Chapter 3 Political History I
Two Third Plenums and the Interim 1978-84
The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, 18-22 December 1978, introduced the policies of reform under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. The first half-decade from the end of 1978 saw policy changes in the economy in the direction of the market and free enterprise in the countryside. The Cultural Revolution was totally negated and China seemed able to throw out all the Maoist propaganda which had been so deleterious to the Chinese revolution as a whole. The legal system, which had been all but destroyed as a result of the Cultural Revolution, made tentative steps towards revival. Economic and social freedoms of various sorts became permissible. Deng Xiaoping appeared able to solve any leadership struggles in the top echelons of the Party or state with reasonable ease.
The economy boomed and the standard of living rose everywhere, especially in the countryside. There were problems, of course. The revived law system did not prevent the worsening of corruption, and crime began to assume worrying proportions. There were quickly signs that intellectuals were losing enthusiasm for socialism, and some were even turning their backs on it. But in general things appeared to be going well.
The Third Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee met in October 1984. Its task was to extend the economic reforms in the countryside to the cities by loosening up state controls over prices and management. It thus introduced a new and important stage in reform, but one which turned out to be rather less successful than the first.
The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee
The Third Plenum was the climax of a series of major high-level meetings which had taken place behind the scenes as posters calling for changes in direction appeared on the 'democracy wall' in Beijing. It formalized decisions reached in those meetings about the future policy of the CCP and its leadership. One writer has called it 'the fulcrum, which he [Deng] had sought for nearly two decades, with which he could move the Chinese nation dramatically on to a new track in its search for identity’.
Deng Xiaoping had been critical of the slow pace of modernization under Hua Guofeng. He also pushed for a much more radical rejection of the Cultural Revolution than Hua Guofeng was willing to countenance. The Third Plenum showed very clearly that Deng was getting his way. It was the single most important point in his phoenix-like rise to ascendancy. Although Hua Guofeng remained in the position of CCP Chairman and Premier of the State Council, his influence was sharply on the wane from then on, and his disappearance as a major power-holder was only a matter of time.
The main decision of the Third Plenum was to push modernization far more strongly than in the previous years:
Now is an appropriate time to take the decision to close the large-scale nationwide mass movement to expose and criticize Lin Biao and the 'gang of four' and to shift the emphasis of our Party's work and the attention of the people of the whole country to socialist modernization... Socialist modernization is therefore a profound and extensive revolution. There is still in our country today a small handful of counter-revolutionary elements and criminals who hate our socialist modernization and try to undermine it. We must not relax our class struggle against them, nor can we weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat. But as Comrade Mao Tsetung [Zedong] pointed out, the large-scale turbulent class struggles of a mass character have in the main come to an end.
This statement signaled not only the end of the campaign against the 'Gang of Four', but, at least for several years, any other campaigns that seemed remotely similar to the sort of political-ideological movements which had characterized Mao's last years. In particular, the lid was opened on criticism of the Cultural Revolution. The Plenum suggested that the Cultural Revolution should 'be viewed historically, scientifically and in a down-to-earth way' and that its shortcomings and mistakes 'should be summed up at the appropriate time'. In fact, Deng Xiaoping detested the Cultural Revolution - not surprising considering how deeply he had suffered as a result of it - and his intention was to move to discredit it altogether in due course.
Other major policy decisions of the Third Plenum pointed in the same direction of a new deal for China and against the policies of Mao's last years. The Tiananmen Incident of April 1976 was reinterpreted. Whereas the power-holders of the time, mainly Mao and the 'Gang of Four', had castigated it as a 'counter-revolutionary political incident', the Third Plenum described it as the unfolding of a 'great revolutionary mass movement'. Nowhere was the hand of Deng Xiaoping more clearly visible than in this 'reversal of verdicts'. What had followed immediately on the Tiananmen Incident of 1976 was the confirmation of Hua Guofeng as Premier and a major acceleration of the mass campaign of criticism against Deng Xiaoping. In other words, Hua had done very nicely out of the Tiananmen Incident, whereas for Deng had come only humiliation and bitterness. Hua must have been extremely uneasy about the 'Third Plenum's view of the Incident, no matter how strong his public endorsement of it may have been.
