I'll Have The Number 3

March 15, 2007 2:40 AM

The selected works of Deng Xiaoping. Three volumes:
1938-1965
1975-1982
1982-1992
posted by sluglicker (13 comments total)

Well, I certainly hope that those of you who haven't read the entire 54 years worth of material here will refrain from commenting.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:09 AM on March 15, 2007

For such a prolix guy, a ten year gap of silence is either out of character or the result of editing with broad strokes.
posted by ardgedee at 5:21 AM on March 15, 2007

Oddly I always think of Deng as a doer more than a thinker, and I think history would have been kind to this son of Sichuan and hero of the revolutionary war, who survived the vicissitudes of Mao-era madness to return Chinese politics to a semblance of sanity, had he not left the Tiananmen massacre as his final legacy to history. There are indeed those who would excuse him even that, but I cannot.
posted by Abiezer at 5:41 AM on March 15, 2007

I'm curious as to why you posted this sluglicker? Without your providing some context as to why this is deserving of post then it seems a bit lame. There were many world leaders in the 20th century whose writings are likely available on the internet. Why is this special?

But looking at the front page of the Peoples Daily Online, they link to the full text of the 'Human Rights Record of the United States in 2005, released by the Information office of China's State Council Thursday', which is kind of interesting, if a little predictable -

"To help people realize the true features of this self-styled "guardian of human rights," it is necessary to probe into the human rights abuses in the United States in 2005."

posted by peacay at 7:10 AM on March 15, 2007

For such a prolix guy, a ten year gap of silence is either out of character or the result of editing with broad strokes.

That reminds me of a famous joke about the Cultural Revolution.

A man was, one night, taken from his home and thrown into prison after some bit of rough interrogation. It was a dank, dark dungeon and the man thought he had been thrown in there alone to be left for dead.

Suddenly he hears a voice coming from the darkness.

"Psst... hey you... why did they throw you in here?'

As the man's eyes adjust to the darkness, he makes out a man sitting in another part of the cell.

"Well, they put me here because I was for Deng Xiaoping."
"How can that be," his cellmate replied. "They put me here because I was against Deng Xiaoping!"

Suddenly both of them hear a man coughing in yet another part of the cell. Straining their eyes they realize that there's a third, short-ish man in the corner who had apparently been sleeping. So they ask him...

"Hey comrade, why did they put you here?"
"Hello gentlemen," the man replied with a slight wave. "I'm Deng Xiaoping."
posted by clevershark at 7:10 AM on March 15, 2007

One officially edited selection from Volume 3 — Deng Xiaoping's Address to Officers at the Rank of General and Above in Command of the Troops Enforcing Martial Law in Beijing, June 9, 1989:

The major difficulty in handling it has been that we have never encountered a situation in which a handful of bad people were mingled with so many young students and crowds of onlookers. Since for the moment we were not able to distinguish between innocent and guilty, we could scarcely take the actions that should have been taken. Without the support of so many veteran Party comrades, it would have been hard even to determine the nature of the incident. Some comrades did not understand its nature and thought that we were only dealing with the masses. In fact, we were dealing not only with people who merely could not distinguish between right and wrong, but also with a number of rebels and many persons who were the dregs of society. They tried to subvert our state and our Party. This is the crux of the matter. If we don't understand this fundamental question, we shall not be clear about the nature of the incident. I believe that if we work at it, we can win the support of the overwhelming majority of Party comrades for our assessment of the nature of the incident and for the measures we have taken to cope with it.

The nature of the incident should have been obvious from the very beginning. The handful of bad people had two basic slogans: overthrow the Communist Party and demolish the socialist system. Their goal was to establish a bourgeois republic, an out-and-out vassal of the West. Naturally, we accepted the people's demand for a fight against corruption. We even had to accept as well-intentioned the so-called anti-corruption slogans of the bad individuals. Of course, these slogans were simply pretexts, and their ultimate aim was to overthrow the Communist Party and demolish the socialist system.

Why is it that in the course of putting down the rebellion so many of our [PLA] comrades laid down their lives or were wounded or robbed of their arms? This too was also because good people and bad were mixed together, so that we could not take the resolute measures we should have taken. Handling this incident was a very rigorous political test for our army. Facts have shown that the PLA men passed the test. If our tanks had pressed forward through the crowd, it would have made it impossible for the entire nation to distinguish between right and wrong. I therefore want to express our thanks to the PLA officers and men for their handling of the rebellion. The losses were grievous, but they helped win the people's sympathy and support and enabled those who had confused right and wrong to change their point of view. From those losses everyone could tell what the PLA men were like, whether they turned Tian'anmen into a sea of blood and who it was that shed blood. Once these questions had been clarified, we were able to gain the initiative. It is a grievous thing that many comrades laid down their lives, but if people analyse the course of the incident objectively, they will have to admit that the PLA is the people's own army. This loss of life will also help the people understand the methods we used in the struggle. From now on, whenever the PLA takes measures to cope with a problem it encounters, it will be able to win the people's support. By the way, the men should not allow their weapons to be seized again.

