Mastering Modern World History

by Norman Lowe

  Between 1963 and 1966 there was a great public debate between the rightists (including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping) and the Maoists about which course to follow. Mao, using his position as Chairman of the Party to rouse the young people, launched a desperate campaign to ‘save’ the revolution. In this Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, as he called it, Mao appealed to the masses. His supporters, the Red Guards (mostly students), toured the country arguing Mao’s case, and carrying their Little Red Books containing the thoughts of Chairman Mao. In some areas schools, and later factories, were closed down, as young people were urged to move into the countryside and work on farms. If questioned, they were required to say that they would like to spend their whole lives on the farm, whether it was true or not. It was an incredible propaganda exercise in which Mao was trying to renew revolutionary fervour.

  Unfortunately it brought chaos and something close to civil war. Once the student masses had been roused, they denounced and physically attacked anybody in authority, not just critics of Mao. Teachers, professionals, local party officials, all were targets; millions of people were disgraced and ruined. By 1967 the extremists among the Red Guards were almost out of control, and Mao had to call in the army, commanded by Lin Biao, to restore order. Mao, privately admitting that he had made mistakes, in public blamed his advisers and the Red Guard leaders. Many were arrested and executed for ‘committing excesses’. At the party conference in April 1969 the Cultural Revolution was formally ended, and Mao was declared free of all blame for what had happened. Later, Mao blamed Defence Minister Lin Biao (his chosen successor), who had always been one of his most reliable supporters, for the over-enthusiasm of the Red Guards. Some sources claim that Mao decided to make Lin Biao the scapegoat because he was trying to manoeuvre Mao into retiring. He was accused of plotting to assassinate Mao (which was highly unlikely), and was killed in an air crash in 1971 while trying to escape to the USSR, or so the official reports claimed.

  The Cultural Revolution caused great disruption, ruined millions of lives and probably held up China’s economic development by ten years. And yet in spite of that, there was probably some economic recovery in the last few years before Mao’s death. Certainly China had made great strides since 1949. Nevertheless, Jonathan Fenby’s recent verdict on Mao was damning:

  In general, China had been laid low by his experiments. Poverty was institutionalized. Much of the country was still in a pre-industrial stage. Productivity had slumped. Urban wages were half what they had been under the Nationalist Republic. It took six months’ pay to buy a sewing machine. In Guangdong 90 per cent of would-be army recruits were rejected on grounds of size or health. … Productive people were demoralized. Trade was tiny. If there was equality in the People’s Republic, it was the equality of poverty.

  The most surprising development in Mao’s policies during his last years was in foreign affairs when Mao and Zhou En-lai decided it was time to improve relations with the USA (see Section 8.6 (a) and (c)).

  20.2 LIFE AFTER MAO

  (a) A power struggle followed the death of Mao in 1976

  There were three main contestants to succeed Mao: Hua Guofeng, named by Mao himself as his successor; Deng Xiaoping, who had been sacked from his position as general secretary of the Party during the Cultural Revolution for allegedly being too liberal; and a group known as the Gang of Four, led by Jiang Qing, Mao’s widow, who were extremely militant Mao supporters, more Maoist than Mao himself. Jiang Qing did her best to muscle in and sideline Hua. But she was extremely unpopular with most sections of Chinese society, and it was said that she suffered from an ‘empress syndrome’. When the Gang attempted to stage a coup, this gave Hua an excuse to have them arrested. Meanwhile Deng Xiaoping kept very much in the background, and Hua seemed set to become Supreme Leader.

  Hua was keen to press ahead with industrialization and he introduced an ambitious ten-year plan which included an increase in oil production. But things soon went wrong: a large oil rig collapsed with the loss of scores of lives; expensive imported technology and insufficient exports resulted in the biggest trade gap since the mid-1950s; and inflation cancelled out wage increases. Hua Guofeng was blamed for the failures and Deng seized the chance to get rid of him. In 1980 the Politburo decided that Hua ‘lacks the political and organizational ability to be the Chairman of the Party’. Hua was forced to resign, leaving the 73-year-old Deng as undisputed leader (June 1981).

