December 21, 2004 --Editor's Notes: He comes from a special family, but he has always lived a simple and plain life; he was once subject to inhuman treatment, but he has been devoted himself to the promotion of humanitarianism; he is one of China's 60 million disabled persons, but he is also a pioneer and guide in the cause of China's handicapped people. Beginning from December 15, People's Daily (Overseas Edition) will relay in two parts the text of the exclusive interview with Deng taken place on December 4 as appeared in a CCTV broadcast program.
December 3 every year is an unusual day for Deng Pufang, because the annual World Disabled Day always pushes him and the China Disabled Persons' Federation he led into the limelight. As the eldest son of China's second-generation leader Deng Xiaoping, the name of Deng Pufang has been closely tied with the country's welfare cause for the disabled.
Reporter: They say your name is of special origin. Is it really given by Marshal Liu Bocheng?
Deng: Yes. I needed a formal name before going to school in Chongqing. At that time the two families of Liu and Deng lived together and their children played together. So my father asked General Liu to give me a name.
Reporter: But your father himself could do this.
Deng: But, you know, Marshal Liu is a man of great learning. Because my infant name was "Pangpang" ("pang" means plump), Marshal Liu added "u" to "p" and capped "ang" with "f", and put the two together to give me the name "Pufang" which means "plain and upright". He personally consulted the dictionary before he did this. This name gives me a life-long influence.
Born in wartimes, little Deng Pufang followed his father to move from place to place, until the Deng family settled down in Beijing in the early days of the founding of P.R. China in 1949. Just as his name suggests, Deng continued to live a plain life as a child of an ordinary family despite the fact that his father was a state leader.
Deng: When I was studying in the "August 1" primary school, there was a bad tendency among students--comparing rankings of their fathers, saying: someone's father is a regimental commander; someone's a senior commander and someone's a general. When asked what my father was, I said I didn't know, or he was nobody. This gave me the feeling that it seemed we were inferior to others.
Reporter: Is it that your parents particularly asked you not to argue with others about such things?
Deng: No, my father didn't say anything about his official ranking, nor did my mother tell me my father's post. We never asked about this. It was not until studying in grade five when I was 11 that somebody told me secretly "your father is finance minister", I asked "really?" At that time my father was acting concurrently as finance minister. I remember that one day when I was in middle school, my bike broke down. I had not a penny in my pocket, so I borrowed money from my teacher to buy a bus ticket. Later the teacher asked me, why, as son of the General Secretary, you didn't have a single penny in your pocket? All my trousers were patched at that time, When I had my new trousers on, I didn't know where to put my legs.
Reporter: For a long time after you entered middle school, your classmates, even your teachers didn't know you were son of Deng Xiaoping?
Deng: That's the case. I stayed six years in the No. 13 Middle School, and in senior grade two, a Youth League cadre of our class wondered if they should invite my father to write an inscription for the class activity. So he asked another League member to talk to me, since my father was the General Secretary (of the Communist Party of China, or CPC). That classmate exclaimed, Oh, he is son of the General Secretary! We had been classmates for five or six years but he never knew it. At that time I didn't think it as anything, for I was the same as others, nothing special.
Reporter: Did your father set any special demands on you? Didn't he tell you not to say anything about your family background to others?
Deng: My father didn't, but my mother did say that, she hoped we wouldn't mention that. We didn't feel it necessary to say what my father was, either, and we intentionally avoided mentioning it when filling in forms.
Reporter: Why you did so?
Deng: I couldn't figure out what my parents thought about this. But as I recall it now, I think maybe they hoped that we could live in a normal environment. I benefited significantly from this point, from childhood up to grown-up, I lived, played and studied together with a group of ordinary children, without any feelings of estrangement. Isn't this great?
Reporter: But at that time it was impossible for you to imagine the subsequent twists and turns in your life, wasn't it?
Deng: Of course not. It was a society filled with ideals at that time, in which we were educated to establish an outlook on life and a communist world outlook. When I took the college entrance examination, I applied for majoring in nuclear physics of technical physics department, longing for working in deep mountains after graduation.
