The Chinese student demonstrations

Monthly Review, Sept, 1987 by Richard Levy

What seems to be missing from what I have seen of the democracy movement is the notion that economic systems operate as whole systems, not piecemeal. Evidence of this is already available in China. Inflation, corruption, a great leap backwards in rural health care, a denigration of women's role in society, and a ravaging of the environment are all part and parcel of the reforms which encourage short-term individual self-aggrandizement at the expense of the collective. The prescribed cure for these ills, when they are recognized, seems to be more democracy, rather than an analysis of the theoretical and structural basis of the reforms themselves.

Small-scale private enterprises are lauded for the jobs they provide and the underutilized resources they have employed. The strengthening of managerial authority and the reorienting of production toward the responsibility system and the notion of profit and loss are praised for the increases in productivity they have engendered. But seemingly lost sight of are both the unique conditions under which this is occurring and the future which these present changes forebode.

The present growth rests on an infrastructure built under the prior regime. Through its emphasis on heavy industry, the infrastructure set the preconditions for the present emphasis on light industry and a corresponding improvement in the standard of living. By its emphasis on economic equality, the infrastructure allowed the present reforms to occur in a system in which whatever polarizing tendencies they might engender will be minimalized for far longer than would be the case in any other society, since other societies would be implementing such policies in a far more economically polarized environment. In addition, the success of the reforms has been, in part, the result of one-time factors--rationalization of the previous system, mobilization of systematically underutilized resources, and a large initial input of foreign capital.

What are the future consequences of these policies? Only rarely do the documents of the student movement, or those of the reform leadership for that matter, seem to recognize the tendency of profit-making structures to grow from small to big. Having seemingly accepted the present leadership's notion that politics and economics are, can be, and should be separated, the democracy movement rarely seems to recognize the consequences of the tendency of those with vested economic interests to move into the political arena to protect their own interests at the expense of other sectors of society. When Fang Lizhe, one of the leaders of the movement who was expelled from the Party, calls on students, the scientific elite of the future, to enter the Party in order to change it, do he and his supporters think that the growing upper economic strata of Chinese society are not attempting the same thing? Do they think that the economic elite, with its economic resources as opposed to the intellectual resources of his own stratum, might not well come to dominate the system at the expense of the intellectuals? Do they not recognize that much of the corruption they correctly criticize is just the initial stages of this very process? Where do the vast majority, who are less likely to have the political or material skills to participate in this struggle, fit into their understanding of the future?