Politics and Political Theory in the PRC and Deng

Firstly let’s have some (neo) liberal theory ala Fukuyama. Free markets lead to a free people/middle class who then seek political liberalisation and control of the state by means of democratic reform. Then the reforms they want happen as a weakened state succumbs to the magic force of individual freedom, Deng allowed free markets, therefore democracy would eventually be forced upon him QED history is now ended. Where could this theory (admittedly very simplistically stated) go wrong? There might be obstacles to the political reform that the theory may be too incomplete to envisage and indeed there have been.

The first might be the lack of information flow that authoritarian regimes are able to bring into non-existence. The second might be cultural constraints: people might for example value peaceful illiberalism over revolutionary liberalism that might involve much more violence.

This would all be debated albeit illiberally within Deng’s illiberal reformist state.

The first debates as I noted initially helped Deng because the main initial target of democracy wall activists was the Gang of Four. I also noted that Deng quickly closed down the wall when he began to perceive the liberal thought it contained being widely disseminated didn’t accord with his own interests. Wei’s fifth modernisation made him the first dissident of the Deng era and it was also the idea that finally made the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 and not democracy inevitable, not yet at any rate.

It wasn’t as simple as Deng opposing all reformist talk all the time however. The 1980s can be viewed as the decade of a repeating liberal/illiberal loop with liberal thinking alternately encouraged, ignored and then discouraged by Deng. It must have suited Deng to be able to present himself as a kind of middle of the road compromise candidate as he consolidated his strength offering at different times something to everyone from the hard core authoritarian leftists to the most radical of the democracy reformers.

Wei could accuse Deng of becoming another Mao and Deng couldn’t easily disprove this by permitting Wei to say that without penalty (as it was he got 13 years’ gaol for ‘counter-revolutionary’ activities) but he could permit some criticism.

Was the picture of the lone man in front of four tanks in Tiananmen the best symbol of Deng’s final political legacy? Or will political liberalism finally ‘catch up’ as the above neoliberal theory supposes and be his final legacy? Did Deng weaken his state with his reformism supported by democracy activists in a kind of ‘zero sum game’ that will ultimately give this picture the power to turn humans into superhumans capable of overthrowing it? Will the internet and/or events in the Arab World and Myanmar also influence this picture?

Let’s back a little back. The wall activists were saying down with Mao and the CR and the Gang of Four but what was Wei saying in particular that Deng finally couldn’t have?

Firstly in Democracy: the Fifth Modernisation Wei was getting ahead of the game too far. Deng had proposed four modernisations and Wei had to add a fifth.

Secondly he claimed in a ‘big character poster’ and another article that Deng would have to become like Mao who he had opposed. He was arguing that the system (that therefore needed to change) caused this (making him a prominent dissident throughout the Deng years – at one point in the 1980s he emerged from gaol only to be re-gaoled soon afterwards).

What did Deng have to say about political freedoms? Firstly Deng had no special interest in or desire for democracy to come about especially quickly (if at all). His first duty as he saw it was still to Marxism in some form. Deng’s response when critical posters began to re-emerge in 1980 was to amend the constitution to ban them. Ironically, such posters were actually first specifically made constitutionally protected during the supposedly more repressive CR years.

Deng propounded his Four Cardinal Principles in March 1979 as the limits of debate. Debaters had to be following the socialist road for the PRC, accept the maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat for some time, acknowledge the rightful leadership of the Communist Party leading in that and adhere to Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought (as expressed before 1957) in any theory of government in the current socialist phase that always precedes Communism in Marxist theory.

He also produced four legal reforms in June 1979 at the 2^nd Session of the 5^th National Party Congress (NPC) defining ‘crimes’ for the first time in the history of the PRC in a criminal code and limiting the definition of ‘counter revolutionary’ crime, enshrining for the first time the notion that ‘all citizens are equal before the law’ (including non-party members) in a new procedural law, regulating and regularising joint ventures (especially with foreigners) and providing for an electoral law at the lower two levels of the People’s Congress structure.

In the following year at the 3^rd Session of the 5^th NPC (as is the practice) matters of party discipline were up for discussion (the criminal law did not apply to party members so a member had to be expelled before it could be applied to her or him). Deng called for reform there to reduce over-concentrations of power with individuals by means of holding multiple positions especially in both the party and the government, further separate party and government functions, provide for a retirement age for senior functionaries and succession and further guard against abuses of power by the further strengthening of internal party discipline by means of appropriate sanctions. These reforms were especially overdue given the continuation of criminal impunity of party members. The intra party codes would now be strengthened to mirror the criminal codes (as now formally promulgated) somewhat closely.

Party members continued to be permitted to be government officials, just with less dual posts. With regard to the retirements of people of his generation (he was in his mid 70s (having been born in 1904)) he set an example by retiring as vice-chairman of the party (though he intended to continue wielding all the power behind the scenes – he took the title ‘paramount leader’).
The two official leaders came from the next generation. They were Hu Yaobang (born in 1915 – CCP General Secretary from 1981 to 1987) and Zhao Ziyang (born in 1919 – Premier from 1983 to 1987 and CCP General Secretary from Hu’s fall in 1987 to 1989). Zhao had been somewhat instrumental in the successful agricultural reforms in Anhui leading to him being brought to Beijing.

Next week: causes and effects of Tiananmen.