IT WAS perhaps inevitable that in the last phase of his career, patriarch Mr Deng Xiaoping would be plagued by the same failings that wrecked his mentor and antagonist, Chairman Mao Zedong.
Mr Deng's lapses have become apparent in spite of reports from Beijing that the decline of the New Helmsman's health had been arrested by the arrival in the Deng household of a new qigong (''supernatural energy'') guru. The master healer from Er-mei Mountain in Mr Deng's native Sichuan province is credited with having restored some of the 88-year-old's eyesight and hearing.
However, like the late Chairman immediately before he slipped into terminal senility, Mr Deng seems obsessed with what cynics call an irrational urge to defend his aberrations.
After overseeing the irrevocable transition to a ''socialist market economy'', Mr Deng is spending his last drop of energy on preventing the reversal of the verdict on the June 4, 1989 crackdown, unquestionably the greatest blemish on his record.
Observers see a parallel in Chairman Mao's efforts to ensure the ''perpetual correctness'' of his Cultural Revolu-tion. Major political events in China since late 1992, especially personnel changes, could be traced to Mr Deng's ''June 4 syndrome''. Senior Chinese sources said Mr Deng decided last November to dump the Yang Clan - President Mr Yang Shangkun and former strongman General Yang Bai-bing - for fear they might overturn the verdict on the massacre. The Tiananmen obsession accounted for the patriarch sidelining in part such liberal aides as politburo members Mr Qiao Shi and Mr Li Ruihuan.
Even if the story that General Yang had engaged in factionalism and that he had chaired a clandestine meeting ''to plot for the post-Deng era'' is true, it was but a secondary factor behind Mr Deng's break with the brothers. Chinese sources said Mr Yang had aroused suspicion by hinting that a strategic revision of the June 4 verdict would boost the CCP's prestige.