With Deng Xiaoping near death, the heir-splitting game in China has already begun. One hard-liner who will carry Deng’s mantle: Ding Guangen, who, as the Communist Party’s propaganda boss, represents the worst of cultural repression. He started as Deng’s bridge partner in the early 1980s, rising to the head of the party secretariat right after Tiananmen. In his current role, he’s made sure that award-winning films by Chinese directors aren’t seen at home, and yanked from the bookshops novels set in the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. Optimists hope Ding will suffer the same fate as the most ardent followers of Mao Zedong, who were purged just months after Mao’s death in 1976. But don’t court him out: at the end of an important economics conference this month, Ding appeared on TV seated first in hierarchical order after the Politburo’s Standing Committee–seeming to outrank higher officials. Ding’s fate in the post-Deng era could be a good barometer of political change in China itself.
