I met Zhao Ziyang only once, when I called on him in his hotel bedroom
in London during his June 1979 trip as head of a Sichuan Province
delegation. The room swarmed with his colleagues, all somewhat bemused
at my sudden appearance among them. I was aware of Zhao’s
growing reputation as the Sichuan Province first secretary, since he was
pioneering reforms in agriculture, and that this trip abroad was an opportunity
to educate himself. But at that point my scholarly interests were
more historical: If I came to Sichuan, would he talk to me about his experiences
in running Guangdong Province in the 1960s? He would be happy
to. I handed an aide my card and withdrew.
From that brief encounter, I formed a few, doubtless superficial but
nevertheless firm impressions. This longtime Party cadre was open, good-
humored,
and energetic. Sadly, I was never able to consolidate those
impressions. When I made my next research trip to China, Zhao Ziyang
was the country’s
Premier and I knew better than to try to get past the
barriers of Beijing’s
bureaucracy.
What we have in this book is Zhao’s
personal account of what it was
like being Premier, and later Party General Secretary, and later still, what
it was like living under house arrest. The documents give us a close-up
of
the vicious world of Beijing high politics as Deng Xiaoping’s acolytes—
Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang and Premier Zhao Ziyang—battled
on behalf of Deng’s
reform program. Much of this has been documentedby Western scholars, but here we have an account of the internal struggles
that underlay the vague turbulence visible on the surface.(1)
What clearly emerges is that Zhao greatly enjoyed his role as Premier,
including the research and thinking it required, the mistakes and disappointments,
and the satisfaction that came with China’s
accelerating expansion. He had his opponents among the Old Guard “elders,” in
particular Chen Yun and Li Xiannian. Chen had been the voice of economic
reason in the 1950s, whenever Mao Zedong went off the rails, and
he still believed that the Five-Year
Plan system under strong central control
would have worked even better but for the Chairman’s errors; after
all, it had turned the Soviet Union into a superpower. Effectively, Chen
Yun proposed that China should go back to the future. He devised the
model of a “birdcage economy”: the planned economy was the cage and
the birds were the market economy. This way the market could be prevented
from getting out of control. Zhao respected Chen Yun—he is the
only one of the elders discussed in this book whom Zhao normally designates
as “Comrade”—and always tried to visit with him to discuss new
policies and bring him around. If that proved impossible, there was always
Deng to fall back on to keep Chen Yun in line.
Li Xiannian was a totally different personality, and Zhao seems to
have developed an active dislike for him early on. Li was the only senior
civilian official to serve alongside Zhou Enlai throughout the Cultural
Revolution. As Hua Guofeng rose to leadership during the last days of
Chairman Mao, Li became Hua’s
principal economic adviser and, had
Hua survived as leader, would have been a power in the land. Li never
got over this, nor his resentment that Zhao inherited his role. Li regularly
grumbled that his own achievements during the brief Hua interregnum
should be acknowledged as part of the basis for current progress. “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?” In fact,
Hua’s
“great leap outwards”—the massive buying of plants from overseas—
grossly overstretched the Chinese economy. But because Li was an
elder, nobody stuck it to him, certainly not Zhao, and so Li grumbled on
about Zhao’s
fixation with “foreign stuff,” his willingness to learn from
what had been successful for the Asian Tiger economies, and even from
the West. Li, who later was consoled with the post of head of state, was
the most prominent opponent of reform and, according to Zhao, “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.”
Other than his problem with Li Xiannian, Zhao was fortunate that
of Deng’s
two standard-bearers,
it was Hu Yaobang who took most of
the heat from the elders and the conservatives. According to Zhao, this
was because as General Secretary, Hu was in charge of politics and ideology,
and the conservatives found Hu decidedly uninterested in their concerns.
Zhao, who writes warmly about Hu, suggests that in part it was
because Hu sympathized with intellectuals and did not want to persecute
them as had been done during the Cultural Revolution. Hu also had a
tendency to shoot from the lip with little concern for the impression conveyed.
In fact, one major divergence between Hu and Zhao was over Hu’s
tendency to press for faster economic progress, overriding Zhao’s
preference for slower but steady. Both were committed to introducing a
market economy, but Hu seemed still to hanker after movement economics,
Maoist-style.
In 1983, Deng had to call them both in and expressly
order Hu not to counteract the government’s economic officials. Zhao
believed that Deng had lost faith in Hu long before an outburst of student
demonstrations at the end of 1986, which became the occasion for his
dismissal as General Secretary; all in all, being allowed to retain membership
on the Politburo was not too bad a fate for Hu under the circumstances.
