
Machiavellian for the United States of the 1970s and, I dare
say, of any other period.

The blueprint of Sino-American relations established by
Nixon and Mao remained remarkably consistent through five
administrations of both parties: a parallel strategy with
China in preventing "hegemony"--in other words, to preserve
the global balance of power against the Soviet Union; no
challenge by either side to the vital concerns of the other;
acceptance by the United States of the principle of one China
and disavowal of a two-China or one-China, one-Taiwan policy;

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and deferral by China of pressing the Taiwan issue. Mao said

in 1973:

> ...We can do without Taiwan for the time being and let it come after one hundred years. Do not take matters of this world so rapidly. Why is there need to be in such great haste? It is only such an island with a population of 12 or more million [corrected by Zhou to 16 million]...As for your relations with us, I think they need not take 100 years.

Normalization of relations with the United States clearly had
priority over reunification with Taiwan.

Mao's geopolitical, single-minded and essentially nonideological orientation with respect to foreign policy stood in stark contrast to the dominant role he assigned to ideology at home. When we encountered Mao, he was the unchallenged leader of a revolution that had claimed tens of millions of victims in the name of historical truth; yet he was assailed by premonitions of its fragility. Two contradictory impulses seemed to be undermining the

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are over thirty, that would solve the problem for us." But
that was another way of saying that the problem was insoluble.

Within a year, Mao was to reverse the maxims advanced in
that conversation. In early 1974, Zhou was for all practical
purposes retired and, two years later, Deng was purged a
second time. When I saw Mao for the last time in 1975, he
concluded the meeting with a whimsical and melancholy bit of
irony that embraced all his ambivalence over what he had
wrought. Explaining why it was just as well that Taiwan's
status remain unchanged for awhile, he said:

> God blesses you, not us. God does not
> like us because I am a militant warlord,
> also a Communist.

Zhou Enlai

It was Zhou who sought to rescue continuity and
consistency from beneath the shadow of this towering, driven,

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available for our dialogue. On my typical sojourns in
Beijing, we generally met for eight hours each day. Zhou
delicately alternated the venue between the Great Hall of the
People and my own residence in one of the ponderous state
guesthouses. It was his way of suggesting that the United
States delegation was "at home," as it were, on Chinese soil
and that meetings were therefore alternating between the "home
turf" of each side. During these lengthy sessions, which
included meals, Zhou was never interrupted by any other
business. No phone calls or notes were passed to him.

Indeed, no phone was even in sight, a state of affairs
unthinkable--nay, impermissible--in Washington. Zhou seemed
determined to convey that he had no more important task than
to nurture the relationship with the United States. (I had
to joke that senior officials in Washington would probably not
be able to free so much time for the Second Coming.)

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Zhou was brought home to me at a dinner in the Great Hall of the People in December 1973. As part of a general discussion, I made the observation that China was essentially Confucian in its belief in a single, universal, generally applicable truth as a standard of individual conduct and social cohesion. All Communism had done, I suggested, was to alter the content of that truth. I cannot now recall what possessed me to make this statement which, however accurate, was surely oblivious of Mao's periodic digs at Confucians. Zhou exploded. It was the only time I saw him lose his temper. Confucianism, he said, was a doctrine of class oppression while Communism represented a philosophy of liberation. With uncharacteristic insistence, he kept pursuing the assault on Confucianism, no doubt to some degree so as to have it on record at least for the benefit of Mao's niece who was also seated at the obligatory round table.

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I saw Zhou for the last time in December 1974. Barely settled in the state guesthouse, I was whisked off, accompanied by my wife and children who had joined me for the occasion, to see Zhou in what was described as a hospital. Located in the general area of the former Imperial City as Mao's residence, it looked to the medically untrained eye as identical with any other Soviet-model Chinese guesthouse. Zhou appeared physically unchanged and as suave as ever. Yet he steered clear of any substantive discussion. He rebuffed every attempt to engage him by saying that his doctors had warned him against any strain. Why substantive conversation would prove more taxing than social chitchat was not explained. Only the symbolism was plain: Deng, not Zhou, was my officially designated interlocutor.

