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Whither China's Leaders?
| Article
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18942 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1991 |
1,754 Words |
| Author
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Parris H. Chang
Parris H. Chang is professor of political science and director
of Asian studies at Penn State University; he is the author of
Power and Policy in China, Elite Conflict in the Post-Mao
China, and scores of articles on Asian affairs. |
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership experienced the greatest challenge to its authority in 40 years when massive demonstrations swept China in the spring of 1989. The prodemocracy protests were symptomatic of popular dissatisfaction with the leadership because of its unwillingness to make the political system more responsive to public concerns, its inability to control widespread corruption, nepotism, and double-digit inflation.
Eighteen months after the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, in which the so-called People's Liberation Army (PLA) used machine guns and tanks to kill thousands of protesters at the order of the CCP leadership, widespread discontent persists. The regime remains unable and unwilling to cope with many of the fundamental economic and political problems that gave rise to the protest, and many reform programs have been placed on hold or even reversed. Instead, the leadership has emphasized stability almost at all costs, stressed ideological orthodoxy against "bourgeois liberalization," and attempted to recentralize control and paper over its differences on major political and policy issues.
Conservative upsurge
The disunity at the top has deepened, however, and its extensive differences cannot be concealed. As the Chinese authorities were putting together the Eighth 5 Year Economic Plan (to begin in January 1991), CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin (Deng Xiaoping's protégé) and Premier Li Peng (conservative party patriarch Chen Yun's proxy) are openly feuding about a strategy and approach to economic development. Provincial authorities have been critical of the efforts by Premier Li Peng to curtail provincial autonomy and recentralize economic decision-making power, and they have refused to cooperate.
A series of People's Daily editorials on August 29, 30 ,and 31, 1990 presented conflicting authoritative policy statements. In these editorials, the conservatives strongly reiterated their views on economic development (i.e., central planning), and the importance of ideology and the continued campaign against bourgeois liberalization.
Moreover, in an article published in the People's Daily on September 14, Liu Gouguang, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, extolled Chen Yun's theory of economic development (central planning, steady and balanced growth, and similar measures) and sang the praises of Chen's past contributions to Chinese economic development. The indications are
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