Hua was right to worry. He was deposed as Premier at the Third Session of the Fifth National People's Congress in September 1980 and as Party Chairman at the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, which met 27-29 June 1981. Zhao Ziyang replaced him as Premier, and Hu Yaobang as CCP Chairman. Both were strong supporters of Deng Xiaoping and his reformist policies, and equally strong critics of the Cultural Revolution. In particular, Hu Yaobang had served under Deng Xiaoping as early as the period of the war against Japan. He had been head of the Chinese Youth League in Beijing from 1952 until the League was destroyed, and Hu himself purged, in 1966 at the onset of the Cultural Revolution.
The Third Plenum ushered in extensive changes in more or less all major spheres of life. Apart from the legal system and the economy, these included ideology, education, literature and the arts, the minority nationalities and religion. Some of them are discussed in other chapters of this book.
Although Deng Xiaoping is rightly regarded as the prime leader of the reforms in China, he was at all times absolutely insistent that China should remain socialist. It was he who formulated the terminology, or jargon, around which the debate over the speed and nature of socialist modernization was joined. He summed up the new ideology appropriate to the period of reform in the phrase 'socialism with Chinese characteristics'. He first specified the requirement that the Chinese people must oppose 'bourgeois liberalisation' and 'uphold the four cardinal principles' which, he declared in a major speech in March 1979, were 'the basic prerequisite for achieving modernisation':
* We must keep to the socialist road.
* We must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat.
* We must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party.
* We must uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
Putting the matter in very stark terms, Deng later declared that 'the essence of the four cardinal principles is to uphold Communist Party leadership'. In other words, he perceived the principle of affirming the Leninist notion that the Party must on no account relinquish its monopoly on power, as the most important. On the other hand, 'the keystone of bourgeois liberalization is opposition to Party leadership'. Although Deng had thus laid down the parameters of change at the start of the reform period, it was not until the mid-1980s that upholding the cardinal principles and opposing bourgeois liberalization came to be a major concern of the CCP leadership.
Reform and the negation of the Cultural Revolution
The political history of China in the wake of Third Plenum can be viewed both as a trend in favour of reform and as reaction to the Cultural Revolution. These were two sides of the same coin. Rejection of the Cultural Revolution strengthened through a series of moves which reached a climax at the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1981.
An early sign of how reform meant negation of the Cultural Revolution was the complete abolition of the revolutionary committees at the Second Session of the Fifth National People's Congress in mid-1979. Early in 1978, these 'new-born things of the Cultural Revolution' had been restricted to organs of government. The Second Session passed laws establishing local people's congresses to replace these remaining revolutionary committees. The senior governmental positions at various levels changed accordingly. So, for instance, the most senior governmental position at province level had been the chairman of the provincial revolutionary committee, but was now the provincial governor.
In February 1980, several further steps were taken by the Fifth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in discrediting the Cultural Revolution. Four leaders with known sympathies for the Cultural Revolution and for Hua Guofeng were dismissed, including Wang Dongxing, who had actually managed the arrest of the 'Gang of Four' in October 1976. At the same time, the main target of the Cultural Revolution, Liu Shaoqi, was rehabilitated posthumously. The decision of October 1968 to expel Liu Shaoqi from the CCP and to dismiss him from all posts both inside and outside the CCP, which had been taken at Mao's behest, was not only reversed but condemned as the 'biggest frame-up our Party has ever known in its history’. Liu's death in prison in November 1969 was for the first time revealed, and a memorial service was held in his honour. Official pronouncements were careful to blame Lin Biao, the 'Gang of Four' and so on for Liu's death, but his rehabilitation was certainly a major slap in the face for Mao's memory and for the Cultural Revolution.
In August 1980, Deng Xiaoping gave a major speech to the Politburo on his vision of political reform. Naturally he blamed the Cultural Revolution for the fact that China's political system had suffered so severely and become so very undemocratic and 'feudal'. Part of his argument was that Lin Biao and the 'Gang of Four' had contrived to persecute so many good cadres that virtually everybody, including the young, had become too cowed to express an opinion or to take any administrative initiative.
Deng advocated a major separation of the roles and powers of the Party and the government. He believed there was too great a concentration of power, with too many senior leaders holding too many posts both in the Party and the government. He called for tighter rules on the retirement of old cadres and a major infusion of young blood into the CCP and government at all levels, affirming his faith in the youth against attacks that they 'may be too inexperienced and not equal to the tasks'. He attacked bureaucracy and patriarchal ways throughout society, denouncing the old way of thinking which had demanded subservience to old age. Deng's stated ideal was that China should 'practise people's democracy to the full...and develop a political situation marked by stability, unity and liveliness’. He was probably quite genuine in this belief. After all, what he had in mind was not Western-style democracy, but a kind which would preserve his 'four cardinal principles', especially Party leadership, and conform to 'socialism with Chinese characteristics'. He may not have bargained either for the direction which the process of democratization would take or for the extent to which he would be unable to control it.
