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Jonathan Chatwin is a travel writer and journalist whose previous books include Long Peace Street: a Walk in Modern China and a literary study of the travel writer and novelist, Bruce Chatwin. In his latest book, Chatwin covers the period leading up to and during Deng Xiaoping’s famous Southern Tour, when the aging politician reasserted his influence over the direction of China’s politics and economy just three years after he had presided over the disastrous Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. The following is an edited transcript of our recent conversation about the Tour and its place in modern Chinese history.

Q: Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour in 1992 has become such a well known moment in modern Chinese history. Can explain how what, on the surface, was just a visit by an aging leader to various places in the country’s south became so significant?

A: We probably need to go back to the summer of 1988. Through the middle years of the 1980s, China had been struggling with inflation, which was politically problematic for the obvious reason that people were finding life more challenging as goods got more expensive; and because it also had resonances with what had happened with the Nationalists back in the 1940s. So people in the leadership were legitimately concerned. Then in December of 1988, rumors emerged that price controls on key goods were going to be imposed. That led to a spate of panic buying, which fueled inflation even further. 

The price control plans weren’t followed through with. But the country still enters into a period of what’s called ‘economic rectification’, where the growth targets are dialed down, credit is restricted, and provincial powers are restricted also. The conservatives in the leadership take back control of China’s economy, and try to tamp down the kind of freewheeling growth that the middle years of the 80s had seen. 

This is not what Deng Xiaoping wants. But then obviously, the protests and subsequent crackdown of June 1989 happen, and for the conservatives, it proves their point even further. They see the importation of foreign ideas and capitalist modes as having led or contributed to the protests and the turmoil. 

So, Deng is on the backfoot. By the middle of 1989, he is significantly weakened in terms of his control and influence on economic policy. And he tries over the next couple of years to wrest back that control. Effectively he fails to do so, and fails to make any significant impact on China’s economic trajectory. The leadership instead keeps to a steady and coordinated approach to the economy. 

And then in 1992, Deng goes on a longer tour, visiting the Special Economic Zones of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, where he hasn’t been since 1984. In doing so, his aim is in particular to influence Jiang Zemin, who had become General Secretary by then, and to get China more ambitiously pursuing economic reform and opening. 

What were the historical echoes for the Southern Tour in both recent and more ancient Chinese history? 

Touring the country has a very long heritage, starting in the mythical Imperial era. Many of the early emperors go on pilgrimages to Tai Shan [Mount Tai, a sacred mountain in Shandong province]. During the Qing Dynasty, there were some significant southern tours, particularly by the Emperor Kangxi, who first went in 1684. With later emperors, it changes a bit into an inspection tour. They do actually go to look at things, particularly to look at things like flood defenses. The tours also become key moments that are turned into imperial history by both writers and painters. 

Later, Mao Zedong became good at co-opting this approach. Often during periods when he wants to get his point across or feels that he’s not being listened to in Beijing, he will go to his redoubts such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wuhan. He will appeal to officials there, and try to get his message across through the apparatus in those cities. 

So the tradition is one that is well established in the Communist Party leadership. I think the denomination of Deng’s journey is something that happens after the fact: A bit like Kangxi’s tours, somebody is saying, ‘Look, this is important’ and laying out a kind of mythology of what happened. That doesn’t happen for a while: As Deng is on his tour, few are really aware, certainly not the Chinese public. 

Let’s look back to the debates that were going on within the leadership at the time. Who was leading them on either side? And what were their core positions? 

People in the West tend to have a slightly sketchy view of the reform and opening era, seeing it as this fairly linear ascent, from the Third Plenum in 1978, through to the roaring 1990s. And it tends to be turned into a story of good versus bad guys, which is an oversimplification. 

