Notes - March 5, 2009

Following the Cultural Revolution, China had to overcome the effects of a decade in which scientific and industrial development had been put on hold and a generation of students had been unable to attend school. China underwent a transitional period of shifting away from Mao’s revolutionary politics toward more pragmatic means of modernization which emphasized economic achievement over ideological purity. With the economy and administration taking center stage, the country’s leading administrator and survivor, Zhou Enlai, became more influential. In 1973, Zhou announced that China would concentrate on the Four Modernizations—development programs to modernize agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology. When Mao died in September of 1976, he was succeeded by Hua Guofeng as CCP chairman and premier. Hua arrested the Gang of Four and Deng Xiaoping emerged as the strong advocate of modernization and breaking with the Maoist model and as a critic of the Cultural Revolution. When Zhou died in January 1977, massive demonstrations were held in his honor. In December 1978, at the CCP’s meeting, Deng’s supporters criticized Mao’s followers. Decisions by the party at this meeting repudiated Mao’s ideas and removed Hua Guofeng from all positions of power.

Deng supporters rose to the premiership and party chairmanship in 1980 and 1981. The core of the modernization efforts was economic policy. There was an unparalleled expansion in the use of material incentives and of market forces which resulted in the greatest economic boom in Chinese history. Deng had made a now famous statement. In 1962, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.” Even when working for Mao between 1960 and 1966, Deng didn’t worry too much about whether a policy was capitalist or socialist as long as it improved the economy. Under Deng’s leadership after Mao’s death (1976), agriculture set the pace. Given discretion, Chinese farmers produced a grain surplus in 1984 which was beyond China’s storage capacity. Similar structural reforms were introduced into the urban, industrial economy which ten became the area of the economy in which China enjoyed its greatest increase. Private businesses owned either by Chinese or by foreign investors were allowed to develop. By 1990 there were about 400,000 private, entrepreneurial firms in China. The leadership began to open the economy to foreign investment even before Mao’s death. Foreign aid and investment came to be seen as good for the economy. To facilitate—and control—foreign entry into the Chinese market, four Special Economic Zones (SEZs) were created in 1976. Here foreign investors were given preferential tax rates and other incentives. Within five years many more areas became SEZs. By the mid-1990s the market and the foreign investment had spread to most of urban China. Joint ventures have been established in several industries. The Chinese slogan “Get Rich” came to refer to mixing state planning in industry and agriculture with individual participation in a market economy.

Under Deng’s influence, China:
1) Revitalized its higher education system
2) Decentralized the economy
3) Tolerated limited private enterprise
4) Emphasized recruiting technicians and intellectuals into the CCP

The success of modernization left two camps: those who would support even more reform and conservatives protective of Communist Party control over the political system and the economy.

The split was very visible during 1978-1979 when China’s leaders permitted the Democracy Wall—a place where people, even government critics, pasted posters calling for freedom on a wall near government headquarters in Beijing. A young political activist named Xu Wenli united the various essays into the most influential political journal of its time in China. Deng moved to smash the Democracy Wall movement in the early 1980s. Xu was sentenced to fifteen years in prison during a one day trial. This illustrates the CCP’s willingness to loosen economic controls while jealousy protecting its political power.

The split came to a head in 1989 when students took the streets of Tiananmen Square demonstrating for more reforms on the occasion of the death of former CCP chairman Hu Yaobang who had been ousted by CCP hardliners two years before but remained a hero to the CCP’s reformist wing. (Interestingly, in September 2005 President Hu Jintao, who had been mentioned by Hu Yaobang, agreed to restore the standing of Hu and announced a series of events to honor Hu on the 90th anniversary of his birth November 20 ending 18 years of official silence.) The students were criticized in an editorial in the People’s Daily. CCP Secretary Zhao Ziyang distanced himself from the editorials. As student demand increased a hunger strike was initiated. Eventually, with compromise out of the question, Deng decided to crush the demonstration. Zhao resigned. Troops converged on the square and the demonstration was forcefully and brutally ended. No one knows how many people were killed, but estimates run as high as four thousand.