TNAG-1622-FCO40-2236-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China-1987 — Page 214

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ideologues, who themselves suspect parts of the

reform programme to be dangerously capitalist and

un-Marxist, now find the tide running with them and are

therefore trying to have those parts of the reform programme rejected along with "bourgeois liberalism"

Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, representing the middle

ground that still favours reform, have made great efforts to restrict the swing of the pendulum, and we can expect the bulk of the reforms already achieved to remain

unchanged. There will of course be difficulties with the

reform programme, but many of these difficulties pre-date

Hu Yaobang's resignation. Price reform will introduce substantial inflationary pressures into China, which neither conservatives nor liberals, ideologues or reformers, will willingly contemplate. It has therefore

been put on the back-burner.

5.

Deng Xiaoping's greatest headache must now be the

succession. The new alliance of conservative ideologues

and conservative reformers consists of the Long March

generation. There are few younger members of the

leadership who share the same values. One exception may

be Vice Premier Li Peng, a technocrat trained in the Soviet Union who is a protege of conservative leaders, and a committed proponent of central planning (and

presumably therefore central power). The rest of the

younger members of the leadership tend to sit on the

liberal end of Chinese politics. But these liberals have failed to make the liberal case persuasive. Hu Yaobang's

personal style and ambition undermined many of his better arguments for liberalisation in China. The youthfulness and confidence of his principal protege, 57-year old Hu Qili, irritate the members of the leadership 20-25

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