Unit 4: China After Mao

 

This unit looks at the rise of Deng Xiaoping and the dramatic reforms that he carried out in the years after replacing Mao, culminating with the government’s brutal crackdown against protestors in the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.

 

The Rise of Deng Xiaoping

Following Mao’s death in September 1976 Deng Xiaoping eventually emerged as leader only after defeating several contenders.  Hua Goufeng, the compromise candidate as Zhou Enlai’s replacement as Premier following his death in January 1976, was probably in the strongest position to emerge as the new leader at first, if only because he was already in power.  He repressed the radical faction led by Mao’s widow Jiang Qing and the Shanghai group—now labeled the “gang of four” after an unsuccessful attempt to take power.  This eliminated one of the major contenders for power after Mao’s death.  Soon a power struggle developed between Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping, who reemerged in public (he had reappeared in 1973, but then faded again in early 1976 after his powerful patron Zhou Enlai died).  In 1977 Deng Xiaoping returned to the Politburo as a major figure within the Chinese leadership.

 

There was a general loosening up in Chinese society in the late 1970s, as even disco—for better or for worse—became popular.  People were encouraged to talk about their victimization during the Cultural Revolution and a wave of so-called “wound” or “scar” literature was published about people’s experiences and suffering during the Cultural Revolution.  People began publishing journals with little or no government censorship or harassment.  This relative freedom in China sparked a new movement, the “Democracy Wall” Movement (1978-79).  In late 1978 someone posted a character poster near Tiananmen Square criticizing Mao for his support of people like Lin Biao and Jiang Qing and for his attack on Deng.  Not surprisingly, Deng approved of the criticisms and was in no hurry to take the poster down.  Soon more posters followed, which were put up all over Tiananmen Square.  Among the posters there were subtle criticisms of Hua Guofeng for his association with the radical, Maoist faction (he had been handpicked by Mao) and for his role in demoting Deng after Zhou Enlai’s death.  Peng Duhai, the one leader (General) who had dared to stand up to Mao during the Great Leap Forward (GLF) and was arrested as a result, was now rehabilitated (he had died in 1974), which favored the moderate faction headed by Deng—the political winds were blowing in that direction. 

 

However, as so often happens in China’s political campaigns, the movement went too far, beyond what Deng and other moderate leaders had hoped.  In the euphoria of the Democracy Wall Movement some pretty bold statements were made.  Among the posters were radical calls for democratization; Ren Wanding’s “19 Points” called for free elections, an independent judicial system, freedom of information and more contact with the West, limitations on the privileges of Party members, and even a multi-party system.  Wei Jingsheng called for a “fifth modernization,” meaning democracy.  Wei argued that democracy was a “necessary prerequisite” for economic development and modernization, which is very similar to what Gorbachev would say a few years later in the Soviet Union.   For Deng such statements went too far.  In December 1979 authorities closed the Democracy Wall and suppressed private publications like Wei’s “Explorations.”  The short period of relatively free expression was over.  Deng had used the movement (much as Mao had intended to use the 100 Flowers Campaign in the 1950s) to criticize his main political opponent, Hua Guofeng.  Once that had been accomplished, he immediately began to reinstate party control over people’s expression, only this time with himself in a relatively strengthened political position. 

 

The crackdown on the Democracy Wall Movement also gave rise to China’s dissident movement.  In March 1979 Wei Jingsheng was arrested for allegedly sharing classified information (about China’s invasion of neighboring Vietnam in 1979) with a Western journalist—although this was widely seen as a pretext, the real reason for his arrest being the “Fifth modernization” wall poster.  In April Ren Wanding was arrested for protesting Wei’s arrest—these two leaders would become China’s two main “dissidents” and would remain in jail over the next 15+ years (Wanding was released but then jailed again after the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations; Wei suffered from poor health during a very long stay in prison, but was finally released in 1997).  The “Democracy Wall” Movement had clearly strengthened Deng Xiaoping politically.  Hua Guofeng resigned as premier in 1980, and was replaced by Zhao Ziyang a close ally of Deng Xiaoping (he was the party’s leader in Guangzhou, a southern resort city adjacent to Hong Kong and one of the fastest-growing regions economically in the years after Mao’s death).  Meanwhile, another close ally of Deng became general secretary: Hu Yaobang.  Deng Xiaoping preferred to put his closest allies in positions of power, but already by 1980 it was widely recognized that Deng was the true power behind the scenes.  These series of events between 1976-1981, culminating with the trial of the “gang of four” and resulting in Hua Guofeng’s demise and Deng’s subsequent rise to power, is often referred to as “the quiet coup.” 

