himself eschewed Mao’s personality cult, though
as a member of the Politburo in charge of the
army he was careful to counter the ‘old guard’ of
conservatives, who remained powerful and strong,
ready to make a comeback should his reforms fail
or loosen party control or threaten China’s unity.
So it can be seen that Deng’s position could not
be compared to Mao’s. When public protests
became too strong, Deng himself was ready to
back a more conservative line.
Deng’s reforms of the political structure were
never intended to create a Western-style democ-
racy, which he condemned as ‘bourgeois liberal-
ism’. But without some reforms of the existing
structures his economic programme would fail.
For years he manipulated the factions in China
with the skill of a poker player. Just so much crit-
icism had to be encouraged to galvanise corrupt
or inefficient party bureaucrats and the patronage
system which placed a premium on who you
knew. Between 1982 and 1985 slow but steady
progress was made in weeding out those who had
become too old or were too incompetent, usually
by offering generous retirement terms. At a special
national party conference in September 1985, half
the Politburo was retired and a fifth of the Central
Committee. Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang and
Zhao Ziyang now had a majority vote in the
Politburo. At this point Deng had probably
reached the height of his influence and power.
Deng could also look back on a remarkably
successful start to his programme of economic
reform in education and technological progress,
but most especially in agriculture. Socialism was
gradually modified and the peasant was given the
incentive of growing some of his crops for profit
and of engaging in handicraft industry. The
people’s communes were replaced between 1979
and 1984 by a new system which, in practice,
returned the land to the peasantry under a con-
tract, called a lease, hardly distinguishable from
private ownership. The contract had been used
before for short periods to revive agricultural
output, but now it became the system adopted
in place of the collectives. Contracts were made
with individual households: taxes had to be paid
and an agreed amount of grain had to be sold to
the state, but beyond this the household (or
groups of peasants) could keep whatever they
could earn. Efficient households soon became
quasi-landlords, employing sometimes as many as
a hundred peasant labourers.
Prices were raised. There was a boom in some
regions of China as the successful farmers built
themselves large houses and bought consumer
goods never before seen in the countryside –
colour television sets and refrigerators. Rural
enterprises and factories also developed and some
owners became rich. What mattered most to the
state, however, was the increase in agricultural
production, which in the years after 1979 was
spectacular, starting as it did from the low base
of the collectives. By 1984 Deng’s agricultural
reforms appeared to have vindicated his approach.
The reform of state factories and urban enter-
prises took off later, in the mid-1980s, Deng
having given priority to the agricultural reforms.
The reformers now turned to free industry from
state shackles and to devolve responsibility to the
factory manager; here, too, the profit motive was
designed to provide incentives. Small, privately
owned enterprises were encouraged. By 1987 20
million one-family undertakings had been started.
But the most startling reform was the develop-
ment of what were called ‘special economic
zones’ – capitalist enclaves within socialist China.
Though the West had exploited China in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, estab-
lishing Western enclaves in China, the treaty ports
and concessions, these had also been a channel by
which Western management and technology were
transferred to China. The most successful of these
international concessions had existed in Shanghai,
whose trading and commercial pre-eminence in
China was due to the presence of the Westerner.
But the communists had reasserted Chinese sov-
ereignty and driven out the West from all the
enclaves. For a decade the Soviet Union had filled
the gap as educator, but then it also withdrew.
Deng and the reformers wanted to bring Western
knowledge and capital back to China. That was
the purpose of the Special Enterprise Zones. One
such, Shenzhen, was placed strategically across
the frontiers of Hong Kong, the prime example
of what a combination of Chinese skill and the
capitalist system could achieve. Favourable condi-