Deng Pufang's revolutionary ideal, however, didn't come true as he wished. In 1966, when Deng was in his fourth college year, the Cultural Revolution started. His father Deng Xiaoping soon became a central target of attacks. Deng Pufang, as well as his elder sister Deng Lin and younger sister Deng Nan, all got severely criticized and kept under control at their respective schools, for the rebellion factions attempted to exact from them "evidence of crime" against their father.
As Deng Xiaoping's eldest son, Deng Pufang bore the brunt of those vicious attacks. He suffered brutal persecutions, was labeled as a counterrevolutionary and was disqualified from being a probationary Party member. In August 1968, Deng Pufang, who could no longer endure maltreatment and humiliation, chose to throw himself down a building. He has since then refused to recall the nightmare and this is the first time he revealed to the media that phase of history.
Reporter: Finally, what kind of pressure gave you unbearable pain?
Deng: after a long time of interrogations, probably, I felt that I was a person who would not tell lies but could not tell the truth. I hoped that I was a man of dignity, but if I were a counterrevolutionary, there would be no future and hope for me. I'm a person eager to do well and, frankly speaking, I was quite revolutionary at that time. But when you realized that, yourself, an earnest revolutionary, was treated as a counterrevolutionary, you would be fatally frustrated. So when I heard them calling me counterrevolutionary, I thought it was the end of me.
Reporter: When you resorted to extremity you must be firmly determined to die?
Deng: Yes, that's it. At that moment I was pretty sure that an end had come to me, your career, whether as a revolutionary or a counterrevolutionary, had ended. There was no way before you. Recalling that now, I realize that I was still young at that time, but I was not flexible enough.
Reporter: Where did they send you after you got injured?
Deng: To the No.3 Beijing Hospital first, and, after staying a couple of days there, without undergoing operation, I was transferred to the Hospital of Peking University.
Reporter: Why no operation?
Deng: There certainly would be no operation on a counterrevolutionary like me.
Reporter: How many days did you stay in the first hospital?
Deng: I don't remember. I had a dizzy mind at that time.
Reporter: Were you conscious?
Deng: Probably I came round once after injury, but fainted again, when I came to again I found myself in hospital.
Reporter: When did you get treatment?
Deng: I was given no medical treatment, and was just lying there.
Reporter: Just lying?
Deng: Yes.
Reporter: When did you really feel the need to live on after you finally came to?
Deng: Never. When I finally came around I was utterly dejected. Life and death made no difference for me. As we Chinese often say, nothing is more lamentable than a loss of heart, I was just in such a state in which one feels no pain when he has a loss of heart.
The lack of timely treatment has irremediably paralyzed Deng Pufang from the chest down. Six months later, he was sent to a welfare home in suburban Beijing. At that time, the couple of Deng Xiaoping had been transferred to Jiangxi to work in the countryside. This turned out to be the hardest time for Deng Pufang.
In June 1971, upon repeated requests of Deng Xiaoping, the central authority finally agreed to send Deng Pufang to Jiangxi, where he felt deeply his father's love.
Reporter: How many years hadn't you seen your parents?
Deng: Three or four years probably!
Reporter: Didn't your father say anything when seeing you after three or four years' separation, especially when you departed you were a healthy lad?
Deng: No, he said nothing. He just looked at me, speechless. I don't remember seeing him weeping, but I knew he was weeping at heart, tears or even blood.
Reporter: How did you spend your days in Jiangxi?
Deng: At that time, I was no longer a Party member, and I was actually jobless.
Reporter: Your physical conditions didn't allow you a job even if you were given one.
Deng: No. My parents still hoped that I could do something, so did I myself. I tried to teach myself the skill of fixing radios or cameras at an army factory. But workers there were poor and there were scarcely any such things for me to repair. So I began reading books at home, and I could read a pile in a week.
Reporter: Who looked after you? And how?
Deng: My mother did most of the work, and my grandma helped. For a heavier task, such as rubbing me down, my father did it.
Reporter: But he was already 69 then.
Deng: Yes, an old man indeed. At that time my mother suffered from serious high blood pressure, and my grandma was even older, so my father became the robust labor in the family.
Reporter: The tragedy on you must cause great pain to your parents, could you see it?
Deng: I couldn't. He must be sad, but he wouldn't show it.