By the time I returned to China for a private visit in 1979, Deng had been restored, and Zhou had been fully

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in his comment to Nixon. Out of the wreckage of the Cultural Revolution, Deng fashioned a modernization that is likely to turn China into an economic superpower during the 21st century. Even as he was distancing himself from Zhou, Deng found many small ways to show his commitment to close relations with the United States. In October 1975, Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua--who had allied himself with Mao's radical wife--made a blisteringly unfriendly toast at the opening banquet and, when I started to reply in kind, the television lights were turned off. The next morning, Deng demonstratively invited me and the American delegation to an impromptu picnic in the Fragrant Hills near Beijing and went to great lengths to put the full weight of his person and office behind friendship with the United States. He did the same during Ford's visit in late November 1975, as I shall describe in a later chapter. After Deng was forced into exile

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vice premier and took over the tasks heretofore performed by Premier Zhou Enlai, who was thought to be ailing. In 1976, Deng was purged again and fell under violent attack, not to reappear until 1978, two years after Mao's death.

Only those who experienced Mao's China can appreciate the transformations wrought by Deng. The bustling cities, the vast construction booms, the incredible traffic jams, the so uncommunist dilemma of a growth rate threatening to spiral into inflation--all of these were inconceivable in Mao's drab China of agricultural communes, a population uniformed in standard jackets, a stagnant economy, deserted streets, and professed ideological fervor. Deng's revolution changed all that. He abolished the agricultural communes and decentralized economic decision-making. He fostered provincial autonomy. The Chinese population is materially dramatically better off, and its lives are less constrained politically.

仅 25 年 ago.

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3

To be sure, almost every great achievement has its
shadows. It remains to be seen whether the vast gaps between
China's coastal regions and the more backward interior can be
bridged without excessive dislocations. And economic progress
has been achieved at the price of rigid insistence on one-
party rule.

This article does not attempt a final evaluation of Deng Xiaoping, who I consider a very great man. It attempts to set this last survivor of the generation that made the revolution in the context of his two predecessors, who I encountered when I first dealt with the People's Republic of China, sleeping in 1977.

One of Deng Xiaoping's daughters told me that her father
had received me more often than any other foreigner. I am in
no position to verify that proposition. But over 15 years,
from 1974 to 1989, except for the period of Deng's second
exile between 1976 and early 1979, I met with him for long

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c1>

conversations, sometimes including meals, at least once a year and, in 1974 and 1975, several times a year.

Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were prone to philosophical reflections, elegant formulations, and indirect allusions. It therefore took me some time to adjust to Deng's acerbic, no-nonsense style, his occasional cynical question, and his relentless emphasis on the practical.

It was not until after Deng was forced into exile a second time in 1976 that I understood how much good relations with the United States owed to his influence. And not until after his third return to power in 1979 did the extent to which Deng was changing his society become clear--indeed, that his revolution is likely to endure beyond that of the larger-than-life figure of his predecessor, Mao Zedong.

Deng's view of reform for China was eminently practical. As one of the leaders of the Long March, he was a witness and,

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the pithy and contemptuous anti-capitalist slogans came
together to launch a geopolitical revolution.

Nixon was driven by the desire to extricate the United
States from Vietnam, and to create a counterweight to Soviet expansionism. Mao shared
Nixon's concern over Soviet expansionism; indeed, he had every
reason to believe that China might be its next target. For
the Brezhnev doctrine of 1968 had reserved to the Kremlin the
right to bring backsliding Communist leaders to heel by the
use of military force. And no contemporary leader had
challenged Moscow's doctrinal preeminence more rigorously than
Mao. At the same time, however, Mao was far too subtle to
overlook that the United States would defend only American
national interests and surely not his right to doctrinal
heterodoxy. In other words, he needed to anchor the Sino-

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7

American relationship in some parallel approaches to foreign policy.

With the very survival of his society and his system at stake, Mao had few alternatives to such an essentially balance-of-power approach, and he could draw on a rich tradition of Chinese statecraft. But emphasis on geopolitics was unprecedented for an American president, at least since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. That China and the United States would seek rapprochement in the early 1970s was imposed by the international environment; that it occurred with such speed and in so straight a line reflected the ability of the leaders of both sides to transcend ideology and meet on the basis of mutual interests and necessities.

Although Zhou Enlai was my principal interlocutor during the early visits, Mao overshadowed all his subordinates by the near religious awe in which he seemed to be held (or which his

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subordinates thought it at least wise to affect). The other
Chinese leaders--Zhou and afterwards even Deng--invariably
conducted their conversations by buttressing their arguments
with extensive quotations from Mao. And in his presence, they
were extraordinarily deferential in both attitude and
expression.

