Lessons from a man ahead of his time

Veteran German editor has watched China grow from economic backwater to global financial power

"I am the oldest piece of furniture in this building," says Theo Sommer, the publisher and editor-at-large of Die Zeit, or The Time, one of Germany's most respected newspapers.

Then the 84-year old smiles and points to the ceiling of his office in central Hamburg: "Mr Schmidt, upstairs, is even older. He is 96."

Sommer is in fact referring to former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who is the co-publisher of Die Zeit.

The two became close in 1983, when Sommer was editor-in-chief, and they still share a passion for international strategy, especially involving China.

He accompanied Schmidt when the former chancellor visited China in 1975, when he met Deng Xiaoping, the first of three meetings between the two statesmen.

"He was a short man, full of energy, who used the spittoon very generously," he recalls of the former Chinese leader, three years before Deng started initiating the country's historic opening up reforms, "but he never missed it."

Schmidt and Deng were both heavy smokers and the chancellor had one of the German delegation use a lighter to light Deng's cigarette.

"He joked how it was such a modern instrument. He said China didn't have them and was very backward, but he added China would learn from foreign countries," Sommer says.

"That was the beginning of his determination to reform the country. The time was historic, so was his motto, 'learning from abroad'."

Their second meeting in late 1978 was after Deng had just emerged as the country's leader, after disputes within the Communist Party.

Sommer was with a group of 15 German journalists who spent two hours talking with Deng and it was during this meeting that he remembers Deng making a rather blunt comment that he hated people who were reluctant to take a firm position.

"He thought too many people talked a lot, but were not acting to reform the country," Sommer says. "They just kept repeating old Marxism, not really doing anything.

"Deng, however, was a pragmatist who always got things done."

Sommer offers a strong comparison between Deng and Mao Zedong; one changed the country while the other liberated the people.

"Deng changed China. It is now probably the biggest economic power and exporting nation. It is back to where it was around 1820, the largest economy in the world."

Sommer says he was able to witness the changes in China for himself.

In 1975 everyone wore gray or blue Mao suits. Girls hid colorful silk blouses underneath; but outside everything was gray, he says.

One day outside his hotel Sommer met an old man, who spoke English, "but he could not find anyone else to talk with," he says.

But in his next visit to China, he found even taxi drivers were learning English.

"Deng pulled the country out of the Middle Ages. I still remember 1979, when I drove across the countryside people were still using plows. I don't think I saw one tractor.

"When journalists asked Deng how China will look after his plans come to fruition, he said, 'let's wait for 10 or 20 years', he then predicted that by 2010 China would be in 'the top group of nations economically'."

When Sommer met Deng for the last time, later in 1979, he says Deng was less excitable, and even talking about himself being an old man.

"He said he would soon be meeting Karl Marx. I knew it was his way of talking about death."

Deng went on to live until 1997 and his legacy is, of course, still much talked about today. Earlier this year a TV drama on his life was broadcast nationwide, which Sommer says he read about, and which he viewed as underlining the government's message that China's economic reforms will continue deepening.

"I wish them (the government) success.

"They are really fighting corruption in a big way. From what I can see and hear, they aren't excluding anyone, whether in the military, the Party or in business.

"It is a tough job, because I am quite sure in 5,000 years of history there has never been such a big leap in such short a time.

"But it is not China which is doing this. It is in the human character that when something happens in such a short time there are so many opportunities to make money quickly, in ways that are not quite legal."

He predicts China will definitely become one of the world's five central economic "poles", with Russia, Europe, America and India the other four.

But China still has to deal with some social issues, two of which are shared by Germany.

"The growing inequality between those people who work with their hands and brains, and those who just make their money work, could become dangerous for the Party," he says, "but that is one of the reasons the Party is trying to fight corruption, because corruption increases that."

Another danger is its aging population, "and you get old before you get rich".

But what Deng told him all those years ago about China's future, applies to his own predictions today, he says.

"Let's wait for another 20 years and see. The question on many European minds is while China has become part of the existing world order, in terms of the WTO, World Bank, IMF, will it bring a new impulse to them or overtake them to create its own order, maybe even confrontationally?

"I would say the jury is still out, but I tend to think that they are reasonable people."

He uses a German phrase of his own to pass on a piece of advice to the Chinese people: "Go easy with the young horses," he says: "Don't rush in or scare them."

liuw@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/17/2014 page32)