Reporter: As a state leader, he couldn't afford time to take good care of his children.
Deng: But he never mentioned these things even after the Cultural Revolution ended. I always believe I've never done anything unfair to others, except for my parents, in my life.
Reporter: Why?
Deng: Because what I did inflicted great pain on them, I feel terribly sorry for them. They took good care of me and educated me meticulously. But I brought them much pain in return.
Reporter: But your fate is linked with their political fate.
Deng: Of course, all of us are linked up, and isn't it the case with my brothers and sisters? But it's me who gave them the greatest pain.
Deng Pufang's state of illness showed no improvement despite much treatment after the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution. During his stay in a foreign hospital, he was deeply impressed by the modernized medical and rehabilitation systems of developed countries. In 1983, Deng Pufang and his fellow patients from their sick beds called on the National People's Congress and (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) to set up a research center for the rehabilitation of the Chinese handicapped and a welfare fund for the nation's disabled. Their proposals were finally approved and the cause of helping the Chinese disabled was put on the right track.
Reporter: When did the idea of working for the disabled come to your mind?
Deng: I never thought of that at the very beginning. I just discussed the matter with a few fellow patients: There were recovery centers in foreign countries, and people like us needed recovery. This made it necessary for a rehabilitation center to be built in China. But our country lacked sufficient money, so we needed to raise a small sum of money from outside and to set up a foundation. I never thought of anything grand. But, much to my surprise, as soon as the foundation was set up, large amounts of letters and visitors flooded in, and there came all sorts of unfairness toward the disabled in their employment, schooling, treatment, as well as all forms of bullying, insulting and discrimination against them. You can't look upon these without doing anything, you need to do something and do it step by step.
Reporter: Did you ask your parents' opinion about this?
Deng: I told them when I began to put into practice my idea about the establishment of a recovery center, and my mother agreed. She made a special phone call to Cui Naifu, then civil affairs minister, to ask him to help me. I didn't know she did this until Minister Cui himself told me later. I totally depended on my mother in deciding to ask uncles and aunts to come to my help. Later I invited many of them to be my board directors. In this way I began doing this work bit by bit. But later as the work went ahead, more difficulties arose. To overcome these difficulties, I finally set up the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF), to work in a big way for the welfare of the disabled, and launch large-scale programs for health recovery, education, employment, publicity as well as for the establishment of a legal system and a working system. This work must be done step by step and in a down-to-earth manner, for only in this way is it possible to make people change their concepts. To change concepts cannot be achieved merely by calling people to do so once or twice. Instead, continuous efforts have to be made to do publicity work among the masses, to remind them of the need to do that and let them hear the term "disabled persons", so they will gradually realize that disabled persons are also human beings after all.
Reporter: Of course, you are doing this work pretty well and in a big way. But how have you achieved this?
Deng: bit by bit and in a thoroughgoing manner. You have to set your eyes on possible crisis, instead of seeing only your achievements. I've done so in the past two decades. I have been trying to find what problems there are with my foundation and my federation. So, from the very beginning, I've taken "humanity, honesty and cleanness" as our vocational ethics.
When the China Disabled Persons' Federation founded in 1988, Deng Pufang served as the chairman and Party secretary. To raise more money for the disabled, a business institution, China Kanghua Development Corporation, was established with approval from the State Council. Practice, however, brought much trouble to Deng along with the collection of funds.
Reporter: Which period of time was the hardest for you?
Deng: It was really difficult to gear it up at the beginning, but it was also the most flourishing time for our business. Later in 1988, it was alleged that I was the biggest embezzler of China, and that my personal savings deposits in foreign banks exceeded US$30 billion.
Reporter: Was that true?
Deng: I said later at a press conference that if anyone of you could go and find out that sum of money, it would be enough for me to keep only 1 percent of the money and the rest would be donated to the country.
Reporter: But at that time, in people's impression, the Corporation was really booming.
Deng: That's a chance given by history. Since you wanted to start an undertaking, but you had no money, so later you started a company, which was quite normal at that time. But later I realized that operating a company got you entangled in troubles. They said your work on the disabled was a philanthropic undertaking whereas your operation of a company meant to make money, these two categorically different codes of conduct could hardly be harmonized in our organization. So later I decided to hand over the company to the State Council and myself was concentrated on work for the disabled.
