A Letter From the Publisher

By John A. Meyers

TIME's cover story this week examines the widespread changes that are taking place in China as it undergoes a "second revolution" under aging, pragmatic Deng Xiaoping. The story was the work of Staff Writer Pico Iyer, aided by Reporter-Researchers Oscar Chiang and Edward Gomez. Reporting for the cover was shared by three men, each of whom brought a very different perspective to the events he observed.

Peking Bureau Chief Richard Hornik found particularly valuable his five years of experience as a journalist in the Soviet bloc, including an assignment as TIME's Eastern Europe bureau chief (1981-83). Says Hornik: "That background was really useful as I tried to discern how far its economic reforms have taken China from orthodox Marxism-Leninism." Stationed in Peking since April, Hornik has traveled widely: to Shanghai twice, to Canton and to Shenzhen, one of China's foreign trade and export zones. Perhaps his most absorbing trip was to the huge heartland province of Sichuan. Says Hornik: "It gave me a better feel for China than any other region that I have been to. Until you see the ageless rice paddies of Sichuan, you cannot begin to understand how far China has come, or how far it has to go."

Coping with the bewildering succession of Chinese shifts and reversals has provided some light moments for Peking Reporter Jaime FlorCruz, a Filipino who has lived in China since 1971. Take dancing: "When I arrived," he says, "social dancing was taboo. Then in 1978-79, it was pronounced 'healthy,' and I found myself waltzing with Chinese women. After that, disco became the craze, and I was often urged to demonstrate it, until last year when it was banned as 'spiritual pollution.' Now it is In again, but not all the time in all places. Rules here, it seems, are made to be changed."

For Correspondent David Aikman, Peking bureau chief from 1982 until early this year and now a member of TIME's Washington bureau, change in China is a constant experience. Revisiting the country last spring to help report the cover story, Aikman drew on observations that go back to his first visit for TIME in 1972, as well as on two other lengthy reporting trips in the 1970s. "Like all students of China's culture, society and politics, I have been at times fascinated, at times saddened by what I have witnessed," says Aikman. "For me, the most exciting aspect of China's modernization, despite all the fits and starts, is the intellectual reawakening that has been bubbling away below the surface. It is real testimony to the inherent vigor of the Chinese sense of self."