Beijing, Past and Future: What the Tiananmen Papers show

National Review, Feb 5, 2001 by John Derbyshire

January 8 saw the publication of the so-called "Tiananmen Papers," transcripts of high-level discussions among the Chinese leadership in the period leading up to the suppression of the 1989 student movement. What do these documents reveal about the inner workings of the Chinese leadership? What guidance do they offer to the new U.S. administration in the task of, as foreign-policy wonks say, "managing the relationship" with China? And what can they tell us about the future course of events in China?

Though they offer few surprises, the Tiananmen Papers fill in some key details for us and give a precise chronology of the decision-making that led up to the victory of the hard-liners and the storming of Tiananmen Square in the early hours of June 4, 1989. We already knew from indirect evidence what kinds of things must have been said, but it is fascinating to read the actual words spoken by China's senior leaders during the crisis. These documents serve to remind us of the fundamentally lawless nature of the Chinese Communist government. The fact of their having been leaked to the West, together with the fierce indignation with which Beijing has denied their authenticity, also offer some clues about differences of opinion at the highest levels of the Party apparatus.

In the matter of lawlessness, it is clear from the Tiananmen Papers that Jiang Zemin, the current president of China and general secretary of the Communist party, owes his positions not to any constitutional procedure, but to a voice vote taken on May 27, 1989, by the "eight elders," a cabal of senior party leaders led by Deng Xiaoping. You will search China's constitution in vain for any reference to this body, yet they made all the key decisions leading up to the June 4 massacre.

Jiang's term of office as party leader ends in October 2002, his presidency in March 2003. Jiang's second-in-command, Li Peng, also holds party and state positions due to expire in those years. These two men were the hard-line victors of the 1989 uprising. Li managed the suppression of the student movement; Jiang replaced a more liberal general secretary, who was cashiered by the "eight elders" and has been under house arrest ever since. By clarifying the roles of these two men in the 1989 atrocities, and by showing the illegitimate nature of Jiang's ascension, whoever leaked the papers may be hoping to weaken Jiang and Li-and by extension, the hard-line faction they represent-preparatory to the changing-of-the-guard period that begins next year.

However, while the leaking of these papers suggests the presence of a faction pushing for political reform, the content of the material does not offer much hope for the success of this faction. To the contrary, we see the ease with which party hard-liners dispatched their opponents, once everyone was convinced that there was a serious threat to Party supremacy. Nor do these conversations indicate that "reform" means the same thing in the upper ranks of the Chinese Communist party as it does in the minds of Westerners. The most liberal of the leaders represented here is Zhao Ziyang, the one now under house arrest, and presumably the inspiration for younger reformers. Zhao speaks encouragingly of:

. . . the need to accelerate the reform of our political system, especially the building of a system of socialist democracy based on law. Times have changed . . . democracy is a worldwide trend . . .

So far, so good. But then:

We must, of course, insist on Communist party leadership and not play around with any Western multiparty systems.

Of course.

Another impression that emerges very strongly from the Tiananmen Papers is of Chineseness-most especially, of long continuity in the thinking of China's leaders. Some of these conversations might have come from the Imperial reactionaries of the "Hundred Days" back in 1898, when an attempt to reform the old imperial system was crushed by the Dowager Empress Ci Xi. Among the invariants of Chinese leadership psychology is the conviction that all China's misfortunes are caused by the manipulations of malevolent foreigners. Li Peng (April 28, 1989): "This turmoil is the result of long-term preparation by a tiny minority of bourgeois liberal elements hooked up with anti-China forces outside the country."

Given that Li, Jiang, and the rest of China's current leaders-the victors of the 1989 struggle-are now in their seventies, can we hope that a younger, more open generation is in the wings, impatient to take over and to try their hand at genuine reform? I doubt it. The Chinese Communist party may have sunk into Brezhnevism-there is precious little ideology on display in the Tiananmen Papers-but they have done so in a much happier economic environment than Brezhnev's USSR. China's ruling class is fat from corruption, a bloated nomenklatura with a huge vested interest in the status quo, and a much greater willingness than the Soviets had to permit economic freedoms-so long as they are allowed to skim off the cream for themselves. Anyone with ideas about real political reform will face this entrenched ruling class, determined to defend its wealth and privileges, and well able to do so as long as the economic pot can be kept bubbling.