II. Regimes in Crisis: China and Czechoslovakia in 1989
II.1 China and Deng’s Reforms
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II. Regimes in Crisis: China and Czechoslovakia in 1989
In order to provide context for the analysis of the media and journalists during China's unsuccessful and Czechoslovakia's successful transition, this chapter will first provide basic narratives of the events in China and Czechoslovakia and then will present an overview of relevant accounts dealing with political transitions, i.e. transitology, focusing on key issues that are usually identified as the main contributing factors to emergence and success of transitions: the economic crisis as a general background for popular discontent with the regime; the regimes' leadership, its divisions and flexibility; and the regime's opponents, e.g.
students and intellectuals, and their tactics. These areas will be complemented by reviewing selected accounts on political culture in China and Czechoslovakia before and during the protests.
II.1 China and Deng’s Reforms
After many initial setbacks, the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong's leadership survived both Chiang Kai-shek's annihilation campaigns and Japan's invasion to China, won a civil war against Kuomintang and established People's Republic of China in 1949. Thanks to its initial success in uniting the country and stabilizing the economy, it enjoyed substantial popularity. However, some of the campaigns initiated by Mao, most notably the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s undermined popular support for the regime and alienated many social strata, most notably the intellectuals.
After Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Party had lost a lot of its former legitimacy. Mao's chosen successor Hua Guofeng got rid of the vastly unpopular Gang of Four of which the most prominent member was Mao's widow Jiang Qing, but he did not get rid of Maoism. However, he proved to be only a transitory figure and soon lost his position to the three times purged but once again ascending Deng Xiaoping. Quickly after
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consolidating his position, Deng got rid of both extreme Maoism and of Hua.
In the leadership, Party members elevated to their posts during the Cultural Revolution were gradually sidelined by people loyal to the new "paramount leader." Many disgraced officials were rehabilitated and some of them returned to high posts. At the same time, Deng created incentives for the less dynamic "older comrades" to retire, being himself the most significant exception to his own rule. Still, the Party remained in the hands of party elders, often octogenarians, while the "young" leaders Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang were behaving submissively to them.21
Intellectuals initially supported Deng as a figure who could open up space for more free expression while Deng needed them for his modernization of China. However, as the program of Four Modernizations illustrated, the focus had been on economic reforms and not on democratization – the so called "fifth modernization," demanded by dissidents since the Beijing Wall events in 1979. Instead of democratization, careful and gradual economic reforms of the early 1980s were supposed to be complemented by a "socialist spirit."22
However, this socialist spirit did not prevent intellectuals such as Wang Ruoshui of People's Daily or Ru Xin from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from turning Marx against the supposedly Marxist-Leninist regime and launching a debate about alienation and socialist humanism.23 After hardliners convinced Deng that this was not acceptable, a campaign against "spiritual pollution" was launched. Leading intellectuals engaged in the debate were attacked - and sacked - for their "abstract humanism", "abstract concepts of democracy" and producing "such talk [that] cannot help people gain a correct understanding."24 But after the reformers Hu and Zhao made Deng shift back to their side,
21 Baum 1994, 134
22 ibid., 148
23 ibid., 153
24 Deng quoted in Baum 1994, 157
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the campaign halted.
Part of the counterattack that Hu and Zhao orchestrated against their opponents was Hu's instruction to People's Daily editorial department to prepare a series of commentaries supporting economic reform.25 They were aware that the economic performance became vital for the regime to stay in power, as the people grew cynical about the role of the Party. A full-fledged return to some kind of Maoism based on charismatic leadership was out of question since Mao and most of the first generation of the great CCP leaders were dead, but the conservative leftwing hardliners could still manage to derail Deng’s, Hu's and Zhao's reforms. In the end, the reformers usually prevailed with Deng being the decisive actor tipping the balance in their favor, but only after periods of short-lived campaigns orchestrated by hardliners trying to push China in the opposite direction.
However, Deng's, Hu's and Zhao's reforms created new problems, which their opponents were quick to point out. Thus, after China's urban areas experienced economic boom in the mid-1980s, the hardliners could - and did - make a point about cadres' growing crime and corruption which actually echoed popular opinion.26 As a result, and also due to emerging problems with dropping living standards in the second half of the 1980s, public confidence in Deng and his reforms started to decrease.27 Still, despite occasional campaigns such as the one that followed student protests in 1986-87 and caused Hu Yaobang's fall, the reforms were being pushed trough if not by disgraced Hu, then by his even bolder colleague Zhao who replaced him in the post of general secretary.
