People's China: third epoch

National Review, Jan 29, 1996 by Robert Elegant

BEIJING

Twenty years ago I landed at Peking airport in the Air Force 707 assigned to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. I had for decades been reporting on the extraordinary phenomenon that was the People's Republic of China under Chairman Mao Tse-tung. But the Communists had consistently denied me entry. Nor would I have been there that October day in 1975 if Kissinger himself had not told the Chinese they could not dictate the composition of the press party that accompanied him.

Before our departure four days later, a spokesman of the Foreign Office told me I was under an interdict because I wrote too critically about the People's Republic, even if accurately. That accuracy was evidently his chief objection.

He said: "Yes, we have crime, but why write about it? Just change your approach and we'll give you visas."

I replied: "If you give me a visa, I might change my approach after close observation. But then again I might not."

And he exploded: "Besides, your Chinese is too damned good!"

I was flattered, but frustrated. Clearly it would be some time before I saw China again.

It was to be six years. By that time a new epoch had begun in China, and the authorities were more concerned with the foreign exchange they could earn from tourism than with keeping a gadfly reporter out. Much more had changed than spelling Peking as Beijing and Mao Tse-tung as Mao Zedong. I was during the following years to watch perhaps the most decisive nonviolent alteration in the character of a modern dictatorial regime that has ever occurred.

China's modern history is divided into three epochs -- with a fourth soon to come. The turbulent epoch that began in October 1949 with the proclamation of the People's Republic was dominated by the mercurial, visionary, and brutal Chairman Mao. In the late Seventies began a second epoch, that of Paramount Leader (though titularly only a vice premier) Deng Xiaoping, who strove to make China and the Chinese people prosperous by relaxing strict "socialist" control of the economy, encouraging private enterprise, and trading with the outside world. The present epoch of collective leadership, only a few years old, will not last long; a desperate national government and Communist Party are striving to remain in power by catering to the generals of the People's Liberation Army.

Deng Xiaoping wanted to make China rich while retaining stringent control over actions, speech, and thoughts. That effort to square the circle led to the massacre of students demonstrating for a modicum of democracy in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Since the movement was nationwide, the regime would have fallen had Deng not been Draconian.

When I went to Beijing last fall, a senile Deng Xiaoping was, at 91, a political cipher. The physical death of the man who led China to a modified market economy will be significant chiefly because the shock may precipitate drastic maneuvers like the conspiracy that destroyed the Soviet Union.

The contrast among those epochs is seen graphically in Beijing. The changes in the city between my visit in 1992 and this visit are more marked than the changes between 1975 and 1992.

In Beijing in 1975 just one out of a dozen big restaurants attempted to attract custom. Globular scarlet Chinese lanterns hung from the eaves outside. That was the gaudiest facade in a town that was grey and gritty. The old city walls had been razed, and China's capital was ringed with factories. The grey blocks of workers' housing had as many broken windows as whole ones. Big signs exhorted hordes of cyclists: Go to work gladly and safely, Gladly toil, And return safely. Obey traffic regulations!

Today traffic is largely motorized, and the remaining swarms of cyclists are roundly abused by angry taxi or bus drivers. Also by the owner-drivers and the chauffeurs of private cars. Though in theory limited to diplomats, private cars are also in the hands of the new rich. "A little tea money" can buy just about anything if the bribe is big enough.

Blue mirror is now the favorite facing for the tall buildings that seem to rise at the rate of ten a week. Even aside from the mirrored towers, all Beijing is a carnival of color. Shop signs are gleaming gold. Merchandising banners fly from shopfronts and from balloons amid the smog. The town is a riot of flashy advertising and splashy colored shopfronts, ranging from hospitals and pharmacies to tiny stalls selling food, Coca-Cola, fur coats, curios, and whatever else anyone may want.

Deprived for so long of the pleasure of dressing for fun, almost all women wear bright dresses or colorful blouses and skirts. Slacks are out, for they recall the trousered blue Mao suits that dampened spirits for so long. Women flaunt their figures in a most un-Chinese way, and every female over 13 has a bright red lipstick mouth. Men's clothing runs to shell suits in electric green, aniline blue, and blush purple.

"A bit gaudy, don't you think?" asked a cultivated visitor from Hong Kong. "Beijing's one big honky-tonk now."