Deng Xiaoping had two key allies at the top of the leadership during the 1980s — Zhao Ziyang, and Hu Yaobang, who had become General Secretary of the party. Zhao was the economic mastermind of the reform and opening, particularly in the middle to late eighties. Hu, at the top of the party, is wanting to move even faster than Zhao. Deng doesn’t get involved in the day to day making of economic policy, leaving the details for Zhao and his team. But that’s the faction driving forward economic reform and opening at pace. 

On the other side, you have the faction that tends to be referred to as the conservatives, because they want to conserve the planned elements of China’s economy. The most significant figure in this faction is Chen Yun, one of the eight elders of the party. He’s the only other person in the party who has the gravitas to challenge Deng — he’s of the same generation, and has gone through the same trials. He is sometimes crudely characterized as an old-fashioned adherent of a Stalinist model of planned economics; actually, he was a proponent of markets, and was really important to Deng getting back into power in the 1970s. 

What he counsels is caution: he believes that any marketization has to still operate within the confines of a planned economy. Through the 1980s, he became more oppositional to what Zhao and Deng were trying to do. He worries about the pace of reform, and the overheating. But he also worries about the importation of foreign ways of thinking, spiritual pollution — ‘bourgeois liberalization’ as it comes to be referred to, somewhat euphemistically — and also the lack of emphasis on ideological work.

What actual role does Deng have in the government at this stage? And what’s his standing, post-Tiananmen, both within the party and, as far as we know, more broadly within China?

I don’t think there’s any doubt that post Tiananmen, Deng was significantly weakened. That’s not just to do with what happens on the night of June 3. 

As Deng goes around one of the things he keeps repeating is that these tools [things like free or freer markets, foreign investment] can be considered socialist… That, for me, is the key: and Jiang Zemin comes out in support of that stance.

Hu had been forced to resign in January 1987, with the tipping point being that he was seen not to have been strict enough in suppressing student protests in December 1986. Hu then becomes a vector for people who want political liberalization: His death in May 1989 became the precipitating force for the Tiananmen protests, after which Zhao Ziyang was basically purged from the party. Deng had already been weakened by the inflation crisis of 1988. So by now he’s without key allies in the leadership. 

Interestingly, in his first high profile public appearance post Tiananmen he addressed the military in Zhongnanhai, so he still had significant support in the military — which he leverages during his 1992 Southern Tour. Even so, he had resigned in November 1989 as the chairman of the Central Military Commission, his last formal post, so effectively he’s retiring. He’s put Jiang Zemin in place as General Secretary, a technocratic leader who has been brought up from Shanghai and doesn’t have particularly solid support in Beijing or in the military. 

So Deng at this point inhabits a slightly strange political position. I think this is one of the reasons why his story is problematic for Xi Jinping because the idea of some octogenarian party elder messing around in the background, trying to wrest the narrative away from the people who, in theory, should be running the country, is not what you want to encourage. By the time Deng goes on his Tour in 1992, he’s 87 years old. He holds no formal position in the Party, but still is indisputably the most important politician in China. 

In terms of how he’s viewed by the general public, that’s pretty difficult to answer without resorting to generalizations. But there’s no doubt that his standing is weakened in the eyes of people who know what happened in Beijing and other cities in 1989. 

So as Deng goes on this Southern Tour, what’s the core message do you think that he is trying to get across?

Very often, the thing that is emphasized in the story of the Southern Tour is that Deng’s talking about things going faster and economic growth being more ambitious, which is definitely true. 

But actually, I don’t think that’s the most significant intervention that the Southern Tour represents. He’d been saying that for a while. What needed to be resolved was the debate at the top of the party as to whether or not what were referred to as capitalist tools — things like free or freer markets, foreign investment — could be used within a socialist system, or whether they were insufficiently socialist.