Reporter: You did so not because of pressure from public opinion?
Deng: That's what happened later. Although the company had already been handed over, its title, however, fell upon me, and contradictions were heaped upon me all of a sudden, resulting in misunderstanding of me.
Reporter: How did you look upon these misunderstandings?
Deng: Naturally I was at first a bit anxious. I asked myself these questions: Why should people treat me this way and what mistakes I had made and crime I had committed? Later I became convinced. It's only a matter like this. Black is black and white is white, can that be changed? Besides, I thought I had died once, and all the rest were gained by fate. I've never thought I can live until now. My physical conditions were not good when I started my work, and I suffered from urethral infection once every two months, sometimes once a month. Each time when that came to me I had to go to the hospital for I was running a fever as high as 40 degrees Centigrade. My kidney and my liver did not function well either, I thought I would die at any time. But, unexpectedly, I survived, and now I can even accept your interview, these are all gained by fate.
Reporter: Have you ever talked with your father about these grievances and misunderstandings you suffered?
Deng: No. But I'm sure he wouldn't hope to see such misunderstandings, so I had avoided causing trouble to him. Because he was too important, whatever we did were minor things.
Under Deng Pufang's leadership, rapid progress has been made in the cause of China's disabled persons. By now, local branches of the Federation have been set up through the Chinese mainland. The Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of the Disabled adopted in 1990 put the rights and interests of the disabled under legal protection and noticeable improvements have been made in their rehabilitation, education, employment, sports and cultural life. Meanwhile, the social awareness of helping the disabled has been significantly enhanced, with a batch of disability-friendly facilities built in large and medium sized cities to facilitate disabled persons' outgoing and participation in social life. While Deng Pufang himself said that he had done what his father wished him to do.
Due to his distinguished contribution to the cause of the disabled, the China Disabled Persons' Federation and Deng Pufang himself were granted a series of awards. On December 10, 2003, Deng Pufang was given that year's United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights, thus making him the first Chinese and the first handicapped person in the world to have received the UN human rights prize.
Reporter: How did you look upon the prize you were awarded late last year?
Deng: I took it lightly. It's a good thing. Everybody was happy, I was happy, too. But I was not very much excited. For me, the prize only indicated two things, first, the cause of Chinese disabled persons has got international recognition; second, the international community has paid more attention to the field of the handicapped. I have won quite a number of prizes, a heap actually, all were given by international organizations and the prizes were no small ones. But the present one is given by the UN, so it weighs heavier. That's all.
Reporter: But, as a matter of fact, there would be no CDPF without you.
Deng: You cannot say that. Even without me, the cause of the disabled could all the same go on, the process might be somewhat different. As the globe would not stop turning without any person, so the cause of the handicapped is bound to develop, without me doing it, others will do. I believe the cause of the disabled is actually a link in the country's process of reform and opening up, it doesn't exist alone, without this prerequisite, nothing will come of it, no mater how capable you are, how much humanitarianism you talk about and what desperate efforts you have exerted. Without this background, isn't it ridiculous if you insist on saying what you've achieved in the cause? So, I have long intended to pass on key CDPF posts to younger people, and now I've done that. I've brought up the new generation CDPF cadres and pushed them onto the most important leading posts.
Reporter: How far are you from this goal?
Deng: It's completed in the main. Now I'm neither Party secretary nor president of the CDPF board of directors. I passed them to the youngsters, and now I only keep the post of chairman.
Reporter: Why?
Deng: A person will invariably die someday! A man of poor health like me will definitely die one day although at the moment I do not look like dying. I'm considering the cause of the Chinese disabled persons without the involvement of Deng Pufang. Actually I began making efforts in this respect 10 years ago. This is a matter of paramount importance. How many years can you continue to work and how much energy can you exert however capable you are?
Reporter: Your physical conditions are of much concern to everybody, especially to the handicapped.
Deng: To put this in simple words, I do not look like dying, I'll hold on since I do not look dying! But I'm determined to foster young personnel and create a cause of the handicapped in China without the involvement of Deng Pufang, only by doing so can I be counted as having fulfilled my task.
