There and Back Again: Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour and the Legacy of Reform and Opening in China
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Barbarian to the Gate. This is Jeremiah Jenny talking to you from a few feet above the streets of Geneva, Switzerland with me as always.

My partner in crime, my co-host, David Moser. David, how are things in the old town tonight? Beijing is... Foreigners are coming back. And not just at the usual places. I've seen them out at random places way out on the outskirts of Beijing. I don't know what they're doing there. Some of them are tourists, lost tourists probably.

can't find the hotel. But I think the universities are starting to see foreign students trotting around. Xi Jinping's earth-shaking announcement that he wanted to get 50,000 Americans here in five years seems to have at least elicited a lot of planning and hopeful programs that are seeming to bear fruit. There's issues of funding and things, but

I'd say next year will be interesting because there's going to be an influx of foreigners in this foreign-free country. The 50,000 announcement, I thought that was great. It almost sounds like a threat, though, looking across the Pacific. We will have 50,000 of your children in our country by the end of this decade.

And I know he meant that in terms of study abroad, but it's hard not to kind of read another way into that. I think there are, I think that's important. There are two narratives going on here. One of which is an important one. You know, people are coming back. Students are coming back. Tourists are coming back. And, you know, I just saw there's an article going around this week. You know, one of these, like the number of, you know, international rivals is way up over the same period last year. But I also think that

Some of these articles, there's another part of this, which is with all these people coming back, how does this look compared to not last year, which is, of course, the six-month period right after the Chinese government went from locking us all down relentlessly to what's a COVID situation?

But what does it look like when compared to the period prior to COVID, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019? They haven't come back to those levels yet. And I still wonder if that will be the case. Even if it comes up to those levels in numbers, the experience will not be the same. So there's going to be a very different abnormal new normal that we'll have to get accustomed to.

Yeah, but everyone's normal is normal of when they arrive. If we were to talk to some of the folks who were, when you first got there in the 80s, if you had talked to some of the last living, the people who had been there in the 30s and 40s and 20s, they'd be like, well, it's nothing like it was back then. And of course, when I showed up in the...

I was inundated with all the people who were there in the 80s and 90s. Like, well, you should have seen it back then. So I think everybody's China experience is always going to be calibrated by the moment they set out to take a foot off the plane. It won't be the same experience you and I have had. Well, I had the Deng Xiaoping experience, fearless leader when I was here. I wonder if we have anyone who might tell us something about that era. That almost sounds like something that would be on the menu at like a sketchy massage place in San Luis Obispo.

Would you like the oil massage, the stone massage, or the Deng Xiaoping experience? Speaking of experiences, Deng Xiaoping or otherwise, we are very pleased to have with us today Dr. Jonathan Chatwin, a longtime friend of the pod. Jonathan's a travel writer and a journalist and was the author of Long Peace Street, A Walk in Modern China, which chronicled his experience.

stroll west to east across Beijing, as well as the book Anywhere Out of the World, a literary biography of the travel writer and novelist Bruce Chatwin. He is here to talk about his new book, The Southern Tour, Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future. Jonathan, how are you doing? I'm

Hi, it's good to be back. Yeah, I am. I am good. Summer has arrived in the UK. Finally, we have temperatures above 20 degrees.

And yeah, my life is pretty good over here, I would say. So Jonathan, tell us a little bit about this book. Where did the idea come from? And maybe also give us an idea. You call it the Southern Tour. And of course, we'll talk about Deng Xiaoping's famous trip. But this idea of a Southern Tour, this did not originate with Deng Xiaoping. This is a pretty important trope in Chinese political culture. Yeah, a very important trope. And yeah,

It goes back really to the mythical Imperial era.

The idea really then of going on a pilgrimage to some of China's sacred sites, so perhaps most well-known amongst them, Taishan, Mount Tai in Shandong province, which is actually where I ended my journey in the book, despite the fact that Deng Xiaoping hadn't been there. So the Southern tour as a concept has a very long heritage. In the modern era, it has become synonymous with this journey that Deng Xiaoping takes in China.

in 1992. Maybe we'll get on to the specifics of that in a minute, but in terms of where did I come up with the idea? Well, I have always been interested, as you mentioned in the intro in travel writing, in

