First Published: Frontline, Vol. 7, No. 1, June 19, 1989.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The June 3 military crackdown on China’s pro-democracy movement was thoroughly unwarranted and politically disastrous.
When tanks deliberately run down unarmed students, when soldiers spray protesting workers with machine-gun fire, when thousands of people are killed by a People’s Liberation Army acting in the name of socialism, the ruling party responsible has rightfully earned the moral condemnation it is now receiving from its own people and the world.
The leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) who ordered the repression and consequent massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square have caused immeasurable harm to socialism in China and to the international working class movement.
The official line that the protesters were a “very small group of people,” out to foment “counter-revolution” and “do away with the socialist system” is without credibility. Over the last two months, millions of people – including large numbers of workers and CPC members – have taken to the streets in Beijing and other major cities to support the student-led protests. It has been a mass popular movement for reform, urging the Communist Party to take the lead in implementing a program against corruption and for democratization of society.
The immediate result of the military attack was to throw China into a period of near chaos. The country’s reform and modernization process was dealt a severe setback. The credibility of the Chinese Communist Party is at an all-time low. The leaders of the imperialist world have reaped a propaganda bonanza, exploiting the events in Tiananmen Square to attack socialism and cynically wrap themselves in the mantle of democracy. We are treated to the disgusting spectacle of George Bush pontificating about human rights and support for student protesters, when the government he heads simultaneously finances and covers up the killing of students demanding democracy in South Korea, El Salvador, Palestine, South Africa and elsewhere around the world.
It is particularly tragic that the CPC’s crackdown takes place when a new emphasis on popular participation and democracy is gaining ground through much of the socialist world. China could have become one of the pioneers in the process of renewal and democratization. Instead, the CPC has taken a giant leap backward with military repression and dishonesty.
In one of the bitter ironies of history, the senior communist leader who apparently ordered the crackdown, Deng Xiaoping, was previously known as China’s principal reformer. Deng’s market-oriented economic policies helped deliver China from the stagnation of the Cultural Revolution to a period of dramatic, albeit chaotic, economic growth. China’s economy expanded at a stunning pace of 9% a year for the last few years.
But the rapidity and relatively uncontrolled character of China’s economic expansion created a host of new social contradictions, including heightened income differentials and divergent sectoral and regional interests. Moreover, with political reform lagging far behind, the growing working class and intelligentsia could not find outlets for their political views that matched the degree of responsibility required of them in economic activity.
The result has been several years of simmering discontent. Widespread official corruption has been a particular target. China’s rapid transition from a planned economy to a more market-oriented system has created plenty of opportunities for speculation and profiteering. Two currencies exist – one of a higher value available to those who deal abroad or with foreigners. Officials with special access to information, commodities and materials can easily buy low and sell high, or get first chance at joint ventures with Western firms, or get “insider” advantage weaving their way through just-developing legal regulations. The result has been extensive abuse of position by those in authority and their families, with corruption, graft and bribery reaching up into the highest ranks of the CPC.
The deep-seated contradictions in such relations were evident when discontent broke out into student demonstrations in 1986. The protests were met by a “campaign against Western bourgeois liberalism” led by party, “hard-liner” Chen Yun. Despite Chen’s attempts to root out Western influence, Chen saw to it that his own daughter was sent to Stanford, and his son reported to have illegally used public funds in a venture with Japanese, partners. Meanwhile, Deng Xiaoping’s oldest son has been implicated in a graft scandal involving a charity fund for the handicapped-and his youngest son was sent abroad to the University of Rochester at a time when the government was ordering severe restrictions in student visas. Since 1983, more than 150,000 members of the CPC have been convicted of corruption charges and expelled from their posts.
Perhaps the main reason that former CPC chair Hu Yaobang’s death was the trigger for the recent round. of protests was that it was he who said in 1986: “Party cadres are using their official posts for private gain and string pulling. They are raising the cultivation of useful connections to the level of an art.” His comments were obviously not appreciated by the present leadership, which removed Hu from his post during the campaign against bourgeois liberalism.
