Uniform Mourning For Deng: A politically stable China?

In this third article of a series on China's future without Deng, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin looks at the mourning for Deng Xiaoping and the light it throws on whether China is politically stable or not.

HONG KONG (JP): A clear indication of just how basically unstable China really is was provided on February 21, the second full day of mourning for China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

A lone Chinese individual arrived in Tiananmen Square carrying a wreath which onlookers noted was dedicated to Deng Xiaoping.

Very quickly between twenty and thirty plainclothes security officials jumped on the man as he walked from a subway station onto the square and towards the Martyrs Memorial. The would-be mourner was quickly bundled into a car along with his flowers. Whether he was briefly detained and then released, or is still being questioned in detention, or is already on his way to a reform-through-labor camp in some remote province -- we will, in all probability, never know. China's communist leaders have sent out an order nationwide banning any public wreath-laying for Deng. Cadres have been told to keep people off the streets. Even the carrying of flowers in Tiananmen Square means you are questioned by the officious, and pervasive, police presence.

Deng Xiaoping, in short, is being mourned within China with an amazing degree of uniformity and with an absence of spontaneity, plus a high degree of police overkill.

So far, the only faint sign of a little spontaneity to emerge from China's 1.2 billion people has been in Deng's home province of Sichuan. In his birthplace in Guang'an county there was evidently no untoward incident as thousands turned out to pay their respects at an improvised altar with a large black-and- white photo of Deng fixed above it. But in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu, a variety of sources indicate that some 30,000 people departed from uniformity by holding a candlelight vigil in the center of the city. The situation got a little unruly as wreaths of flowers for Deng were piled in the city center, with everyone trying to get their's on top.

To what extent the situation got out of hand is not reported so far but the security forces claim that order was quickly restored. Interestingly the security people showed that they had not learned anything from history.

This was when all the piled-up wreaths, the natural expression of a province for its most powerful son, were removed from Chengdu city center overnight. In 1976, it was precisely an identical gesture of removal by security personnel when wreaths were profusely laid in Tiananmen Square which so infuriated those mourning the passing of former Prime and Foreign Minister Zhou EnLai, thereby further arousing the people. But that was in Beijing, whereas this incident was in Chengdu.

As far as can be seen -- and that is not very far -- this has been the only real break so far in the identical national pattern reported by the controlled media. The state tells the people in what way Deng is to be mourned. For now, the people comply.

All this raises some interesting questions.

For a start, how popular was and is Deng Xiaoping? Since there are no worthwhile opinion polls in China and no popular elections for higher office, no definitive answer to such a question is possible. Deng was essentially a man of the party, so in part any popularity he may have had in his early days would have waxed and waned with that of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

But once Deng rose to pre-eminence and then showed, in the late 1970s, that he was going to break with the chaotic politics- in-command policies of Mao Zedong, Deng undoubtedly captured a firm place in the hearts of the Chinese people. His initial reform efforts were particularly popular with China's huge peasantry -- a popularity that has probably waned as less attention has been paid to the rural sector of the economy.

Had Deng died in the mid-1980s the CCP would have been powerless to prevent the people publicly demonstrating their affection. But then, at that time, the CCP would almost certainly welcomed such spontaneous displays. Everything changed, for Deng and for the CCP, with the suppression of the Tiananmen and China- wide demonstrations in mid-1989. Deng's increasing unpopularity was indicated by a popular gesture during and even after the demonstrations -- the smashing of a small bottle. The Chinese characters for Xiaoping translate as small bottle.

So is there any danger for the CCP that some Chinese will be angry at not being able to express their true feelings for him during this mourning period?

Probably not, but, obviously, from the precautions the CCP is now taking, they fear that there could be. Deng is particularly well remembered in the southern provinces, notably Guangdong and especially in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) adjacent to Hong Kong. These are areas which have particularly benefited from Deng's economic reforms.

Shenzhen is another place where there has been a slight breach in the uniform mourning pattern. Residents have been laying flowers in front of one the large billboards portraying Deng along with his slogans such as "To Get Rich Is Glorious". But there, too, the ubiquitous security personnel stop to question people and to discourage even the slightest hint of restiveness.

So, in view of this so far orderly and trouble-free mourning period, can China be deemed stable, as the CCP leaders claim?

Not a bit of it. As always with China-watching, it is as well to read events backwards. The very fact that the precautions have been so intense and so pervasive signals fears that the situation could get out of hand. As the propaganda machine asserts that the country will turn unity into strength, and stand solidly behind President Jiang and the CCP leadership, it indicates anxiety lest the reverse is closer to the truth.

Certainly, the CCP has indicated that it can still organize itself effectively nationwide. Certainly, the people are still intimidated by the memory of the Beijing Massacre and the more recent harsh crackdown on all dissent. There will not be lacking foreigners, some diplomats but businessmen particularly, who will go along with the party line that China is stable, there is nothing to worry about.

There is everything to worry about. If the CCP is successful in intimidating 1.2 billion people into this pattern of quiescence then the world will be faced with one of the most successful tyrannies in history, compared to which the Soviet Union at its worst was a free wheeling democracy. Mercifully, any such "success" is highly doubtful.

The much more likely result is that the CCP will merely succeed in postponing a day of reckoning. 1.2 billion people as diverse and as individualistic as the Chinese cannot be reduced to drab political uniformity. The economic dynamism which Deng Xiaoping strove successfully to create simply cannot co-exist for long with political stagnation. The very methods now used to create "stability" are fairly certain to bring about instability eventually.