The atmosphere of remoteness and of all-encompassing, at
times menacing dominance was reinforced by the manner in which
meetings with Mao took place. Although Mao's philosophy
disdained historic China, he lived in the Imperial City as
remote and exalted as the emperors he derided. Appointments
with him were never scheduled; they simply came about as if an
event of nature. On each of my five meetings with Mao, the
first hint would be a stirring among my Chinese interlocutors
and the appearance of Wang Hairong, reputed to be Mao's niece
and then an assistant foreign minister. For a few minutes, my

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clearly agitated Chinese counterparts would act as if nothing
unusual were happening but then, almost immediately, Zhou or
Deng would put away his papers and say: "Chairman Mao is
expecting you." Whether or not the American delegation was
ready did not seem to be an issue worthy of being raised.

Accompanied by Zhou (or Deng, in my last two
conversations), I would set off for Mao's residence in Chinese
cars. No American security personnel were permitted, and the
press could only be notified afterwards. The Chinese were
skillful in controlling the public image to be conveyed by the
pictures they released and the adjectives they used to
describe the meeting. When Mao was photographed as beaming,
the message was that American-Chinese relations were benign;
after one of our meetings at which Mao had indicated that he
thought the United States insufficiently confrontational vis-
à-vis the Soviets, the photo depicted Mao wagging a finger at

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10

me, but he was smiling so that the overall impact was that of a benign leader.

Mao's residence was approached through a red gate on the wide east-west axis carved from where the ancient city walls stood before the Communist revolution. Today this avenue is a permanent gridlock; in the early days of Sino-American relations, however, it was largely empty. The few official cars and the more numerous bicycles seemed lost on it. Once inside the Imperial City, the road hugged a lake, on the other side of which was a series of residences for high officials identical to the official state guesthouses in another part of the city. All had been built in the days of Sino-Soviet friendship and reflected the severe Stalinist style of the period.

Mao's residence appeared no different though it stood slightly apart from the others. On my first two visits, a

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11

small anteroom was almost completely dominated by a Ping-Pong
table which later disappeared. It did not matter because I
never had to wait and was instead taken directly to Mao's
study. It was a room of modest size with bookshelves lining
three walls filled with manuscripts in a state of considerable
disarray. Books also covered the tables and occasionally were
piled up on the floor. On my first few visits, a simple
wooden bed stood in a corner. The all-powerful ruler of the
world's most populous nation wished to be perceived as a
philosopher-king who not only had no need for the trappings of
power but buttressed his authority by the absence of any
traditional symbol of majesty.

Mao would rise from the center of a semicircle of easy
chairs, a female attendant standing close by to steady him
(and, on my last visit, to hold him up) for by the time I met
him, he already had had several strokes. He would fix upon

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12

his visitor a smile both penetrating and slightly mocking as
if to warn that there was no point in trying to deceive this
specialist in understanding and exploiting human weakness and
duplicity. ~~Mao would usually~~ p 23 Item 46 S. U. A. progressively

Despite Mao's impaired physical condition, he exuded more
concentrated will power and determination than any leader I
have encountered, with the possible exception of Charles de
Gaulle. He could move only with difficulty, and his ability
to speak progressively worsened to the point where, during our
last conversation, aides had to write down what the sounds he
uttered might mean and then show it to him before translating
into English.

Despite these handicaps, Mao conducted conversations in a
Socratic style. He would ask the soliloquies and formal
points with which heads of state generally make their case.
Instead, he would begin the dialogue by asking a question,

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13

quite often in a needling tone. With deceptive casualness, he
would then offer a few lapidary comments on the reply, ranging
from the philosophical to the sarcastic and culminating in yet
another question. The cumulative effect of his tangential
observations was to convey a mood and a meaning while avoiding
any formal commitment. Mao indicated a route of march but
left the tactical decisions to others. When Nixon tried to
draw him into a discussion of specific measures, Mao replied:
"These should be discussed with the Premier [Zhou Enlai]. I
discuss the philosophical questions."

But that actually was only partially true. For one
thing, Mao could be brutal in exposing the hollowness of an
interlocutor's observations. On one occasion, he picked up on
a banality I had uttered to Deng several days earlier to the
effect that Sino-American relations were in good shape because
neither side had anything to demand from the other. Showing

GJ

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14

his attention to detail, Mao volunteered: "If neither side
has anything to ask from the other, why would you be coming to
Beijing?... And why would we want to receive you and the
President?"