And so for me, most having written the book on Beijing and walking across the capital, I was sort of looking around for things that I thought would be interesting journeys to make. Always looking for an excuse, I guess, to travel, travel in China. And the Southern Tour seemed to me a really interesting moment to explore for a couple of reasons. Firstly, revisiting the sites as I did of his tour in 92 gave me a chance to explore

explore some of the transformation of China in the intervening decades. And I think it's also a story that has a lot of relevance to the current leadership and prior leadership and their interest in the shaping of history in the way in which they want to write Chinese historiography and the manipulations that that can entail. So actually the title of Southern Tour comes well after Deng Xiaoping's journey

Whilst he is on the journey, it is not well known at all beyond the confines of the leadership in Zhongnanhai that he is taking this trip. In fact, it's a controversial thing to be doing. So the title, this kind of imperial title, is later imposed to add meaning

glory and sort of meaning to a journey that at the time was potentially quite problematic for those at the top of the party. It seems like, well, you mentioned Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, I think about four times in the book, but the current leader of the regime, in spite of laying a wreath at Deng's statue a couple of times,

seems to have been slowly trying to erase the legacy of Deng Xiaoping with regards to the former opening project and then also no mention of the Southern tour and anything in the recent party documents. The issue, what's going on here?

I think it's very difficult to know exactly what's going on with Xi's kind of attitude towards Deng Xiaoping. I think we can speculate as to some reasons why, despite, as you say, kind of signaling early on. So the first journey he makes is,

as leader is down to Shenzhen and he lays this wreath of flowers at the statue there and, you know, it goes back to the fishing village of Shenzhen myth where Deng Xiaoping had been in 1984 and

So he does seem to be at that point setting himself up as continuing the legacy of Deng Xiaoping. And in subsequent years, rhetoric has dialed down Deng's legacy to the point where he really isn't, as you say, mentioned at all. The historical resolution of 2021 does include references to Deng Xiaoping, but it tends to frame it in terms of Deng Xiaoping theory rather than the person himself.

I think there's a few reasons that we could potentially speculate around. One is the idea of Deng Xiaoping being necessary is problematic because if the party is always right, and if you take as the kind of two core leaders, as modern historiography does, as being Mao and Xi, well, why did you need Deng Xiaoping? Why do you need the process of reform and opening to kind of fix the problems of the Cultural Revolution?

So I think that era is problematic just for, you know, there's got to be a global sense for that reason. The other, I think, significant problem is that to talk about 1992 in the Southern Tour, you have to really be talking about 1989 now.

Not just what happened in terms of the protests at Tiananmen, but also the loss of his second general secretary in the space of a couple of years. So Jiaxiang, who's booted out of the party in 1989. Well, actually, there's a sort of process that goes on for a little bit after that, but effectively expelled from the party from that point onwards.

So I think that era is problematic. There's a recent television series made about Deng Xiaoping that stops in 1984, which I think tells you quite a lot about how comfortable the party is with that later period of the 80s. I think the other thing is that what is Deng doing in 92? He's a kind of

officially retired party elder, this octogenarian wandering around, causing problems for the official leaders, and particularly Jiang Zemin. I don't think that's perhaps a model that Xi wants to encourage as something to be emulated. I think he's far too keen to preserve his grip on power. So I think there's a few reasons there why he might not be entirely comfortable with talking about Deng Xiaobin. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember a few years ago going to the, I guess it would have been the 40th, yeah, 40th anniversary of the Reformant opening. And there was at that time a pretty big exhibition at the National Museum of China right there in Tiananmen Square. And I was struck by in this telling of the Reformant opening, the history of the Reformant opening era, there was like

four, five pictures of Deng Xiaoping and like 35 pictures of Xi Jinping, who, as far as I know, really didn't have much to do with the reform and opening era, except, of course, for killing it. And also Xi Jinping's father is kind of replacing Deng as the architect of all of that. He's gotten a lot more mention in the terms of the reform and opening up than Deng Xiaoping lately. And in the Fuxing Zhiru, the Guo Bo,