 

Deng Xiaoping’s Reforms

Once he had consolidated political power, Deng Xiaoping set about reforming China’s economy and society in very fundamental ways.  His most significant reforms were in the economic realm, and he began by carrying out sweeping changes in the agricultural sector.  At the Third Party Plenum in late 1978 the party began some initial reforms in the rural sector, namely the creation of Production Responsibility Systems (PRS).  This new policy shifted production responsibilities and compensation from the collective, communal levels to the level of individual households.  This was a decisive move away from the collective system of agriculture established during the GLF that was still largely in tact.  Instead of working the fields collectively, families and households could sign contracts to cultivate a portion of the land as if it were their own.  Initially contracts for land were handed out on a short-term, one-to-three-year basis.  According to the contracts, the peasant households agreed to meet a specified quota or tax set by the government (based on how much land they received, which would have depended on the number of laborers within the household and other mediating factors).  Anything above that set quota could either be consumed by the household or (more likely) sold at the marketplace.  In the early 1980s the government increased the contractual period for land to 15 years and the PRS model began to develop rapidly.  As part of this reform, peasants were also encouraged to purchase their own trucks, which of course were needed to haul the surplus produce to the markets (remember this when we view the film “Ermo”).  The government provided loans to peasants who could make money by hauling their own and others’ crops to sell in the cities.  Peasants were even allowed to hire a set number of seasonal laborers for work on their contracted land, which had always been a sensitive political issue because of the prominence of landless laborers before the 1949 Revolution.

 

These reforms clearly contributed to increased agricultural production in the 1980s.  One estimate for the early stages of the reform has agricultural production increasing by 36% between 1978 and 1983, with stabilization at high rates thereafter.  Critics, however, including Kathleen Hartford, point out that a negative result of the reforms is the extreme polarization of incomes in the countryside, i.e. a growing divide between rich and poor peasant households, the same problem that plagued China for centuries prior to the Revolution.  Once again “rich peasants” began to appear in the countryside, some earning 20-30 times more than the average rural household. 

 

In industry China’s reformers decentralized decision-making power and allowed factory managers to reinvest profits back into their factories, which gave them a personal stake in the company’s profitability.  Apart from this, the reform-minded government also allowed the opening of small privately-owned businesses, mostly in the service sector at first such as Inns, restaurants, tailor’s shops, barber shops, repair shops, all sorts of shops sprang up.  Gradually these took hold within small industry as well.  The number of private businesses in China grew from 1 million in 1981 to 3.4 million in 1984.  Again, though, there’s always a negative side; in the case of industry, in 1981 the state announced the end of guaranteed employment for workers, which had been one of the basic features of the socialist state since 1949 (the “iron rice bowl”).  The state closed down unprofitable businesses and factories that could not be converted to profitable semi-private ownership, which increased unemployment in the country in the mid-1980s.  Beginning in 1980s the Chinese government created China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZs), Shenzhen near Hong Kong, to entice foreign investment and promote exports by allowing production with little government regulation.  (Given the old unfair treaty-port system with the colonial powers in the days of semi-colonialism this was a sensitive issue).  Foreign companies investing in China had to enter joint-ownership agreements with the government (which maintained a majority 51% control of these businesses) and had to agree to abide by Chinese law.  As a result of all these changes, China became more closely linked to the world economy throughout the 1980s, and its trade with the US increased dramatically in the 1980s—from $1,100 million in 1978 to $4,500 million in 1983, a fourfold increase in that 5-year period.  Bear in mind that its trade with Japan and Western Europe was increasing at a similar pace at the same time. 

 

Another important part of Deng’s reforms with regard to the West is that, beginning in the early 1980s, he allowed hundreds of thousands of Chinese students to travel to and study in the West.  The rationale was to give them technological knowledge and expertise they could not achieve in China with the hope that they could then help pull China up economically.  This is often cited as one of the root causes of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests—that students exposed to life in the West would return to become the driving force in the call for democratization in China. 

 

Of course, Deng’s reforms also affected Chinese society in very direct ways, aside from these economic factors.  For example, he imposed a one-child policy on Chinese families, which has been particularly difficult to enforce in rural areas due to the importance of having a son to carry on a family’s line.  So if a couple’s first child is a daughter, they’re likely to try again for a son; true too if their second, third, fourth child are all daughters.  In many ways this policy of Deng Xiaoping has had the greatest legacy and impact on Chinese society, an issue we will return to later when we talk about China today.