On another occasion, he chose a parable to indicate his
displeasure with what he considered ineffective American
resistance to Soviet and Cuban moves in Angola which had, in
fact, been mandated by Congress: "The world is not tranquil,"
said the gusts painfully emitted by the shattered hulk, "and a
storm--the wind and rain--are coming... At the approach of the
storm, the swallows are busy... but the flapping of their wings
cannot obstruct the coming of the storm."

And later, when he
President Ford seemed to defeat the interpreter with the
statement, "I always say it is possible to disagree without
being disagreeable," Mao interjected: "Why would you always
say that?"

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23
referring to the radicalism of his wife and her entourage. No
comment of Mao's--however flippantly presented--was random.
He was ending the Cultural Revolution, Mao said. China would
have to go to school abroad, especially since the Chinese
language was an obstacle to modernization. The Chinese
people, he added, were "very obstinate and very conservative."
"If the Soviet Union would throw its bombs and kill all
Chinese who are over thirty, that would solve the problem for
us."

But, with every passing month, the actual choices facing
the aged Chairman grew more constricted. Within a year, Mao
was to reverse the maxims he had advanced in that
conversation. In early 1974, Zhou was for all practical
purposes retired and, two years later, Deng was purged once
again. When I saw Mao for the last time, six months before
his death, he was back to the old Chinese statecraft of

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24

playing off one set of barbarians against another. To avoid
the United States moving towards Moscow for fear of
confrontation with China over Taiwan, he recalled, with
whimsical irony, his comment to Nixon that the issue could
wait a hundred years: "A hundred years hence we will want it
and fight for it...And when I go to heaven to see God, I'll
tell Him that for the present it is better to have Taiwan
under the care of the United States."

It was from under the shadow of this towering, driven,
and conflicted personality and against the backdrop of Mao's
ever present temptation to institutionalize permanent upheaval
that Zhou sought to establish continuity and consistency in
his vast country. Graceful, suave, and elegant, Zhou was my
principal interlocutor in the first three years of Sino-
American relations. Throughout the strange preliminary period
before liaison offices were established in each capital in

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1973--when we exchanged messages first through Pakistan, then through the Chinese Embassy in Paris via the American military attaché, General Vernon Walters--the dialogue between the two sides followed no established diplomatic precedent. As a result of the long separation, the traditional raw material of diplomacy--the trade issues, the looking after each other's nationals--was lacking. There was no trade at all and very few visitors. The Sino-American relationship therefore depended on the ability to concentrate on fundamentals--a task which in mature relationships is often obscured by the minutiae of routine.

Zhou seemed to have unlimited time for the American-
Chinese dialogue. We generally met for eight hours each of
the three days of my typical sojourns in Beijing. Zhou
delicately alternated the venue between the Great Hall of the
People and my own residence in one of the state guesthouses to

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26

convey that each side was in a sense meeting on the home turf
of the other and also that the American delegation was "at
home," as it were, on Chinese soil. During these lengthy
sessions, including meals, Zhou was never interrupted by any
other business. No phone calls or notes were passed to him--
indeed, no phone was even in sight, something quite simply,
a state of affairs antithetical

if not inimical to
unachievable in Washington. Zhou seemed determined to convey

that he had no more important task than to tend to the
American relationship.

Zhou's conduct of the substantive negotiations reinforced
the mood he was so meticulous in creating. The issue of
China's unity was always raised as a principle, and Zhou
insisted that China would never accept a two-China or a one-
China, one-Taiwan solution. At the same time, once the
principle was established in the Shanghai Communiqué, he never
pressed for a practical solution any more than Mao did.

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Similarly, Vietnam was mentioned only elliptically, even when, in June 1972, meetings coincided with the mining of North Vietnam's harbors. Zhou insisted that China owed Vietnam some support not for geopolitical reasons, even less for a common Communist ideology. "The debt we owe them was incurred by our ancestors. We have since liberation no responsibility because we overthrew the old system. Still, we feel a deep and encompassing sympathy for them."