You know, I mean, you're right. There's only like a few pictures of Deng Xiaoping. There's pictures of Xi Zhongshu in there. Yeah, and I think that's a, I agree that there has been a kind of steady revision of history that has diminished Deng Xiaoping's importance. And I like your point, Jonathan, which is how do you figure this figure? Because as you pointed out, and as you point out in the book, part of his work,

claim to power. Part of the reason he was able to push through a lot of these reforms, and some of these reforms actually predated his time in power, going back to Zhou Enlai and of course, my man, shout out to the mighty Hua Guofeng. But you can't, I think one reason that he was able to get all of this done and make the turn that he was able to make and effectively sideline, or at least push back against some of the party elders who thought he was going too far was the

because the cultural revolution was such a disaster. If it hadn't been so bad, it would have been much harder to change. It's easier to convince people to fix a system that is clearly to everyone involved except for a few people broken. And it's a fix that somewhat kind of works. And you're right. I mean, we look at his legacy and we're like, hey, we turn a corner. And part of that is because a corner needed to be turned. And if you're Xi Jinping and you're interested in things like historical nihilism and not

talking about the problems of the past then of course that's going to be an issue yeah and there was in in 2013 there's a an idea that is introduced by she of the of the two undeniables and and this is that we must not use the period of history after reform and opening to deny the period of history prior to reform and opening and and vice versa so you know this idea that uh

You know, one doesn't, you can't just talk about the 80s without talking about the cultural revolution that's gone before. And as I say, if you look at the historical resolution, it's very much centered around the idea that the party is always right. And so, yeah,

I think it's interesting to your point about his diminishment in terms of current kind of iconography of leaders. I mean, his position as the kind of architect of reform and opening is itself a kind of mythologization, right, that happens post-92 in particular in order to kind of functionally erase Jiazi Yang, who's actually the leader who's perhaps most responsible for

at least the detail of the policies of reform and opening. So the fact that he centered in the first place as the kind of great hero of reform and opening is to occlude some of the controversies and problems of the late 80s. And then he has now been himself sort of moved on from that. And as you say, Xi Zengshen, who is a significant figure within this story is perhaps a little bit easier for Xi to talk about. Maybe you should give us just the basic ABCs of this other tour of its importance, its

maybe historically, but also especially for Deng Xiaoping in this special situation, in terms of regional differences, in terms of political pressures, in terms of him having to massage the reform and opening up to lessen, you know, hardships and pain, and also to keep the people optimistic on the same page in terms of going forward. At each stop, there was, seems like there was a separate kind of special message.

Sure. I think to kind of understand the importance of the Southern tour, you have to kind of conceptualize it within the key debates that are going on at that point. And also within what's going on in global politics as well with the fall of the Soviet Union. So, yeah.

Post 89, but even before that in the summer of 1988, which is a period where an inflation crisis happens. Inflation has already become a problem, but it really speeds up in the summer of 1988 as a result of some rumours around price controls being loosened. And this creates a kind of an overheating trend.

that needs to be tamped down and the economy enters into a phase known as rectification, where effectively those who are ideologically suspect of

freewheeling reform and opening, tighten the controls again. And then, of course, the protests of 1989 happen. And for a lot of those same people, and we tend to term those people conservatives, which is confusing, I think, to a lot of people who are perhaps unfamiliar with Chinese politics, because it means something different to what it means in the UK, for example. Conservatives, because they want to conserve the kind of planned elements of the economy, the kind of older way of doing things, if you like.

So the conservative faction see what's going on in 88 and 89 as kind of proof that reform and opening is problematic. Yeah, importing foreign ideas, foreign capital. This is not a good idea. It's going to cause all of these problems and we need to tighten things up.

Deng Xiaoping takes the opposite view and he says, look, actually, what we need to do is we need to improve people's lives and that will give the party legitimacy. And so post 89, he's engaged in a debate with those conservatives effectively saying we need to be more ambitious in our economic growth. At the same time, the conservatives are saying we need to keep things dialed down, tamped down in order to retain control.

And he, over the period of 1919, 1991, post-Tiananmen, goes to Shanghai a couple of times to try and create the momentum to get reform and opening back to its high, you know, sort of the double digit growth of the mid 80s. He doesn't succeed in that.

in 1990 and 1991. But in 92, he takes this much longer journey where he goes to the special economic zones of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, as well as Shanghai, and appeals to local leaders and local people. And that does signal a decisive moment where the leadership changes

shift course back towards a more ambitious economic policy, which really emphasizes growth and emphasizes the importation of, well, lots of foreign money coming in and foreign technology in order to bolster that growth. A lot of the history as it was kind of told after, say, 1992, sometimes it does also slip in this kind of teleology that

Cultural revolution, bad. Reform and opening, good. And then Tiananmen Square kind of knocked everything off the rails. Then Deng Xiaoping did his southern tour and got everything on track and go-go China into the 90s and 2000s. But I think your book does a really good job of explaining the internal dynamics of what was happening here. Deng's political position, despite his moniker as paramount leader of China,