In the end of the 1980s, situation seemed far from being stable. The economic reforms were not accompanied by political reforms, because these would go against CCP's monopoly
25 Baum 1994, 164
26 ibid., 172
27 M. Meisner, The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1996, p. 353.
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on political power. At the same time, the side-effects of the reforms created social pressure that could not be confined within the non-reformed political structure. Finally, as China gradually opened windows to the Western "fresh air", ideas about an alternative political structures were blown inside. Once again, intellectuals were ready to debate how a desirable political regime in China should look like, the students were ready to protest against appalling conditions in their dormitories and against many other issues, and general population was nervous about course of the economic reforms that were undermining their previously stable and predictable livelihoods. The leaders could not derive their legitimacy neither from their non-existing charisma, nor from the economic prosperity that seemed to work only for certain people with certain guanxi but not for the majority of others. Almost everyone was dissatisfied.
On April 15, 1989, Hu Yaobang died after suffering a heart attack during a politburo meeting. Using his death as an excuse for protests that were actually already being planned, the students staged a sit-in at Tiananmen Square on the night before Hu's memorial service at the Great Hall of the People, despite official ban. On April 24, they declared boycott of their classes and started organizing an independent national student federation. The demonstrations turned into a fundamental challenge to the regime - partly because, as Lieberthal observed,28 the regime treated them as such - and their agenda expanded from a mere criticism of appalling dorm conditions, official corruption and inflation towards calls for press freedom and greater democracy. After a neutral or even favorable coverage of pro-reform media, a watershed came in a form of April 26 editorial in People’s Daily, based on a speech of Deng Xiaoping to the inner circle of other top Chinese leaders and harshly condemning the protests29 (for more details about the article, see chapter IV.2, section A, of
28 K. Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution to Reform. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995, p. 140.
29 Lieberthal 1995. Also see Zhao Ziyang, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.
New York: Simon and Shuster, 2009.
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the thesis).
The demonstrations spread to other cities and were joined by number of workers, small entrepreneurs and even by some Party members. Interestingly, as Lieberthal recalls, "on May 4, the huge crowds cheered when a contingent from the CCP Central Committee Propaganda Department marched into square holding aloft a banner proclaiming that henceforth they would publish only the truth."30 Journalists from other official media also joined the protests.
Still, despite explicit support and requests for participation by members of other social strata, the students initially guarded their leading role in the protests to such an extent that they often blocked non-students from joining out of fear of regime-orchestrated infiltration.
Zhao Ziyang has been initially one of the targets of the students' criticism because his sons had been allegedly involved in corruption. On the other hand, he had been associated with promoters of democracy, although more recently, his supporters started to discuss the idea of "neo-authoritarianism" in order to boost Zhao's position as Deng's apparent successor.
On May 3, Zhao's surprisingly sympathetic response to the students' demands was broadcasted on the national evening news. This boosted his popularity among the protestors, but undermined further his position in the Party leadership where, at the time, the hardliners who were unsympathetic to the students had the upper hand.31 Zhao remained in charge until mid-May Gorbachev's visit, but immediately after the Soviet leader departed, he had been stripped of his power by Deng and his fellow retired octogenarians in spite official Party rules that did not allow deposing the Party secretary in such an ad-hoc way.32
The Gorbachev visit actually became an embarrassment for the whole Party leadership.
The hunger strike that the students staged at Tiananmen attracted international media attention and prevented the authorities to stage a crackdown. When the troops tried to move
30 Lieberthal 1995, 141
31 see Zhao 2009
32 Lieberthal 1995, 141-142
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into the city on May 19, after Gorbachev's departure, they were blocked by the capital's entire urban population that became sympathetic to the protesters.33 The army had to withdraw, but on the night from June 3 to June 4, fresh units were brought to the capital with orders to seize the Tiananmen using any means necessary. This time, the student protest ended in a bloodbath and persecution of its participants; the prospects of democratic transition vanished.