The wealth of profiteers stands in marked contrast to the economic situation of China’s workers and students. A 30%inflation rate eats away at people’s buying power. A salaried teacher or steel worker earns one-fifth the pay of a typical street vendor. Privatization of agriculture has created millions of unemployed. While most people are much better off economically then they were a decade ago, buying power has not kept up with rising expectations.
These problems indicate the necessary link between economic reform and democratization. Giving greater play to markets, foreign investment and decentralization may well be necessary to modernize China; certainly a number of other socialist countries are experimenting with similar approaches as they confront the requirements of socialism’s current level of development. But such means are simultaneously a breeding ground for income inequality and conflict. Precisely for this reason, channels must be opened to increase the involvement of the popular masses in decision-making, and to institutionalize the accountability of political leadership. This is the check against abuse of authority; the way to bring the widest experience to bear in making economic decisions, and the means to maintain a popular consensus behind reforms that may bring short-term difficulties to specific sectors of the population.
On another level, the impetus for greater democracy is built right into the nature of a modern economy itself. It is simply not tenable to encourage workers and intellectuals to master modern technology, be innovative on the job, assume greater responsibility for economic decisions, interact with the latest technological breakthroughs from around the world-and simultaneously remain silent when it comes to politics. This fundamental reality, rooted in the steady development of the productive forces, is making its presence felt in movements for increasing democracy in the capitalist and socialist world alike. And it’s no surprise; that students – whose daily routine is defined by the struggle to attain knowledge and master ideas – are often in the lead of democratic movements.
But China’s economic reform was unmatched by reforms in the political arena. Refusal to relinquish strict control of the press kept that avenue closed to the expression of popular grievances. No institutions were built to bring differences of opinion into the open and organize their resolution. The events of the last few weeks dramatically underscore the almost feudal character of China’s political system, with a handful of top leaders relying on personal connections, family ties and influence in the military to wield power. “What they say counts for everything, what we say counts for nothing,” said one group of workers during the recent protests.
Finally, it must be noted that the political and economic problems of recent years come at a time when socialist ideology is extremely weak in China. The anarchy and simplistic ultra-leftism of the Cultural Revolution, followed by the swing to pragmatism of the last ten years, have undermined the prestige of Marxist theory. In the absence of a vital Marxist intellectual life; it has been increasingly difficult to counter the sophisticated brands of bourgeois thought to which China is increasingly exposed, not least through the thousands of Chinese students studying abroad. And the backward foreign policy of the CPC, with narrow nationalism prevailing over proletarian internationalism, has certainly done nothing to assist in the promotion of Marxism.
In spite of these conditions, the protest movement was not anti-socialist in character. To be sure, a mixture of symbols and ideas were expressed in the demonstrations: strains of the International were juxtaposed with expressions of admiration for the West. But given the contradictions which gave rise to the movement, it could not be otherwise, and there was no evidence that the pro-democracy movement sought a change of China’s social system. Quite the contrary, the movement and its demands explicitly recognized the leading role of the communist party, urging that party to fight corruption, allow a freer press and freer expression of views, and initiate other democratic reforms.
Many of the early leaders of the student demonstrations were sons and daughters of ranking CPC officials studying at the Party History Department of People’s University in Beijing. People’s University is a special school to develop future communist leaders; those admitted to the Party History Department represent an extremely select group carefully screened by the central committee. Unlike many of their contemporaries, they do not aspire to go abroad; they study the history of China’s communist movement in preparation for assuming major party responsibilities.
On April 15, a group of graduate and undergraduate students from the People’s University Party History Department took the action that sparked the student demonstrations. Late in the evening, after the announcement of Hu Yaobang’s death, they went to Tiananmen Square to lay wreaths in his honor. Even more boldly, they put the name of their school and department on the wreaths.