The politics he had to go through were very complicated, and it wasn't necessarily a preordained conclusion that these reforms would survive into the 90s, survive all the shocks to the system in the late 80s, or even survive him. So, you know, in thinking about this Southern tour, how did the Southern tour help him to kind of make sure that

that his legacy would continue. What are some of the ways that the Southern tour, at least in his mind, helped to kind of make him more optimistic that after he was gone, after he stepped off history stage, that his ideas would still have a part to play? Yeah, I think it is entirely intentional in terms of his legacy and writing a different final chapter to his biography. You know, that

If he didn't go on the Southern Tour, if he wasn't successful, then the last bit of his biography is Tiananmen and its aftermath. So I think it is intentional. And I think perhaps one of the, not misconceptions, but people focus with the Southern Tour on the idea that it reignites economic growth. And it certainly does that. I mean, you pivot back to...

in 1992 to a 13% growth almost immediately from, you know, in the prior years, the prior three years, much lower growth figures. So it does have that immediate kind of turbo boost effect. But actually, I think what is most important about the Southern Tour is that it legitimises the

ways of making money that have been all the way through the 80s deeply controversial. So it legitimizes the special economic zones, which have been deeply problematic for the conservative faction within the party all the way through the 80s and actually haven't been always enormously successful. We tend to think of Shenzhen in its current incarnation as this kind of glossy,

futuristic metropolis, but there were lots and lots of problems with its development, real, you know, not sort of ideological, but actual real kind of infrastructure issues with its development through the 80s. And also there's this constant debate through the 80s about whether using foreign money, technology, capital coming in from Hong Kong, whether that is capitalist or socialist or not. And Deng Xiaoping has always been clear right from the beginning of his leadership that it's not

that it's ownership by the people because the money isn't going to him or

or any of the other leadership. I mean, ironically, of course, that becomes a big problem in terms of corruption, but because theoretically that money isn't flowing into the pockets of people in the party, it's ownership of the people, therefore it's socialist, not capitalist. So in 92, what he does is he goes round to all of these sites of controversy and economic importance and basically rubber stamps them and says, this model is acceptable, it's acceptably socialist.

And in doing so, he sort of allows Jiang Zemin the rhetorical space to say the same thing. And after that, anything within that, within what he's rubber stamped is permissible. And therefore people get going immediately with putting in their applications for development zones. And I think in 92, they have 6,000 new development zones that people are starting to start using.

You know, it really does operate as a kind of a deus ex machina in some ways coming down and saying, you know, this is this is OK. You're allowed to do this. And Jiang Zemin picks that up. And he in the 14th Party Congress in October of 92 sort of he sort of adopts that rhetoric himself. And from that point onwards, again,

pretty much anything goes. And what's interesting, of course, is that the problems that preceded the Southern Tour and preceded Tiananmen, the inflation problems around kind of unequal development in terms of being concentrated in the coastal provinces, exploitation of workers, none of that goes away. But people, a kind of deal is struck by which, in which people are kind of able to ignore some of those negatives. And that is just the model that then is pursued all the way through, all the way through the 90s, really.

Just to follow up on that, I mean, it seems like that Deng never really resolved the contradictions between the new economic reforms and the tenets of Marxism, Leninism. I remember not reading them that much myself, but really talking to other people who were reading party theoretical journals, that they were tying themselves in knots.

to explain how this could still be socialism. I mean, just calling it socialism with Chinese characteristics is this kind of a hand-waving there. You know, in terms of his speeches during the Southern tour, it's just a matter of rallying cries, you know, calling for faith in the party and its judgment, willingness to experiment, admitting that mistakes will be made, but we will correct them, and so on and so forth, and also maybe kicking out

or forcing into retirement a million or so aging cadres to like shut them up. I mean, it seems like it's all hand-waving and to this day they've never really resolved those contradictions. It seems like

He just said, you know, ipso facto, this is the case and it's OK. And don't ask any questions. It's socialism with Chinese characteristics. Yeah, I agree. I think he fundamentally is interested in retaining the party's control. He sees the way to do that as being people observing their lives materially improving. And that's one of his real issues with the period of sort of post-88 rectification period.

is that people have got used to, it's not like, you know, 1976 anymore. People have got used through the eighties to see, of seeing their lives materially improve and their ability, you know, being able to make money. And, you know, in the late eighties that the wheels start to come off that model, you know, you've got high inflation and employment is a problem. Dung is really very laser focused on the idea that we have to, they have to get back to a model where people feel that they are getting better off effectively. And that's going to legitimize party control. But as you say, David, the,

the kind of ideological, I mean, that's the Conservatives' big problem in a way with Deng Xiaoping is he's not interested really in promoting the ideological work that the people like Tian Yun, Deng Lijun think should be going on. He is laser focused really on this one number, which is the kind of headline growth statistics.

