Deng concentrated on big strategic decisions. He was known for distinguishing important issues that demanded his attention from less important issues that he could leave to underlings. He avoided personally going out on a limb to support controversial policies, but gave leeway to those beneath him who were prepared to do so. Once enough positive feedback had been gathered for a given experiment, he declared his personal support.
Deng spent mornings by himself reading reports and thinking through issues. He commonly met with other officials in the afternoon or evening.
Once he had determined key strategies, he presented them to the public in a clear, simple, and straightforward way. Deng, who like other Party leaders sought to understand what had gone wrong in the Cultural Revolution, concluded that the problem was not just Mao but the system, which had concentrated too much power in one individual. To provide predictability and ensure that policies would be at least vetted by key officials, Deng, unlike Mao, held regular meetings of the central committee and Party con-
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gress. While Lee, in his small city-state, could manage things by personal conversations and speeches, Deng had to present his views to a massive country that when he took power had virtually no television system.
Deng’s style in public was aloof and formal, but in private conversations, he could be disarmingly direct and humorous, while occasionally inserting colorful popular aphorisms.
Park Chung Hee, unlike Atatürk and Deng, was not constrained by a strong traditional society, because South Korean society had been torn apart by the Japanese occupation and the Korean War. His instinct was to use a hierarchical disciplined system, and he placed former military officers who accepted this style in key positions. He was constrained by the democratic system, including a National Assembly and an electoral system, introduced since the foundation of the Republic in 1948 but still not yet firmly rooted by his immediate predecessor, Chang Myôn. Park had to revive and keep the National Assembly for fear of losing the support of the United States, but since the National Assembly was weak, he could manipulate it. In the 1970s when he decided to remain in office beyond term limits and squeezed the society for all possible funds for investment in the development of heavy and chemical industries, he rammed through the yushin constitution that enabled him to run roughshod over the National Assembly.
Park pushed others as he pushed himself, to the limits of human endurance. Lacking communication skills to persuade or at least mollify the opposition, he relied on more repressive means, especially the Korea Central Intelligence Agency. He dealt harshly with opponents. When opposition grew after the launching of yushin in 1972, he responded in the way he knew, by tightening controls. Deng suppressed opposition when he judged that public demonstrations threatened stability, but Park suppressed opposition almost continuously.
Approach to Rule: Economic Growth
All four leaders linked their countries to international markets. The stability and openness that all four achieved enabled them, with proper incentives, to attract foreign investment. They all made good use of their initial comparative advantage, low cost labor, to produce goods for export to earn foreign exchange to buy more technology from abroad and to enrich their people. Only Deng inherited a socialist economy and, like the others, soon accepted a market economy.
Atatürk aimed first to make political and social changes and then, de-
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spite his lack of interest in economic issues, to modernize the economy. After stabilizing the country, he pursued a relatively open liberal market economy and attracted foreign investment. With investment in industry and infrastructure, the country began to grow rapidly until the growth spurt was slowed down by the global depression in 1929–1931. From the time the depression broke out, the government made greater efforts to promote the economy by planning and financing industries, promoting sectors like textiles, iron and steel, glass, and ceramics. Between 1933 and 1939
the GNP growth rate was 9.1 percent, one of the highest in the world. By 1939 Turkey was able to produce not only most of its consumer goods but most of the basic capital goods that it needed.
Lee Kuan Yew, to build up industry, relied on multinational industrial companies. With a tiny population, then less than three million, Singapore could not build up its industry through sales to the local market, so it made no sense to protect the home market as Japan and Korea did. Local merchants, overwhelmingly of Chinese ethnic background, were shrewd bargainers and traders but they had little experience in manufacturing.
Even if they could manufacture goods, they lacked the global networks to provide outlets for their production. Singaporean leaders sought large, stable multinational companies that would be committed to Singapore for a long period of time, and in order to attract such companies they gave very favorable conditions. Singapore built an industrial zone in Jurong to provide appropriate facilities. It succeeded in attracting well-known international corporations. Singapore has continued this strategy, training local people and upgrading its industries as they moved into electronics and bio-technology.
Although all four of the countries encouraged their students to learn foreign languages, only Singapore went so far as to make English the standard language for public schools. This made it easier for Singaporeans to benefit from international educational institutions and to take part in international commercial and political discussions.
Lee Kuan Yew and his team had a socialist vision of providing welfare benefits. They also wanted to give Singaporeans a stake in the system, and they concluded that nothing would do more to achieve this than home ownership. In February 1960, only a few months after taking office, Lee established the Housing and Development Board, initially designed to provide low-income housing for workers. Under the British colonial government, to provide modest pensions, a Central Provident Fund had been established, with matched contributions from the worker and his employer.
