The memoirs of Zhao Ziyang provide an intriguing insight Into what China would be like today, if the 1989 Democracy Movement had prevailed
“We must establish that final goal of political reform is the realization of this advanced political system. If we don’t move towards this goal, it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China’s market economy,”
The “advanced political system” mentioned in the quote above refers to one that includes an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, and the right of citizens to organize. In one word, this system is democracy. The quote comes, not from a disenchanted dissident or from some armchair academic, but rather from the memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, the former Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party who was toppled in 1989, after trying to peacefully negotiate with the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. His demise paved the way for hard liners under Deng Xiaoping to abruptly crush the demonstrations with soldiers and tanks on the morning of June 4, 1989. In one bold, violent stroke, The one party regime, teetering on the verge of collapse, was given a reprieve. Now twenty years later we live with that legacy: a China still ruled by the same one party dictatorship; a China that aggressively represses any dissent internally; a China that is, at the same time, America’s second largest trading partner and its most significant competitor militarily and politically.
Zhao’s memoirs provide an intriguing insight into the deep divisions that existed within China’s leadership at the time and how close China came to a peaceful transition to a democratic society. After reading these memoirs, I could not help but imagine what China would be like today if my compatriots and Mr. Zhao had prevailed in June of 1989. Would China have devolved into political chaos? Or would the world now see a China robust culturally and socially as well as economically? I believe the attempt to answer this question will provide a better understanding of the political dynamics that are shaping China today. This deeper understanding will be most useful in shaping future policy toward America’s second largest trading partner and what many believe to the most significant challenge to America’s military and political leadership in the world.
To understand what China might be like today if the democracy movement of 1989 had prevailed, we need to first understand how China has actually developed politically and economically in the past twenty years. China started market oriented reforms a decade earlier in 1978. Three results soon came from this initiative: rapid economic growth; negation of the Communist revolution; unbridled corruption.
On a national level, China has enjoyed staggering economic development. The economy of the People’s Republic of China is the second largest in the world after that of the United States with a GDP of $7.8 trillion (2008). Of all the major nations, China’s economy has been the fastest-growing for the past quarter of a century with an average annual GDP growth rate above 10%.[China’s per capita income has grown at an average annual rate of more than 8% over the last three decades. However, this rapid growth has been shadowed by equally rapid growth in income disparities and distribution of wealth.
A curious and conveniently overlooked fact of China’s economic reform is the moral vacuum it has created in Chinese society. The rapid embrace of capitalism negated the Communist revolution and consequently, the legitimacy of the CCP regime itself. The purpose of the revolution and the communist regime was to destroy capitalism and establish socialism. Now that capitalism has replaced socialism, wherein lies the legitimacy of the revolution and the one party dictatorship that supposedly is its guardian? This question is not just academic banter. It highlights the very real and deep rooted insecurity that haunts the government and Chinese society as a whole. Both are desperately searching for a moral compass to give legitimacy to their lives meaning to their prosperity. The phenomenal growth of the Christian community and the Falun Gong practitioners, and the government’s futile attempts to repress that growth are just two quick examples of the moral and ethical tensions that are distancing the CCP from the Chinese people.
The third result unbridled and unchecked corruption. The widespread corruption caused widespread discontent and became a reason for the 1989 democracy movement.
The 1989 democracy movement had two slogans. One was “freedom and democracy”, and the other was “no official business dealings, no corruption”. The 1989 democracy movement caused unprecedented split within the CCP leadership. At that time, a quarter or even a third of the officials in Beijing joined the protesters. Most of the rest also were sympathetic towards the students. Such was the degree of dissatisfaction within the party and the acknowledgment that the CCP had lost any pretense of being a “people’s party and had become a self serving ruling elite. Today, the corruption, spawned by 60 years of rule without any system of checks and balances, is an open sore on the face of Chinese society and a major source of alienation between the CCP and the population. This corruption distorts every aspect of Chinese society. It is reasonably estimated that 80% of the wealth in China is controlled by the top 10% of the party officials. From the shoddy workmanship of the elementary schools that led them to collapse on thousands of innocent children during last years earthquake while the homes of party official stood firm, to the summary displacement of over 300,000 citizens of Beijing in the name of “beautification” in preparation for the 2009 Olympics, the endemic corruption of the Chinese government generates an estimate 100,000 major protest demonstrations a year in China.
The legacy of the crushing of the 1989 Democracy Movement is a lopsided Chinese society. A society that has prospered economically and atrophied morally and socially. China attracts huge amounts of foreign capital into China, takes advantage of a workforce without rights or avenues of recourse to produce these products at a very low cost. It then exports the products. The Chinese government becomes very rich this way, but the purchasing power of the ordinary people do not increase accordingly. In countries that imported Chinese products, the investors make a fortune and ordinary people get cheap merchandise, but capital flows out, and industries shrinks rapidly. Workers lose jobs, welfare tends to decline, and public finances run into trouble. In other words, by exploiting a politically disenfranchise labor force, China is able to maintain a competitive edge. Even free market economies such as the U. S. find it hard to compete with China, to say nothing of the welfare states.
Instead of creating a stable society, the economic prosperity of China under an autocratic government without philosophical or political legitimacy has produced a society at odds with itself. The CCP is sitting on a pressure cooker with a cauldron inside. It feeds that cauldron by ruling without the moderation of law and political dissent. One can only imagine how long the cauldron can be contained. The counsel of Zhao Ziyang that unless the Chinese government moves toward real democratic reform “it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China’s market economy.”
is prophetic indeed.
One can only imagine how this tension, how this lopsided society materially wealthy and morally bankrupt might have peacefully evolved into one that is not only prosperous but whose citizens have equal ability to access that wealth to enjoy their lives socially and spiritually as well as materially. One can only imagine if the vision of Zhao Ziyang and the Tiananmen patriots had prevailed in 1989, we would not only have a vibrant economic partner but a real ally in the pursuit of world peace and stability. Instead, twenty years after Tiananmen, we are left to confront the equally prophetic words of Soviet era dissident, Andrei Sakharov, “The world community cannot rely on a government that does not rely on its own people.”