CONFIDENTIAL
PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT TO CHINA AND HONG KONG, 18-21 DECEMBER 1984
CHINA INTERNAL: SUPPLEMENTARY BRIEF ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Extract from Peking Telegram No 2917 of 7 December
A
Political
1. Deng Xiaoping is China's unchallenged leader. Together
with Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, he has been successful in moving his supporters into most key party and Government positions at the
His policies enjoy widespread popular support. But in the party as a whole he has neutralised rather than removed opposition to the new orientation.
centre.
2.
Attempts to replace some old conservatives on the Central Committee by younger and more reformist candidates have been thwarted in the past two years. Party rectification, whose avowed aim was to get rid of leftists who rose to power during the Cultural Revolution is going badly. A member's performance since 1978 will
be the main criterion for registration, a process all party members
are now undergoing. This effectively grants an amnesty to all
misdeeds during the Cultural Revolution. Less than 0.1% of party
members are in fact likely to lose their registration.
While there
is no single figure or pole around which the opposition is formed, centres of resistance are in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) (which appears to have successfully resisted Hu Yaobang's replacing Deng Xiaoping as Chairman of the Party Military Commission this summer) and in some provinces (eg Hunan and Guangxi). More generally
there is a widespread lack of eagerness among lower-level party
members to implement the new policies, which put a premium on knowledge. A great many of them joined the party during the Cultural Revolution and they now fear that their lack of education will put their jobs in jeopardy. Only 4 per cent of party members have been
to university.
3. The longer Deng remains, the more likely that his philosophy
and policies can root themselves firmly for the future. But it would
CONFIDENTIAL
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