The Washington Post Henry Kissinger  
Recent conversations with Chinese leaders have convinced me that the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that has just opened in Beijing is likely to mark the rare example of a ruling group that voluntarily diminishes its dominant position. Of course the scope of government in a country of 1 billion population is comparable to nothing else. The majority of ChinaÛªs provinces each has a population larger than those of the most populous European states. Most of ChinaÛªs dynasties have each lasted longer than the entire history of the United States. China thus has a perspective all its own. About no other society would it be possible to repeat the apocryphal story of a Chinese leaderÛªs reply to the question of what he thought of the French Revolution: ÛÏIt is too early to tell."</br></br>The task of governing China is made all the more daunting by its peopleÛªs extraordinary mix of individualism and fierce sense of cultural uniqueness. Rulers have often despaired of achieving coherence by any means other than monolithic rule only to be submerged in the end by the elemental common sense of that multitude that defends its fundamental values by patient endurance. At the height of his power, when complimented by Nixon on having changed the face of China, Mao replied: ÛÏNo, I have only changed Beijing and a few of its environs.Û I thought then he was being polite; I now know he was prophetic.</br></br>Indeed MaoÛªs intuition of the ultimate futility of his doctrinal obsessions caused him to unleash the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution. But in the end the Chinese people outlasted the violent attempt to impose an unnatural conformity by destroying all ancient values. Ironically, the Cultural Revolution brought about the exact opposite of its intention: it guaranteed reform. Every contemporary Chinese leader has survived a decade of degradation, imprisonment and deprivation. Far from being broken by the ordeal, they emerged serenely determined to reform the system that made such suffering possible.</br></br>This legacy is the principal reason to be optimistic about the poignant task Deng Xiaoping has set for himself: to abandon, at the end of his life as a revolutionary, his movementÛªs quest to bend reality to theory. Deng is fond of saying that he is neither a reformer nor a conservative, but someone ÛÏwho has sought truth from facts.Û</br></br>That truth as it will emerge at the party congress is likely to contradict almost every previous Communist practice elsewhere: it will reject detailed central planning; it will implement two principles that are revolutionary in Communist terms: that a Communist state can prosper only if the Communist Party abandons the detailed supervision of government and if the government loosens its grip over the economy.