Lee and his team expanded the percentage going into the fund so it would be enough to allow an employee to use the accrued fund to make a down payment on an apartment. The government built the apartment buildings
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and sold the apartments to the workers. In new buildings, apartment size and quality were gradually upgraded and people could sell their older apartments and purchase new ones. In 1996, of the 725,000 flats under the Housing Board, over 90 percent were owned by the occupants.13 In addition there was a private housing market, primarily for people who were not citizens.
The Singapore government used housing to reduce ethnic separatism, mixing ethnic groups in a given apartment building, and for family policy, giving discounts to younger couples who bought an apartment near where their parents’ apartment was located. Later Singapore began allowing families to use money accumulated in the Provident Fund to pay for medical care as well as for housing and retirement benefits. After Deng Xiaoping became the preeminent leader of China in December 1978, he first allowed Chen Yun, the most respected official in managing the economy, to undertake retrenchment to ensure that there was enough grain, that the economy was not overheated, that there was enough foreign currency to repay foreign loans and purchases, and that the budget imbalance did not get out of hand. Deng was impatient to speed up growth, but having experienced the Great Leap Forward when haste made waste, he initially yielded to Chen Yun.
In Deng’s efforts to get enough grain, he allowed experiments in “contracting responsibility down to the household,” whereby the community owned the land but let the individual farm family be responsible for tilling it. The experiment, which began first in poor mountainous villages to ease the opposition of leftists who feared the socialist system was being replaced by capitalism, was an immediate success and grain production shot up. In addition the population, earlier required to stay in a given locality, was given greater flexibility in moving to towns and later to cities.
/> Deng not only allowed but welcomed foreign investment. Foreign companies built factories and brought in technology, machinery, and management skills. China initially encouraged a “processing industry,” in which foreign companies supplied the materials, machinery, and product design while Chinese supplied the labor and passed the products on to outsiders.
Deng allowed the formation of small household enterprises, but initially, to avoid becoming capitalist, they could not employ more than seven workers. Gradually they were allowed to expand. Rural towns and villages, were allowed to form “collective enterprises” that had far more flexibility than state enterprises that were constrained by planning, but once the collective enterprises grew and could provide employment opportunities, pressure was placed on state enterprises to become more efficient and competitive or else go out of business. Planning increasingly gave way to markets. Deng, trying to keep down leftist opposition, allowed the new
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overall economic system to be called “The Early Stage of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”
Park drew heavily on Japanese practices. He imported technology, management systems, and organizational structure from Japan. Once a local industry was capable of producing certain goods, he protected that industry from foreign imports. Once low-wage, labor-intensive industries were established, Park began to introduce higher technology and heavy industry. But compared with Japan, where ministries played a major role in shaping plans, Park centralized decisions more in his own hands.
Compared with the other three leaders, Park personally played a more proactive role in promoting industry. Worried about possible Japanese domination of Korea’s industry, Park kept tighter control over foreign investment. He identified able business executives like Chông Chu-yông (Hyundai) and Yi Pyông-ch’ol (Samsung), who had management abilities, the same all-out dedication Park did, and Japanese connections to get technology. He helped provide the capital needed so that after they proved themselves in one sector, they could expand into another. Where possible, he supported competing companies in a given sector to heighten their performance.
Park suppressed wages and used police to subdue the labor movement so that Korean goods would remain competitive. The number of hours that laborers worked was the highest in the world. Especially in the 1970s, the whole country was straining to make its economic breakthrough, which came with enormous speed.
Park, worried about U.S. troop withdrawal and competition from the North, pushed the development of heavy and chemical industries far harder and faster than Japan or any other country pushed industrialization at a comparable stage of development. This effort constrained the availability of finance and resources, leading to debt, inflation, and political turmoil. Amid this turmoil, Park was assassinated by his childhood friend and intelligence chief Kim Chae-gyu, who said at his trial that he feared more massive crackdowns like those Park had carried out in Pusan and Masan. Despite the enormous social costs, the plans met their targets and after Park’s successors made needed corrections to the country’s macroeconomic policy, heavy industry development continued to take off.
The Inner Circle, Bureaucrats, and Intellectuals In all four cases the strong leader required a small group of dedicated fellow leaders who were absolutely committed to the same goals and could be counted on to make an extra effort to overcome difficulties they con-
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fronted as they engineered fundamental changes in society. Although some in the inner circles split off on certain occasions, a core of trusted allies remained. Before coming to power, each of the four leaders had a deeply committed inner circle that had bonded and developed common goals so they could move quickly and firmly as they confronted myriad issues after they came to power. They also needed to link to a broader group of knowledgeable specialists to deal with complex issues related to the economy, science and technology, and foreign relations.