Sympathy, of course, was not the same as political--even less military--support; it was a delicate way to assure us that China would not get involved. Like Mao, Zhou was at pains to stress--and more explicitly--that China would send no soldiers abroad and hence would threaten no American interest. Indeed, Zhou never even hinted that America's actions in Vietnam might impair the relationship with Beijing politically. As to Laos and Cambodia, Zhou avoided taking a

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position--either threatening or supportive--by claiming to know nothing about them. "...When we were making our revolution, we did not know anything about that country [Laos]. Although there have been many writings in our historical books about the country called the land of the Vientiane which in Chinese means literally 'the land of the ten thousand elephants.' The same is the case with Cambodia."

Once most of the regional problems were removed from the agenda, Zhou and the Nixon Administration could concentrate on the geopolitical aspects of the United States-China relationship which, in the Chinese view, depended on our respective abilities to orchestrate parallel contributions to the global equilibrium. Even at the first "secret" meeting in 1971, Zhou and I, by a kind of tacit agreement, devoted most of our dialogue to an analysis of the international situation despite the unbreakable deadline of 48 hours by which time I

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had to reappear in Pakistan. In the process, we both avoided
the principal purpose of my trip--to arrange a visit by Nixon
to Beijing--until 18 hours before I had to leave. Because the
concrete issues which did exist were not ready for resolution,
the only available area for cooperation was defining a
community of interests. And since the common interests could
not be expressed in formal diplomatic language--which surely
would have created a firestorm--everything depended on whether
the Chinese and American sides could come to understand each
other's intentions sufficiently to gear their actions to them
without explicit understandings except vague declarations
against hegemony.

Almost the first sentence uttered to me by Zhou was:
"Our word counts." And he proved meticulous in acting on this
proposition. Zhou understood--as did Nixon--that the
relationship would depend on intangibles. He eschewed the

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31
harmonizing the policies of the two countries without being
deflected by peripheral issues, Zhou played an indispensable
role.

Where Mao's role was sounding the basic themes as in the
overture of a Wagner opera, it was Zhou's task to mount the
actual performance by elaborating on Mao's allusions. In his
relationship with Mao, Zhou, recalling the fate of
predecessors who had been destroyed once they had reached the
pinnacle of being Number Two, took great care to emphasize
that he was the subordinate. Wherever possible and even when
it required a stretch, he buttressed his observations by
quotes from Mao and invariably described initiatives as having
been decreed by Mao. And on domestic matters, he adopted the
attitude of a melancholy observer though as premier he was in
fact responsible for the entire range of Chinese policy.

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Deng was to say later that Zhou had eased the fate of many but never sought to reverse the policies that made their suffering inevitable. This was consistent with how Zhou described the Cultural Revolution to me at our first encounter in 1971. He introduced the subject, insisting that I needed to learn about the Cultural Revolution to help me understand China. He described the country as torn between the fear of bureaucratization and the excesses of ideological zeal. He talked of the anguish of a society brought up on faith in a single truth when, suddenly, factions representing different versions of the same truth began battling for preeminence in the streets until the fruits of fifty years of struggle seemed in jeopardy. Zhou himself, he told me, had been kept prisoner in his office by the Red Guards for several days. Despite his initial doubt as to whether such drastic measures were in fact

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necessary, he said, if only for the record: "Mao was wiser; he had the courage to look further into the future."

Zhou never explained what that future was, and I doubted that he shared Mao's vision of it. Clearly he had made a personal decision that the best he could do was to mitigate the reality of his driven chief; any attempt to reverse it would merely guarantee his own destruction. When speaking of China's domestic problems, Zhou adopted a passive tone almost as if the policies which he was in fact implementing were someone else's. Like Mao, he would praise the Chinese language for having served to unify the country, but now he thought it had become an obstacle to modernization. He said that China had much to learn from the United States which had "the courage to use young people" in its government. Yet Zhou never left me with the impression that he considered it his task to remedy the weaknesses he was describing.

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34

The pressures of his system came to expression at a dinner in the Great Hall of the People in December 1973. As part of a general discussion of philosophy, I observed that China was essentially Confucian in its belief that there exists a single, universal, generally applicable truth; all Communism had done was to change the content of that truth. I cannot now recall, if I ever knew, what possessed me to make this basically accurate statement which ignored Mao's frequent digs at Confucians (which in retrospect were clearly aimed at Zhou's upper middle-class origins). Zhou exploded-- the only time I saw him lose his temper. With uncharacteristic insistence, he emphasized his rejection of that proposition, no doubt in part to have a record for Mao's niece seated at the table.

