Mr. Deng died on my birthday, and Ms. TKG returned with her very fancy web site. As a veteran on the former NYT forum, I am tempted to let out my "mixed" emotion about all this.Thanks to MCD for this.Utopians will remember Mr. Deng as an unsurpassed Chinese locksmith who successfully opened the western designed Pandora's box for China. Yeah, under his reign, the Chinese have more rice, but more vice too. Capitalists will remember him as a savvy broker who shrewdly put Chinese labor and American dollar together. I will remember him as a giant with shortcomings, rather than a dwarf with towering merits.
To forecast China's future, one has to understand China's character. And so many missed the crucial element of China's character. China has surprised the world so many times that I always wonder if normalcy is an abnormality for China. I am superstitiously convinced about Chairman Mao's intuition, "for China, revolution comes every 8 or 9 years." It is a Chinese passion that only Chinese can understand it. The passion that drove China into a political slaughter house during Mao's Cultural Revolution is the same passion that propelled China into an economic power house during Deng's open-door reform. It's this passion that saves China from extinction. It's this passion that renders China so unpredictable and vulnerable.
China's passion is now rationally released through many functioning valves. Mr. Deng's death is just one missing valve that will not disrupt the process.