And yet Hu had had one advantage that Zhao could never emulate.
He had worked at the center for most of his political career, which meant
he had a constituency, connections; indeed, Zhao tells us, Hu was accused
by his many enemies of promoting a Communist Youth League
faction, since he headed that organization during the 1950s. By contrast,
Zhao had worked in provincial apparats in different parts of the country,
and on being summoned to Beijing in 1980, he had no connections, or as
he put it, “fewer channels. Therefore some of the behind-the-scenes
dealings
remain obscure to me, even now.” Instead, Zhao had a constituency
of just one: Deng Xiaoping. Of course, it was the best one-man
constituency
to have, but even Deng had occasionally to bob and weave when
faced with strong opposition from his fellow elders. No wonder that Zhao
begged Deng not to resign every time the latter had mentioned the possibility.
For his part, Deng was assuring Zhao as late as April 1989—only a
month before his career crashed in ruins—that he had secured the agreement
of Chen Yun and Li Xiannian for Zhao to serve two more full terms
as Party General Secretary, the job that Zhao had taken when Hu Yaobang
was dismissed in January 1987. But before turning to that sad finalphase of Zhao’s
career, it is worth pausing to consider his role in the reform
program.
Deng is normally seen as the architect of reform. Certainly, without
his strong initial push for it and for opening up to the outside world, there
would have been no such program. Thereafter he remained among the
elders the godfather of the effort, ready to sally forth from seclusion to
defend it against all comers. But reading Zhao’s
unadorned and unboastful
account of his stewardship, it becomes apparent that it was he rather
than Deng who was the actual architect of reform. It was Zhao who, after
countless inspection tours, finally realized that the commitment to rural
collectivization, reaffirmed when Deng came back to power in December
1978, was passé, and who threw his support for a national household
responsibility system as the way to develop agriculture and raise farm
incomes. As Zhao acknowledges, without Deng’s
support it would never
have been possible to proceed. But Deng did not make the conceptual
breakthrough. Zhao did.
It was Zhao, too, who conceived of the hugely successful coastal development
strategy. This was not the Special Economic Zone policy
launched early in the reform era. Rather it was an effort to mobilize all the
coastal provinces to develop an export-oriented
economy, importing large
quantities of raw materials, transforming them, and then exporting the
results in equally large quantities. There were many different kinds of
objections that Zhao overcame, but again, once he convinced Deng, it
was relatively smooth sailing. Zhao devised the policy in 1987–88 and it
outlasted his political demise, but thereafter it was no longer referred to
as the coastal development strategy because that phrase was so closely
linked to Zhao and no credit could be allowed to go to him.
Zhao takes responsibility for failures, too. One of the big issues in the
late 1980s was price reform, but late in the debate Zhao agreed to postpone
it because of the state of the economy. This was one of the few occasions
that he and his principal opponents, Premier Li Peng and Vice
Premier Yao Yilin, were on the same side. But Li and Yao took advantage
of the economic problems to sideline Zhao. Deng had lain it down that
Zhao would still be in overall charge of the economy even after he took
over the general secretaryship, but Li and Yao now increasingly ignored
Zhao’s
inputs. As veterans of the Chinese political system they were quick
to sense erosion of power.
Zhao’s record remains impressive. What is even more impressive is
that he was working virtually single-handedly
at his level. He developed
a loyal coterie of reform officials who worked for him, notably his aide
Bao Tong who remains under house arrest till this day. But it was Zhao in the first instance who had to persuade or do battle with the elders. It was
Zhao who had to watch his back for the slings and arrows of outraged
“colleagues” such as Li Peng and Yao Yilin. It was Zhao who had to argue
with the bureaucrats at the national and provincial levels, officials who
probably had not had a new idea since well before the Cultural Revolution,
but who were determined to protect their turf and their ways of managing
it. And yet, throughout the 1980s, till he left office, Zhao was
thinking, questioning, inspecting, discussing, and arguing over the next
step forward. Deng had displayed excellent judgment in choosing Zhao
as the architect of the reform program.
Zhao never wanted the formal promotion to the position of General
Secretary. He loved what he was doing and didn’t
want to become involved
in disputes over theory or politics. Had Deng come up with another
candidate for the office, Zhao would have gladly stayed where he
was. But the only suggestions of alternate names came from conservatives
who were playing their own devious games, which Zhao naively took at face value, but which Deng saw through. So Zhao, duty-prone, was trapped.
