Open-door policy 'needed’

Press, 23 August 1984, Page 10

Open-door policy 'needed’

NZPA-Reuter Peking China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, said yesterday that China needed both Marxism and foreign capital investment. Mr Deng, aged 80, who has reversed many of the policies of Chairman Mao Tse-tung since taking the reins of power two years after Mao’s death in 1976, is the driving force behind China’s ambitious modernisation programme. In an interview in the weekly magazine “Outlook,” Mr Deng said China needed Socialism in order to prosper. But he was also quoted as saying that the isolationism practised in the first 30 years of Communist rule after 1949 showed a closeddoor oolicy did not wfjk. “The reason Chin#* has

been historically backward is due to our traditional closed-door isolationism ... all things considered, the experience of these 30 years has proved it doesn’t work to try to build up the economy behind a closed door,” he said. Mr Deng, a heavy smoker in spite of doctors’ advice, was recently said to be “as fit as a fiddle” by the official New China News Agency. He is known to tire quickly, but he regularly meets foreign visitors. Diplomats said he had no health problems other than impaired hearing in his right ear. The magazine published a photograph, said to have been taken last month, of him swimming in the sea. He is still China’s paramount leader and all key

decisions are referred to him. The day-to-day running of thefiommunist Party and Goverijnent is conducted by his two trusted lieutenants,

the Premier, Zhao Ziyang, and the party’s general secretary, Hu Yaobang. China now actively seeks foreign investment and technical expertise in an effort to quadruple economic output before the turn of the century. Mr Deng said that the foundation of the economy was broad enough to absorb foreign capital without damaging its Socialist nature. If China had opted for capitalism instead of Communism in 1949, only a small fraction of the population would have prospered while the rest would have remained poor. “There wasn’t enough food to go round. Capitalism wouldn’t have we had to adopt he said.