China mourns Deng Xiaoping

Fri, 21 Feb 1997, 00:00 WIB | Source: REUTERS

BEIJING (Agencies): Peacefully and calmly, China yesterday
began mourning for Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who lifted
the world's most populous nation out of rank poverty and put it
on course to become an economic superpower.

A single red flag fluttering at half-mast over Tiananmen
Square was one of the few public signs of sorrow over the loss of
the chief architect of China's capitalist-style reforms.

Deng, in the advanced stages of Parkinson's disease, died of
complications from lung infection on Wednesday night. He was 92.

Authorities decreed six days of mourning, but in contrast to
the public outpouring of grief following the death of Mao Zedong
in 1976, Beijing residents reacted calmly and analysts dismissed
fears of any immediate power struggle.

People who gathered in Deng's home village of Guang'an
yesterday were reduced to tears at the news of his death -- even
though he had not been there for decades, Chinese state
television reported.

Television interviewed several people in the Sichuan province
who could not control their tears at the death of their
patriarch.

Beijing's students were left unmoved by the Deng's death as
they straggled back to the capital to enrol for the summer
semester.

"We already heard that Deng's dead, but then he was very old,"
said a economics student eating lunch at one of the private
restaurants on the People's University campus in western Beijing.

Further north at the prestigious Beijing University, the mood
was similarly nonchalant.

It was also reflected citywide, where Beijing's 12 million
citizens continued to go about their business and displayed
little emotion about the 92-year-old's passing.

Privately-operated fruit and clothing stalls maintained a
brisk business on the streets of the capital, befitting a nation
liberated from its Maoist shackles by a pragmatic reformer who
decreed that "to get rich is glorious".

Deng's chosen heir, Jiang Zemin, 70, remained silent and
invisible.

The only hint that the mantle of supreme authority had passed
to the former tractor factory manager was an announcement that
Jiang would head a 459-strong funeral committee.

Funeral

Sources said Deng will be cremated in a brand new incinerator
to avoid contamination from other people's ashes, but there was
no word on a date. No foreign dignatories will be invited to the
no-frills, non-state funeral, and foreign media will be barred.

A letter to the nation from the Communist Party, State Council
and Central Military Commission expressed profound grief at the
death of "a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary,
statesman, military strategist and diplomat".

Chinese sources said doctors performed an emergency
tracheotomy to try to save Deng in the crimson-walled Zhongnanhai
government compound just off Tiananmen Square.

China's 1.2 billion people had been amply prepared for the
shock, and Jiang had been shoring up his power base against
possible challenges from figures such as Qiao Shi, former
security tsar who now heads the Chinese parliament, and premier
Li Peng.

Stock markets in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan -- which had
widely been expected to slump when Deng died -- moved higher
yesterday after gyrating wildly at the opening.

Other than cordons sealing off the alley leading to Deng's
home near Tiananmen Square, there was little intrusive police or
military presence in the streets of Beijing and other Chinese
cities yesterday.

Nationwide tranquility was a fitting tribute to a leader whose
career tracked China's tumultuous 20th century journey from the
last emperor through civil war and revolution to fledgling
superpower status.

Deng led China from Mao's ultra-leftist fervor to a nation at
its most stable and prosperous for nearly 200 years.

But death robbed him of his cherished dream -- to be in Hong
Kong after June 30 when Britain returns the colony, wrested from
China during 19th century opium wars.

Hong Kong residents, despite anxiety over looming rule by
Beijing, appeared unruffled by his demise.

Taiwan, the next target of Beijing's drive to recover all
historically estranged territory, sent condolences and urged a
"peaceful, cooperative, prosperous new era" between Taipei and
Beijing.

But the island, which Beijing regards as a renegade province,
maintained a military alert.

Hours after the death announcement, flights arrived as usual
at Beijing international airport, disgorging foreign tourists and
business travelers.

It was one of the most visible signs of Deng's "open door"
policy that ended almost three decades of isolation and turned
swathes of coastal China into foreign investment boom zones.

Editorial -- Page 4