He soon realized how lucky he had been to have had Hu Yaobang
running interference all those years. Zhao now inherited two new nemeses:
Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun (“little Deng,” no relative of Deng
Xiaoping). Hu Qiaomu was the prince of pens, Mao’s
onetime secretary
and favorite ghostwriter. Deng Xiaoping had refused to have any dealings
with him for some years. Deng Liqun was a longtime leftist theoretician
with considerable contacts among the conservative elders. He ran a research
office under the central party Secretariat that could be relied upon
to produce the most anti-reform
ideas and commentaries. According to
Deng Xiaoping, “little Deng” was very stubborn, “like a Hunan mule.”
His supporters, on the other hand, doubtless thought he was admirably
determined in standing up for the truth.
Zhao had displayed no interest in the ideological battles that Hu Yaobang
had fought with Hu Qiaomu and little Deng, and they viewed him
as neutral, concerned only with preventing ideological issues from disrupting
economic development. But when Hu Yaobang was dismissed
and they thought they could embark on an anti-bourgeois liberalization
campaign, they ran up against Zhao’s
opposition. In short order Zhao
achieved what Hu Yaobang had failed to do: he dissolved little Deng’s
power base by liquidating the research office of the central Secretariat,
and he closed down left-wing
magazines such as Red Flag.
As a quid pro quo, Zhao proposed that little Deng be given a seat on
the Politburo at the next Party congress so that he could air his views.
This was agreed to, but when the necessary first step had to be taken—
election to the Central Committee from which the members of the Politburo
were drawn—little Deng failed to get elected. Despite his earlier
agreement to little Deng’s
promotion, Deng Xiaoping decided to let the
vote stand. Little Deng’s
supporters among the elders were furious and
began to regard Zhao as worse even than Hu Yaobang.
Yet Zhao was to have one more triumph. He decided to solve once
and for all the nagging problem that had underlain the whole reform era:
If China had completed a socialist revolution in the 1950s, why was it
adopting capitalist methods now? He decided to take a phrase that had
been around for some years—“the initial stage of socialism”—and assign
it a theoretical prominence it had so far lacked. This would not deny the
socialist achievements thus far but it would free China from rigid socialist
dogma. He also tried to please everyone by emphasizing the status of the
“Four Cardinal Principles,” enunciated by Deng in 1979: upholding the
socialist road, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leadership of the
Communist Party, and Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought. Zhao
proposed that the Central Committee plenum that had brought Deng
back to power in December 1978 had implicitly meant to say that the
Four Cardinal Principles and reform and opening up were on an equal
level and that these were the two basic points, with economic development
as the main focus. This was turned into a colloquial phrase by Bao
Tong and his colleagues as “one central focus, two basic points.” Not everyone
saluted it, but Deng Xiaoping loved it, and that was what mattered.
The idea became the theoretical centerpiece of Zhao’s Political
Report to the 13th Party Congress in the fall of 1987.
When we come to the events of April–June 1989, when the students
began their marches to Tiananmen Square to show their respect for Hu
Yaobang, who died on April 15, it is possible that Western readers have
access to more knowledge than Zhao Ziyang had at the time. This is as a
result of the publication abroad of secret Communist documents on the
crisis,(2) some of which Zhao probably never saw, particularly the minutes
of the meetings of the elders who decided on Zhao’s
dismissal and the
selection of his successor. What Zhao provides here is his analysis of the
student movement and his policy for handling it.
Zhao infuriated his conservative colleagues, such as Li Peng, with his
relaxed attitude toward the student activities. He was convinced that after
their initial demonstrations, with persuasive handling the students could
be induced to return to their campuses. With Li Peng promising to follow
Zhao’s
line, the latter left on a long-scheduled
visit to North Korea.
Unfortunately for Zhao, Li Peng found a way to get around his promise.
Shortly after Zhao’s
departure, Li Peng rushed the leaders of the Beijing
municipal Party committee to report first to the Politburo Standing Committee
and then to Deng. Their report was full of fire and brimstone,
prophesizing that if control were not immediately restored, there could
be a nationwide upheaval. Deng, with his memories of the Cultural
Revolution—during which his son was crippled for life—was bound to be
impressed by such a report, and he designated the events “anti-Party,
anti-socialist
turmoil.” Zhao was contacted in North Korea and in the
absence of any other information, perforce had to agree with Deng’s
analysis.
