"We Learned from Our Suffering"

Chinese tell of the momentous changes sweeping their nation

Will it work? And how far can it go? These are the questions that the Chinese keep asking as their leaders search for ways to modernize the world's most populous nation. In the past two years these leaders have abandoned a rigid ideology in favor of a relatively freewheeling pragmatism. Communist economic policies have been modified to give greater initiative to local factories and farms. The government has offered new latitude for artists and writers, and it has risked sending thousands of scholars and scientists to study in the capitalist West. Taken together, these peaceful changes could ultimately prove as profound as those that came with the armed Communist revolution in 1949. Rarely in history has a ship as large and unwieldy as the People's Republic of China been turned so sharply.

To see firsthand how far some of these changes have gone and to hear of what might be in the offing, Editor in Chief Henry Grunwald led a number of Time Inc. editors on an eleven-day tour through four separate regions of China. The group included Editorial Director Ralph

Graves, TIME Managing Editor Ray Cave and Chief of Correspondents Richard Duncan; they were accompanied by Peking Bureau Chief Richard Bernstein. After a stay in Peking, the party visited agriculturally rich Sichuan province, where many of the current experiments in economic liberalization were first tried, then flew over the towering Hengduan Mountains to Lhasa, Tibet (average elevation: 16,000 ft. above sea level) and finally to the semitropical trading port of Canton some 3,000 miles to the southeast.

The editors found a country obsessed with the "four modernizations"--the upgrading of industry, agriculture, science and technology, and the military--formally announced by then Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping three years ago. In a radical departure from past practice, local farm and factory managers are increasingly deciding what to produce on the basis of what will make a profit. After filling their state quotas, they have been given considerable freedom to sell some of their products directly to other factories or on the free market, and they keep part of the resulting profits to use as they see fit, primarily to pay bonuses to workers and buy additional raw materials and new equipment. Greatly expanded contacts with other countries, particularly the industrialized democracies of Japan and the West, have begun bringing China advanced technical knowledge and a growing impatience to liberalize still more. But this form of modernization has many hazards in a vast Communist state, a fact that China's new leaders are very much aware of. The ambitious, flexible programs that China has begun will produce tensions and fissures in a society long controlled by force and regimentation. Even as statues of Mao are vanishing all across China and the trial of the Gang of Four--which includes Mao's wife Jiang Qing--begins, there are rumors of conflicts between the reformers and the Maoists.

The TIME editors spoke with dozens of Chinese, from members of the State Council (China's Cabinet) to factory managers, commune workers, educators and artists. Each provided a glimpse of the rewards and strains of modernization. Together they gave human scale to an epochal transition. Herewith, seven voices of China:

THE VICE PREMIER. "I myself have made revolution my whole life, and I am continuing to make revolution." So said Vice Premier Wan Li, 64, at the beginning of an hourlong meeting in Peking's Great Hall of the People. Wan, a tall, affable, silver-haired man, is widely regarded as the key official below Premier Zhao Ziyang in China's new government. Until early this year he was the governor of Anhui province in the eastern part of China; there, as in Premier Zhao's Sichuan, the new national economic policies were first tested. Wan was brought into the central government when Party Vice Chairman Deng, who was then Vice Premier, began promoting skilled provincial administrators to top jobs in Peking. Like his mentor and ally Deng, Wan had been twice purged as a "counterrevolutionary" and twice resurrected. "I personally suffered a lot," he says. "As a party, we have learned much from our suffering. That is why we have the courage to make these reforms.

"Our party and government made some mistakes in leadership. Sometimes our plans were not completely in accordance with practice, and some ultra-leftist ideas appeared in our development." One major error was not encouraging the production of consumer goods, another was the misuse of workers' abilities. Says Wan: "We had manpower, but we did not stress the importance of science and technology. We did not pay enough attention to the role that the intellectuals could play. Because of these defects, the ministries had too much power and the local enterprises didn't have enough. We stressed egalitarianism, but we did not find ways to ensure that those who contribute more should get more."

Today, the old Maoist disapproval of material incentives has been replaced with its opposite--a recognition that the chance to get richer will make people work harder. Wan cites the way local farm communes no longer have to produce solely according to a state quota system but can decide for themselves what to grow to satisfy local market conditions. Says he: "They are in a better position to know what to plant--and they can become richer." Under the old system, factories produced according to fixed quotas and turned over virtually all of their profits to the state. Now about 20% of their production can be directed to the free market. "We also plan to give a greater role to the banks," says Wan. "In the past, industrial investment was always provided directly by the state. With the new policy, enterprises get money directly from the bank, though they have to pay some interest." (Bank interest on personal loans in China is about 3% a year.)

