Ailing Deng Xiaoping Visits China’s Leaders

Deng Xiaoping visited with China’s other leaders and asked them to convey his greetings to the people for the Chinese New Year, official reports said Saturday.

The report was the lead item on the national evening television news. But no pictures were shown of the 90-year-old senior leader, leaving questions about his health unanswered.

In recent weeks, there have been unofficial reports that Deng has been critically ill.

Deng was last seen in public last February at New Year celebrations in Shanghai. A brief televised appearance showed him looking frail.

A report by the Xinhua News Agency on Deng’s visit with the leaders indicated he has remained in Beijing, instead of going to Shanghai to escape the cold northern winter as he has done in previous years.

President and Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, Premier Li Peng and other leaders visited Deng and other retired leaders “recently,” Xinhua said.

The current leaders “extended cordial festival greetings to Deng and other veterans, and wished them good health and long life,” the state-run news agency said.

Visits to family and friends are a customary part of the lunar New Year, or Spring Festival. The holiday is on Tuesday, when the Year of the Pig begins.

Meanwhile, an Australian newspaper quoted Deng’s daughter, Deng Rong, as denying she had said in an interview with The New York Times that her father could not stand or walk or that his health was declining each day.

“He does not walk as long as he did perhaps some time ago. However, when other people help him he continues to walk. He refuses to be put into a wheelchair,” she was quoted as saying by the Weekend Australian in a report published Saturday.

“I may not have expressed myself clearly,” she said. She said that “except for some problems with his legs” there were no other changes in his condition.