Two Pictures in the Rain

1978 · The Revolutionaries · Work 1160 of 1,871

A colour television factory near Osaka on a rainy October afternoon, grey light through tall wet windows, a conveyor line of empty walnut cabinets, at the left on a white plinth a large television, its screen split into two blurred landscapes of green hills and blue sea, empty of people, in the centre standing on the factory floor in person the man, a short stocky man of seventy-four, dark grey high-collared tunic suit, his face in three-quarter view toward the screen, beside him a very old slender man in a dark suit seen from directly behind, head turned fully away.

Who
Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) was the most powerful figure in the People's Republic of China from the late 1970s until his death, although he avoided the most conspicuous posts in party and state. Born on 22 August 1904 in Guang'an, Sichuan province, the son of a landowner, he studied in France from 1920 to 1924, where he joined the communist movement, and then in the Soviet Union. He took part in the Long March, served as a political commissar in the war against Japan and the civil war, and became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1954. In the Cultural Revolution he lost all his high posts; in 1973 Premier Zhou Enlai brought him back, in 1976 he was purged again, and in July 1977 he returned and prevailed over Mao Zedong's successor Hua Guofeng. He then gave farmers responsibility for their own output, gave enterprises more freedom and opened the country to trade and foreign investment. China grew fast and living standards rose. At the same time he introduced the strict one-child policy and held fast to one-party rule. In June 1989 he backed the violent suppression of the protests in Beijing. He died in Beijing on 19 February 1997.
The moment
In October 1978 Deng, then vice premier, became the first leader of the People's Republic to visit Japan, travelling there to exchange the instruments of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship. He had come to learn from the Japanese, he said. Besides a Nissan car plant and a steelworks, on 28 October he visited the television works of Matsushita, the company behind the National brand, today Panasonic, at Ibaraki near Osaka. It was drizzling. The firm's 83-year-old founder, Konosuke Matsushita, waited at the gate and guided him himself. Deng walked slowly, asked many questions and toured a fully automated workshop of the colour television factory. In the showroom stood a television showing two pictures at once, a high-speed fax machine, a typesetter for Chinese characters and a video recorder; from a microwave oven he tasted a dumpling. Then he asked Matsushita whether he could give a little help to China's modernisation, and Matsushita agreed. In the guest book Deng wrote: "China-Japan friendship boasts a bright future." The picture shows him before the television with two pictures, beside him, seen from behind, the aged Matsushita.
The other side
Deng's request became, in 1987, a joint venture in Beijing for colour picture tubes, at the time the largest Sino-Japanese venture of all; 250 Chinese employees trained in Japan for it. The first tube was finished on 3 June 1989. That night tanks and troops advanced in Beijing against the people who had been demanding greater political freedom since April; many died. Deng had backed the use of force. On 9 June he addressed the commanders of the martial law troops, mourned the soldiers who had died and called the protest a "counter-revolutionary rebellion". The new plant kept working. Panasonic later gave up the Ibaraki television works and sold the site, partly to Amazon.

What the sources leave open: The slow tour, the microwave and the dumpling come from a Chinese account based on the recollections of Deng's entourage. The time of day, Deng's clothing and the layout of hall and television are not recorded and are typified in the picture. The face follows a public-domain White House photograph of 29 January 1979. The death toll of 4 June 1989 is disputed and is not given here.

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