Li Peng ensured that Deng’s
words and sentiments were immediately
expressed in a People’s Daily editorial on April 26. Contrary to Li Peng’s
expectations, however, the editorial, far from frightening the students into
submission, infuriated them further because their patriotic actions were
so misdescribed. On the 27th, the students marched again to the square,
breaking through a police cordon. Li Peng, with Deng’s
help, had reignited
the student movement.
Immediately on his return, Zhao saw that no matter how many placatory
speeches were made, the offensive bits of the editorial would have to
be withdrawn if the student movement were to be quieted again. But his
inquiries indicated what he already knew: Deng had no intention of allowing
the editorial to be disavowed. Li Peng’s
greatest triumph was that
he had finally found an issue over which to divide the Deng-Zhao
partnership.
Zhao tried other ways of appeasing the students, but by mid-May
he was out of options and faded from the policy scene. When his
resistance to the imposition of martial law proved futile, the Zhao era was
over and all that remained was to attend the Central Committee meeting
and accept dismissal.(3)
Zhao, who died in 2005, was to spend more time under house arrest
than he had spent trying to run the reform program. During this period,
he was allowed to make occasional trips to carefully specified locations,
play occasional rounds of golf, and have visitors as long as they were heavily screened.(4) But much of Zhao’s
time was spent protesting the petty
restrictions under which he was incarcerated. Ever the conscientious
Party official, he quoted the state constitution and the Party rulebook to
his jailers. To the end, he seems genuinely, if naively, to have believed
that at some point his opponents might crack under the weight of his impeccable
legalism. Of course, they didn’t.
Legality didn’t
figure at all in
the handling of the Zhao case, only power and stability. It’s
almost as if
Zhao had just arrived in Beijing from the sticks and didn’t
realize that law
plays no real role in Chinese political life. But perhaps he took some slight
consolation from the idea that the leadership had genuine fears of the
turbulence that he might arouse if he were to be seen on the open street.
In captivity, Zhao thought about political reform, Deng’s
ideas, Hu
Yaobang’s,
and his own. He concluded that Deng didn’t
really believe in
political reform, only in tighter administration. Hu hadn’t
thought his
ideas through, but his mildness in political campaigns and his insistence
on pardoning all those wrongly arrested in previous campaigns led Zhao
to speculate that if Hu had survived he would have “pushed China’s
political
reform forward” toward democratization.
Zhao confesses that as of the mid-1980s,
he was an economic reformer
and a political conservative. Gradually he came to realize that
without political reform, the economic reform program was in peril: for
instance, the massive corruption would continue. By 1989, he was prepared
to tell visiting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the position of
the Chinese Communist Party would not change, but its method of governing
had to change: rule of law had to replace rule by men. He wanted
to increase transparency and to establish multiple channels of dialogue
with various social forces. Moreover, he felt the social forces should be
allowed to organize themselves, rather than being required to submit to
bodies led by the Party-state.
Zhao wanted the possibility of choice, albeit
limited, in elections to the national legislature.
Thereafter, Zhao’s
views evolved further. “In fact, it is the Western
parliamentary democratic system that has demonstrated the most vitality.
It seems that this system is currently the best one available.” This modernizing
involved both a market economy and a democration political
system. In China, this would mean a long period of transition, one requiring
two breakthroughs by the Communist Party: allowing competition from other parties and a free press, and making the party itself more democratic.
Reform of the legal system and the establishment of an independent
judiciary would also take precedence. Zhao concludes with a brief
disquisition, based on experience, on how difficult it would be to introduce
such reforms.
The story of Zhao’s
captivity prompts two reflections: If a patriotic official
only came to the conclusion that democracy was needed for China
after years of nothing to do but think, what chance is there for a busy official
today to have the leisure or the security to think such thoughts while
on the job? And if he did manage to come to such a conclusion, how
would he implement these ideas in the teeth of Party opposition at all
levels of society? It took a disaster of Cultural Revolution proportions to
shake China out of the Stalinist economic model. China doesn’t
need
another Cultural Revolution, but the Party would have to be shaken to its
roots for its leaders to contemplate following the final message of Zhao
Ziyang’s
testament.
Today in China, Zhao is a nonperson. In a less paranoid time in the
future, perhaps he will be seen as one in that honored line of Chinese officials
down the ages who worked hard and well for their country, but fell
foul of the ruling authorities. Their names remain inspirational, long after the names of their venal opponents have been forgotten. |
