MISSOURI COMMENTARY: DENG MADE CHINA READY FOR THE FUTURE

It's Generalissimo Francisco Franco all over again. Deng Xiaoping, China's maximum potentate, refuses to die. The death watch ticks in months, not hours.

When the more sagacious future historians chart the great leaders of the 20th century, Deng Xiaoping will be on the list. Not that he's perfect. Great leaders are human too. But he's unquestionably on the list.

It was Mao Tse-Tung who brought the Chinese masses out of the Kuomintang period. President Franklin Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt thought KMT leader Chaing Kay-shek was a nice sort of fellow and that Madam Chaing, the erudite English speaker out of Wellesley College, was even nicer. Subsequent American presidents felt the same. Truth was that Chaing and his Nationalist crowd were good for one-tenth of one percent of the population and indifferent to the well-being of the rest. That's how Mao could philosophically win the "hearts and minds" of the Chinese people during his long civil war against Chaing.

It was Deng who did even more as Mao's successor. He took power in 1979 and transformed China from a pre-industrial backwater into a country fit to cope with the challenges of the 21st century. Deng made the opening to the outside world that brought in the curious mixture of communism and capitalism and, with it, a semblance of broad-based prosperity previously unknown in China. Friedmanesque economists rolls their eyes with great expression of perplexity when asked how pure capitalism can seemingly thrive amidst the thorns of rancid communism. For the time being, Deng has made that shotgun marriage work for China.

To be sure, Deng lost a great deal of international stature after the bloodbath in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But he was, in time, forgiven by the world of international business. When there is a clash between money and human rights, put your money on money.

The Middle Kingdom is on hold while old Deng refuses to die. His daughter says he is declining "day by day," but the days seemingly never dwindle down to a precious few. The whole of China, one-fifth of the world's population, holds its collective breath.

While Deng lingers, the Chinese economy is starting to overheat. The country now has 27 percent inflation. If allowed to persist too long, that could wipe out many of the gains of Deng's market reforms.

Even as a frail relic, Deng is the glue that holds China together. He has not official title, but he provides the link between a freer economy and oppressive political control. Some have argued that free markets insure a free people. Not so in China, at least up until now.

President Jiang Zemin will most certainly be Mr. Number One after Deng's death -- just as it was certain that Georgi Malenkov would be Stalin's heir. Remember Georgi? Whenever Jiang leaves the room after a cabinet meeting, he will back out -- to be polite and to protect himself. No one really knows what the new Chinese leadership will bring.

Will Deng's death bring forth a pervasive sense of uncertainty with a resulting even tighter grip on internal politics? Or might it bring a "lighten-up" crew that thinks it has to bring a little happiness into the daily lives of the people?

Take your pick. Most of the China-watchers in Washington are hedging their bets. Those who follow the endless negotiations over the future justice system in Hong Kong are not comforted by resistance to fundamental human rights guarantees for when China takes control from the British in 1997.

However it all shakes out, the new Chinese regime will face a laundry list of problems. Free enterprise, good as it has been for China, has not brought utopia. The economy needs attention. When people acquire some wealth, other people want to steal it or cheat them out of it. Crime is on the rise. Bribery, the unfortunate handmaiden of capitalism, abounds.

Yes, Deng made China fit to cope with the challenges of the 21st century. We will have to wait and see if his successors improve on that fitness or whether China goes flabby.

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for the Pulitzer Publishing Co.