As Deng goes around one of the things he keeps repeating is that these tools can be considered socialist, because their system is one of ownership by the people — the money is not going to go to individuals, it’s going to benefit the whole of Chinese society, theoretically. And so people should be allowed to use these tools in improving life in China. That, for me, is the key: and Jiang Zemin comes out in support of that stance. At the 14th Party Congress, later in 1992, there’s this transition to what becomes referred to as the ‘socialist market economy’ — a key change in terminology, where effectively those capitalist tools are co-opted and deemed to be sufficiently socialist. In effect, this is legitimizing a means of making money that had been very contentious previously. 

Deng acts as a kind of final arbiter in these debates. The problems don’t go away in the 1990s: there is still later inflation and lots of economic overheating. But because Deng has said these methods are sufficiently socialist, the ability for the conservatives to critique the approach is diminished. 

So he’s using this Tour to set the intellectual and political framework within which that 14th Party Congress will take place.

Yes. His constituency is not quite a constituency of one: But Jiang Zemin is the person he needs to win over. The economic situation, even before Deng goes on his Southern Tour, had become more supportive for him. The economic rectification process had been quite negatively impactful, not just for the private sector element of China’s economy, but even for the state owned enterprises that the conservatives saw as the core foundation of the planned economy. Because demand has fallen, the SOEs are struggling or having to lay people off. So there’s a recognition that something has to change in terms of the economic fundamentals. I think that’s one of the reasons why Deng’s successful in 1992, because that realization is becoming more acute within the leadership. 

Left: During his tour of the South, Deng Xiaoping talks to officials in Hubei, at Wuchang Railway Station, January 18, 1992. Right: Deng Xiaoping returned to Beijing after his Southern Tour and inspected Shougang Corporation, a Chinese state-owned steel company, May 22, 1992. Credit: Party History Collection via Sichuan Provincial Local Chronicles Office

There also aren’t any very good other ideas around. 1991 has been described as the ‘Year of Living Cautiously’. Nobody seems to have a plan that isn’t the one that Deng’s advocating for. He’s aware that party congresses are kind of rubber stamping events: but what they were going to rubber stamp still had to be decided, and so persuading Jiang to come out in support of Deng’s rhetorical position was what he was seeking to do.

When we look back now, the SEZs such as Shenzhen are seen as core to the whole project of reform and opening up: But they were pretty controversial by the early 1990s. Why was it important for Deng to reiterate his support for them, through the Tour?

Deng had gone to Guangdong in 1977, and been made aware of the thousands of people fleeing across the border to Hong Kong. And he identifies that if people are fleeing across the border, something is wrong with their policy. Subsequent to that, Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, who was then the party secretary in Guangdong, comes up with the idea of establishing some export zones. At that point, they are talking about exporting agricultural goods and tourism as a way of attracting money from across the border. This turns into the establishment of the special economic zones: There are four of them initially and Shenzhen becomes by far and away the most successful and well known, because it is literally just across the river and the bay from Hong Kong. 

But the SEZs also became vectors for those conservatives who worry about the importation of foreign ideas. People talk about Shenzhen being almost like Hong Kong as a negative, that the style of the buildings and what they’re trying to set up there just doesn’t look sufficiently socialist. 

They’re also not hugely successful in the early phase. Even by the mid to late 80s, people are commenting that Shenzhen hasn’t achieved what the SEZs set out to achieve. There’s problems with infrastructure, transport, with regular power cuts, and the development isn’t particularly high quality in terms of what Shenzhen is actually making and doing. And obviously, Shenzhen relies on huge numbers of migrant workers coming in and working in pretty terrible conditions at very low pay, in order to, at that stage, make low value goods. Chen Yun talks about the lack of quality development that SEZs represent. 

By going back to Shenzhen again in 1992, Deng though reaffirms his support for that model of urban development. And it’s a model that then does get rolled out: if you go to any Chinese city, the skyscrapers, the perpendicular highways, it is very familiar. 

But Shenzhen went through a number of iterations. Even in 1992, at the time when Deng’s not allowed to go back to one of the areas he went to in 1984, because it’s made up of so-called ‘handshake buildings’ for migrant workers that are so close to each other, you can reach out and shake the hand of the person in the room opposite. He’s not actually shown some of this stuff that’s going on in the background.