  In the words of Robert Service: ‘Deng was as hard as teak. He endured as many demotions as promotions at Mao’s hand since the 1950s. His son was crippled from the waist down after leaping from a window to escape physical maltreatment in the Cultural Revolution. Deng was forthright about the need for change … and he knew he had no time to waste if he wanted to make the changes he wanted.’ As a gesture of open criticism of Mao and his policies, the Gang of Four were put on trial for ‘evil, monstrous and unpardonable crimes’ committed during the Cultural Revolution. They were all found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Central Committee of the Party (CCP) issued a ‘Resolution’ condemning the Cultural Revolution as a grave ‘Left’ error for which Mao himself was chiefly responsible. However, Mao was praised for his successful efforts to ‘smash the counter-revolutionary Lin Biao clique’. As historian Steve Smith explained: ‘By pinning the blame on one man in this fashion, the Resolution sought to exculpate the “overwhelming majority” of CCP leaders who were said to have been on the right side in the struggle. The Resolution thus underwrote a shift of authority within the CCP from a single leader to a collective leadership.’

  (b) There was a period of dramatic policy changes

  This new phase began in June 1978 as Deng Xiaoping gained the ascendancy. Deng somehow succeeded in persuading the Politburo that changes were vital, after all the upheavals and crises caused by the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution.

  Many changes introduced during the Cultural Revolution were reversed: the revolutionary committees set up to run local government were abolished and replaced by more democratically elected groups. Property confiscated from former capitalists was returned to survivors, and there was more religious freedom and greater freedom for intellectuals to express themselves in literature and the arts.

  In economic matters Deng and his protégé Hu Yaobang wanted technical and financial help from the West in order to modernize industry, agriculture, science and technology. Loans were accepted from foreign governments and banks, and contracts signed with foreign companies for the supply of modern equipment. In 1980 China joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. On the home front, permission was given for the setting up of private industrial companies. State farms were given more control over planning, financing and profits; bonuses, piece-rates and profit-sharing schemes were encouraged; the state paid higher prices to the communes for their produce and reduced taxes in order to stimulate efficiency and output. These measures had some success – grain output reached a record level in 1979, and many peasants became prosperous.

  As so often happens, this reform programme led to demands for more radical reform.

  (c) Demands for more radical reform: the Democracy Wall

  In November 1978 there was a poster campaign in Beijing and other cities, often in support of Deng Xiaoping. Soon there were massive demonstrations demanding more drastic changes, and early in 1978 the government felt obliged to ban marches and poster campaigns. However, there still remained what was called the ‘Democracy Wall’ in Beijing, where the public could express itself with huge wall posters (Dazibao); During 1979 the posters displayed there became progressively more daring, attacking Chairman Mao and demanding a wide range of human rights:

  the right to criticize the government openly;

  representation for non-communist parties in the National People’s Congress;

  freedom to change jobs and to travel abroad;

  abolition of the communes.

  This infuriated Deng, who had appr
oved the Democracy Wall in the first place only because most of the posters were criticizing the Gang of Four. Now he launched a fierce attack on the leading dissidents, accusing them of trying to destroy the socialist system. Several were arrested and given prison sentences of up to 15 years. In November 1979 the Democracy Wall was abolished altogether. Law and order and party discipline were restored. ‘Without the party’, Deng remarked, ‘China will retrogress into divisions and confusions.’

  (d) Modernization and its problems

  Following the first flush of reforming zeal and the embarrassment of the Democracy Wall, the pace slowed considerably. But Deng, together with his two protégés, Hu Yaobang (party general secretary) and Zhao Ziyang (prime minister), was determined to press ahead with modernization as soon as possible.

