The architect of modern China

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0:17There's all sorts of elements of China which have slightly a Blade Runner aesthetic. And Shenzhen is one of these cities that really embody that. The city of Shenzhen sits right on the southern coast of China. Its subway is one of the most rapidly expanding on the planet. Skyscrapers tower high above the city. By night, millions of bright neon lights punctuate an impressive modern skyline, like a futuristic cyberpunk fantasy. It's one of the country's industrial powerhouses. By day, you'd see the insignia of the world's biggest brands around you. Nike, Adidas, Tesla. It's likely the place where all the parts in your smartphone are made.

1:04Almost 90 % of the world's electronics are made there. All the farmers in Blade Runner who are mining for recycling for electronics, there was Shenzhen. It's a city defined by its manufacturing, technology, and innovation. If I wanted to propose a grand synthesis for Americans to understand Shenzhen, it would be Detroit in its heyday of about 100 years ago to Silicon Valley today. And that comparison is really important because the architect of this industrial city on China's coast was taking notes from American capitalism all the way back in the 1970s when China began to open itself up to the world.

1:46That man was Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader in the 1980s. When you go to Shenzhen today, you can still see his legacy everywhere you look. You've got this big billboard. Deng Xiaoping is on it. In the background, the great skyline of Shenzhen. And he's looking at it as if to say, I made this.

2:14Today, it's easy to take for granted that China is one of the world's big superpowers and an economic rival to the U.S. But this transformation started as an experiment, a gamble by Deng Xiaoping, that he could turn China into an economic powerhouse. Shenzhen embodies that gamble. China's current leader, Xi Jinping, visited Shenzhen soon after taking office on a whistle-stop tour designed to mimic one Deng took two decades earlier. And so much of China's ascent globally as a superpower began with the vision set in motion by Deng. To make that vision real, he had to change China's relationship to the world and introduce capitalism to a society steeped in tradition and communist ideals.

3:03I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. On this episode of ThruLine from NPR, we tell the story of Deng Xiaoping's quest to open China, transform its economy, and make it the world's factory.

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5:09Part one. The great manager. I want to take you back to a time before China was the global juggernaut it is today. It's May 1966, and the Chinese Communist Party, run by Chairman Mao Zedong, issues a warning. No capitalist infiltrators. Communism must survive. Wealth must be distributed and not held by individuals. Mao Zedong's approach to economics was non-existent. This is Kerry Brown, a professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lao China Institute at King's College London. So 99 % of the economy was in the hands of the state. Mao's plan had been to industrialize the country through collective farming, which also diverted labor from other agricultural activities, leading to a plunge in grain production.

6:03People were starving. An estimated 30 million people died. Mao was a believer in class struggle, a sort of social mobilization. And the Cultural Revolution was really driven by this idea to remake Chinese culture. The Cultural Revolution was Chairman Mao's attempt to regain control over the party. His strategy was ruthless. There's a deliberate destruction of culture, ideas, customs, habits. Historical artifacts were destroyed and ancient scrolls were torn apart. Intellectuals were persecuted or imprisoned. Families were forced to destroy heirlooms to avoid persecution. The lives of citizens themselves were destroyed.

6:48Millions were forcibly relocated to the countryside and forced to perform manual labor. Visiting Western journalists covered the strict working conditions. There are 7 ,000 workers in the Shanghai shipyard. They're constantly being reminded of their need to work for their fellow workers and for China. The Maoist period seems like another planet. Chairman Mao's thoughts are there on the loudspeakers to egg them on.

7:16To remind them of the three main rules of discipline. Life in China was really dire. Society was in chaos. The country needed someone to help stem the bleeding. Deng Xiaoping was not at all charismatic, but incredibly effective as a manager.

7:43Deng Xiaoping was a true communist patriot. He served in the military and later wore many hats in the party. In the 1950s, he served as vice premier and vice chair of the Defense Council. He later served as the Communist Party's general secretary. In the early 1960s, Deng embarked on a series of reforms to help China's economy recover after the famine and widespread death in the previous decade. Because unlike Mao, who's considered the visionary, cult-like leader and dreamer of the party, Deng is different. He's practical, realistic. He was a ferociously competent and very pragmatic dude. This is Dan Wong, a writer specializing in contemporary China and author of Breakneck, China's Quest to Engineer the Future.

8:34He was a short little dude, chain smoker of cigarettes. Enormously strong personality. He was a tough, tough character. He had a spittoon by the side of his feet, which he spat into. There are all of these accounts of foreign leaders meeting him and marveling at how expertly he would spit into a nearby spittoon because he was just able to hawk up so much mucus, just direct spit right in there. Deng's pragmatic approach threatened Mao's project. He was a valuable confidant, yes. But Deng's ideas were pragmatic and growth-oriented. And Deng earns a reputation for being a little too innovative for comfort.

