China and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping: from Communist Revolution to Capitalist Evolution

Military Review, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Lewis Bernstein

CHINA AND THE LEGACY OF DENG XIAOPING: From Communist Revolution to Capitalist Evolution, Michael E. Marti, Brassey's Inc., Dulles, VA, 2002, 263 pages, $27.95.

China and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping: From Communist Revolution to Capitalist Evolution is a succinct treatment of Chinese political maneuvering in the early 1990s. Indeed, the book is one of the most comprehensive narratives of the intricacies of factional politics of that time. The book is also a masterful reconstruction of the internal politics of the Chinese Communist Party and probably the best account we will have until appropriate documents are smuggled out or Party archives are opened to foreign researchers. That said, one must also ask, "So what?"

Michael E. Marti posits that when Deng Xiaoping returned to power in 1978 his goal was to make China a modern economic power by the middle of the 21st century. Marti theorizes that after retirement Deng realized the entire plan was in danger of becoming undone when the Party reasserted its power after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Deng marshaled his forces for a counterattack to secure economic change.

A "grand compromise" between the Central Party's administration, provincial governments, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) ensured fiscal health, economic prosperity, and military modernization. Marti makes this point quite clearly and claims he is the first to have worked this out. He also states it was never Deng's intention to liberalize China's political system. All this is true, but most scholars recognized the latter point after the 1979 suppression of the Democracy Wall Movement. The links between military modernization and the PLA's continued support for economic reform became evident in the 1990s, although few before Marti were able to put this support in its proper context.

The book is useful as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it is a victim of academic inflation. Marti's points would have been better presented in an article. For example, in the early 1980s, many scholars realized the era of mass political campaigns in China was over when the campaign against spiritual pollution failed because of lack of popular interest. As the economy was reformed and the power of the danwei (work unit) decreased, the party's power of mass manipulation was ending.

The same could be said for the proliferation of communications outlets: various sources of information meant a decrease in the power of the central authorities to dictate what would happen in the provinces. The power the Party lost will be extremely difficult to regain. The Chinese Communist Party seems to be following the path blazed by the Guomindang--another Leninist organization--traveling down the road to economic prosperity and sociopolitical irrelevance. All this has been said in other venues: Marti breaks no new ground in announcing it here.

The book is valuable for its recounting of the way in which Deng saved his reform program and slowly eased the older leadership generations out of power. The retirement of this gerontocracy led to the so-called fifth generation of leaders now in charge of the Party and the country. However, it seems the leader of the fourth generation is reluctant to leave the political stage. The process Marti has so ably outlined enabled Deng to retire his opponents but has provided China with an orderly succession and transfer of power. This book covers a limited time span and makes no attempt to place Deng in the Chinese political and historical context of the last 150 years.

Lewis Bernstein, Ph.D., Huntsville, Alabama