As one of his country's major economic planners, Wan is very aware of the pitfalls ahead. Says he: "We have the manpower. We have the raw materials. The biggest problem is that we are lacking qualified technicians and qualified managers." Yet quick results will be needed to maintain the confidence of the people. Says Wan: "There is pressure. We have made mistakes in the past. If we make any more mistakes, it won't be very good."

THE COMMUNE LEADER. "Most members of the brigade (work unit) have no fear of me at all. I do my work by trying to reason things out But if any brigade members do bad things, then they might be afraid of me." So says a smiling Teng Jiayun, the lean Communist Party secretary of the Tsao Kang production brigade of the Yun Men Kou People's Commune near Chengdu capital of Sichuan province. At 29, Teng is the ranking authority in this vegetable-growing operation. Last year the 450-household brigade increased its income by 35% to a total of 1-2 million yuan ($816,000). Says Teng: "There are basically two reasons for this First, we put a lot of effort into developing our sidelines and setting up workshops [these include shops to make carpets and sulfuric acid and to repair farm machines]. Second, we've given more power to the production teams and are following the principle of more pay for more work." The brigade has a very strict system for measuring who does "more work." Teng, who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, earns 900 yuan ($612) a He built his new brick home himself at a cost of 2,000 yuan ($1,354) a portion of which he borrowed, interest-free, from the brigade's credit association. "I spend a lot of time working in the fields, says Teng, but as party secretary, a post for which he receives a small salary ($22 a month), he must also mediate conflicts, punish misdemeanors and even try to persuade couples to have only one child, in accordance with Peking's hope of limiting population growth. Teng thus knows how many brigade marriages ended in divorce last year (one), how many women had abortions (twelve) and how many crimes were committed (a dozen cases of minor theft). "Whenever the leader talks to the offender, usually that is sufficient," Teng says. "But if the leader chooses he may also call a meeting to criticize the offender in public. If the person does not work hard, it is very easy to penalize him because of the new system of more pay for more work."

With a ready market in nearby Chengdu (pop. 3.4 million), the Tsao Kang brigade is richer than farther outlying farming Teng believes that the new incentives will raise incomes higher. Says he: "We need a consistent policy, and that can now be assured. In fact, more pay for more work was first tried out by Zhao Ziyang here in Sichuan, and now that he is Premier, I'm sure the policies will continue. Before, if you did something to increase your income, you would have been called a capitalist reader."

A former soldier, Teng once wanted to become a factory worker so that he could earn a steady urban wage. But now he is enthusiastic about his prospects on the farm. "I have many things already," he says. "A bicycle, a watch. We have a sewing machine. At the end of this year, I will first return the money I borrowed from the brigade. My goal next year? To buy a television set. It will cost 400 yuan [$280]. After that our income will grow, and life will keep on getting better "

THE INTELLECTUAL. No other social class suffered more during 1966-69 Cultural Revolution than the intellectuals "the stinking ninth category," in the pungent rhetoric of the Red Guards. Few scientists, writers or professors were able to avoid terms of "reform through labor." The victims use a different phrase today: "being sent to the countryside." Many were so persecuted that they committed suicide. Says Huan Xiang, vice president we the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: 'Tor years we imbued ourselves in dogma. Our heads were down and our feet were up in the air. Now we have our feet back on the ground."

A former Chinese ambassador to several European countries, Huan, 70, is one of thousands of intellectuals who have been restored to important posts since Deng returned to power.

Today he is the prime mover in China's most prestigious think tank. Says Huan: "All together, we have 8,000 researchers Our economic researchers have been cooperating with the economic ministries to find out ways to solve numerous problems. We lave even organized a discussion on what is the purpose of human life. After 30 years of political turmoil, our thinking is confused. Our young people in particular don't know what to do in this world. We have an open forum for them to discuss these things so they can draw their own conclusions."

The academy is one of the key institutions that are leading China's shift from ideology to ward pragmatism. Says Huan: "We try to get away from dogma, from what Marx said or what Lenin or Mao said. That's a reference. But we need to start from the facts." Though Huan argues that scholars can follow "the facts" without political interference, it is unlikely that one of them could publish articles criticizing the Communist system. Yet there is more leeway for questioning than at any other time since the Communists came to power. Says Huan: "Since, the end of the 1950s, we have had no connections with academics either in the East or the West. We are now encouraging scholarly communications with the West, particularly the U.S., Japan and Western Europe "

Many young people had their educations disrupted by China's political turmoil. Says Huan: "Some were able to educate themselves during the Cultural Revolution-- they studied very hard. But most of that particular generation is illiterate."

