Xiaoping

BEIJING -- Chinese television viewers were treated to an extraordinary show last night that virtually amounted to a Western-style political ad for senior leader Deng Xiaoping and his drive for greater economic reforms.The 45-minute special, announced only a half-hour before it was aired, focused on Mr. Deng during his January trip to southern China's freewheeling Guangdong province, which claims the fastest growing economy in the world.The 87-year-old leader publicly kicked off his drive for economic liberalization during that journey two months ago, but the first reports about it in China's national newspapers did not appear until this week.

Make that four financial institutions claiming to treat a customer like "a neighbor, not a number." Ronald Robinson, treasurer of Wyman Park Federal Savings and Loan, tells me his bank has been using the slogan, "Be Treated Like a Neighbor, Not a Number," in advertising since 1991. First Mariner, Columbia Bank and Fraternity Federal all use some version of the phrase. (See Wednesday's TJI.) The plot thickens. ... At Monday night's benefit for the Babe Ruth Museum's future home at Camden Station (783-0033 for reservations)

BEIJING -- In the vast hollowness of the Great Hall of the People, the stage props were the same as every year: the bright flowers, the tiers of geriatric leaders, the thousands of half-dozing delegates. But the opening of this year's meeting of China's essentially powerless legislature had an expectant air, unusual in recent times.China is shifting gears again, its sleepy political theater of the past two years lately enlivened by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's public drive for less dogmatism and more pragmatism.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration expects so few repercussions in China's leadership resulting from Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's death yesterday that it moved ahead with plans for Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to visit China early next week."

BEIJING -- China's top leader Deng Xiaoping, 87 and said to be in ill health, has mustered enough political support to triumph for now over hard-line socialists in his renewed bid to accelerate China's economic reforms by any means.The significant victory in Mr. Deng's power struggle with more doctrinaire Chinese leaders was evident in a rare public statement here yesterday by China's Communist Party.The strong message from the party's ruling Politburo -- bannered in every state newspaper and on government television -- endorsed aggressive liberalization of China's economy, while diminishing the role of socialist ideology.

BEIJING -- Chinese Premier Li Peng, widely reviled here and abroad for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, has confounded his many critics by not only keeping his job since then but appearing to thrive in it.Today, however, Mr. Li is expected to suffer an embarrassing political setback that may leave him significantly weakened as he enters the last year of his five-year term in office.The setback involves a political code phrase -- a call to fight "leftism" -- which the premier has been forced to include in the final version of his annual report to China's legislature, according to Chinese and Western sources.

BEIJING -- China's top leader Deng Xiaoping, 87 and said to be in ill health, has mustered enough political support to triumph for now over hard-line socialists in his renewed bid to accelerate China's economic reforms by any means.The significant victory in Mr. Deng's power struggle with more doctrinaire Chinese leaders was evident in a rare public statement here yesterday by China's Communist Party.The strong message from the party's ruling Politburo -- bannered in every state newspaper and on government television -- endorsed aggressive liberalization of China's economy, while diminishing the role of socialist ideology.

BEIJING -- Another Chinese model leader has fallen from grace.This time, the reversal of fortune is being cast as a victory by China's nascent legal system over the country's pervasive corruption -- a victory that neatly coincides with the latest national drive against rapidly spreading official profiteering and abuses of power.It also represents a salvo from Beijing in what's been a losing battle against a proliferation of regional and local officials who ignore its dictates and rule their domains like feudal lords.

BEIJING -- The death of Chen Yun, China's reclusive opponent of free market capitalism, robs orthodox Communists of their best opportunity to roll back the country's recent economic reforms.His death also puts an end to the worst fear of China's reformers: that ailing leader Deng Xiaoping would die before Mr. Chen, allowing conservatives to rally around the survivor and reverse China's recent economic reforms."With Chen dead, there's no one else of his stature to lead a campaign against the reforms," said a Western diplomat in Beijing.

BEIJING -- All is peaceful under heaven -- for now.But it is a measure of the shakiness of China's body politic that discussions of its future peace invariably begin with the question of what happens after senior leader Deng Xiaoping, 89 and long ailing, finally dies.Last week, the old man summoned the strength to perform his annual rite, turning up on television from Shanghai for a few minutes. The world's largest nation could get through its most important holiday with its vital lie somewhat intact.

