Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

by Adi Ignatius

  After I said this, he paused to think for a moment. Then he replied, “Very well. I will do what you have suggested. I will not mention this for another year.”

  This talk with Deng made me realize that some people, perhaps many of the elders, had been putting pressure on Deng, bad-mouthing me. Deng openly expressed that he would not be influenced by them. He rejected their pressure. From the moment I was made General Secretary in 1987, a conservative force had gradually formed to oppose me. Though they were aggressive in their opposition, utilizing all sorts of tactics, without Deng Xiaoping’s support they were unable to succeed.

  This situation only changed after the political upheaval of 1989. Because Deng and I disagreed over how to deal with the student demonstrations, and because I refused to execute his decision, Deng’s attitude toward me changed. When that happened, the elders who had opposed me for more than a year were finally able to share a consensus with Deng. United, they made the decision to remove me from office.

  Here I’d like to talk about Li Xiannian and Deng Liqun. Deng Liqun was the general leading the conservatives in the ideological, theoretical, and propaganda realms. His supporters behind the scenes included Li Xiannian, Wang Zhen, and Comrade Chen Yun. Of course, there were other elders who also opposed reform. Deng Liqun had extremely close relationships with them.

  His relationship with Wang Zhen extended back to the early years after liberation, when Wang Zhen was the Party secretary of the Central Committee’s Xinjiang Bureau, where Deng [Liqun] was in charge of its department of propaganda. He also had a good relationship with Li Xiannian and had long served as his assistant. When Li Xiannian was in charge of the Fifth Division of the State Council, Deng [Liqun] was his adviser.

  Comrade Chen Yun was also very good to him. Deng Liqun held Comrade Chen Yun’s opinions on the economy in high esteem. As for Deng Liqun’s own views on economics, though of course he didn’t approve of the ways of the Cultural Revolution, he very much approved of what had come before the Cultural Revolution, especially the methods of the first Five-Year Plan. At least as early as 1980, he promoted the notion that Comrade Chen Yun’s economic ideas were sufficient to guide us in our new economic policies.

  He [Deng Liqun] often used his position in charge of [propaganda] to publish collections of essays for Party elders, to flatter them and win favor. Examples include the Selected Works of Chen Yun and the Selected Works of Li Xiannian. Therefore, when Deng Xiaoping decided to remove Deng Liqun from his position leading ideological and theoretical work, both Chen Yun and Li Xiannian disagreed. They openly expressed this by commenting, “Deng Liqun is a good comrade.” However, since Deng Xiaoping had already made the decision, there was nothing they could do to change it.

  Immediately after Deng Liqun lost in the elections at the 13th Party Congress, Comrade Chen Yun wrote a letter to safeguard Deng Liqun’s salary and other compensation. To this day, Deng Liqun still enjoys the compensation package of a secretary of the Central Committee Secretariat or a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Advisory Commission, even though he was never elected to be a member of the latter group. This is highly abnormal.

  In fact, Deng Liqun is the most powerful writer among those who oppose Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. It would be wrong to underestimate Deng Liqun’s influence. After Red Flag magazine and the Research Office of the Secretariat were abolished, Deng Liqun made other arrangements for people who supported his work. Deng Liqun still holds titles in many organizations, where he controls the realm of ideology and theory, especially in Party history and other Party publications.

  Li Xiannian was the most prominent elder who opposed Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. He hated me because I was implementing Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, but since it was difficult for him to openly oppose Deng, he made me the target of his opposition. Li Xiannian claimed that I only listened to what Deng Xiaoping said, while ignoring him. He once relayed a message through [Vice Premier] Wang Renzhong, who in turn sent [Hubei Party secretary] Wang Quanguo to tell me, “You should listen to all Party elders and not be so partial to just one!” In fact, I could not listen to him, because he was opposed to reform.

  Another issue was Comrade Chen Yun’s insistence on applying the methods of the first Five-Year Plan, which he said should not be criticized. He believed that reform had, in many ways, negated the methods of the first Five-Year Plan, so he was often antagonistic toward reform.

  Li Xiannian’s opposition, by contrast, was not primarily based on the first Five-Year Plan. Instead he advocated for the policies used during the Cultural Revolution or the three years of stagnation afterward, during which he was in charge of economic policy. When Comrade Chen Yun lost Chairman Mao’s favor in 1958, it was Li Xiannian who took over as the Standing Vice Premier of the State Council and for a long time he was in charge of economic policy. He was upset that the records of his economic successes during the Cultural Revolution era and the three years of post–Cultural Revolution stagnation went unrecognized. He often said, “The economic successes are not all the result of reform. Weren’t there successes in the past, too? Weren’t the foundations laid in the past?”

  PART 6

  HOW CHINA MUST CHANGE

  1

  Deng’s View on Political Reform

  The modest political reform measures passed by the 13th Party Congress in 1987 are shelved after the Tiananmen crackdown. The effect is still in evidence today: China permits widespread economic freedom but little in the way of political liberty. Zhao, as he languishes under house arrest, turns his thoughts to China’s stillborn political development.