Three kinds of people, Huan says, do not like China's new di rection. "First, the wooden heads-- they cannot accept any change. Second, those who have been poisoned by their former training-- they don't know how to change. Third, those who are too enthusiastic-- they go to the other extreme " Concludes Huan: "There will be a fight between the modern and the traditional in China. But the man who persists in the old ideas will not survive. We are inventing a completely new experiment. How far can we go? That is the question."

THE PLAYWRIGHT. "We are beginning to have real freedom of speech in China." That remark by Tsao Yu, 70, the head of the Chinese Dramatists' Association and one of the country's best-known playwrights, is an exaggeration. There is still considerable supervision of what is written and published in China. But Chinese dramatists have been persistently bold since the Western-style art form was restored in 1979. In the past two years, dozens of plays have criticized China's shortcomings, stressed the personal hardships caused by political turmoil and savagely lampooned leaders who were corrupt or incompetent. Dramatists have also dealt gingerly with what Tsao calls the "once forbidden zone" of love.

Tsao is a gracious host as he welcomes his guests to the living room of his simple but comfortable apartment in the western part of Peking. He has an international reputation and has traveled widely (he went to New York last spring for a revival at Columbia University of his 1940 play Peking Man). So he brings a sophisticated perspective to his assessment of artistic freedom in China. "There is still too much control exercised over films," says Tsao. The 200 new plays performed or published each year fare considerably better. Says he: "There is hardly any interference from the top these days. It is up to each company to decide its own repertory."

Tsao, like most writers, was made a laborer during the Cultural Revolution "We now call that period the 'Ten Years of Catastrophe,' " he says. "Maybe the younger generation was spared, but we suffered terribly. We were deeply mired in a feudal mentality. People took what their superiors said for granted. Everything got reduced to a test of loyalty, and one man's word became law. Still, they couldn't stop us from asking why China was reduced to such a state and what we should do to prevent this from ever happening again. It is the need to explore such questions that caused this great burst of new plays."

With no independent press, it is impossible for a truly dissident author to publish works that go beyond the vague limits set by party authorities. Yet Tsao Yu is optimistic, and understandably so. He remembers that even during the '50s, plays had to have "workers, peasants or soldiers in them." In the standard stereotyped drama, he recalls, "you'd have a hero who becomes a model worker, then gets wounded, but comes back to work before his wounds are healed. Seeing 100 plays was the same as seeing one play. But now things are changing, and we feel the changes profoundly. We may even produce a Eugene O'Neill in China, maybe even our own Shakespeare."

THE FACTORY MANAGER. The deputy governor of Sichuan province, which, with its population of 100 million, would rank among the world's ten largest countries, calls Yang Yixuan "one of the newly discovered managers." She is in charge of weaving at the No. 1 Sichuan Cotton, Spinning, Weaving and Dyeing Factory, a sprawling red brick plant with 10,000 workers on the northern edge of Chengdu. A smiling, unassuming woman, Yang, 48, was promoted from the workshop floor to become one of six deputy managers of the plant, which is one of the most successful experiments launched last year under then Governor Zhao Ziyang.

"During the Cultural Revolution, there was so much fighting between factions in this factory that production was suspended three times and we lost 100 million yuan," says Yang. She then proceeds to reel off a clutch of figures showing the recent improvement: "Last year the value of our out put increased by 22.3% over the year before. Our profits increased by 56%.

For the first six months of this year, our profits are year." up She 117% over attributes last the increases to greater self-management at the factory--deciding what varieties of cloth to make, what raw materials to use and where to sell over-the-quota goods on the free market. "We reduced our costs by 3.1%," Yang says. "We also started to produce more of the high-quality goods that bring in a higher profit than the low-quality goods we made before."

The No. 1 Sichuan plant, a prized example of progress, demonstrates the other new features of China's reformed economy. The mill keeps 30% of its profits and gives its workers bonuses averaging 200 yuan ($136) a year, which is just over three months' average salary. The mill also uses its profits for plant expansion and new housing. Yang points proudly to a new dyeing workshop. "It is one of the additions we built ourselves."

The factory is still very much a socialist enterprise. The state fixes its prices and 80% of its production quotas, and there is far less competition from other factories than there would be in a free-market system. But Yang and her co-workers are not complaining. Says she: "In the past, if we proposed something new, it had to be approved by the higher authorities. Now we can do much more on our own." How does she feel about her own increased responsibilities? "The possibility that the production will not go well, and the plant will suffer a loss--that's my only worry."

