Essay:Deng Xiaoping in 1975

Introduction

This essay will provide a brief overview regarding the role of Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation in 1975, how Deng Xiaoping was treated, what he did. The attitude taken towards him and the effects he had primarily on China's economy.

Setting the scene

Zhou Enlai’s health had by now deteriorated to the point that the meetings of the State Council and Politburo he chaired could no longer be held in the Great Hall of the People or Zhongnanhai, but had to take place in the hospital. He took an active part in the preparations for the long-delayed Fourth NPC in January 1975, and even rose from his bed to make the principal report. Zhou was permitted to reaffirm the need for the “four modernizations”: agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology. Due to Zhou Enlai's poor health, Mao suggested that Zhou retire after the NPC, saying:

“Your health is no good. After the Fourth National People’s Congress you must relax and take treatment. Leave the State Council to Xiaoping.”

On February 1, 1975, Zhou gathered the members of his cabinet by his bedside one last time to inform them that he was in effect withdrawing from active politics. “In future meetings of this sort [of the State Council],” he said, “comrade Xiaoping will preside.” The next day, Zhou wrote to Mao and informed him of the new division of labor on the State Council. Deng, he said, would be “in charge of foreign affairs” and would be “running the State Council and sign off on major documents on behalf of the premier.” Mao had no objects, considering it was his idea in the first place.

Interestingly enough in December of 1974, in conversation with Zhou Enlai, and with Wang Hongwen himself present, Mao remarked about Wang that “politically, he’s not as astute as Deng Xiaoping.” Deng, Mao insisted, was “politically and ideologically astute” and had “rare talent.”

Reaction from the Gang of Four

Wang Hongwen has been alleged to have complained, a lot. Wang complained about Deng’s being given access to Mao while he himself was not. He has been stated to have said,

“What power do I have? The power of the party, the power of the government, the power of the military—I have none of it...All that talk about wanting me to run things: they’re the ones who made my life a living hell!”

Jiang Qing's report regarding Deng Xiaoping appears to show an inability to cope with Deng Xiaoping's way of running things, stating

"He doesn’t give people time to think, doesn’t circulate the documents [that are to be discussed/approved] ahead of time, so that by the time you receive them, you don’t have time to read them. When you arrive at the meeting, there’s a whole stack of them that you don’t have time to read through, but he [nonetheless afterward] says “approved by the Politburo” and passes them on to the Chairman, forcing the Chairman’s hand. Then he utilizes his encounters with the Chairman at meetings with foreign dignitaries and says “that’s the Chairman’s [opinion]” as a way of exerting pressure on the Politburo"

Tackling China's Problems: Absenteeism in the Economy

Symptomatic of how the Cultural Revolution had affected the performance of the economy (where roughly one-third of all enterprises were running a deficit) was the kind of thinking allegedly common among enterprise leaderships, that is, that being in the red was actually safer than making a profit, since it spared one the accusation of having “put profits in command.”

The long-term objective that Deng set for the party was the “four modernizations” that Zhou Enlai had spelled out in his recent NPC report. According to Deng,

"The entire party and nation must strive for the attainment of this great objective. This constitutes the overall national interest,”

His short term and most immediate goal was an all-round readjustment, boosting the economy and maintaining national stability.

The Railway

In late February 1975, the Politburo had called a national conference of party secretaries to tackle problems in the transport sector. Factional strife, labor unrest, and strikes were seriously disrupting the railways. Since this was the principal means of transport for industry, particularly for coal, China’s prime fuel, the result was massive economic dislocation. On this issue, Deng said that

“If the problems in railway transport are not solved, our production schedules will be disrupted, and the entire plan will be nullified.”

On March 5, the Politburo took a formal decision, ratified by Mao and circulated as Zhongfa [1975] , to “improve railway work.” The Ministry of Railways, just recreated after having been part of the Ministry of Communications since June 1970, was given extensive new powers. Railway officials were given until the end of March to get the trains rolling again. If they failed, Deng announced, their failure would be treated as a crime. He stated,

"Stop paying wages until [railway officials] submit...[if someone's real trade is factionalism]...why should we keep him on the payroll?"