9:16Mao's rule and the communist project were paramount. So, like the rest of China, Deng succumbed to Mao's rule. This was a man who was savagely attacked in the Cultural Revolution and had everything taken from him. In the late 1960s, Deng Xiaoping was removed from his political post, and his political titles were stripped. He and his family were sent far away. To work in a tractor factory, I think, in Jiangxi province. He was disgraced, punished, sent to the countryside. Deng and his family are banished to work in that factory from 1969 to 1973. They're forced to read Mao Zedong thought. They live in a military compound.

10:04But while he's there working at the factory, Deng Xiaoping has plenty of time to think about his country, about what had gone wrong with many of Mao's policies, about what might be possible. He had this spiritual reawakening where he thought, why is it after 20-plus years of socialism, our country is still so poor and weak? I see all this poverty around me. Something's wrong. His thoughts start to cohere into one main idea. Could there be a way to loosen China up to the outside world economically, but also retain the structure of the Communist Party? By 1973, Deng was summoned back to Beijing.

10:44Another official with a good relationship to Deng convinces Mao to let him return. Deng rises in the ranks, becoming Mao's third in command. He's brought back to initiate pragmatic reform, organization, and essentially do the cleaning up of the destruction caused by the Cultural Revolution. I think we see that Deng Xiaoping was a really supremely competent administrator and that China is a country which needs being administered, like a continent rather than a country.

11:21World leaders sent their condolences to Peking today, calling Mao the last giant of the century and one of the world's immortals. But then, September 1976, Mao Zedong dies. At the White House, President Ford called Chairman Mao a great man with vision and imagination. The power structure in China, as it had existed in the Maoist era, totally collapsed. There was a period of chaotic power struggles as members of the party tried to claim control. But when the dust finally settled, Deng remained. They needed the skills of someone like Deng Xiaoping, and so he was allowed to come back to Beijing and to be part of the kind of new system.

12:06He also did have a plan. A radically new economy. One opening itself up to science, technology, business, and new big ideas from all over the world. It didn't matter what its political system was. The trick here for Deng was to develop a political system that could fit the unique needs of China at this moment. In complete disarray, diverse, very poor, but a nation with a deep cultural history. Deng cannot simply import another system into China. He had to develop something as unique as its needs. By 1977, he's looking over at nations like the UK and the US and thinking, we need to embrace some of what's going on over there.

12:50The free market. But he also doesn't want to go full-on capitalism. Well, we don't like capitalists, but they are able to produce what we can't, which is GDP growth. We have to find a way of doing that without being contaminated by them. He was the key architect of that. That's what he's called in China, the key architect of the reform process. By 1978, newly minted Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping wants to carry out his plan to bring wealth to the people of China for maybe the first time in the modern era. He didn't know exactly how. Taking a stab at this would be almost like feeling around for the stepping stones as he crossed the river.

13:32A favorite saying of his. He's 74 years old by this point, back in the Communist Party in Beijing. By now, he's losing his hearing. There's a meeting with high-ranking members of the party overseeing the government and the military. But there was a big meeting in Beijing, and a hotel actually, a military hotel. From that meeting comes the start of a project. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. It's Deng's brainchild, a system where small private businesses could operate, and employees working in those businesses could receive bonuses. Deng and his comrades argue that in order to reach the communist ideal, China needs to go through capital development.

14:16It allowed sort of entrepreneurialism and foreign capital to come to China. Under Deng's vision, China would finally open itself up to the world, to allow it to rejoin the international system. So these things were complete heresy before, but because of these few words in a high-level speech, they became OK. And from that point on, it was good to get rich. And in that good-to-get-rich spirit, Deng went on a big trip to America for some inspiration. That's after the break.

14:58Hi, my name's Alyssa. I'm in Madison, Wisconsin, and I actually work in public radio. And shows like this one just keep me really engaged and inspired. It's my favorite one. So you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

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16:22Part two. Deng's new plan. This house belongs to all Americans, people who are firmly dedicated to a world of friendship and peace. And Vice Premier Deng, on behalf of all Americans, I welcome you here to our house. Deng Xiaoping went to America in 1979. Deng Xiaoping was welcomed to Washington today by President Carter, the two leaders promising to work for peace and stability in the Pacific and the world at large. Your visit here, Mr. Vice Premier, is an important milestone in the development of friend relations between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. So this trip to America is a huge deal.

17:12Deng was the first Chinese communist leader to visit the United States. Shouting protesters marred the South Lawn ceremony a bit, but Carter carried on with his speech. When Jimmy Carter became president, he kind of did very end of 1978 shift diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. And so Deng very quickly, I think in January or February of 1979, went to America. And, you know, kind of these are more innocent times. He went to a rodeo in Texas. It was big news. This Chinese communist leader was eating barbecue and going full cowboy. The eyes of Texas were on Deng Xiaoping today as the Chinese vice premier continued his tour of this country.

17:57His two-day schedule in Texas is certainly varied. A visit to the space center, a rodeo, and barbecue tonight. An inspection of oil drilling equipment tomorrow. And famously sort of wore this 10-gallon hat, which is about the same size as him. He's like one of those cartoon characters. That little sort of like cartoon character. When he wears a hat, it's half the size of its body. He famously wore this hat in the stadium and it got huge coverage in America. Indeed, at the rodeo, the Chinese came alive. All wore cowboy hats and drank beer and Li Sun-sung of the Chinese news agency summed it up.