Atatürk’s core team consisted of military officers who had been together for many years, but they were a highly select elite who had received not only modern military training but a broad background in European culture and history. They had bonded through life-and-death struggles in which many of their comrades had fallen. When Allied powers invaded, Atatürk assembled a small core of military officers he could count on, ostensibly to round up weapons to pass on to the victorious Allies, but in fact secretly committed to working with Atatürk to establish their own government. He took this small group with him to Anatolia, where they worked together to build a base before declaring their independence. Atatürk used his time in Anatolia to forge a clearer understanding of not only a common core of ideas but how to respond to the issues he and his officers would face once in power.
Lee Kuan Yew, through Raffles Institution and Raffles College, through meetings with Singaporeans studying in England and through his work as a lawyer defending labor union leaders and other leftists, came to know many of the talented people of his age in Singapore whose views were similar to his. Lee valued academic excellence. The inner core backing him had performed well on their school and university exams. The PAP brought together like-minded people who fought together in the struggle for independence and then in the struggle against the communists. A high proportion of this group was ethnic Chinese. The inner circle also contained a small group of Indian ethnics and Caucasians, but virtually no Malay ethnics. In the small city of Singapore their members had a broad base of common experience and personal connections. Theirs was the most cosmopolitan of the four circles of leaders, and Singapore was small enough to ensure they could meet and reach common understandings.
In China the leaders who worked closely with Deng were all longtime members of the Communist Party, but since China was so huge they came from different regions and social class backgrounds and therefore had very different perspectives. Even those in Deng’s top circles who had known each other for decades represented widely different kinds of units, each with their own subcultures. Although the politburo and the Party secretariat were small and could make decisions, it was difficult for them to form a
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small, intimate, closed group. The Party had over the years developed strong methods for preventing factionalism, making it risky for any small group, even one that included Deng, to have full and frank discussions apart from others. Although discussions had implications for personal relations, issues were discussed in a formal way in terms of common principles so that if discussions were reported to a wider group, they could be defended.
But Party discipline ensured that those below Deng could be counted on to follow agreements made at higher Party levels. Deng was concerned with achieving overall goals and was not constrained by personal loyalties.
When he considered it necessary for the sake of Party goals, Deng removed in turn the three people he worked with most closely in the reform period: Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Yang Shangkun. There were no permanent friendships, only various levels of cooperation between comrades serving the same Party.
Like Atatürk, Park had a core group of former soldiers he was close to, but the bond came not from fighting together but from the intense loyalties of certain classmates at the Korea Military Academy that was established after World War II. Park relied particularly on those in his class and several who were in the eighth and eleventh classes. The South Korea Military Academy did not provide the broad cultural training that Turkish military academies had, but since it drew on the American military’s modern equipment, academy students learned how to manage modern technology that had not yet spread to other parts of Korean society. Older academy students had received Japanese education in school and younger ones learned about the world through the U.S. army. Academy students were powerfully nationalistic and moved by the commitment they had observed earlier among young Japanese officers.
Park’s core group was the least cosmopolitan of the four, and Park himself lacked e
xperience negotiating with politicians and making appeals to the broader public. After taking power in 1961, Park assigned graduates from the military academy to serve in other sectors, including foreign policy, the bureaucracy, construction, and economic affairs. Since the academy had recruited some of the brightest people in the society, many of them, though lacking in expertise, proved to be very able and learned quickly on the job.
Park, lacking intimate relations with many other groups in the society from whom he might get accurate information, relied heavily on the KCIA to carry on secretive work and report to him. Despite the agency’s activities, many people believed that Park was bringing needed order to society, and he was popular enough to be elected president in 1963. Although the counting of votes in his later election in which he ran against Kim Dae-
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jung is deeply suspect and his ultimate abolition of direct presidential elections shows he feared the results, he still had acceptance among some of the electorate. They believed he imposed much needed order, provided security against the North, and brought economic growth.
Once the core team in each country took over responsibility for ruling, they were confronted with complex issues such as foreign relations, economics, and technology for which they had at best limited experience.
Deng had far more experience than the other leaders, but he too lacked the detailed understanding needed to deal with the new age. Deng did have experience dealing with a range of bureaucrats and had specialists he could call upon. Nor were the other three leaders, bright and self-assured, afraid to select the best and the brightest; indeed, they sought them out.
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