 

The 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident

In moving on to the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, let’s begin by putting that incident in a broad, historical context by looking at the many precedents in China’s history leading up to that event.  I would like to emphasize one key point at the outset: Chinese students did not necessarily have Western ideas of “democracy” in mind when they rose up in protest in 1989.  A close examination of their rhetoric reveals some important differences between Western democracy and what they were calling for in China.

 

The first student protests in Tiananmen Square began on May 4th 1919, sparking the “New Cultural Movement” that we discussed earlier.  These protests were brutally crushed by the government, and this uprising marks the beginning of a long tradition of student protests in Chinese history.  The students in 1989 very consciously based their own uprising on this earlier precedent.  There were frequent student riots and uprisings against the KMT in the 1930s-40s, during the Civil War years.  Often veterans of the Chinese Communist Party had taken part in such uprisings, which made their harsh clampdown in 1989 somewhat ironic.  Student uprisings of various sorts continued into the communist period, as we have seen, especially with the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966-69), which could not have happened without the pivotal role played by students.  There was the Democracy Wall Movement of 1979, in which students played a very important role.  Then the most direct and important precedent to the 1989 uprising: student demonstrations in 1986-87.  This brief video clips gives a good look at those protests (click for video, 4:11).  So the events of 1989 were deeply rooted in Chinese history and in recent political events—they did not just happen out of thin air. 

 

In 1986, Hu Yoabang, a close ally of Deng Xiaoping in the economic reforms and General Secretary of the CCP, sympathized with student demands for less corruption, democratic reforms, and more freedom.  Deng removed Hu from his position as General Secretary (he maintained his spot on the Politburo) for being “too lenient” toward the student movement and, of course, repressed the demonstrations violently.  Deng was sending a clear message both to the students involved in organizing protest and to members within his own government—unrest would not be tolerated!

 

That brings us up to 1989.  Tiananmen is called “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” in China, but in the spring of that year it was anything but peaceful.  Let’s go through a Chronology of Events leading up to the tragedy:

·        Hu Yoabang’s death on April 15, 1989, sparked the student demonstrations that led to the Tiananmen Square Incident.  Thousands of students and others came to Tiananmen Square to lay wreaths and mourn for Hu.  On the night of April 17-18 several thousand students marched along a main avenue to Tiananmen Square; the next night a group of students ranging from 20-30,000 gathered on the square—the demonstrations were gradually gaining momentum. 

·        By the time of Hu Yoabang’s funeral on April 21, an estimated 100,000 students, workers and others occupied the square.  The death and funeral of this formerly key party figure had become highly politicized, and all because he had sympathized with the student demonstrations of three years earlier and been removed from power because of it—he was thus cast in a very positive light in the students’ eyes as someone supporting their cause.

·        The Party Editorial of April 26 in The People’s Daily was a key turning point.  The editorial, which was initiated by hard-line leader Premier Li Peng with Deng’s support, labeled the demonstrations “chaos, turmoil, upheaval.”  The word “turmoil” was the Deng government’s official term for the Cultural Revolution; by using that word to describe what the students were doing, Deng and the conservative party leaders were tainting the movement with “Mao’s” legacy.  The editorial also called the protests a “planned conspiracy” and “riots” by those planning to undermine Chinese “democracy”!!!  The editorial also stated that “Under the banner of democracy, [the students] were trying to destroy the democratic legal system.”  In other words, in the eyes of party leaders, democracy already exists in China and the students’ actions will destroy it!  We see two different, conflicting definitions of “democracy”—a phrase that can mean very different things to different people! 

·        Until the editorial it was not clear which way the government would go on this issue, and there were clearly still some people in positions of power, namely Zhao Ziyang, the other major reformer along with Hu Yoabang, who were sympathetic to the students.  The editorial clarified the party and government’s stance against the demonstrations and deadlocked the two sides.  The editorial sparked the largest protests to date on April 27; it became a reference point for the remainder of the movement—one of the students’ demands thereafter was that the party rescind its denunciation of the students in this editorial and its use of the word “chaos.” 

·        In early May the protests gained momentum; huge protests were held on May 4, the anniversary of the 1919 student uprising.  The students called for a meeting with party leaders to discuss their demands, but party leaders denied the request, so on May 11 a group of about 2,000 radical students began a hunger strike that would become one of the defining features of the movement. 

·        On May 13 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came for an official state visit, the first Soviet leader to step foot in China since the 1950s.  Gorbachev was an impetus to the students calling for reform because of his own democratization (glasnost) in the USSR; he was welcomed as a hero by the students. 

