When the Bee Gees were the anthem of Chinese reform
Posted: Thursday, December 18, 2008 8:37 AM
Filed Under:
Beijing, China
By Eric Baculinao, NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief
Eric Baculinao is the NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief. He first moved to China from the Philippines in 1971 as a member of a visiting youth delegation and has lived in China ever since.
BEIJING – I remember the palpable air of excitement in our school as the news began to trickle in.
Thirty years ago, on Dec. 18, 1978, a pivotal secret meeting of China's Communist Party leadership began, concluding in a decisive victory for Deng Xiaoping.
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| Courtesy Eric Baculinao |
| Eric Baculinao, center of back row, in a 1970's group photo outside of Mao's village home. |
The party's decision to shift the country's focus to economic modernization marked the beginning of China's new era of open door policies and economic reform. But for foreign students like us, there was a more practical, immediate cause for celebration
‘
Confused’ gatekeeperDeng was popular because he symbolized open-mindedness and pragmatism, as opposed to the Maoist radicalism and isolationism of the past. Foreign students in Beijing took Deng's political ascendancy as a signal, at last, for throwing away restrictions and relating with China and the Chinese people in a new and normal way.
For weeks, my dormitory on the campus of the Beijing Language Institute pulsated with dance parties, as if Boney M and the Bee Gees were the anthem of reform.
The restrictive system of curfews and gate registration – that effectively barred Chinese guests or Chinese girl friends during late hours – broke down. I once asked the old gatekeeper why he was no longer doing the job of screening and registering guests.
"It's supposed to be open-door now," he said. "I'm not sure, I'm confused."
Xidan Democracy Wall and the missing modernization
Deng's victory immediately emboldened many Beijing citizens to freely express their pent-up views on the wrongs of the past with declarations posted on the long brick wall located on the shopping street of Xidan.
The so-called Xidan Democracy Wall, which existed from early 1978 to late 1979, would turn out to be a transformative political event, which presaged the enduring conflict between the open economy and the closed politics that Deng espoused, that would play out in a more dramatic fashion with the 1989 Tiananmen uprising.
We visited the Democracy Wall a few times, attracted by the unprecedented political debates, as well as the chance to improve our Chinese.
"We need no gods or emperors…Freedom and happiness are our sole objectives," declared Wei Jingsheng, China's foremost dissident and author of the document "Fifth Modernization," which urged that democracy be added to the four modernizations program that only included industry, agriculture, technology and military.
Deng used the Democracy Wall movement to pressure and oust his Maoist opponents, but when the spearhead turned to Deng himself, the Democracy Wall was banned, and Wei himself ended up in jail, accused of trying to subvert communist rule. Wei spent almost 18 years in prison, before he was deported to the United States for a life of exile.
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| Eric Baculinao / NBC News |
| The Democracy Wall is long gone; Xidan today has the Bank of China as a landmark instead. |
‘Charlie Two Shoes’ and finding a 'common ground'
I began working for NBC News under Beijing Bureau Chief Sandy Gilmour soon after the bureau opened in late 1982. One memorable story we did was that of Charlie Two Shoes, which illustrates how China dealt with Western media in the early years of the open-door policy.
In 1946, U.S. Marines stationed in China during World War II adopted an 11-year-old boy and nicknamed him "Charlie Two Shoes" because that was easier to pronounce than his real name Tsui Chi Hsii. Charlie lived and learned English from his Marine buddies until 1949, when the Communist revolution forced the Americans out of China.
Charlie Two Shoes suffered imprisonment and humiliation as a suspected U.S. spy, but he clung on to his hopes. And true enough, by 1983, Charlie reestablished contact with his buddies, who in turn devised a plan to invite him to America.
Finding Charlie and obtaining media access was a challenge, as his village and vast areas of Shandong province remained off-limits to foreigners, even after four years of the open-door policy.
We negotiated repeatedly with the local government, and eventually we found common ground, convincing them that the story would benefit the newly re-established relations between the United States and China.
But there were compromises. We agreed not to venture into Charlie's village, but that rather the local government would transport him to Tsingdao, where Sandy could interview him for an exclusive report. We covered Charlie's departure for America, where he was joined years later by his family. The lesson of his story became an important guide for future news gathering in China.
Deng and Mao: the unconventional wisdomWhen Deng passed away in 1997, his legacy as the architect of China's reform appeared secure.
It is conventional wisdom to credit Deng for China's rising power and prosperity today. But one question still remains, why did Deng insist to the very end that his predecessor, Mao Zedong, who instigated the disastrous Cultural Revolution, remained 70 percent correct, and only 30 percent wrong?
A review of China's party history and the Sino-Soviet split in the 60s would seem to yield one explanation.
Deng came at just the right historical moment. It can be argued that had Deng become China's leader at an earlier stage, his capitalist-oriented "economy first" program would have brought him close to the Soviet leaders who tried similar reform after the death of Stalin.
Seeking independence from the Soviets, Mao raised the primacy of ideology over economics – which led to the Cultural Revolution – but he also instigated a global strategic maneuver that brought China closer to America and the West in an anti-Soviet united front.
In a sense, Deng's capitalist reform and open-door policies, which envisaged closer cooperation with the West, only became possible because of the anti-Soviet independence and strategic platform that Mao had built.
‘Thirty years east of the river…’
Today, China is
still grappling with Deng's legacy. The nation is at a "crossroads," said Hu Xingdou, outspoken professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
Despite a decade of economic boom, the current crisis and growing unrest is overshadowing the anniversary of the start of Deng’s reforms. Hu likened China's transition to a Chinese saying, "30 years east of the river, 30 years west of the river."
"In the past 30 years, China has achieved progress but has also accumulated a great deal of contradictions," he explained.
"It is a moment of serious test, either the contradictions will cause greater turmoil, or they will lead to greater opening and reform, reform not just of economics, but political reform, institutional reform and democracy," he added.
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