In early 1974, Zhou disappeared from exercising his responsibilities, though he remained in office. No Chinese

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35
official was to mention him again; the long tour d'horizon
with Mao described earlier became the bible which Chinese
officials invoked thereafter when legitimizing their
positions.

I saw Zhou for the last time in December 1974 when I came
to Beijing from Vladivostok to brief the Chinese on the summit
between Brezhnev and Ford. By then, Deng had become my
interlocutor. My wife and children had accompanied me on the
trip, and all of us were taken to see Zhou. The meeting place
was referred to as a medical facility although it resembled
any other official residence in the Imperial City. To the
medically untrained eye, Zhou appeared unchanged, and he was
as charming as ever. But he avoided any discussion of foreign
policy, even the most allusive, saying that his doctors had
forbidden it. Why substantive conversation would prove more
taxing than social chitchat remained unexplained. When I

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36

complimented him on appearing to be in good shape, Zhou
replied ambiguously: "Appearances can be deceiving."

Zhou died in January 1976 and came to symbolize to the
Chinese people the humane hopes of his society. Large throngs
gathered that month in Tiananmen Square to mourn his death.
Mao--or his entourage--interpreted these demonstrations to be
directed at Maoist orthodoxy. Counterdemonstrations were
organized, and Deng was purged for the second time.

By the time
when

Deng had been restored, and Zhou once more became a symbol--
this time for the reform direction. Great crowds--I among
them--toured an exhibition on his life at the museum in
Tiananmen Square tracing the evolution of his career and
displaying replicas of his office (which I had never seen) and
of his home.

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symbol for the thaw that followed and that continues to this
day.

Deng Xie liny
After 1974, Deng was my principal interlocutor. At
first, I thought him a step down from the titans whose
acquaintance I had made in the initial phase of restored Sino-
American relations. Acerbic, matter-of-fact, and eminently
practical, he lacked both the philosophical sweep of Mao and
the grace and suavity of Zhou. Deng rarely invoked ideology
and referred to Mao at a barest minimum. But, as time went
on, I grew to admire this doughty little man whose face in
rare unguarded moments reflected a melancholy imposed by a
dramatic life full of upheavals. He had certainly been
prepared to pay the price for his unorthodox convictions
dedicated to improving the daily life of the average Chinese,
if not his political choice. After Deng returned from his
second exile in 1978, it became increasingly apparent that he

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39

would transform Chinese society. Mao had uprooted traditional
China. But he had never resolved the revolutionary dilemma:
the more sweeping the upheaval and eradication of existing
patterns of obligation, the greater the force needed to
reimpose discipline, to replace what has been taken for
granted and therefore did not need to be imposed.

Deng's reforms started from the conviction that the
suffering caused by Mao's upheavals would turn into a travesty
if it did not lead to an improvement in the well-being of the
Chinese people. Hence the dominant theme of his political
life was for practical economic reform. Where Mao (and, to a
lesser extent, Zhou) sought to transform Chinese society in
accordance with Marxist theory, Deng insisted on altering
Marxist dogma to fit economic reality; "I do not care whether
a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice" was one of
his widely quoted aphorisms. On many occasions he said to me,

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40

"I am neither a conservative nor a reformer," he said to me in 1987. "I seek truth from facts." Deng was a pragmatist whose goal was economic progress and political stability. He was a reformer, he said in the same conversation, with respect to economic and technological reform but a conservative in the sense of opposing political instability (and not, it must be noted, upholding Communist economic dogma).

While Mao was alive and Deng acted as vice premier, standing in for the incapacitated (medically as well as politically) Zhou, our conversations primarily revolved around foreign policy. Sino-American relations were entering a new phase. Mao and Zhou had been chiefly concerned with establishing a visible Sino-American relationship to discourage Moscow from enforcing the Brezhnev doctrine.

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Neither Mao nor Zhou was enamored of the simultaneous American rapprochement with Moscow, but they seemed to operate from the premise that the end of the Vietnam War and Nixon's overwhelming reelection would strengthen America's role as the guardian of the global equilibrium whatever the tactical differences. America's firm conduct in the Middle East War of 1973--especially in facing down the Soviet threat of intervention--was enthusiastically endorsed by Mao and Zhou.