  Zhao Ziyang had won a reputation as a brilliant administrator in Sichuan province where he was responsible for an 80 per cent increase in industrial production in 1979. He also began experiments, later extended to the whole country, to break up the communes so as to give peasants control of individual plots. The land, although still officially owned by the state, was divided up and allocated to individual peasant households, which would be allowed to keep most of the profits. This was successful in raising agricultural production, and the standard of living for many people improved. In December 1984 Zhao announced that compulsory state purchase of crops was to be abandoned; the state would continue to buy staple products, but in much smaller quantities than before. Prices of surplus grain, pork, cotton and vegetables would be allowed to fluctuate on the open market.

  By this time, however, modernization, and what Deng called the move to ‘market socialism’, were having some unfortunate side effects. Although exports increased by 10 per cent during 1984, imports increased by 38 per cent, leaving a record trade deficit of $1100 million, and causing a sharp fall in China’s foreign exchange reserves. The government tried with some success to control imports by placing heavy duties on all imported goods except vital raw materials and microchip equipment (80 per cent on cars and 70 per cent on colour televisions and video players). Another unwelcome development was that the annual rate of inflation began to rise, reaching 22 per cent in 1986.

  (e) The thoughts of Deng Xiaoping

  Apparently not unduly worried by these trends, the 82-year-old Deng explained his ideas for the future in a magazine article of November 1986. His main aim was to enable his people to get richer. By the year 2000, if all went well, the average annual income per head should have risen from the equivalent of £280 to somewhere near £700, and China’s production should have doubled. ‘To get rich is not a crime’, he added. He was happy with the way agricultural reform was going, but emphasized that in industry, sweeping decentralization was still needed. The Party must withdraw from administrative tasks, issue fewer instructions and allow more initiative at the lower levels. Only capitalist investment could create the conditions in which China could become a prosperous, modernized state. His other main theme was China’s international role: to lead a peace alliance of the rest of the world against the dangerous ambitions of the USA and the USSR. Nothing, he said, could possibly alter the course he had set for his country.

  20.3 TIANANMEN SQUARE, 1989 AND THE CRISIS OF COMMUNISM

  (a) The crisis of 1987

  In spite of his radical words, Deng always had to keep an eye on the traditional, conservative or Maoist members of the Politburo, who were still powerful and might be able to get rid of him if his economic reforms failed or if party control seemed to be slipping. Deng was doing a clever balancing act between the reformers like Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang on the one hand, and the hardliners like Li Peng on the other. Deng’s tactics were to encourage criticism from students and intellectuals, but only up to a point: enough to enable him to drop some of the oldest and most inefficient party bureaucrats. If the criticism looked like getting out of hand, it had to be stopped (as had happened in 1979) for fear of antagonizing the hardliners.

  In December 1986 there was a series of student demonstrations supporting Deng Xiaoping and the ‘Four Modernizations’ (agriculture, industry, science and defence), but urging a much quicker pace and, ominously, more democracy. After the students ignored a new ban on wall posters and a new rule requiring five days’ notice for demonstrations, Deng decided that this challenge to party control and discipline had gone far enough, and the demonstrators were dispersed. However, it had been enough to alarm the hardliners, who forced the resignation of the reformer Hu Yaobang as party general secretary. He was accused of being too liberal in his political outlook, encouraging intellectuals to demand greater democracy and even some sort of opposition party. Although this was a serious blow to Deng, it was not a complete disaster since his place was taken by Zhao Ziyang, another economic reformer, but one who had so far kept clear of controversial political ideas; however, Li Peng, a hardline supporter of order and authority, took Zhao’s place as prime minister, and he demanded a clampdown on all further protests.

  Zhao soon announced that the government had no intention of abandoning its economic reform programme, and promised new measures to speed up financial reform, and at the same time, a clampdown on ‘bourgeois intellectuals’ who threatened party control. This highlighted the dilemma facing Deng and Zhao: was it possible to offer people a choice in buying and selling and yet deny them any choice in other areas such as policies and political parties? Many western observers thought it was impossible to have one without the other (and so did Gorbachev in the USSR), and by the end of January 1987 there were signs that they could be right. On the other hand, if the economic reforms proved successful, Deng and Zhao could turn out to be right.