Over the next couple of months, public security groups across China came down hard on Deng's "criminals" on the transport industr, subjecting more than 11,700 of them to public “denunciation and struggle,” imposing formal sentences of varying severity on more than 3,000 “serious criminal offenders,” and swiftly executing, amid a major propaganda blitz, eighty-five of the “criminals guilty of the most heinous crimes.” In the words of an official source, these measures “basically put a stop to the evil wind of theft and looting of railway shipments, and allowed some degree of control over disturbances, including travel without tickets and clinging onto and traveling on the outside of trains.” By April, all but one of China’s major trunk lines were operating normally again. Wang Hongwen had previously been tasked to tackle this issue, but had failed.

The Iron and Steel Industry

After the railway issue was resolved, Deng quickly turned to the iron and steel industry He warned the officials working in the iron and steel industry that,

“The experience gained in handling the problems in railway work will be useful to the other industrial units,”

By the middle of May in 1975, China’s steel industry was lagging behind the plan target by 2.02 million tons, and Deng called for immediate and rapid changes to boost the labour productivity and achieve output goals. He believed the main issue was due to laziness and absenteeism in the cadres that worked in the steel industry, stating that:

“The main cause of our sluggish iron and steel production is the leadership, which is weak, lazy, and lax.”

In Zhongfa [1975] , issued on June 4, the Politburo ordered the reorganization of “leading bodies at all levels,” beginning with the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry. The message that was given to the leading cadres was:

“Is your ideological-political line proper? Has a powerful leadership nucleus been set up? Has factionalism been overcome? Are the party’s policies being conscientiously implemented? Has a resolute blow already been struck at the destructive activities of class enemies?” If the answer was no, then they should do something about it, and stop procrastinating."

After Deng turned towards the steel industry, by the end of the first six months of 1975, China’s steel production was still lagging behind the national plan, output had so far been a mere 42.2 percent of the target for the whole year, however the daily output figure was up significantly.

Deng's primary concern was the Anshan steel complex constructed in Liaoning province, administered by Mao's nephew, Mao Yuanxin. Mao Yuanxin did not appear very capable, considering the fact that it was 400,000 tons behind schedule in April 1975. And was underproducing an average of 2,000 to 3,000 tons per day. Deng's solution was to create an Anshan Steel and Iron Corporation, resembling a company structure prior to the Cultural Revolution.

Mao Yuanxin was not happy with this result, having reportedly complained and said,

“some old geezers at Anshan Steel are eager to set up a corporation and dream of once more becoming managers or vice managers and of satisfying their bureaucratic craving!”

Despite opposition from Mao Yuanxin, in September of 1975, the CPC called on the leadership of the newly formed Steel corporation to, "conscientiously implement Mao's three important directives", alongside a massive clampdown on "factionalism" within the steel corporation itself.

The Aerospace Industry

After conquering the Iron and Steel Industry, Deng then turned to the Seventh Ministry of Machine Building. This Seventh Ministry was responsible for missile and satellite creation, however disruptive factional infighting inside this branch of the government was rampant. Years of infighting and purity spiralling (arguing and fighting for the title of, "most red") was said to have indirectly led to a failed satellite launch in 1974.D eng adopted the same measures he had used in the transport sector: a forcefully worded Politburo decision, a deadline for compliance, and a visit by a highpowered work team, this one led by General Zhang Aiping, director of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission. At the end of May, Deng told a meeting of the State Council:

We told the Ministry of Railways, we would wait for only one month. Now we’re telling the Seventh Ministry of Machine Building the same thing, that we’ll wait only until June 30 . . . Come July, we’re not going to be polite any more. We’re not going to wait for anyone. I don’t care if you’re a tiger’s arse or a lion’s arse, I’m going to pat you anyway, fight you, and fight you resolutely

On June 30, the CPC purged the ministry party committee by issuing Zhongfa [1975] 14. In a move that symbolized Deng’s determination to put disgraced officials in key jobs whatever their political past. The most senior target of China’s first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster in 1966, Peking University president Lu Ping, was made vice minister of the Seventh Ministry of Machine Building subsequent to a formal rehabilitation. Meanwhile, Lu’s most senior attacker in 1966, Nie Yuanzi, was resided to the role of a worker in an instrument factory on the Peking University campus.