  His journey begins with a look back at the diverging views that China’s top leaders held before Tiananmen. He starts with an analysis of Deng Xiaoping, his onetime mentor, who set China on its current path.

  Let me start with a discussion of Deng Xiaoping’s view. From 1980 until just before June 4, 1989, Deng repeatedly spoke about opposing liberalization. On the other hand, he also said many times that political reform was necessary, so how exactly was reform to be conducted, according to Deng Xiaoping’s idea of political reform?

  I believe Deng was somewhat dissatisfied with the existing political system. His belief in political reform was genuine. But the reform he had in mind was not a modernization and democratization of politics. It was rather a kind of administrative reform, the kind of reform that only involved specific regulations, organization, methodology, and general morale. Deng believed that a precondition of reform was an upholding of the Communist Party’s one-party rule. Reforms were precisely intended to further consolidate the Communist Party’s one-party rule. Deng firmly rejected any reform that would weaken that.

  The impression most people had of Deng Xiaoping’s idea of political reform was from a speech he delivered at the enlarged Politburo meeting of August 1980, titled “On the Reform of the System of Party and State Leadership.” He criticized the bureaucratism, overconcentration of power, and patriarchism that were part of the system at that time. He pointed out that these problems were rooted in the existing system and that a good system would prevent unscrupulous people from being able to do whatever they wished, while the unsound system was restricting good people from fully realizing good deeds or was even pushing them to the opposing side. In the speech, he even quoted an expression of Chairman Mao, who once said that an episode such as Stalin’s trampling on the socialist legal system could never have happened in Western nations such as England, the United States, or France. Also, when he analyzed the root of the existing shortcomings, he referred especially to the influence of feudalism. He pointed out that even though we worked on building our new democratic revolution for twenty-eight years, and had overthrown the rules of feudalism as well as the feudal ownership of land, we had underestimated the task of cleansing feudalism’s influence on political thinking, and we had not completed the task.

  The contents of Deng Xiaoping’s speech could easily have caused people to believe that Deng was prepared to proce
ed with political modernization and democratization and to change the fundamentals of the political system. But it wasn’t like that. After Deng criticized those shortcomings, he proposed measures that did not exceed the realm of specific regulations, organization, methodology, and morale, and did not touch upon the fundamental system. His reform was to be administrative in nature.

  In addition, Deng’s speech was made in a particular context: at the time, he was focused on how to deal with Hua Guofeng [Mao’s chosen successor]. Both Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun believed that Hua was an obstacle to carrying out the policy of the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee [in 1978, when Deng’s reforms were launched]. Chen Yun even believed that since Hua rose to the top from Mao’s “rebel factions,” he was not to be trusted. Hua’s leadership position was unacceptable to both Deng and Chen.

  At that time [1980], Hua was Party Chairman, Premier of the State Council, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, so in his hands were all the powers of the party, the state, and the military. Therefore, when Deng voiced opposition to an overconcentration of power, one of his objectives was to break up Hua’s power. Foremost was asking Hua to give up his position as Premier.

  A document reviewing lessons to be learned from the Cultural Revolution, “The Resolution of Several Historical Problems,” was being drafted around that time. The entire Party was consumed with reviewing how Mao’s patriarchal dictatorship had put him above the Party and resulted in the great catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, in which Deng himself had been severely victimized and had directly suffered. Therefore, when Comrade Li Weihan [vice chairman of the Central Advisory Commission] proposed cleansing out the influences of feudalism, Deng accepted without hesitation.

  In June 1986, at a briefing on the economic situation and again at an enlarged Politburo meeting, Deng raised the need to proceed with political reform. He said that if we didn’t initiate political reform, we could not adapt to new situations. Political reform should be made a milestone of reform; the success of all other reforms depended upon reform of the political system. In September of that year, at a briefing by the Central Economic and Financial Leading Group, Deng again mentioned political reform and said that a blueprint was needed. In June 1987, in a talk with visitors from Yugoslavia and again in July with Bangladeshi visitors, he repeated that political reform should be an important agenda item. He also said that political reform would be one of the two most important issues of the 13th Party Congress.

  However, the meaning of “political reform” in his remarks was even more limited than what he had said in 1980. He was referring only to administrative reform, issues related to administrative organizations and regulations. In his definition of political reform, foremost was the separation of Party and state, aimed at resolving the issue of how the Party might provide leadership and how to lead well. That was the key. Second was handing authority down to lower administrative levels, which would tackle the issue of the relationship between central and provincial governments, and also the issue of provincial governments handing power down to various local levels. Third was reducing the size of the administration. Another point was improving efficiency.

  In Deng Xiaoping’s speech of September 13, 1986, he said, “I consider there to be three items. First, the Party and administrative bodies and the entire state administrative system must improve their vitality. That means they shouldn’t become ossified and must adopt new ways of thinking to deal with newly emerging issues. The second is to truly improve efficiency. Third, we must fully mobilize people, enterprises, and all local level administrations to be more enthusiastic and to have renewed vitality. The most significant issue now is to promote younger cadres. Other major issues include boosting people’s enthusiasm and handing more power down to lower levels.”