And that causes all sorts, as I've already sort of alluded to, all sorts of problems, which no one ever really, you know, until potentially Xi Jinping, not that I'm here to defend Xi Jinping's economic record, but until he's

he takes over those problems of environmental degradation, corruption. They're very much not dealt with by any of the subsequent leadership. Well, I wonder if part of that was because after Deng Xiaoping or thinking in terms of like after Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, there's a certain kind of managerial quality to those leaders. Zhu Rongji, they definitely had their own ideas and they made policies that were very important. But the

There were parameters within which they could operate. They were often more comfortable tinkering with the machine than replacing parts. We can definitely talk about the wisdom of some of the major decisions that Xi Jinping has made or directions that he has set.

But it's clear that he has been given or gave himself a mandate to do more than just tinker. And I suspect that may be one reason why some of these problems were able to be addressed in the way they were in the last 10 years, although also setting the stage for perhaps even larger problems to emerge as well. Yeah, and I think, I mean, it's always going to be more appealing to keep the kind of high growth model alive.

going in that Deng Zeping mold for those subsequent leaders, because actually fixing some of the issues, I mean, the big issue really, which still is a huge challenge for China's economy is what do you do with the state-owned enterprises that are so dominant? That's a problem that, you know, Zhu Rongji comes in in the early 90s and tries to kind of untie that very complex knot. But, you know, again, all the way through subsequent leadership, they're kind of

not really able to fix some of these really substantial structural problems in the China's economy. You know, things to do with as well, you know, how many times have we talked, China's leaders talk about fixing the problem with hukou and, and, and, you know, that's been, that debate has been going on for as long as I can remember really talking about, you know, needing to enable people to move more straightforwardly and access services in different cities and,

to bolster China's economy. So I feel like whilst that low-hanging fruit was still there to pick, why not do that? I think what Xi Jinping said

has encountered is that you can't, that export model, foreign investment, foreign money coming in, cheap labor making stuff, exporting it, that doesn't really work anymore in terms of China's economy. No one has managed to cultivate a kind of consumer middle class that's going to sustain China's economy. And I know that's one of the things that Xi Jinping is trying to do.

but they've just kept on going with this debt-fueled investment model and export-led growth, and they've kind of run out of road with that. And so Xi's left with some difficult decisions to make, really. I'd like to also talk, Jonathan, too. I mean, this is your third book. I'm curious, you know, we're in a very contested and confrontational era when it comes to things China. And I want to get your take, you know, what's it like these days

being an author or writing a China book, you know, how are people receiving it, both in terms of publishers, the greater public?

If you don't mind, like, you know, peeling back the curtain a little bit, can you talk a little bit about what the process is like to research and write a book like this in an era where it's a much more challenging environment to do this kind of work? Yeah, it is a more challenging environment. And I think it's a real shame that we've lost kind of light and shade of writing on China. And so many people that when I lived there, you know, people who've been there for a long time, journalists,

and other writers have left China completely understandably. And I think if you look at the type of China book that tends to get published, and I get sent a lot of China books through a review from publishers, it has narrowed enormously to, I don't know what the percentages would be, but sort of 80 to 90% are just international relations focused, particularly trade war, interest in the trade war,

I saw something Alec Ash has written a new book recently, and there was something on Twitter where he'd given an interview and talked about how important it is to humanize Chinese people, right? That we can't possibly understand the country just in terms of these kind of crude political binaries. And, you know, as with anything in Twitter, somebody had kind of commented suggesting this was akin to humanizing kind of Nazi concentration camp guards, right?

And I thought, I mean, I don't want to read too much of that single data point, but I do feel that even something that to me is as dramatically uncontroversial as saying, maybe we should understand Chinese people a little bit more on their own terms.

I think there is just an unwillingness to do that. And so I think that means then that pitching those kinds of books is a lot harder. And I think, unless you're Peter Esler, probably, if you're pitching that sort of China book now, I think it's going to be much harder to get published. And realistically, with a book like mine, what tends to be the main area of interest for people, the journalists who might be interested in covering it or talking about

about it is its relevance to the Xi Jinping era. And I think that's a shame because I think it's a story that's worth understanding on its own terms, that we don't just have to look at China as a, that Chinese history as a way of understanding the present day. Well, you know, there's lots, and I tried within the book to include lots of kind of detail of the time and also of Deng Xiaoping's own life to try and give it kind of depth and colour.