This appeared to have worked, within the final months of 1975, four successful satellite launches were carried out in quick succession. With pride, the Chinese media now spoke of “three stars shining brightly from on high,” and Western news sources concluded that the successful recovery of the fourth satellite indicated that Chinese scientists were “close to test firing an intercontinental missile.”

Results

The formal decisions taken by Deng and the Politburo to make changes in the railway, iron and steel, and aerospace sectors became programmatic documents for how to proceed with readjustment elsewhere in the economy. In July, the State Council submitted a report to the Politburo on industrial production during the first six months of the year. It showed a constant increase in the production of crude oil, coal, electricity, chemical fertilizer, cement, and so forth since March. The plan for the first six months of the year had been fulfilled by 47.4 percent. China's economy was beginning to recover.

Of course, readjustment was not so much a matter of fine-tuning economic priorities and practices. Rather it was Deng dealing with striking workers and procrastinating middle managers. Before Mao had put him in charge, he had praised Deng in front of the Politburo, saying that “he scares some people, but he is quite competent.”

Tackling China's Problems: Civil Unrest

Zhejiang Factionalism

Readjustment of Zhejiang province was being disrupted by a radical worker's faction of the Red Guard. Deng sent the work team led by Wang Hongwen, Ji Dengkui, and the director of the CPC’s Organization Department, Guo Yufeng, to the provincial capital to sort out the situation.

After three weeks of heavy pressure, the radicals caved in. A predawn raid on the headquarters of the workers’ faction was followed by the arrest of Weng Senhe, the factional leader known as “the Wang Hongwen of Zhejiang,” who was caught in his residence frantically burning incriminating documents. The provincial RC was thoroughly reorganized. The new leadership transferred in to replace the disgraced radicals included one Zhang Zishi, son of the third-ranking CPC vice chairman, Kang Sheng. Zhang was promoted from his post as secretary general of the party committee in his father’s home province, Shandong, to become vice chairman of the Zhejiang RC and concurrently first secretary of the Hangzhou CPC Committee. PLA units were dispatched to key factories to forestall unrest.

Implicated party leaders of the Zhejiang radical worker's faction were relieved of their duties, and the three members of the provincial RC seen as the most deeply tainted by “bourgeois factionalism” were exiled to the countryside to engage in manual labor and to be “reeducated by the poor and lower-middle peasants.” In August and September, a massive campaign to denounce “factionalism” was carried out in the province.

Ethnic Conflict

Deng used the PLA quite harshly to quell ethnic conflict. The worst incident being the "Shadian Case" in the summer of 1975. Shadian was a Muslim hamlet, a rural production team with a total population close to 8,000, in southern Yunnan province. Serious ethnic conflicts had first erupted there in 1968, in the course of Cultural Revolutionary attacks on “backward” religious practices, and continued off and on through the early 1970s.

By late 1974, after an abortive public protest by more than 800 Muslims from Shadian in the provincial capital, Kunming, demanding that the state honor the freedom of religion granted in the constitution, the delegation was accused of “creating a disturbance” and of “opposing the leadership of the party”. Violence erupted between a locally organized “Muslim Militia Regiment” and the non-Muslim county administration’s militia command. In early 1975, representatives of both sides in the conflict were called to Beijing, where a truce was negotiated, only to be broken immediately on the ground in Shadian when confusion arose about how the handing in of illegal arms was to be managed. Village-state relations deteriorated to the point that the villagers protested by refusing to pay grain tax to the state.

On July 5, the CC issued Zhongfa [1975] 15, signed off on by Mao himself, which gave the PLA the go-ahead to enter Shadian to bring the situation under control if all other attempts to end the now increasingly tense standoff peacefully failed. With Deng in his capacity as PLA chief of staff giving the order, the PLA was sent in the solve the issue. At dawn on July 29, Shadian hamlet and other muslim villages were surrounded. The PLA forces included a division from the 14th Corps, soldiers from the Mengzi military subdistrict, one artillery regiment, and people’s militia. When the fighting ended twenty-one days later, Shadian had been razed and more than 1,600 villagers, including 300 children, elderly, and sick attempting to flee, had been killed

Tackling China's Problems: Fixing the People's Liberation Army

Although the PLA was a key tool in Deng’s struggle to restore order throughout China, the military, too, had to undergo “rectification.” By 1975, with Deng in charge, it finally became possible to hold the longanticipated expanded MAC conference. It became the lead item of the working agenda of the reconstituted MAC Standing Committee from its meeting in February until the conference opened on June 24. The conference, which lasted exactly three weeks, was attended by more than seventy senior PLA officers from all branches of China’s armed forces.

