I met him twice. On both occasions, we broke bread. The first time was soon after Mao had brought back the twice-purged ““capitalist roader’’ to help clean the hellish mess left by the Cultural Revolution. Then Mao held all the trumps, and Deng’s hands literally shook. I can’t recall anything he said that night. I only recall thinking that the diminutive man, whose toes when he was seated barely touched the rug, must not be long for this world. That was more than 20 years ago. Only in retrospect did I see that appearing weak and forgettable was the shrewdest disguise for a courtier sizing the throne.

The second time was in 1989, two months before the students began marching against corruption and for democracy, at Deng’s banquet for President Bush. Had I leaned to my left I could have poured mao tai into our host’s wineglass, but for him, throughout the 12 courses the wife of the American ambassador did not exist. No, worse. By befriending dissidents, I had become as an insolent child, unworthy of a glance, much less a nod from the Patriarch. A tyke to be caned as soon as the outsiders were out the door. How dare anyone with a strand of Chinese hair think for herself?

Once I thought Deng, the Reformer, could rescue the people of China. After Tiananmen, I realized that the people of China would rescue themselves and enjoy the esteem of the world that could have been his, had he in his final years not been hard of hearing. How ironic. Heeding the cries of the people crushed by the Cultural Revolution, he climbed to power. Deaf to the cries of the people yoked by corruption and repression, he fell from grace.

In joining Mao, he nevertheless leaves a substantial legacy. Nowadays Chinese live by his words–getting rich is glorious. It is, however, the only aspiration the party of Deng allows. Someday Chinese will join their former Communist brethren around the globe and live as they choose to live, the lives of free people.

Amidst the murk of China’s immediate prospects, one certainty looms: once again history will be rewritten. In the spring of 1976 hundreds of thousands gathered at Tiananmen Square to mourn Zhou Enlai’s death and petition for Deng, who espoused his comrades’ more benign ways. The radical regime at the time branded the event counterrevolutionary, but even so, its fiendish Gang of Four cleared the square without calling in the tanks. Two years later Deng secured his popular mandate by overturning that verdict and pronouncing the incident a patriotic milestone.

So will leaders who follow Deng overturn the official judgment on the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989. However full their pockets and bellies thanks to the economic policies of Deng, Chinese still ache for those who perished when the tanks rolled. However unfettered Chinese look going about their business today, they still must tiptoe, kowtow and pay lip service and proffer cash under the table to open doors that may at any moment be slammed in their faces. However obliged they may feel for his genuine accomplishments, however forgiving and fearful of the unknown, they will always remember that Deng sullied his place in history with his own hands.

The tragedy of this pivotal figure is that a man able to change a country as poor and as densely populated and vast as China was unable to change his thinking. He believed that economic reform was imperative. And so he dashed the iron rice bowl and opened markets, boosting China’s GNP until it was the fastest growing in the world. He believed that political reform was suicide. And so he suppressed all who disagreed. In an age when billions of dollars exchange hands across oceans in less than a day and satellites circle the globe sowing seeds that bloom in the remotest parts of this planet, he secreted himself at home and prized his own counsel alone. Though millions of voices across the land had risked all to be heard, he never entertained second thoughts. To the end, his credo remained absolute: feed bodies, forget starving souls, and the party, which always knows best, retains control.

One day he will pause during a game of bridge with those jolly Red giants–Lenin, Stalin and Mao–to see a homeland he won’t recognize. I cannot picture it exactly, but my hopes are high. Technology and pent-up longings, skills and energies are propelling Chinese too fast in too many directions for the party to seize them all and keep them under wraps.

I believe the soul of China cannot be killed by emperors or foreigners. It has survived for 5,000 years. I believe those who look to the horizon and see the specter of a more democratic China and cry, ““The Great Wall is falling! The Middle Kingdom is disintegrating! Chaos is coming!’’ wear blinders. I believe in the Chinese people. I saw them in the spring of 1989, a million strong, marching peacefully, caring for one another, walking tall to embrace the young, their future.