CHAPTER 7: WHOSE IDENTITY, WHOSE CONSTRUCTS AND WHOSE INTEREST? THE SYNTHESIS OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DATA IN
4.11 Tiananmen Crisis and After
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two systems” formula suggesting that mainland China would not impose a communist economy on Hong Kong after the British withdrawal.48
A prosperous Hong Kong was good for mainland China’s economy and it had to be taken into consideration that Hong Kong ranks high among investment destinations in the world. Deng was well aware of the direct relationship between economic success and influence in the world system. While Mao’s China was more vocal on trying to change the status quo, its economic status did not offer it the requisite influence needed for a country to meaningfully change international politics. The clout that China enjoys in, and the challenge it poses to, the current international system is a direct consequence of the economic success that the country has attained (Shuja 1999; Jing, Humphrey and Messner 2008; Hsiao 2012). The presence that China has in the world also means a change on diplomacy. Thus, certain aspects of China’s politics have also evolved from 1978. The role of the military has somewhat been limited and that of diplomats enhanced. More importance has been attached to foreign policy.49 Decentralization was encouraged and helped “major localities to establish their own international cooperation networks” (Cabestan 2009:64).
However, certain aspects of China’s politics still rankle the West, especially with its ambiguous understanding of human rights and democracy. Yusheng (2013) states the despite the ideological changes that Deng introduced in China, he still maintained that the CCP be the sole de jure political party, based on the Soviet template. The good repute that China had painstakingly cultivated was temporarily shattered with the crackdown on the Tiananmen protest. The highhanded manner with which protesters were dealt was redolent of the Maoist era.
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was drifting towards an economic system akin to capitalism (Lüsted 2010). Deng was practical in applying practices that were suitable for a fast changing international system. Yusheng Yao (2013:254) suggests that the range and width of transformation that Deng introduced to post- Mao China was “arguably the most important event in the latter half of twentieth-century world history.” Even though the role of the military and the military budget were reduced so as to apply more resources to the economy and international diplomacy, the CCP did not change, substantially, its antipathy towards opposition. One of the major criticisms thrown at China is precisely the fact that the CCP does not brook opposition and that it has remained steeped in its denial of political pluralism, or democracy. The Tiananmen Square Crisis of 1989, which happened almost at the same time as the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, could have been justifiably judged as signaling the end of the status quo in China. The current section looks at how the Tiananmen incident influenced, to some extent, China’s identity on the international scale.
Deng’s time at the summit of Chinese society was characterized by reform and openness. China was opened to the West but Deng did not tolerate an importation of Western democracy to China (Yusheng 2013). Just like Mao had argued decades before that a copycat application of Soviet communism cannot fit China’s unique circumstances, Deng was also persuaded by the notion that Western democracy was “both inefficient and unfit for the Chinese situation” (Yusheng 2013:255). The Tiananmen protests of 1989 that culminated in the June 4 Incident started in April and May of 1989, and were mainly led by students who were peacefully calling for more responsive governance that supported some liberties common in modern democracies (Lüsted 2010). With time, the protests increased in momentum and numbers and the students were joined by workers and intellectuals who bemoaned ineptitude, corruption and other vices by Chinese leaders and bureaucrats (Walder and Xiaoxia 1993). There were reports of protest groups gathered in other parts of the country. Tiananmen was a protest unprecedented in the history of the PRC.
To provide justification for what was to ensue, the CCP warned that the protesters were counterrevolutionary forces that wanted to illegally conduct a takeover of the PRC. A general analysis of what was to follow in other communist countries somewhat offers some basis for the fears of the CCP. Disenchantment with socialism in the Soviet Union and East Germany
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effectively ended the Soviet Empire and led to the reunification of East and West Germany.
Many foreign observers, including President George H. W. Bush believed that the Tiananmen protests would force the CCP into yielding to calls for democracy. However, instead of pandering to the demands of the protesters, the CCP elected to foil the protests with force. Deng Xiaoping purged Zhao Ziyang, the then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CCP when Zhao’s actions during Tiananmen were considered as kowtowing to the demands of the protesters (Chai 1997).50 The disproportionate means used by the CCP sent shock waves to the rest of the world, and arms embargoes were imposed on China. The manner in which the CCP reacted to the crisis suggested that the Chinese leadership retained a deep aversion towards any perceived threat. This antipathy was a feature during the Mao years and seemingly continued even after post-Mao China embarked on the policies of reform and opening China to the rest of the world.
The Tiananmen Square crisis provides an interesting dimension to political change and social reform. This is because, despite the international attention that the protests elicited the CCP still remains in power in China as one of the few remaining communist countries, if only in name, in the world. A number of reasons could be adduced for this situation. Instead of being weakened by its critics, the CCP closed ranks. Furthermore, there has been more distribution of power in the Politburo; power does not repose in one paramount leader. This gives the CCP some semblance of democracy of the few – the politburo. Furthermore, the stellar work that the CCP has done after Deng took over has been consolation for the millions that it has rescued from poverty. Another possible reason why the CCP survived Tiananmen Square is because of its use of alarmist rhetoric towards its foreign critics. One of the central emphases of China’s foreign policy is the insistence on sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs of other countries.
For this reason, China accused foreign critics of trying to interfere with its internal affairs and hence manifesting imperial tendencies.
The gambit of using its past of victimhood and vulnerability to foreign powers has been an enduring theme in China and has been used to court the sympathy and friendship of other former colonies, chief among them being African states. China’s revived interests in Africa, after a lull during the 1980s, could be explained both from the support that African states gave the CCP
50 The purging of Zhao Ziyang arguably demonstrates that while China was reforming economically, the CCP was still intolerant of political reformers (Buruma 1996).
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with the way it dealt with the Tiananmen protests and also with China’s growth which demands energy resources that Africa is abundantly endowed with and with China’s exports that find markets in Africa. The next section of this chapter deals with China’s political identity and interests after Deng Xiaoping. The following pages show how China has used its theory of
“socialism with Chinese characteristics”, which was influenced by Deng’s pragmatism (Solé- Farràs 2008), as a clever formula of presenting China as an acceptable member of the current international system rather than a relic or anachronism of communist economics.