  Some people feel that Deng only paid lip service to political reform now and again, in order to give people a favorable impression. Others believed that Deng’s political reforms could never be carried out because they were blocked by the [political] situation or had encountered forces of opposition. I believe these two views both lack sufficient evidence.

  The essence of the issue is what kind of political reform Deng had in mind. In Deng’s mind, there was no contradiction between political reform, upholding the Four Cardinal Principles, and anti-liberalization; they could all exist simultaneously. Therefore, each time he spoke about political reform, he almost always spoke at around the same time or even in the same speech about anti-liberalization and strengthening the people’s democratic dictatorship, and so on.

  Before he gave his famous August 1980 speech, “On the Reform of the System of Party and State Leadership,” at a theoretical discussion in March 1979, he spoke about “Upholding the Four Cardinal Principles”—like issuing a hoop-tightening incantation* just as the theoretical and metaphysical arenas were beginning to enjoy some freedom.

  After his August speech, in a talk delivered in December, “Implementing the Readjustment Policy and Safeguarding Peace and Solidarity,” he emphasized maintaining the stability and unity of the political scene, as well as strengthening the state apparatus and the people’s democratic dictatorship. He pointed out that though class struggle was no longer a major conflict in society, it continued to exist and could not be underestimated. He stressed that organs of the state must use the appropriate laws and rules to ensure that worker and student strikes be mediated and handled in advance, and that street demonstrations only take place after permits have been obtained specifying time and place; no interorganizational or cross-region contacts for cooperative demonstrations would be permitted; activities of illegal organizations and illegal publications were to be prohibited; martial law could be applied if necessary to areas where events of potentially serious consequences were taking place.

  The years 1986 and 1987 were the period when Deng Xiaoping was focusing on dealing with anti–bourgeois liberalization. As I mentioned above, at the same time on various occasions he mentioned political reform. This shows that what Deng had in mind for political reform was different from what most people understood it to mean: modernization of the state and democratization. His idea was mainly to tackle the vitality and efficiency of the Communist Party and the state; in other words, administrative reform.

  In June 1987, when Deng spoke with guests from Yugoslavia regarding China’s political reform, he said that, in general, political reforms were associated with democratization, but the meaning of democratization was not clear. Democracy was an important means of reform, but how exactly democracy could be carried out was an issue that was new to us.

  Deng was particularly opposed to a multiparty system, tripartite separation of powers, and the parliamentary system of Western nations—and firmly rejected them. Almost every time he mentioned political reform, he was sure to note that the Western political system absolutely could not be adopted. This was the foremost component of the “bourgeois liberalization” that he opposed. In September 1980, when Deng said that separation of Party and state must be the first item on the agenda of political reform, he also pointed out that pursuing liberalization and copying the West were absolutely forbidden. The June 1987 talk with Yugoslav guests included a long section in which he said, “The democracy of the bourgeoisie is in fact a democracy for those who have a monopoly on capital, nothing more than multiple parties, elections, and tripartite separation of powers. How could we possibly do that?”

  During the drafting of the report for the 13th Party Congress, he warned me several times: “The idea of political reform absolutely must not be influenced by Western parliamentarian political ideas. Let there not be even a trace of it!” Many other times, when he mentioned the functions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, he criticized people who wanted to make the NPC and CPPCC into houses, with the NPC as the lower house and the CPPCC as the upper house.

  In 1988, when I proposed expanding participation by other political
parties, he opposed allowing them to establish party groups or to conduct activities during the convening of the NPC. As for selecting people from other parties for positions of real power in the government, he said, “They should only be permitted to join the government in a personal capacity, not as a representative of their party.” He did not want even the slightest relaxation on this issue.

  Deng very much appreciated and liked the political system of socialist countries whereby power was concentrated in the hands of one or a few. He despised systems in which powers were separated by checks and balances. When he was talking to the guests from Yugoslavia, he said, “One of the greatest advantages of socialist nations is that, as long as something has been decided and a resolution has been made, it can be carried out immediately without any restrictions; unlike the parliamentary democratic process that is so complicated, going back and forth, only talking about it without doing it, concluding without executing. In this respect, our efficiency is higher; we carry things out as soon as we have made up our mind. What I am referring to is the overall efficiency. It is our strength, and we must retain this advantage.” Deng regarded a system without restrictions or checks and balances, and with absolute concentration of power, as our overall advantage.

  “We absolutely must not adopt the Western system of tripartite separation of powers! We must safeguard the advantages of the socialist system.” Deng made remarks like this several times.

  I remember once, sometime in the early 1980s, on the topic of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, Deng said, “I would say that the Americans cannot compete with the Soviet Union. The Soviets can do something after just one Politburo meeting. Can the Americans do that?”