One part of the tour you highlight is the episode in Zhuhai, where Deng appears to have met with some of China’s senior military leaders. What did that meeting signify?

Deng’s Tour has three different aspects. There’s the inspection tour aspect, where he goes into factories that he thinks represent the future of China’s economy, and meets people. And he does some touristic stuff: Four of his five children are there, his wife’s there, lots of his grandkids come with him. He goes to a theme park which is a miniaturized version of China’s scenic spots. There’s a photo of him in front of a miniaturized Potala Palace in Lhasa with his grandkids, and it looks like a very ordinary family scene. 

The third significant thing he does is he convenes, or at least is in the vicinity of, this meeting of top military personnel in Zhuhai — which is the other SEZ he goes to visit, just across the Pearl River from Shenzhen. Now there is no official CCP record of this as far as I could find, going through all of the state media archives. The awareness we have of it is mainly through Hong Kong journalists reporting on it at the time. 

What seems beyond dispute, though, is that in Zhuhai, whilst Deng is there, there’s a meeting of all of the key military leadership, both in the party and in the PLA — apart from Jiang Zemin, who is theoretically chairman of the Central Military Commission at that point. And also whilst he is in Zhuhai, Deng says, at one of his stops, that whoever is against reform will be driven out of power. 

So we’re not stretching the sources too far to suggest that Deng was leveraging his still significant authority in the military to suggest that, first of all, the military is behind reform and opening. And there’s an implicit, unstated threat there, too, that he’s [Jiang Zemin] not irreplaceable if he doesn’t get behind it. How much this affects what Jiang’s thinking at that stage, we just don’t know. But this is not soft power: it’s not the kind of cuddly, touristy ‘Uncle Deng’ in action here. It must have been a fairly stark threat.

The other thing is we can’t underestimate for all of those key leaders the importance of having lived through the Cultural Revolution, especially for Deng. What is the reason for his desire for economic growth? Well, he remembers the chaos of the Cultural Revolution years. And he talks about how ‘poor socialism’ isn’t something that should be aspired to, that it needs to make people’s lives better. 

…in terms of the official party relationship with his legacy, Deng is problematic, because if you talk about Deng, you acknowledge that Mao was wrong — and if the party is ‘eternally right’, that’s a problem.

But why does he want that? Well, it’s because he wants the party to remain in charge, and he sees what’s going on. What we haven’t mentioned, which is really key, is that whilst Deng is in the process of retiring, what is going on elsewhere in the world? Well, the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Even on the morning after he retired in November 1989, the front page of the New York Times had stories about the Berlin Wall opening, and then Deng Xiaoping retiring. So he can see that something needs to shift in order to make sure that the party retains popular support.

How does news about the Tour get out eventually?

The Southern Tour is sometimes seen as a move by Deng that was a bolt from the blue for the leadership. But he didn’t just set off and surprise Jiang Zemin and Li Peng with what he was doing. The notes from his half-hour conversation with provincial leaders at his first stop in Wuhan are immediately wired back to Beijing. So we know that the top brass in China’s leadership knew what he was doing, and knew pretty quickly what he was saying. 

But you’re right that for the Chinese public — apart from in Guangdong, where it’s quite easy to receive Hong Kong Radio and TV — there’s a kind of press embargo on reporting. That extends for a really significant amount of time. Deng leaves on the Tour on 17th of January, but it’s not until the 31st of March that it’s nationally publicized, with a TV documentary and an article in the People’s Daily. 

We know that a week after he’s back, the Central Committee issues a summary of his speeches to party cadres. And then we see increasing signals that Jiang is falling into line: He gives a speech at the Central Party School in June 1992, which really is a reiteration of Deng’s key talking points. And then at the 14th Party Congress later in the year, there’s a full blown endorsement of what Deng has been talking about on his Southern Tour. But it was very much a drip feed at the time. If you talk to people who were around in ‘92, they will say we didn’t know it was happening until quite significantly after it had happened.