In a speech on July 14, Deng Xiaoping summed up the shortcomings of the PLA in five words, “bloating, laxity, conceit, extravagance, and inertia,” all of which Deng saw as rooted in developments under Lin Biao and “especially in the later period under him.”

Bloating

Bloating in this case, refers to overstaffing.

At the beginning of 1975, the PLA employed 1,526,000 cadres, or 467,000 cadres more than authorized. Overstaffing had always been widespread, but this was too much for Deng to let slide. One provincial military district boasted no less than fifty-eight district commanders, political commissars, chiefs of staff, and political and logistics department directors. The number of active PLA soldiers was also excessive, in view of the perceived lowered international tension. The MAC, itself “swollen” to an unprecedented degree, from sixteen members in May 1966 to sixty-three members in August 1973, proposed that the size of China’s armed forces be reduced from 6.1 million to 4.5 million within three years.

Both the PLA railroad corps and engineering corps had expanded their personnel since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, mainly, one suspects, as a result of the massive manpower needs of the logistically complex Third Front relocation of entire factories from coastal China to remote and mountainous inland regions. They were ordered reduced, by over 60 percent. Least affected by cutbacks in personnel were the air force and the navy. By the end of 1976, the total number of PLA officers and men had been reduced by 13.6 percent.

Laxity

By Laxity, Deng referred to factionalism and what he believed was an inadequate level of discipline. Deng did not cite specific examples of military districts or army units that were affected, most likely because the problem was widespread. Since the PLA’s entry into the Cultural Revolution in 1967, far too many officers and men had in Deng’s opinion become “embroiled in factional politics,” and this involvement was having a serious impact on intra-army discipline. Deng’s preferred solution was to relieve PLA officers of the civilian posts they had accumalated. Such reassignments were made in a number of provinces in 1975.

Conceit

Conceit was something Deng believed had been an issue within the PLA, but within the span of 1972 to 1975, things had taken a turn for the worse. PLA officers had amassed more power than ever before. “Some members of the armed forces,” Deng said, had become “arrogant” and “overbearing.” When ordinary people complained about them and said: “Uncle Lei Feng isn’t around any more,” they were justified in doing so. Deng believed that,

“It would be dangerous to underestimate the gravity of these things or to lower [our] guard against them,”

Cases of intra-army “extravagance” were “increasing and have so far gone unchecked,” Deng maintained. Some PLA units took things from civilian units at will, or bought them without paying the full price. Some officers “seek ease and comfort, higher salaries, more housing space, and indeed top conditions in every respect.” The situation had to be changed. The sanitized partial transcript of Deng’s speech distributed nationwide in the wake of the MAC conference had him abruptly concluding his call for a clampdown on extravagance by saying:

“I am sure every comrade knows of examples in the army, so I need say no more on this point.”

As a concrete measure, shortly after the conference, the MAC for the first time, at least since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, stipulated exactly how many cars, domestic staff, and secretaries a high-ranking PLA officer had a right to.

Inertia

Inertia referred to an unwilllingness to take responsibility and laziness regarding work. Some high-ranking officers no longer put any conscientious effort into their work, Deng maintained, nor did they lift a finger themselves, nor did they “use their own minds.” Echoing Mao’s observations on the same subject in August 1971, when the Chairman had complained that Lin Biao and Huang Yongsheng had become too dependent on their secretaries Deng said that,

“They rely on their secretaries to do everything and even ask others to write a five-minute speech for them, and then they sometimes read it wrong...But, once they are corrected, that should be the end of it.”

In rectifying the PLA, Deng was doing precisely what Mao wanted: forcing the military out of civilian politics. Wang Hongwen could never have bent the PLA to his will in the same way.

Conclusion

This was just meant to be a brief essay discussing the scope of Deng's role as the defacto "2nd in command" of China during his time after rehabilitation in 1975. Going over what he did to help the economy, fix the issues of the PLA and crack down on the civil unrest within China.