  (b) Tiananmen Square, 1989

  Unfortunately for Deng and Zhao, the economic reforms ran into problems during 1988 and 1989. Inflation went up to 30 per cent, and wages, especially of state employees (such as civil servants, party officials, police and soldiers), lagged well behind prices. Probably encouraged by Gorbachev’s political reforms, and the knowledge that he was to pay a visit to Beijing in mid-May 1989, student demonstrations began again in Tiananmen Square on 17 April; they were demanding political reform, democracy and an end to Communist Party corruption. On 4 May, Zhao Ziyang said that the students’ ‘just demands would be met’, and allowed the press to report the demands; but this outraged Deng. The demonstrations continued throughout Gorbachev’s visit (15–18 May, to mark the formal reconciliation between China and the USSR) and into June, with sometimes as many as 250 000 people occupying the square and surrounding streets. The scene was vividly described by John Simpson (in Despatches from the Barricades, Hutchinson, 1990), the Foreign Affairs editor of the BBC, who was there for much of the time:

  There was a new spirit of courage and daring. … There was a sense of liberation, that just to be in the Square was a statement in itself. People smiled and shook my hand … everyone, it seemed, listened to the BBC’s Chinese language service. The gentleness, the smiles and the headbands were irresistibly reminiscent of the big rock concerts and the anti-Vietnam demonstrations in the 1960s. There was the same certainty that because the protesters were young and peaceful the government must capitulate. … Food was delivered on a regular basis. Ordinary people responded with generosity to requests for bottled water. … Hundreds of thousands of people had decided to join in on the side which seemed certain to win. The major avenues of Peking were blocked with bicycles, cars, lorries, buses and flatbed trucks all heading for the Square, filled with people cheering, singing, playing musical instruments, waving flags, enjoying themselves. The racket of it all could be heard streets away. … Victory seemed a foregone conclusion; how could any government resist a popular uprising of this magnitude?

  It certainly began to look very much as though the government had lost control and might soon give way to the demands. Behind the scenes, however, a power struggle was going on in the Politburo between Zhao Ziyang and the hardline Li Peng, the prime minister. Li Peng, with
the support of Deng Xiaoping, eventually won. On 20 May Deng declared martial law, and sent Li Peng to negotiate with the protesters. When negotiations failed, thousands of troops were brought in, and on 3–4 June the army, using paratroopers, tanks and infantry, attacked the students, killing between 1500 and 3000 of them (see Illus. 20.1). Tiananmen Square was under government control again, and demonstrations in other large cities were also dispersed, though with less bloodshed. The protest leaders were sentenced to long terms in labour camps. Zhao Ziyang was removed from his position as party chief and replaced by Jiang Zemin, a more ‘middle of the road’ politician. The hard-liners were triumphant and Prime Minister Li Peng became the leading figure, when the 85-year-old Deng stepped down as premier in November 1989.

  There was worldwide condemnation of the massacres, but Deng and the hardliners were convinced that they had taken the right decision. They felt that to have given way to the students’ demands for democracy would have caused too much disruption and confusion; one-party control was needed to supervise the transition to a ‘socialist market economy’. Later, events in the USSR seemed to prove them right: when Mikhail Gorbachev tried to introduce economic and political reforms both at the same time, he failed; the Communist Party lost control, the economic reforms were a disaster, and the USSR broke up into 15 separate states (see Section 18.3). Whatever the rest of the world thought about the Tiananmen Square massacres, the Chinese leadership could congratulate itself on avoiding Gorbachev’s mistakes and preserving communism in China at a time when it was being swept away in eastern Europe.

  Illustratio 20.1 Tanks advance in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, June 1989; the man was pulled away by bystanders