·        On May 20 the government declared martial law, which further intensified an already tense situation, and brought troops from outlying regions into the capital because they could not trust the loyalty of troops stationed in Beijing.  The students had been trying (with some success) to win their support.  So that’s why the government decided to bring in troops from areas outside of Beijing when it declared martial law; but amazingly people surrounded the troops and tanks and would not let them advance to the square.  Students defiantly held a rock concert in the square on the day that martial law was announced.  Also, in mid-May protestors set up a small radio broadcasting station (with a very limited broadcasting range, of course) in one corner of the square, and it subsequently became the communications headquarters for the movement.  There were constant fights over control of the station, as various students fought to get airtime. 

·        In a speech on May 30, Chai Ling, one of the radical student leaders, called for the overthrow of the Li Peng government.  Tensions were mounting—a lot of people felt in retrospect that Chai Ling had crossed a line by her statement.  A defining moment of the events leading up to the government’s crackdown came in early June, when one of the protestors held up tanks in front of the world’s cameras.  A tremendous act of bravery, that particular protestor has never been identified.

·        On June 3, the government sent in the troops to end the protests.[1]  Earlier that day PLA troops were called out again, and again were surrounded and stopped by the students and their supporters among the population (workers).  At one point students and soldiers even sat down together and began singing, although the relative peace was broken by several clashes between soldiers and students on the fringes of the crowds.  Around dusk the troops retreated, and it appeared that the city’s population had once again succeeded in keeping them at bay.  But the relative peace would be short-lived, as by 9:00 P.M. the troops were called out again, this time with orders to kill if necessary. 

·        As for what happened next, the demonstrations were brutally crushed.  This wasn’t the end of the story; there were isolated clashes for days after the square was cleared and reports of tanks randomly running over people.  There were, of course, disputed accounts of casualty figures; the government would only admit a few deaths, whereas protestors estimated the numbers at between 200 and 4,000.  Those numbers are still in dispute.  After crushing the movement, the government followed up by arresting countless students, workers, and other participants.  It drew up a list of the 21 most active leaders and called for their arrest.  Countless student and worker leaders, like Chai Ling, fled the country.  Others, like Wan Dang, were arrested.  He at first received a 4-year sentence, but was arrested again in 1995.  In general sentences ranged from 4 months-10 years, depending on one’s level of involvement.  An interesting footnote: to round up participants the government made good use of US-made surveillance equipment placed all over Tiananmen Square.  Another point that I think deserves emphasis is the lack of participation—and relative lack of concern—by peasants, who seemed not the least bit worried about these events. 

 

These video clips give a fascinating look at the events of 1989: Part I (5:49); Part II (8:04); Part III (9:58)

 

The Tiananmen Square incident has to be put not only in the long-term history of student protests that we have already discussed, but also in terms of the short-term background to the incident, specifically the economic reforms carried out by Deng Xiaoping.  In the 1980s the reforms of Deng Xiaoping created some major economic pressures.  On the one hand, life for many was clearly improving, especially for peasants in the countryside, but also for urban party officials.  On the other hand, by the end of the decade the cities were beginning to feel the pinch economically, and the reforms had created a “revolution of rising expectations” without necessarily leading to dramatic improvements for city dwellers.  In fact, there is a major differentiating factor between the student movement for democracy in 1986-87 and that two years later in 1989: the latter movement had the support of broader segments of society, especially the urban working class.  Specifically, the economic reforms led to inflation, unemployment (the state closed unprofitable factories and ended guaranteed employment), and corruption.  The reforms also led to a noticeable and growing gap between rich and poor in the country, including in the countryside.  Han Dongfang, one of the leaders among the workers who became heavily involved in the protests, said: “In the quest for profits there was a total disregard for the impact on the society and the environment, and we workers had to defend our interests.”  Corruption is another theme that comes up often.  Chai Ling, one of the radical student leaders of the protests, said in her famous interview with an American journalist during the uprising: “Those in power have benefited from [the reforms], not the people.”  Party officials and their friends and relatives had access to the documents and paper necessary to start import/export businesses; guanxi = connections to people with influence/in positions of power, an indication of the prominence of corruption in China’s political and economic system.  In the system created by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, this meant people with the right connections can buy goods at low, fixed state prices and then resale them at much either prices either as exports abroad or domestically on the flourishing market economy.  In this sense the state subsidized the party elite as it grew even wealthier at the expense of workers and others—Mao is turning in his grave!