18:31We have good relaxation, good barbecue, good country music and good rodeo show. So the Chinese leave today with their memories and perhaps a new image for communist China's leading man. For Deng Xiaoping not only went west, but went western.

18:55Deng went on to other U.S. cities on his trip. He encouraged American business people to invest in China, academics to collaborate on scholarship, and generally advocated for more exchanges between the countries. So he went to the Boeing factory in Seattle. And this has never happened before. Deng Xiaoping, this diehard, 100 % committed communist leader, became very popular in America, really until the late 1980s. And he was times, you know, like man of the year twice. A lot of it was about how America had this image of this, what they thought was a relatively benign, capitalist-friendly communist leader who was leading China towards final capitalist sort of revolution.

19:37No, he was 100 % committed a servant of the party, and that was never going to be negotiable. No, never. When Deng looked at the economic model in America, he learned a lot, and he wanted China to learn those lessons too. The lessons were very profound. The need for industrialization and a decent technology infrastructure, the importance of education. There was a very intentional effort by Deng Xiaoping, the then leader, to say, well, you know, who is the most successful country in the world? It's not really the Soviet Union. It's much more the Americans. And so why don't we adopt practices closer to America?

20:15And my view is that China adopted absolutely everything from the United States, aside from the political system. China decided that its only great asset was plentiful, well-educated, cheap labor. Deng wants some of what he sees in America for his own people. The prosperity, the economic freedom. But was there a way to do that within communist China? If he moves too fast, he could upset members of his own party and be ousted. Or it could embolden protests and plunge the nation into disarray, as it did under Mao. How could he let some freedom trickle in without losing the architecture of a communist society?

20:57He needed a bubble, a place where he could experiment with capitalism without letting the contagion loose. In concert with other advisors as part of the economic reforms, Deng established something called Special Economic Zones, spots where business and trade laws are a little more relaxed than the rest of the country. In 1980, Deng and the party opened the first three Special Economic Zones, one of which was Shenzhen, a small city on the coast near Hong Kong. Shenzhen was a fishing kind of, well, it wasn't a village. It was a whole kind of county that had about 300 ,000 people, but it was rural.

21:35And if you stood in Hong Kong in 1978, you would have looked across to mostly fields and rivers, you know, very rural scenery. Shenzhen did not have a great deal of industry. It was a lot of low-slung buildings that were making things like harvesting oysters. Why did Deng see Shenzhen as a good place to experiment with the idea? Well, special economic zones were to engage with capitalism but at arm's length. So to allow very designated areas where you could control these sort of nasty capitalist behaviors in case they got out of hand. Special economic zones would allow Deng to introduce the foreign market in these little city laboratories where market reforms could be tested.

22:25Shenzhen was to benefit from Hong Kong. Hong Kong's land prices were very high. It couldn't manufacture. It was doing manufacturing in other parts of Southeast Asia and Asia. So Shenzhen was perfect. It was just across the border. You could get Hong Kong entrepreneurs. The idea was that you could mitigate state regulation and taxes, and the zones would attract foreign businesses. Deng's bet was that this city would help chip away at socialist structures and begin the capitalistic transformation he dreamed of. The city received loans from Chinese banks, new roads were built, housing, water, power.

23:01A brand new Shenzhen was on its way. The scale in Shenzhen was what made it unique. Shenzhen, when it developed, was a crazy, crazy sort of, you know, wild west sort of place. After Deng made Shenzhen a special economic zone in 1980, Rural citizens flocked to it. A job in Shenzhen was a ticket to a totally different life. Soon, businesses from around the world moved their manufacturing to Shenzhen. It had become, in many ways, the factory for the whole world. Well into the 1980s and 90s, the city grew at an alarming rate. Now colloquially referred to as Shenzhen Speed. It had had 40 % growth a year.

23:48You mean literally building, you know, like half the city in a year. So it just was growth, growth, growth, even if it wasn't particularly sustainable. So this was one huge experiment.

24:06The Shenzhen Commercial Daily newspaper said that there was so much irresponsible construction in Shenzhen that one in five rural buildings simply collapsed in the year 1985. There was quite a lot of... That's a lot, though, 20%. That's what progress feels like. Deng's bed on Shenzhen and the special economic zones of the reform process offered powerful lessons. Let's be open. Welcome foreign investment. Be ready to learn from other countries and move up the technology leader in part through a foreign help. Sounds like a great formula for reindustrialization. Shenzhen was just the beginning. More and more businesses moved in over the coming decades.

24:53Titans of industry advertising their products in America, like Apple, Walmart, and Procter & Gamble, started moving operations to China. Producing Macintosh. It does all the things you'd expect a business computer to do. Tremendous selection, spectacular savings during Walmart's January clearance sale, now through Saturday. The new six-roll family pack, the softest family pack you can buy. But it created massive distortions so that you got huge inflation in 1989 and massive party corruption. China was growing at breakneck speed, but the bottom was going to give out at some point. They're butchering people.