What was the impact of the Tour, both immediately and over the longer term? Do you see it as a significant moment that changes the trajectory of China? 

Was it significant in the short term? Yes, it was hugely significant in driving really quite breakneck economic growth through the next few years of the 1990s. Provincial leaders were literally writing to and calling up Jiang in Zhongnanhai, desperate to start their own development zones. And it has attendant problems: inflation is still a significant issue, for example.

In terms of its impact subsequently, one thing that I found interesting as I pondered it more was Chen Yun’s perspective. You go into this story thinking he’s the bad guy. But actually there is a large degree to which the problems that Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping have been dealing with were bequeathed by the model of economic development that Deng espouses. Deng talked about quadrupling China’s GDP by the year 2000. But if all you’re chasing is those headline numbers, and no one’s really too worried about how you get there, then you end up with huge imbalances, exploitation of workers and massive environmental costs. And you end up with an economy that is still now over reliant on debt fueled growth, on infrastructure, on real estate: They haven’t cultivated a middle consumer class that will prop up the economy. 

It’s indisputable that the economic reforms of the eighties were hugely impactful in terms of improving people’s quality of life, post the Cultural Revolution. The agricultural reform of the early 1980s is the most straightforwardly net positive. But the urban reform Deng talked about has been really tricky. Even now, the state-owned enterprises are a big problem for China’s economic leaders. 

Xi has been left with a legacy to sort out of dwindling growth figures, and he doesn’t have many levers to pull in order to drive growth. But people still remember the freewheeling growth of the eighties. I think that’s why Deng has basically been written out of the contemporary narrative, because he [Xi] doesn’t want too many reminders of that time. Deng’s legacy is still pressing, he is very rarely mentioned by the current leadership. 

Yes, one of the reflections I had reading the book was that there’s almost more of a straight line from Chen Yun to Xi Jinping than there is from Deng to Xi. 

I think that’s a really interesting point. With Xi it is sometimes quite hard to grasp how much deliberation is going into the things that he says. Because when he came to power, his first major trip in 2012 was to Shenzhen, where he goes and lays a wreath of flowers at Deng’s statue. And at the Third Plenum in 2013, he talks about the increased role of the markets. So there’s often rhetorical nods towards more ambitious reform and opening up. 

But you’re right, there’s been a pivot towards ideology and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Presumably, at some level, there must be an awareness that look, we need an alternative to 12 percent levels of growth, because you can’t get that anymore. Interestingly, when Xi goes to Shenzhen in 2012, he privately gives a speech to party leaders talking about what happened in the Soviet Union. He carries with him, I think, a pretty visceral fear of that. 

It is notable that Deng Xiaoping’s never mentioned. The thirtieth anniversary of the Southern Tour in 2022 was not mentioned at all. His statue is still up in Shenzhen: But in terms of the official party relationship with his legacy, Deng is problematic, because if you talk about Deng, you acknowledge that Mao was wrong — and if the party is ‘eternally right’, that’s a problem.

It also struck me reading the book that in the long run, the debate about what a ‘socialist market economy’ means in practice hasn’t been resolved — or at least, to the extent that it is resolved now under Xi, it’s much more towards reducing the role of markets. 

That’s true. The Southern Tour does provide a convenient narrative, as an end chapter to the story of Deng’s life and the story of reform and opening, certainly in that first phase. Interest in the narrative of the Jiang Zemin and then Hu Jintao eras has been much less. The debates don’t go away and some of the contradictions are not resolved. But things become a bit more technocratic in that phase. And I think that’s probably why 1992 appeals as a kind of narrative endpoint. 

But the more I worked on the Tour, the more I felt that its legacy ended up making life quite difficult for Deng’s successors.

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