Two days later, the Party History students began a boycott of classes, demanding a reappraisal of Hu’s career. They then formed a militia enforcing the strike throughout People’s University. The idea later spread to other schools throughout the city. On April 17, it was again students from the Party History Department who formulated plans for a large march into Tiananmen Square on the day of Hu’s funeral, the first large student march into central Beijing.
The demonstrations won unanimous support of students in Beijing and from the city’s entire population. From May 16 to 19,more than a million people filled Tiananmen Square: intellectuals, teachers, journalists, factory laborers, flight attendants, soda pop dispensary workers, hotel workers, the China Travel Service, the staffs of most newspapers and the central TV station.
After martial law was declared on May 20, Beijing residents took to the streets by the tens of thousands to block the tanks and soldiers from reaching Tiananmen Square. Large number of rank-and-file communists took part in the protests. Many later gave their lives.
The protests apparently sparked – or intersected with – sharp struggle in the top ranks of the CPC. Divisions in the CPC are hardly new: since long before the Cultural Revolution the party has been wracked with factional differences, and all too often these have been fought out by military force or manipulation of mass movements rather than straightforward ideological debate. Many have surmised that inner-party struggle carried out by such means played a role in shaping events in the streets. This is speculation – but what is not a matter of guesswork is that a section of the CPC leadership was sympathetic to the democracy movement and opposed to the crackdown. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang visited the Tiananmen Square hunger strikers on May 19, saying “I came too late, too late,” with tears in his eyes. “We deserve your criticism, and we are not here to ask for your forgiveness. I am too old but you are still young. You should live to see the realization of the four modernizations in China.” The following day, premier Li Peng announced martial law and Zhao has not been seen or heard from since.
Following the military crackdown, the CPC central committee released a statement that “The organizers and instigators of these riots are mainly people who had entered into collusion with foreign forces hostile to China – clandestine organizations. They are people ... who hate the CPC and the socialist system.” This cynical statement turns facts on their head: it was the massacre, not the protest movement, which has turned millions in China against the CPC.
It only adds to the tragedy that China’s crackdown occurs at a time when new forms of democracy are being debated and experimented with in a number of other socialist countries.
The experience, both positive and negative, of socialist countries over recent decades increasingly shows that de-Stalinization is on the agenda, and only a democratic, law-governed system of socialist pluralism can guarantee the fullest participation of the people and the true competition of ideas socialism needs to succeed and prosper. Various socialist countries are already moving in this direction – though at different speeds and by different routes. But a common trend – and a necessary one, in our opinion – is increasing separation of the communist party from the operations of the state, with new mechanisms coming into being to make the state directly accountable to the masses. To play a leading role, the communist party, or other parties, must earn their influence based on their ideas and their ability to persuade.
Is such a perspective a negative concession to bourgeois democracy? Absolutely not. Socialist democracy was never meant to deny workers any of the democratic rights achieved under capitalism. It was meant to provide workers all the rights won under bourgeois democracy and to extend these rights further, deepen them more. In countries where revolutionary power is secured and socialism is established, workers should have more freedom to assemble, more freedom to speak out.. more access to information about how society is functioning, more power to elect and recall their leaders.
Socialism has absolutely nothing to fear from democracy. On the contrary, as the only system in the world based on meeting the needs of the masses, it should thrive on democracy. The transition to more democratic forms of socialism is complex. But the positive steps taken in the Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary provide a stark contrast to the tragic events in China. In that regard, differences between the paths of the two largest socialist countries are worth noting. In the Soviet Union, the pro-perestroika wing of the CPSU advocates economic reform, political democratization, and revitalization of Marxism - while taking the lead in the struggle against corruption. Indeed, political reforms race ahead, so as economic reforms proceed, the means are being developed to sort through and cope with the new contradictions they engender.
In China, however, the Deng Xiaoping leadership offered sweeping economic reform – without political reform, without consistent opposition to corruption, and without serious attention to the revitalization of Marxism. And when the contradictions of this course burst into the open, the CPC rejected reform, and instead chose a course which is likely to prove one of the most costly in the history of socialism.