Subsequently, differences in perspective between Beijing and Washington became more apparent. Nixon's position progressively weakened; détente with the Soviet Union continued but in the face of growing conservative opposition in the United States. In December 1974, Gerald Ford, the new president, met with Brezhnev in Vladivostok, not far from the Chinese border. It was one of our less brilliant moves; almost any other venue would have been preferable in terms of

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our relations with the Chinese. Deng did not fail to point out Chinese sensitivities: "In the past, the inhabitants of this territory were mainly Chinese. And our name for that place was Haishanwey [meaning sea slug]...We hear that its present name Vladivostok means 'ruler of the East'...But East also includes the part of the Pacific that you are in."

[CHECK]

The deeper strategic issue was that China considered itself under direct threat by the Soviet Union while the threat to the United States was more long-term and cumulative. China therefore strove to create an explicit anti-Soviet coalition of all neighboring states. While I had great sympathy for its analysis, in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, neither Nixon nor Ford considered a confrontational policy towards the Soviet Union sustainable in the face of European doubts and America's domestic divisions. Both

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"insecurity conference"--a judgment which history surely did not sustain. Throughout 1975, as Indochina collapsed and Angola fell to Cuban troops as a result of congressional restrictions of executive authority, Chinese criticisms grew more insistent. The Chinese foreign minister, Qiao Guanhua, who later joined the so-called Gang of Four which purged Deng a second time, accused the United States of trying to push the "evil waters east" and of "seeking to stand on the shoulders of China" in order to make a better deal with Moscow.

Deng never went this far. He neither challenged America's good faith nor did he question its commitment to containing the Soviet Union. His disagreements concerned tactics to reach agreed objectives, and his criticisms were tempered by helpful suggestions on how to improve American relations with Japan as well as moderation regarding Korea and Taiwan, though he was passionate in insisting that Chinese

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restraint towards Taiwan was a contribution towards good relations with the United States; it was not a right on which Washington could insist. "We can wait until the time is riper for a solution of that question...[but] we do not admit that another country has a right to participate in the solution..."

Deng never left any doubt that he considered cordial relations with the United States the central element of Chinese foreign policy. "Even when we differ in views," said Deng as he welcomed me in October 1975 on what turned out to be a frigid (?) visit, "we do so as familiar friends." But that same visit, Qiao Guanhua, in a welcoming toast, repeated his previous criticisms of the United States. The next day Deng invited the American delegation to an unscheduled picnic in the Fragrant Hills near Beijing, marked by ostentatious cordiality--in effect dissociating himself from the foreign minister.

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When President Ford visited China later that same year, Mao was civil, but his needling left a certain amount of leeway for the Gang of Four critics. It was Deng who said to the leaders in a previous note that the trip was successful by describing the Mao-Ford conversation as an "earnest and significant conversation...on all media". He added that "our two countries face problems of common concern and share many common points."

Throughout his career, friendship with the United States would remain the cornerstone of Deng's foreign policy. To be sure, Deng's definition of friendship was quintessentially Chinese--that is, without a trace of sentimentality; it reflected his assessment of the requirements of Chinese security in a world composed of a menacing Russia, a resurgent Japan, a potentially unified Korea, an India emerging into a great power status, and a Vietnam in the process of achieving

1947

A1

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47

hegemony over Indochina. And it was based on Deng's
assessment that China could progress economically only in a
relaxed international atmosphere for which good relations with
the United States were the essential precondition.

After the overthrow of the Gang of Four, Hua Kuo-feng
became Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party on the
basis of an alleged statement by the dying Mao: "With Hua in
charge, I will be at ease." [CHECK] In 1978 [CHECK], Deng
returned from exile to his previous position as vice premier
(in which he was technically outranked by Hua Kuo-feng).

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example was hardly an imminent contingency and, in the nature
of things, not an issue likely to recur frequently. Deng's
ultimate achievement is that, ruling in the name of Communism,
he launched a process which, redefined a Chinese version of
Communism.

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56
to move step-by-step rather than as a package deal. At the
same time, American human rights goals had became more
ambitious.

Deng considered the ultimate purpose of his life to be
reform. For that, he struggled--and suffered--with courage
and imagination. Paradoxically it was the passion for reform
which shaped his attitude toward the events which fall under
the heading of Tiananmen Square. To American observers, they
seemed a flowering of democracy. But Deng saw less glory in
demonstrations by students whose fathers had besieged his
residence when they had been students and who had thrown his
son out of a window, maiming him as a paraplegic for life.

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Obliged to choose between political and economic reform, he opted for the latter, albeit with heavy-handed methods.

TOTAL P.16