In the early 1980s the agricultural communes were dismantled and land was leased to individual farm families; agricultural production, helped by a spate of good weather, sharply increased. The government at the same time retooled factories to meet pent-up consumer demand. The country was opened to the outside world, and foreigners were encouraged to bring capital, technical information, and managerial knowledge to China. The new government established four Special Economic Zones to absorb and experiment with foreign knowledge and technology. At the same time, it lessened its reliance on political campaigns and reduced the political pressure on the people. As long as they did not oppose the “socialist” system and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese could think what they wished. In a society where almost every aspect of people’s lives had been controlled, this represented real change. Popular religion revived in the countryside, while cultural and intellectual life in the cities cautiously reappeared. Publishers poured out translations of foreign works, as well as new and old books by Chinese authors. The new regime seems to have been genuinely popular in its early years; people affectionately referred to Deng Xiaoping as “Old Deng,” a term they rarely used for the venerated yet remote Mao Zedong.
The opening of the country and the relaxing of political control, however, created problems for Deng’s regime. Many Chinese came to believe that life in the Western liberal democracies and Japan was much better than life in “socialist” China. Moreover, neighboring countries and territories such as Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, which had decisively rejected socialism, flourished over the course of the 1980s while the Soviet Union and “socialist” bloc countries languished. Belief in the superiority of socialism was shaken. If countries with much the same cultural heritage and racial background as China had advanced so rapidly, they reasoned, why shouldn’t China? Students and intellectuals, already disillusioned by the violence and contradictions of the Cultural Revolution, now had the chance to learn about foreign countries and different political and economic systems. Many came to wonder about the efficacy of the existing Chinese political and economic system. Some, moreover, came to see the regime’s claims to preserve Chinese culture as really intended to block out cultural and intellectual influences from the outside world.
Increased contact with the outside world also now gave members of the Party and government increased opportunities for graft and corruption. The People’s Republic of China had not yet succeeded in establishing institutions to handle this problem, and many of the Party’s political campaigns going back to the early 1940s can be explained in part as attempts to wipe out corruption and curtail special privilege. The prestige of the Party and government, already badly shaken by the violent and seemingly arbitrary political campaigns of the past decades, plummeted. Moreover, since the new regime stressed the modernization of the country rather than revolutionary leadership and the building of socialism, the dominant role of the Party was now called into question. Despite efforts to bring younger and better-educated people into the Party and government, many Chinese saw members of the Party and government as elderly veterans of the Long March or uneducated people who got their positions through seniority rather than through merit. They did not seem equipped to lead China into the twenty-first century.
These developments led to a series of student movements, or “tides,” over the course of the 1980s, which garnered increasing support from the urban population. Intellectuals moved from thinking about reforming socialism to considering how to establish liberal democracy and called for the release of activists imprisoned in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the summer of 1988, government price reforms brought about high rates of inflation in China’s cities, and this in turn created a wave of panic buying. Despite their new admiration for consumer goods and capitalism, urban Chinese were not willing to give up the safety net established for them by the party. In the fall the government slammed on the economic brakes, cutting back on reform. This move, while not entirely reassuring the populace, led to fears among students and intellectuals that reforms begun by Deng Xiaoping a decade before were now being retracted. All these developments culminated in the 1989 student movement and the Tiananmen Massacre of early June.
Through repression, the government managed to stifle dissent and curtail the student movement. At the same time, increased foreign investment led to an economic boom in certain parts of the country; attention was drawn, even by Deng, from making revolution to making money. While certain areas along the coast, such as the southern province of Guangdong, boomed, areas in the hinterland languished. With China rapidly becoming a nation of two unequal halves, migrants from depressed interior provinces crowded increasingly into the more dynamic coastal areas, seeking employment. Meanwhile the population, despite government efforts to curb it, continued to grow, while efforts to increase production and make money at all costs led to increased exploitation and degradation of the environment and to charges that the affluence of some was gained by collusion and corruption among entrepreneurs and bureaucrats.
THE TURN TO STABILITY AND MODERNIZATION
ZHOU ENLAI: “REPORT ON THE WORK OF THE GOVERNMENT,” DELIVERED ON JANUARY 13, 1975, AT THE FIRST SESSION OF THE FOURTH NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CONGRESS OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
In 1975 Prime Minister Zhou Enlai was already stricken with cancer and would die early the following year. This speech, given to the rubber-stamp legislature, is considered the clarion call to emphasize modernization rather than class struggle. The Four Modernizations referred to as the second stage became slogans of a national campaign.
Socialist revolution is the powerful engine for developing social productive forces. We must adhere to the principle of grasping revolution, promoting production and other work, and preparedness against war, and with revolution in command, work hard to increase production and speed up socialist construction so that our socialist system will have a more solid material foundation.
