ABSTRACT
The June Fourth slaughter destroyed the Deng Xiaoping empire. The new "Huaihai battle" launched by Deng Xiaoping was from a purely "military perspective a victory." One can see that Deng Xiaoping had established his empire with the 1979 war to "punish" Vietnam. During the more than three months from the Third Plenum to the end of the war to "punish" Vietnam in March 1979, it was commonly believed throughout the nation that development toward democracy would occur. Deng Xiaoping became the leader of the forces for democracy inside and outside the Party. The power of the dogmatist and militarist factions in the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party was comparatively weak and on the defensive at the time, owing to the catastrophic "Cultural Revolution" and the smashing of the Lin Biao and the Jiang Qing cliques. But Deng Xiaoping never practiced what he preached by truly preparing for the establishment of a democratic political and legal system in China.