 

These issues were extremely important during the Tiananmen Square uprising.  One of the best sources on these events is a book edited by Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement (1990).  The author was there in 1989 and, as during the Democracy Wall Movement of 1979, people hung up posters and handed out leaflets all over Tiananmen Square during the demonstrations in 1989, so he went around copying these down and collecting them.  The complaints of the students and others are pretty clear.  Minzhu shows that the students mainly complained of corruption by party officials and the bureaucratic elite, unequal distribution of wealth, inflation, and unemployment.

 

He produces a wealth of sources to prove his point.  This is part of a long poster entitled “Soldiers, Look How Profiteering by Government Officials is Eating You Up”: “When it comes to foreign trade … there are three conditions for success. … The first is the import/export license.  The second is the state-granted ‘right to engage in foreign trade.’  The third is foreign exchange bought at the official state-fixed rate [in comparison to the market rate, which is nearly double]. … Of the three, the import/export license is the most important.  But for those government lords, a license is hardly an obstacle.  They can always get one from their daddies or brothers who were big officials. …

 

Dear Soldiers, please ask yourselves how come in these days of wild inflation, your food stipend remains at 1.65 yuan.  I suggest that you take a look at the profiteering going on among government officials!”  These are pretty strong words indeed!  And the aim is clearly to win over the soldiers to the students’ side, which is dangerous for Deng.

 

This is from a poster hung on Tiananmen Square: “Prince Deng [Deng Xiaoping’s son] is delighted to find some profits he can dredge up: he buys material at state-fixed prices, then resells it with a huge return.  What a ‘piece of cake.’  Prince Deng has made a killing, doing practically no work while getting a hundred times’ return.  Money has poured into his pockets.  Who wouldn’t be gleeful in his shoes?”

 

This is from a leaflet handed out in Tiananmen Square during the protests: “Turning your head to one side, you hear people with hungry stomachs complaining, and turning it to the other side, you see others squandering money without a second thought.  And the general state of economic depression persists alongside the ever-expanding pockets of a few individuals.”

 

This is from a statement issued by student hunger strikers: “Although we are young and do not want to die, we must go on a hunger strike, and we are prepared to die if necessary because our country has already reached a time when prices are soaring, profiteering by officials runs rampant, power politics hangs high, and the bureaucracy is corrupt.”

 

Clearly the demonstrators were concerned with more than just political freedom or democracy.  They defined “democracy” in economic as well as political terms.  They were clearly responding to the West, for example with the model “Statue of Liberty” that students built during the protests and with posters and signs written in English.  But what they call “democracy”—political rights mixed with economic rights—does not necessarily correspond to the Western idea of democracy.

 

Also, at face value (and from our Western point of view) you might expect Chinese students demanding “democracy” to have opposed Mao’s legacy, and perhaps even to have damaged the huge picture of him that hangs in Tiananmen Square, in much the same way protesters in Russia would destroy statues of Soviet leaders two years later in 1991.  In fact, there was one incident when some protesters tried to damage the painting by splattering red paint on it, but others in the square intervened and stopped them and formed a unit of students to guard Mao’s picture.  If you look at what the Chinese students were saying, you might be surprised to find that their complaints were in many ways comparable to what Mao himself had said!  The attacks against a corrupt, elitist party bureaucracy are very reminiscent of Mao.  In many ways the students were much more in line with Maoism than with Western democracy, and the movement was grossly misunderstood by the Western media.

 

Let’s wrap up with this one last video clip that brings the situation in China down to the post-Tiananmen Square period of the 1990s (click for video, 8:45).

 

 

 


[1] A lot of the students themselves did not agree with the statements and tactics of some of the more radical leaders, and this hints at a crucial development: the student movement, which started out very unified, began to splinter and divide over time, which facilitated the regime’s eventual crackdown and suppression of the movement (repeat).  There were specifically two main issues that began to break the unity of the student movement: 1) The boycott of classes; while there was initially agreement on this point because students felt humiliated by party officials who refused to listen to them, on May 4th—obviously an historically significant date in all this—Zhao Ziyang contradicted the April 26th editorial, saying this was not “chaos” and that the problem should be solved through “dialogue.”  This was seen as the first sign of some support for the students by someone in a position of leadership, and afterward a large segment of the students in Tiananmen voted to end their boycott of classes as a concession to the leadership; 2) The second major divide was over the hunger strike and whether or not to continue occupying Tiananmen Square.  A number of the students opposed the hunger strike as going too far, and voted that the students should not occupy the square—that left only the most radical core (behind Chai Ling and Wuer Kaixi—pronounced “Woo-er Kai-see”) in the square continuing the hunger strike.  Again, the divisions within the student movement were crucial because they facilitated the government’s crackdown on the protests, which began in early June.