On Chairman Mao’s instructions, it was suggested in the report on the work of the government to the Third National People’s Congress that we might envisage the development of our national economy in two stages beginning from the Third Five-Year Plan: The first stage is to build an independent and relatively comprehensive industrial and economic system in fifteen years, that is, before 1980; the second stage is to accomplish the comprehensive modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology before the end of the century, so that our national economy will be advancing to the front ranks of the world.
We should fulfill or overfulfill the Fourth Five-Year Plan in 1975 in order to reinforce the foundations for completing the first stage before 1980 as envisaged above. In light of the situation at home and abroad, the next ten years are crucial for accomplishing what has been envisaged for the two stages. In this period we shall not only build an independent and relatively comprehensive industrial and economic system but march toward the splendid goal set for the second stage. With this objective in mind, the State Council will draw up a long-range ten-year plan, five-year plans, and annual plans. The ministries and commissions under the State Council and the local revolutionary committees at all levels down to the industrial and mining enterprises and production teams and other grass-roots units should all rouse the masses to work out their plans through full discussion and strive to attain our splendid goal ahead of time.
[From Peking Review 4 (January 24, 1975), p. 23]
COMMUNIQUÉ OF THE THIRD PLENARY SESSION OF THE ELEVENTH CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA, DECEMBER 22, 1978
Deng Xiaoping and his allies gained control of the party at the third plenary session of the Eleventh Party Congress. This document indicates that they intended to steer the country in a new direction, away from the class struggle and mass movements of the Cultural Revolution and toward the modernization of the economy. Though the rhetoric of revolutionary struggle is still used, the main thrust is to achieve stability.
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p; The Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held its third plenary session in Beijing between December 18 and 22, 1978. . . .
The plenary session unanimously endorsed the policy decision put forward by Comrade Hua Guofeng on behalf of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee that, to meet the developments at home and abroad, now is an appropriate time to take the decision to close the large-scale nationwide mass movement to expose and criticize Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, and to shift the emphasis of our Party’s work and the attention of the people of the whole country to socialist modernization. This is of major significance for fulfillment of the three-year and eight-year programs for the development of the national economy and the outline for twenty-three years, for the modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology and for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country. The general task put forward by our Party for the new period reflects the demands of history and the people’s aspirations and represents their fundamental interests. Whether or not we can carry this general task to completion, speed socialist modernization, and on the basis of a rapid growth in production improve the people’s living standards significantly and strengthen national defense—this is a major issue that is of paramount concern to all our people and of great significance to the cause of world peace and progress. Carrying out the Four Modernizations requires great growth in the productive forces, which in turn requires diverse changes in those aspects of the relations of production and the superstructure [that are] not in harmony with the growth of the productive forces and requires changes in all methods of management, actions, and thinking that stand in the way of such growth. Socialist modernization is therefore a profound and extensive revolution. There is still in our country today a small handful of counterrevolutionary elements and criminals who hate our socialist modernization and try to undermine it. We must not relax our class struggle against them, nor can we weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat. But as Comrade Mao Zedong pointed out, the large-scale turbulent class struggles of mass character have in the main come to an end. Class struggle in socialist society should be carried out on the principle of strictly differentiating the two different types of contradictions and correctly handling them in accordance with the procedures prescribed by the Constitution and the law. It is impermissible to confuse the two different types of contradictions and damage the political stability and unity required for socialist modernization. The plenary session calls on the whole Party, the whole army, and the people of all our nationalities to work with one heart and one mind, enhance political stability and unity, mobilize themselves immediately to go all out, pool their wisdom and efforts, and carry out the new Long March to make China a modern, powerful socialist country before the end of this century. . . .
While we have achieved political stability and unity and are restoring and adhering to the economic policies that proved effective over a long time, we are now, in the light of the new historical conditions and practical experience, adopting a number of major new economic measures, conscientiously transforming the system and methods of economic management, actively expanding economic cooperation on terms of equality and mutual benefit with other countries on the basis of self-reliance, striving to adopt the world’s advanced technologies and equipment, and greatly strengthening scientific and educational work to meet the needs of modernization. Therefore, there can be no doubt that our country’s economic construction is bound to advance rapidly and steadily once again. . . .