BEIJING -- The death of Deng Xiaoping leaves in place a Chinese leadership that he anointed before effectively leaving the scene in 1994.But with Deng gone, few are sure how the coalition will fare centered around 70-year-old Jiang Zemin, who wears three hats as China's Communist Party general-secretary, president and military boss.Who will fine-tune the collective leadership when one of its members retires or becomes too ambitious? Who will pull the strings from behind the scenes as Deng did so masterfully from 1978 to 1994?

BEIJING -- Deng Xiaoping, who dramatically transformed China while brutally maintaining Communist political supremacy, died yesterday. He was 92.The death of the resilient former guerrilla fighter -- twice purged from power before becoming paramount leader of the world's most populous nation in 1978 -- was announced by Xinhua, China's state news agency.Xinhua said Deng died of complications from Parkinson's disease and a lung infection. He had been hospitalized since last week and had been sick for years.

HE LIBERATED China from the communes, the horrors of the great famine of the 1950s, the folly of the Great Leap Forward and the terrors of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-70s. He brought back the profit motive, supply and demand, individual initiative, the stock market, the private farmer, the private company. He unleashed the massive potential of China to produce the greatest economic growth of any country at any time. He was the antidote to the madness of Mao Tse-tung. For all this, Deng Xiaoping will be gratefully remembered as long as there is a China.

BEIJING -- The death of Chen Yun, China's reclusive opponent of free market capitalism, robs orthodox Communists of their best opportunity to roll back the country's recent economic reforms.His death also puts an end to the worst fear of China's reformers: that ailing leader Deng Xiaoping would die before Mr. Chen, allowing conservatives to rally around the survivor and reverse China's recent economic reforms."With Chen dead, there's no one else of his stature to lead a campaign against the reforms," said a Western diplomat in Beijing.

Beijing -- When asked 10 years ago what he thought the biggest story in China was, the Toronto Globe and Mail's Allen Abel gave a prophetic reply: "Deng's death. That's the big event that everyone's waiting for."Unless it happened by the time you read this article, senior leader Deng Xiaoping is still kicking. The difference between 1985 and 1995 is that the media have now become so impatient that it almost seems as if they're urging the old man to give up the ghost.At least that's the conclusion that one might draw after watching the media's interest in Mr. Deng's health over the past few months.

BEIJING -- All is peaceful under heaven -- for now.But it is a measure of the shakiness of China's body politic that discussions of its future peace invariably begin with the question of what happens after senior leader Deng Xiaoping, 89 and long ailing, finally dies.Last week, the old man summoned the strength to perform his annual rite, turning up on television from Shanghai for a few minutes. The world's largest nation could get through its most important holiday with its vital lie somewhat intact.

Make that four financial institutions claiming to treat a customer like "a neighbor, not a number." Ronald Robinson, treasurer of Wyman Park Federal Savings and Loan, tells me his bank has been using the slogan, "Be Treated Like a Neighbor, Not a Number," in advertising since 1991. First Mariner, Columbia Bank and Fraternity Federal all use some version of the phrase. (See Wednesday's TJI.) The plot thickens. ... At Monday night's benefit for the Babe Ruth Museum's future home at Camden Station (783-0033 for reservations)

BEIJING -- The death of Deng Xiaoping leaves in place a Chinese leadership that he anointed before effectively leaving the scene in 1994.But with Deng gone, few are sure how the coalition will fare centered around 70-year-old Jiang Zemin, who wears three hats as China's Communist Party general-secretary, president and military boss.Who will fine-tune the collective leadership when one of its members retires or becomes too ambitious? Who will pull the strings from behind the scenes as Deng did so masterfully from 1978 to 1994?

BEIJING -- Another Chinese model leader has fallen from grace.This time, the reversal of fortune is being cast as a victory by China's nascent legal system over the country's pervasive corruption -- a victory that neatly coincides with the latest national drive against rapidly spreading official profiteering and abuses of power.It also represents a salvo from Beijing in what's been a losing battle against a proliferation of regional and local officials who ignore its dictates and rule their domains like feudal lords.

BEIJING -- Chinese Premier Li Peng, widely reviled here and abroad for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, has confounded his many critics by not only keeping his job since then but appearing to thrive in it.Today, however, Mr. Li is expected to suffer an embarrassing political setback that may leave him significantly weakened as he enters the last year of his five-year term in office.The setback involves a political code phrase -- a call to fight "leftism" -- which the premier has been forced to include in the final version of his annual report to China's legislature, according to Chinese and Western sources.