In calling for political reforms Deng was speaking from bitter experience and his position gained very widespread support. Attempts were made to implement his ideas over the next few years-some fairly successfully, but others much less so. Certainly, after 1978 freedom in society increased. There was more tolerance of religion. Early in 1979 the PRC'S first national conference on the study of religion was held in Kunming, Yunnan province. Later in the year, Chinese Muslims went on a pilgrimage to Mecca for the first time since 1964. The arts blossomed and became incomparably more varied and interesting. Traditional drama, which had been totally banned during the Cultural Revolution, revived quickly and prolifically.
From 20 November to 29 December 1980, a specially formed court held a trial of sixteen persons involved in the Cultural Revolution. Of these, ten were living, among whom the 'Gang of Four' were the most important, and six dead, including Lin Biao. Some legal implications of the trial are considered in Chapter 13. The trial also had very considerable political significance, especially in the negation of the Cultural Revolution, which was on trial as much as the people accused. The main charge against the living defendants was of framing and persecuting CCP and state leaders as well as large numbers of cadres and ordinary people. For the first time, specific figures of the number of sufferers were issued: according to the indictment, in twelve major cases 729 511 people were framed and persecuted, of whom 34 800 were persecuted to death.
The climax of the moves to discredit the Cultural Revolution was the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in June 1981. The Plenum issued a long document called ‘On Questions of Party History', which analysed and assessed the history of the CCP from its beginnings until the aftermath of the Third Plenum, including reference to various ideological issues (discussed at greater length in Chapter 10) and to the career and status of Mao Zedong. The Plenum adopted the view that the CCP had done very well until the late 1950s, when things began to go wrong due to 'left' influence. 'The Great Leap Forward was basically a mistake caused by the impatience of Mao and other leaders for quick results. But the main barbs of the document were reserved for the Cultural Revolution itself, which it portrayed as a total disaster without any redeeming features:
The 'cultural revolution', which lasted from May 1966 to October 1976, was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People's Republic. It was initiated and led by Comrade Mao Zedong. ..The history of the 'cultural revolution' has proved that Comrade Mao Zedong's principal theses for initiating this revolution conformed neither to Marxism-Leninism nor to Chinese reality. They represent an entirely erroneous appraisal of the prevailing class relations and political situation in the Party and state. ..
Practice has shown that the ‘cultural revolution' did not in fact constitute a revolution or social progress in any sense, nor could it possibly have done so. It was we and not the enemy at all who were thrown into disorder by the 'cultural revolution'.
The Sixth Plenum went on to analyse the Third Plenum, claiming that it 'marked a crucial turning point of far-reaching significance in the history' of the CCP since 1949. It alleged that Hua Guofeng had made serious mistakes during his tenure of power, mainly in being far too slow to renounce the Cultural Revolution. That confirmed Deng's final victory in his ideological battle with Hua Guofeng.
The status of Mao Zedong
The main personality involved in the deliberations over the Cultural Revolution was, of course, Mao Zedong. It had been obvious that the immense power wielded by the 'Gang of Four' was due to Mao's backing. Indeed, should not one rather speak of a 'gang of five', with Mao as the most important member? During the trial of 1980, Jiang Qing defended herself against all charges by arguing that everything she had done was on orders from Mao. She told her judges that their purpose was 'to make me stink, and through me to make Chairman Mao stink, so as to revise the development of Marxism-Leninism and the immense contributions Chairman Mao made'.
The negation of the Cultural Revolution, and especially the trial of the sixteen, could not possibly avoid affecting Mao's status. In particular, one question inevitably bulked large: if sixteen leaders of the Cultural Revolution, including virtually all the luminaries of the period, were criminals, why was Mao still regarded as a great revolutionary leader? Was not he the biggest criminal of them all?
Deng Xiaoping repeatedly insisted that while Mao had made serious mistakes in his later years, his reputation should remain fundamentally intact. After all, as Deng told a foreign journalist in August 1980, 'for most of his life, Chairman Mao did very good things. Many times he saved the Party and the state from crises.’ But towards the end of his life he began to go wrong. He lost touch with reality and began to go 'counter to the style of work he himself had advocated'. However, because of his major earlier contributions, Mao could not be compared in any way with criminals like Jiang Qing. Naturally this line was echoed by the official press, but that did not ease concern among many ordinary people. The argument that Mao had made major contributions beforehand did not really absolve him for wrongdoings during the Cultural Revolution. If there was one point on which Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Qing could agree, it was that Mao was primarily responsible for the Cultural Revolution and it was he who was giving the orders at that time.
