At a time when the Chinese Communist Party is renewing its leaders, Ezra Vogel’s masterful work paints the portrait of a Deng Xiaoping invested with a mission, that of building a rich and powerful nation-state, and determined to take the relay of Mao, by adopting a more pragmatic and experimental approach, with the idea that the latter had missed his own.
A seasoned historian, Ezra Vogel is among the first Western specialists in the political history of People’s China. He notably published a monographic study – Canton under communism: programs and politics in a provincial capital, 1949-1968 (1969), which will be followed twenty years later by another survey covering the same region: One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong Under Reform (1989). The period of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms is therefore not foreign to the field of investigation of researcher Vogel. His latest work is a biography of Deng Xiaoping, the man who transformed China after Mao. It mainly traces the events of the last part of Deng Xiaoping’s life, from 1969 to his death in February 1997. Only around thirty pages are reserved for the previous period, going from 1904 to 1969 (Deng’s Background 1904-1969) ; the other 800 pages are entirely devoted to the following years, notably the post-Maoist period. The meticulous work of Ezra Vogel details the main episodes based on abundant Chinese and foreign sources, without neglecting the interviews of numerous personalities, Chinese or not, contemporary witnesses of the Deng era ; some members of his family were also consulted.
This rich documentation is in itself significant of the change in working conditions for historians of contemporary China. If Deng Xiaoping and other first-rate leaders still speak little, even in front of their families, we now have collections of their texts (Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian, etc.) and chronicles (nianpu) posthumous concerning them. These chronicles, which record their day-to-day activities and statements, constitute an important mine of information. Among all these sources, we now have relatively new documents. Zhao Ziyang, general secretary of the party at the time of the Tian’anmen events of June 1989, has, for example, left us an important memoir and a collection of interviews, carried out in his house arrest in Beijing and published in Hong Kong. For Hu Yaobang, dismissed at the beginning of 1987, we have a “ thought chronicle » (sixiang nianpu) who faithfully transmits his ideas and statements to us. Second-rate cadres, such as Deng Liqun, Yu Guangyuan, Wu Jiang, Li Rui, etc., secretaries or chiefs of staff of senior leaders, journalists from the Xinhua Agency, such as Yang Jisheng, former politicians, foreign diplomats and journalists, testified about what they experienced, saw and heard during the twenty years of the immense Chinese transformation orchestrated by Deng Xiaoping. Vogel bases his work on the exploitation of this host of sources. They allow him to accurately portray a turbulent era and a man who was dedicated to transforming Maoist China and its relations with the world.
Ezra Vogel recalls that Deng was originally a leader and military leader promoted by Mao in the 1950s. Despite his disgrace during the Cultural Revolution, Mao always gave him special treatment and always avoided convictions without appeal. He first brought him back to counterbalance the influence of Zhou Enlai, who had become too powerful after the disappearance of Lin Biao in 1971. By designating him as “ superintendent » to represent China at theUN in the spring of 1974, Mao voluntarily consecrated the eminence of Deng’s position within the party. Subsequently, the great helmsman did everything to keep him at the key points of power… on the express condition that he undertakes not to call into question the Cultural Revolution. Deng had to make his self-criticism before the Politburo three times before being forced to resign in February 1976. After this second dismissal, rumor had it that Deng had been hidden in secret provincial locations by military leaders of his movement. Vogel shows on the contrary that Mao authorized him to stay with his family in his residence in Beijing. But if Mao seems to have always been sparing with Deng, wasn’t it also because the support he enjoyed in the army worried him? ?
In Ezra Vogel’s stories, the events, actions and statements of Deng and other characters are amply contextualized and explained. The two politicians, Mao and Deng, are confronted on various levels: personality, style, methods, ideas, works. Founder of the regime, Mao carefully built a powerful and disciplined party which constituted the essential pillar of the communist state before being weakened by its own contradictions. Vogel rightly underlines the consciousness with which Deng worked to put it back on track, to rebuild its unity, to rejuvenate its workforce and its structures. From his return to power in 1977 until his tour of the South in winter 1997, Deng never hesitated to directly confront his political adversaries when he deemed it necessary. But as Ezra Vogel points out, he did so by respecting institutional procedures and by preserving the unity of the party (notably in his fights against the neo-Maoists gathered around Hua Guofeng, then against the conservative veterans united behind Chen Yun ).
In short, the party is at the heart of the rich and powerful nation-state that Mao and Deng both dreamed of building. The title of Vogel’s introduction is significant in this respect: “ The Man and His Mission “. Deng, in a way, resolved to take over from Mao with the idea that the latter had failed in his historic mission. This motivation was so strong that it led him to almost systematically overturn all the orientations decreed by Mao: suspension of the class struggle as the fundamental orientation of the party, conciliation between the latter and intellectuals, scientists and the various social elites. and professional, improving relations with foreign countries to provide China’s development with a serene and beneficial international environment. In this very important part of the work, entitled “ The Deng Era, 1978-1989 » (p. 217-373), Vogel dwells at length on “ the art of governing » by Deng. Faced with thorny problems posed by certain projects, such as special economic zones and agricultural decollectivization, Deng encouraged experimentation carried out by his provincial collaborators and firmly supported them when they found themselves in the crosshairs of the conservatives. Deng’s methods contrast sharply with those of Mao: firstly, Deng hardly imposed authority, as Mao did, a uniform political line on the immense Chinese territory. Experimentation went hand in hand with a certain diversification in terms of government policy. Secondly, if he allowed the recalcitrants to take the time to decide whether or not to follow the course of the reforms, there was no question of letting them destroy the current experiments. Deng thus opened a new era of normalization of political struggle within the Party.
A fundamental element must not be neglected in the post-Tiananmen period of 1989: it is the predominance of former planners in the central financial and economic sectors, a predominance all the more effective as the country was plunged into a situation of recession. Vogel points out that Deng’s prestige and ascendancy suffered considerably in Beijing during the three years following the Tiananmen events of 1989. The promoted successor, Jiang Zeming, was reluctant to accelerate the reform and opening desired by Deng. But he had to fall in line when Deng publicly threatened to replace him during his famous “ southern tour » from the winter of 1991-1992. Vogel adds that subsequently, old Deng, then aged 88, pushed his relatives, the Yang brothers (Yang Shangkun and Yang Baibing), to leave their civil and military functions, so as to give Jiang Zemin free rein.
An admirer of the statesman Deng, Vogel speaks without complacency about his responsibility in the tragedy of Tian’anmen. He also mentions his refusal to make any concessions in the face of demonstrations in favor of freedom prior to 1989: the Democracy Wall of 1979, the campaign against spiritual pollution of 1983 and the campaign against bourgeois liberalization of 1987. It seems to me that for Deng, it is the substantial authority of the Party which establishes the power of government essential to Chinese modernization. The Party and the nation-state are one. Is it a dilemma between the strong state and the participation of the people in political life ? It remains for his successors to find the appropriate forms for the construction of a true nation-state. Chinese style “, and the construction of a powerful mode of government, based on the institutionalized participation of citizens.