But yeah, it's depressing. And I think until we get to a point where people are willing to, it's interesting. I mean, you know, this is hugely anecdotal, but I noticed recently quite a lot of

TV programs, we just finished watching, I don't know whether it's got the same name in the US, but Tokyo Vice, the TV series. And then we had Shogun on, you know, my wife and I have two small children. So we watched a lot of, you know, a lot of series. And I was thinking, why aren't there's nothing like you can't imagine a program, an historical drama about China getting made. You know, and what a shame that is that TV companies would not even entertain the idea, I don't think.

of making a programme like that, just because it would be so controversial. So yeah, I think pitching those kinds of books is harder and harder. And it leads to a very narrow view, you know, a ridiculously reductive view of a country of huge diversity and, you know, enormous population. And we're really fixated on one or two people and places in that country. And it's a real shame for everyone, really.

The ending of your book sort of echoed your previous book, Long Peace Street. It's kind of a trek through the trajectory that you're writing about.

In the case of your previous book, it's the center of Beijing, Chang'anjie. But you retrace the steps of Deng Xiaoping and the southern tour, but this time by high-speed train. What were your thoughts? You write about them, but in a certain sense, did it feel like this, in fact, what you saw, this new China with high-speed trains, is the legacy of Deng Xiaoping? And whether or not it's ever in the official record that it's there for the world to see?

I think you're saying at the beginning about how the day you step off the plane in China, that's your reference point for everything that subsequently happens in the country. And that's definitely true. And when I first lived there, the high-speed train, I think Beijing, Shanghai was there, but everywhere I traveled were on slow sleeper trains and

And yeah, so during this journey back in 2019, I was whisked between cities at lightning speed on these air-conditioned trains. I think one of the things that I'm reassured by is that it doesn't ever take very long to get away from that version of China. And actually, in a way, the model of urbanization that the Southern Tour bequeaths, which are these kind of

perpendicular highways through glass canyons of skyscrapers, huge amounts of debt used to produce this incredibly impressive network of high-speed rail. It's actually probably the thing I like least about China, to be honest with you. Apart from, it's a hot day and you're trekking around Nanjing and you come across a nice air-conditioned mall, then I'm into that. But

But otherwise, you know, what I like about China and what I like about traveling there is something different. And I think it doesn't take that long to get away from that sleek, glossy model. And actually, the journey, I went from Guangzhou to Shanghai on one of the old sleeper trains. And it was reassuring to see that they were as they ever had been. So I think, you know, for me, one of the revelations of writing the book in a way was me

Coming to a story that we are often quite unquestioning of, which is that Deng Xiaoping had this kind of economically...

very positive impact on the country. And I think that's true. I don't think you can dispute that. But I think in all sorts of ways, as time went on, I was more and more interested in the kind of problems that had been bequeathed by that model and the problems that have been bequeathed in, you know, to bring it back crudely to the present day, the problems that have been bequeathed to its current leadership. Well, Jonathan, I really want to thank you for coming on our podcast today. The book is The Southern Tour, Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future. And if I may...

I know this is an audio podcast, and if you've ever seen me, you'll know why that's the case. But I want to, if you get a chance to take a look at the cover, because the cover says Southern Tour, and it's a picture of a statue, a very large statue of Deng Xiaoping in mid-stride, which gives the impression, I think, from the immediate view that this is like a Godzilla figure trapping through...

And it reminds me, there was a poster, which you can find on the Chinese posters website from 1992. And it's a similar one. We'll put a link to this on the show page of Deng Xiaoping looming

over Shenzhen from a poster from his southern tour. And it also gives a very kind of Deng Xiaoping as Kaiju, Deng Xiaoping as Godzilla feel to it, which I suspect may be part of his historical legacy, despite the attempts by recent museum curators and a few leaders to minimize his role, somebody who was four foot 11 in life.

much larger in history. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Thanks for having me, guys. And thank you, David. My pleasure. I hope to see you next time. Yeah, whenever I get back to China. Okay. Thank you all for listening and join us again for another episode of Barbarians at the Gate. And this is the point where, you know, I say, cue the drums. So cue the drums.