Nevertheless, Deng resisted sweeping downgrading of Mao because of the effects on legitimacy of the CCP and the regime. Deng himself made this point clear when, in June 1981, a few days before the Sixth Plenum was to convene, he told a preparatory meeting that 'certain recent remarks about some of Comrade Mao Zedong's mistakes' had gone too far. He asked that the excesses should be corrected 'so that, generally speaking, the assessment will conform to reality and enhance the image of the country and the Party as a whole’. His reference to China's and the CCP's image is very revealing: whether good or bad, Mao's role in the history of the CCP was just too towering to allow him to be fully discredited. The 'limits of criticism' of Mao were dictated by the need to preserve the authority of the CCP.
The Sixth Plenum did duly criticise the actions of Mao in his later years. It attacked not only the mistakes he had made during the Cultural Revolution, but also the fact that he had allowed or encouraged such a disaster to occur in the first place. It charged him with arrogance and other faults. At the same time, it reaffirmed that 'Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist', whose 'contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes' and whose 'merits are primary and his errors secondary’.
The aftermath of the Sixth Plenum
The Sixth Plenum was like a purging of the Chinese system. A definitive official assessment and rejection of the Cultural Revolution allowed attention to shift more fully to issues of reform. From that time, the Cultural Revolution did not dominate Chinese politics in the same way it had in the previous period.
Nevertheless, China was confronted with a problem of confidence, especially among young people. The Chinese people had been told, 'believe in radical revolution' and then soon afterwards told, 'radical revolution is nonsense and harmful; believe in reform'. Many were left feeling confused and deceived. The new reformed order encouraged them to get rich, and that is precisely what they did as far as they could. But the implication was that their order of priorities had changed. Whereas love of country and the people and loyalty to the Party had been primary, the top priority was now self and family, with the people and the country, let alone the Party, a long way down the list. The Party found itself faced with a 'crisis of faith’. Even more serious, the new attitudes and values produced by reform, together with the greater freedom, paved the way for growth in the extent of corruption.
When the Twelfth National Congress of the CCP met in 1982 it endorsed the conclusions of the Sixth Plenum and took several further reform measures, as well as confronting such problems as the crisis of faith and corruption. The two main changes in the Party system were abolition of the post of CCP Chairman and establishment of a new Central Advisory Commission. The first of these measures flowed directly from the criticism of the excessive power the single figure of Mao Zedong had been able to wield, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Hu Yaobang was appointed General Secretary of the CCP, which from this time on was the most senior formal position within the Party.
The Central Advisory Commission, composed of veteran Party leaders, was supposed to act as assistant and consultant to the Central Committee, and thus contribute to sharing power. However, the first person to be appointed to chair it was none other than Deng Xiaoping, who also remained Chairman of the Central Committee's Military Commission. The effect of the Twelfth Congress was actually to increase Deng's power, even though he showed no aspirations to the job of General Secretary.
In his report to the Congress, Hu Yaobang raised the issue of 'socialist spiritual civilisation', presented as a kind of recipe to counter the crisis of faith and the growing corruption. 'While working for a high level of material civilization,' he said, 'we must strive to build a high level of socialist spiritual civilization. This is a strategic principle for building socialism'. The two aspects of this socialist spiritual civilization were cultural and ideological, with each permeating the other. The people should accept a working-class world outlook, communist ideals, beliefs and moral values, including a collectivism corresponding to a system of socialist public ownership-in other words, precisely all the values which appeared to be deteriorating more quickly than ever under the impact of reform. Hu also echoed Deng Xiaoping's demand for a socialist democracy and an improvement in the CCP's system of democratic centralism. 'Undemocratic practices and patriarchal ways have still not been eradicated in many organizations,' he said. He attacked the corruption which he recognised as very destructive of inner-Party life, and which he saw as getting worse: while claiming that discipline inspection committees, the Party's organs charged with countering corruption, had made some progress, he also acknowledged that they had met 'considerable, and in some cases shocking, obstruction in their work'. Clearly the route towards 'socialist spiritual civilisation' would not be easy.