The session points out that one of the serious shortcomings in the structure of economic management in our country is the overconcentration of authority, and it is necessary boldly to shift it under guidance from the leadership to lower levels so that the local authorities and industrial and agricultural enterprises will have greater power of decision in management under the guidance of unified state planning; big efforts should be made to simplify bodies at various levels charged with economic administration and transfer most of their functions to such enterprises as specialized companies or complexes; it is necessary to act firmly in line with economic law, attach importance to the role of the law of value, consciously combine ideological and political work with economic methods, and give full play to the enthusiasm of cadres and workers for production; it is necessary, under the centralized leadership of the Party, to tackle conscientiously the failure to make a distinction between the Party, the government, and the enterprise and to put a stop to the substitution of Party for government and the substitution of government for enterprise administration, to institute a division of responsibilities among different levels, types of work and individuals, increase the authority and responsibility of administrative bodies and managerial personnel, reduce the number of meetings and amount of paperwork to raise work efficiency, and conscientiously adopt the practices of examination, reward and punishment, promotion and demotion. . . .
The session held a serious discussion on the question of democracy and the legal system. It holds that socialist modernization requires centralized leadership and strict implementation of various rules and regulations and observance of labor discipline. Bourgeois factionalism and anarchism must be firmly opposed. But the correct concentration of ideas is possible only when there is full democracy. Since for a period in the past, democratic centralism was not carried out in the true sense, centralism being divorced from democracy and there being too little democracy, it is necessary to lay particular emphasis on democracy at present, and on the dialectical relationship between democracy and centralism, so as to make the mass line the foundation of the Party’s centralized leadership and the effective direction of the organizations of production. In ideological and political life among the ranks of the people, only democracy is permissible and not suppression or persecution. . . . The constitutional rights of citizens must be resolutely protected, and no one has the right to infringe upon them.
In order to safeguard people’s democracy, it is imperative to strengthen the socialist legal system so that democracy is systematized and written into law in such a way as to ensure the stability, continuity, and full authority of this democratic system and these laws; there must be laws for people to follow, these laws must be observed, their enforcement must be strict and lawbreakers must be dealt with. From now on, legislative work should have an important place on the agenda of the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee. Procuratorial and judicial organizations must maintain their independence as is appropriate; they must faithfully abide by the laws, rules, and regulations, serve the people’s interests, keep to the facts, guarantee the equality of all people before the people’s laws, and deny anyone the privilege of being above the law.
[From Peking Review, no. 52 (December 29, 1978), pp. 10–15]
YU QIULI: “THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICS AND ECONOMICS”
In September 1979, after Deng Xiaoping’s assumption of party leadership, the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Yu Qiuli, a vice premier of the State Council and a Politburo member, addressed the State Council on a basic redirection of economic policy. While reaffirming the inseparability of politics and economics, he reversed Mao’s priority of “politics in command” and declared that economics should guide state policy and technical expertise [an “economic cabinet"] provide political leadership. Putting ideology aside in favor of pragmatism, he argued that Mao’s China, following the Soviet model, had fallen far behind after 1949 in the economic competition with Taiwan and Japan, which followed the Western model.
1. The relationship between politics and economics cannot be severed because to do well in economics is to serve the purposes of politics. . . . From now on, we should break away from the bad habit of beginning every briefing with a political report before taking up the subject concerning business operations. People used a lot of political terms even at meetings called by departments in charge of business operations. . . .
2. There is nothing wrong with the �
��State Council’s being not a political cabinet but an economic one.” Let others say what they want, I see no harm in Jiang Jingguo’s bringing in a large number of economic experts to form a Taiwan economic cabinet. Taiwan’s economy is making rapid progress; the people there are living many times better than the people in any of our provinces, and Taiwan’s per capita income is reported to be the forty-fourth in the world, putting Taiwan among the rich areas. It would not be a bad idea to learn from this economic cabinet. . . .
3. Why do we compare ourselves with Taiwan rather than with any other country? The economic situation in Taiwan during the 1950s differed little from that in any of our provinces, the only difference being that the area on their side continued to be ruled by the Nationalists while on our side we had a change of government. At first, they lived on American aid, later taking the Japanese route of economic development, while we, on the other hand, “leaned completely to one side” and followed the Soviet pattern of economic development. In the first decade, we did have some achievements. In the second decade, Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated; the Soviet Union tore up treaties, withdrew its experts, and suspended all kinds of assistance and cooperation projects. It was a time when we could have turned a misfortune into a blessing. For if we had turned back as soon as possible and opened wide our door to take in scientific and technical achievements and equipment from the advanced Western countries, instead of continuing to follow the Soviet pattern, the situation today would not be like this. . . . It is always more difficult to rebuild after destruction than to build up from nothing. The situation in Taiwan is just the opposite. While we were rapidly regressing, they suddenly forged ahead like a miracle. With one working in high gear and the other moving backward, the gap between us has become wider and wider. When our ostrich policy no longer worked, we had to admit that we have lost in this peaceful economic competition in which there was not even a whiff of gunpowder. One does not lose “face” in conceding defeat. Failure is the mother of success. There is no reason why we cannot win back the lost time if we would learn from past experiences.
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2 Page 73