THE FORMER RED GUARD. The tiny fourth-floor walk-up that Wang Keping shares with his mother, brother and sister is crowded with powerful wooden sculptures. There is a large twisted head of a man choking on a cylinder stuffed into his mouth. There is a bust of Jiang Qing in the shape of a rifle (power comes out of the barrel of a gun, said Chairman Mao). There is the severed head of a bureaucrat. "A head but no brains," Wang explains, "a nose but no nostrils, a mouth but no lips, in short, a bad cadre."

Wang, born in 1949 of a military family, is the same age as the People's Republic. As a teen-age Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution, he belonged to a rebel faction in his home town of Tianjin. There he once helped loot and burn a Roman Catholic church. Chastened by those outbursts, he has become a sculptor whose brooding images, carved from blocks of wood bought at a local firewood shop, show the evils of political fanaticism. "When I was a Red Guard," Wang says, pointing to his work, "I would have smashed all of this."

Officially a scriptwriter for Peking television, Wang only began sculpting about two years ago--and then by accident. "I happened to carve a piece of wood that had fallen off a chair," he recalls. "I didn't really know how to carve, but as a scriptwriter I had been influenced by the French theater of the absurd, especially Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Ionesco's The Bald Soprano. So I decided to try to carve a kind of theater of the absurd in wood." Though many foreigners and Chinese alike have been impressed by the energy and originality of his work, he is not recognized as an official artist by the state, and thus cannot make a living by his sculpture.

Excluded from official circles, Wang belongs instead to an unofficial group called the "Stars," which grew out of last year's Democracy Wall movement. This group of 26 artists was allowed last summer to show 160 works in Peking's main art museum --an important gesture toward openness in China. Wang's large, totemic figure of Mao, with one eye open and one eye shut, was the most controversial piece in the show, which drew between 4,000 and 7,000 visitors a day during its two-week run. Says Wang: "Today's leaders have made their ideas about economics very clear, but they have not yet decided about art and culture. Many of them are still afraid of Western influences, thinking that they are unworthy and immoral. The leaders have been isolated for such a long time that many of them are not very cultivated. But as living standards go up, there will be an effect on art and culture too. The best way to develop art is not to pay official attention to it at all.

"During the Democracy Wall period (when critical posters were tolerated by the authorities), we had feverish expectations, so we are disappointed with today's slowness--but we recognize that moving ahead slowly is better than not moving ahead at all. In fact, going too fast could bring a reaction from the conservatives, who continue to hold great power. Still, I think we shouldn't be afraid. The Chinese people have often-been too afraid."

THE JOURNALIST. "Most important are the changes in the fundamentals," says Yuan Xianlu, 52, foreign affairs editor of the official Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, which has a worldwide circulation of 6.3 million. Yuan, a tall, wiry man who has been with the paper for three decades, warns that easy political slogans and simplified explanations will not solve China's problems. He has seen too many of them before. "Many people say that everything bad is the fault of the Gang of Four," he says. "Some of our friends in the West have had doubts about this, and, in fact, while it is true that the Gang of Four did a lot of damage, if we blame everything on them, we won't find the real reasons why China has not developed satisfactorily."

Among China's defects, Yuan mentions its long imitation of the Soviet system, which was not relevant to local conditions. Like many other intellectuals, he also blames the country's "feudal heritage," the centuries during which China's economy remained backward and "the Emperor's word was law." Adds Yuan: "One thing that the common people get very angry about is the special privileges of high-ranking officials. There used to be a saying in the old society that once a man got promoted, even his dogs and chickens could go to heaven." This notion lingers, and it impedes efforts to reform the practice of officials clinging to their jobs for life. Says Yuan: "The problem is that once a person has a high position, he gets special privileges that he doesn't want to give up.

"We admit that because of the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four, the prestige of the Communist Party has decreased. But the party still has the basic support of the people. For example, compare China and Poland. A lot of the trouble in Poland began with a rise in the price of meat. But in China the economic situation was much worse than in Poland, and yet last year we had to raise the price of eight varieties of food. We did do a lot of political and economic groundwork to handle the matter."

The TIME editors asked Yuan whether rising expectations and greater tolerance of criticism might hold long-term dangers for China. His answer: "In the rural areas the farmers don't care about democracy. What they care about is good rulers. In the absence of democracy there are only two ways for people to show dissatisfaction -- with silence or with rebellion. Now there is something in between. There is criticism, and that is healthier."

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