In short, this was a test and you passed it. There are not many veteran comrades in the army, and most of the soldiers are only 18 or 20, but they are still true men of the people's army. When their lives were in danger, they stood firm, not forgetting the people, the Party's teachings or the interests of the country. They went to their death unflinchingly, worthy of the title of heroes. By passing the test, I mean that the army remained an army of the people. The army passed the test in respect to its nature as a people's army. It retains the traditions of our former Red Army. It was by no means easy to pass this genuine political test, a test of life and death! This shows that the people's army is truly a great wall of steel guarding the Party and the country. It shows that no matter how great the losses it suffers, and no matter how one generation of leaders is replaced by another, our army will always be an army led by the Party, the defender of the country, the guardian of socialism, the protector of the people's interests, and the most beloved men. At the same time, we should never forget how ruthless our enemies are. We should not grant them the least forgiveness.

Rabble-rousing progressives just never learn, I guess. If they lean left of the left far enough, are they right?
posted by cenoxo at 9:25 AM on March 15, 2007

Actually these things have an odd fascination.

I remember walking the aisles of an academy library once and coming across the collected speeches of the post Stalin USSR leaders, like the 5 hour plus speeches they would give at the annual communist party gatherings, the dodderings of their decay and decline. Even the obscure Chernenko had about 30 thick volumes to his credit(?).

I pulled one down and read a page at random. Drivel. Meaningless words bereft of all thought. And poorly translated at that. And there was about 50 encyclopedia sets of this stuff!

I was very OCD at the time and immediately the thought grabbed me to read it all. I could feel the compulsion coming on. My observing brain was horrified, why it would take 10 plus years.! I ran out of the library and avoided those stacks forever after. Even now, I hear them beckoning me in a weird Edgar Allen Poe kinda way.
posted by quercus at 12:34 PM on March 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

peacay: There were many world leaders in the 20th century whose writings are likely available on the internet. Why is this special?

In the public mind, Deng tends to be overshadowed by Mao; but he was the one who took over after Mao's death and who set the direction that China is still following today, opening up China's economy but not its politics. This has had tremendous implications: in 2001, there were over 400 million fewer people living in extreme poverty than there were 20 years earlier (World Bank). In turn, China's economic growth is changing the balance of power in East Asia; whether China is going to be expansionist in the near future--which would bring it into conflict with other powers in the region, notably Russia, Japan, and the US--is a very important question.

The story of Deng's life--sent into rural exile during the Cultural Revolution, his son tortured and crippled, eventually called back by Mao to bring things under control, and then outmaneuvering Hua Guofeng after Mao's death--is also pretty fascinating.

Roderick MacFarquhar suggests that in 1989, Deng thought he was putting down a new Cultural Revolution. As the leading living victim of those ten years of terror Deng could not tolerate chaos or a revival of mob rule. What he did not and does not comprehend is that Tiananmen Square 1989 was virtually the mirror opposite of Tiananmen Square of 1966. ... The million-strong Red Guard demonstrations at the outset of the Cultural Revolution re-created the hysteria of Nazi Nuremberg; this year's protest was redolent of an urban Woodstock.

--
There's a semi-famous story about Margaret Thatcher meeting Deng to begin negotiations over Hong Kong and being shocked at how tough he was; so much so that she stumbled on the way out, in full view of the media. (People in Hong Kong interpreted Thatcher's stumble as a sign that negotiations weren't going well.)

Quite a contrast with Deng's image in the West--in his photos he usually looks friendly, cute almost (because of his height), not forceful.
posted by russilwvong at 3:12 PM on March 15, 2007

Here's an interesting 1951 speech, looking back on the civil war: The entire party should attach more importance to united front work.
posted by russilwvong at 3:16 PM on March 15, 2007

I'm reminded a bit of a quote from Tibor Fischer:

The good thing about Mao, like Marx, and in particular Lenin and Stalin, was that at one point or another, he had written or said everything from "I ordered the steak medium-rare" to "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" to "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". Everything had passed their lips, so you couldn't go wrong quoting from imagination.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:21 PM on March 15, 2007

Be Realistic and Look Toward the Future is a pretty good read.
posted by Sukiari at 3:59 PM on March 15, 2007

After the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement released a statement which spoke about Deng's treacherous role in history:

"The revisionists and capitalist roaders within the communist party, headed by renegade Deng Xiaoping, twice toppled by Mao himself, and the likes of Hua Guo-feng, Hu Yao-bang and Zhao Ziyang, usurped state power in China. They set about destroying the socialist economy and socialist relations of production and establishing a system of private ownership with profit in command. Their motto was `To get rich is glorious'; their highest goal was the pursuit of self-interest. They carried out a rapid, all-round restoration of capitalism and subjugation of the economy to imperialist finance capital and its market system, especially to the Western imperialists led by the U.S....All of the social injustices the masses are protesting against--the dramatic rise in unemployment, sharp price increases, lack of housing, and the massive corruption of Deng's government--are the inevitable outcome of the restoration of capitalism in China. And the criminal butchery by the ruling class there is just an extension of the horrors, violence, and suffering that the imperialist system brings down upon the majority of people all over the globe."
posted by sen0rjon3s at 4:06 PM on March 15, 2007

Thanks for taking the trouble russilwvong. I admit my comment was more snark than searching enquiry although I'm thankful to have some of the interesting aspects teased out. Something I was hinting that the poster ought to have done.
posted by peacay at 8:28 PM on March 15, 2007