Teng and his followers have, in the past several years, conducted a campaign to press the veteran cadres in the Chinese Communist Party, regime, and the military to retire and to promote the younger and better-educated in the name of reform and modernization. Thus when a national conference of the Party was convened last September to deliberate and approve the leadership reshuffle, analysts abroad thought that in order to persuade others to retire, Teng himself might set a personal example by giving up his leadership posts.
Although 10 of the 24 Party Politburo members, including 5 who are younger than Teng, resigned from the Politburo and the central committee, Teng was not among them. As a matter of fact, he has retained his membership in the Politburo standing committee and the chairmanship of the Party's military commission.
There seems to be no doubt that, given his advanced age, Teng probably would have let his "second team" take over, and put his protege Hu Yao-pang, the Party general secretary, who he has groomed for years, in charge, if he had his way. However, things did not go as smoothly as the Tengists had hoped for. First of all, the open door policy and the reform programs have encountered difficulties and aroused considerable criticism in the Party. Secondly, not a few revolutionary leaders, including several Party patriarchs, have refused to be kicked upstairs and become nominal advisers. Under these circumstances, apparently Teng himself also decided to stay on and, indeed, Hu Yao-pang and other Tengists also realized that they needed Teng at the helm.
In spite of his dominant role in Communist Chinese politics, Teng obviously does not possess the same kind of personal authority and enormous power the late Mao Tse-tung used to wield. Mao's colleagues treated him much like an emperor, but Teng is only the primus inter pares and can only rule through persuasion and by consensus-building. Therefore, Teng has to accommodate the views of his colleagues and often has to resort to give and take.
The case of Hu Chiao-mu and Teng Li-chun is a good example. Although many Tengists sought last September to remove these two conservative ideologues and critics of the open door policy from the Politburo and the central secretariat, respectively, Teng Hsiao-ping found it necessary to keep them in order to placate their backers and constituents in the Party.
Likewise, Teng Hsiao-ping has to cope with other leaders. For instance, Chen Yun, a member of the 5-man Politburo standing committee and an authoritative spokesman on the mainland economy and Party affairs, was quite out-spoken in his criticism of the Tengist reform measures during the recent Communist Party national conference. Among other things, Chen severely criticized the excessive weight assigned to the use of market forces and the lack of planning in economic production, one-sided emphasis on high growth rate resulting in unbalanced development, corruption, and violation of Party discipline and slate laws by the senior cadres. Moreover, without naming names but, unmistakenly, with Teng in mind, Chen called for all the decisions on major policy issues to be made by the collective after full consultation with others, and emphatically stated that "no one should try to have the final say."
In addition, at least five other members of the Politburo can, individually or working together with others, constrain, delay, or block the Tengist programs. They are Li Hsien-nien, Communist Chinese president, who is also a member of the Politburo standing committee; Peng Chen, speaker of the National People's Congress; Yu Chiu-li, director of the general political department of the People's Liberation Army; vice-premier Yao Yi-lin, a member of the secretariat and responsible for economic planning and foreign trade; and Chen Mu-hua, president of the mainland's Bank of China. They differ with the Tengists on various key domestic and foreign policy issues.
It is true that, so far, Teng Hsiao-ping has achieved a great deal in his reforms, and many Chinese appear to have benefited from the changes. But it is also undeniable that the results of the reforms are mixed and not an unqualified success. A case in point is the embarrassing closing down, last spring, of 10 of the 14 port-cities which were opened to foreign investment with such great fan-fare just the year before last. Another example is the Shenchun Special Economic Zone which was profusely praised by Teng himself as a great success and a model of economic development to be emulated by other localities, and is now downgraded as an "experiment" after many defects, incidents of smuggling, and abuses have come to light. Continuing reports of student demonstrations, protests, and unrest sharply contradict the undue rosy picture of open door and economic reform painted in the official Chinese pronouncements; these underline widespread discontent of a very important segment of Chinese society.
Although veteran leaders like Chen, Li, and Peng Chen are not themselves contenders for the succession, they would be in a much stronger position to shape the policy, structure the new leadership lineup, and play the role of "kingmaker" in Teng's absence. Their "second team," namely those younger leaders who would be put in charge, would probably be very different from those Teng and Hu Yao-pang have selected. Likewise, the directions of their reforms would be very different from those of the Tengists.
Communist Chinese politics has remained highly personalized and has not been adequately institutionalized. Leadership stability and policy continuity in Communist China still depend largely on the person of Teng Hsiao-ping, not-withstanding his attempts to build up organizations and the system.
(Parris Chang is a professor of political science and chairman of Asian Area Studies at Penn State University, and a 1985-86 visiting professor at the Department of Strategic and Area Studies, JFK Special Warfare Center.)