At the end of 1982, the National People's Congress adopted the PRC's fourth constitution, revising substantially the 1978 constitution. One revision which again showed rejection of the Cultural Revolution was that the post of President of the PRC, abolished by Mao, was now restored. It was ironical that only a few months after the Twelfth Party Congress had removed the Party chairmanship, a post to which Mao himself had lent such lustre for so long, the State Constitution should restore the post which he had acted to eliminate. In 1983, Li Xiannian was appointed (or, technically, elected by the National People's Congress) to fill the post.
Despite the rejection of the Cultural Revolution and the mainly successful implementation of reform, problems of corruption and 'crisis in faith' increasingly confronted the CCP leadership. In October 1983, the Second Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee decided to undertake another ideological campaign, directed against 'spiritual pollution'. The campaign was a minor shift against an over-hasty pace of reform, but was not a rejection of reform itself. Although it was the closest thing to the Maoist style of campaign since the Third Plenum of 1978, it did not have an impact in any way similar to campaigns during Mao's time. Intellectuals and artists, among others, experienced some serious tension in the late months of 1983, with the banning of a few dramas and other works of art and fears of a renewed purge. By the beginning of 1984, however, the influence of the campaign had waned to the extent that many people were no longer taking it seriously and few were still worried about it.
The Second Plenum also decided to implement 'an overall rectification of Party style and a consolidation of Party organizations over a period of three years'. The main problem was seen as 'the corrosive influence of decadent bourgeois ideology and remnant feudal ideas’-that is, influence of ideas from abroad, especially the West, and thinking left over from the past, especially China's Confucian traditional attitudes. What was not to be criticised was the process of reform. Some people were expelled from the Party and the CCP did indeed go through a formal process of 'consolidation' over three years. However, the effects on the CCP were rather less than spectacular.
If the campaign against 'spiritual pollution' signified a minor trend towards slowing down the pace of reform, the Third Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee, in October 1984, saw a swing back in the opposite direction. The decision of the Third Plenum focused mainly on the economy, concerning such matters as the price system. Issues such as management policy in urban units were also involved. Directors were given greater powers to hire and fire, disposing of the old idea that worker's in a socialist society could never be sacked. The idea of absolute egalitarianism was roundly condemned, simply because it prevented people from working hard and showing initiative. The widening gaps between rich and poor were of slighter concern than this disincentive. Just as reform really derived its origins from the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1978, the pace and extent of reform clearly took a very substantial step forward through the Third Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee some six years later.
Conclusion
Change had been extraordinarily rapid in China between these two Third Plenums. Yet, the pace of different aspects of reform was uneven. Already economic modernization was beginning to outstrip its political partner. Although some aspects of society were becoming distinctly 'modern', there were others in which the trend appeared to be in precisely the opposite direction-towards the reinstatement of very ancient traditions. The reference which the Second Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee made to the corrosive influence of feudal ideas must be taken seriously. The lifting of restraints had allowed back all kinds of traditional ideas and customs, including not only neutral or beautiful ones such as religious worship or traditional dramas and festivals, but also some less worthy, like superstitions, patriarchal domination of the young and of women, and ill-treatment of mothers failing to bear sons.
Many in the West noted the return of market mechanisms and free enterprise with enormous enthusiasm. Here was a communist party which seemed to be making genuine progress towards something which, if not really capitalism, was at least beginning to look like it. Although the situation changed greatly in the following period, it is doubtful that, as of 1984, many in the top Chinese leadership were seriously worried that the reforms could lead to capitalism. The leading role of the CCP had not yet been seriously challenged. The dominance of state ownership of industry was still perfectly secure. The reforms could genuinely be identified as consistent with 'socialism with Chinese characteristics', which represented at least one interpretation of Marxism-Leninism. The new leadership could, and did, argue that it was not they, but the late Mao, who had departed from Marxism-Leninism.
The trouble was that the logic of reform implied the acceleration of change in a system which could not readily handle the shock. The policies of the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee led directly on to those of the Third Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee. And the second of these two Third Plenums unleashed forces with very serious long-term implications, such as the gathering pace of inflation. The reforms increasingly took on their own momentum. Deng Xiaoping had accused Mao of arrogance and becoming divorced from reality. Perhaps he was himself suffering from the same weaknesses if he thought he could keep the situation on an even keel indefinitely. |
发表于 12-7-2010 22:02:39
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发表于 12-7-2010 22:15:41
楼主
！扫描原书容易，OCR太烂，校对没时间。第一章还没对完。