Millions of flowers LE
CHINA HE MASSIVE student demonstrations that have shaken Beijing — and to a lesser extent Shanghai, Tianjin, Changsha, Wuhan, Xian and other provincial cities - represent another important change in the international situation.
The international dimension of this awakening is not obvious simply from the fact that the Beijing students explicitly refer to glasnost, with Gorbachev's visit on May 15.1 It becomes doubly clear when we remember that the May 4 demonstration coincided with another notable "first": the participation of a Taiwan banker (a partisan
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE was written on May 5, 1989.
Since then the events have developed with lightning speed. The mass mobilization of students has been joined by millions of workers throughout the country.
The power of this mass mobilization has upset everybody's plans and predictions, starting with those of the top leaders of the party and the army high command.
As long as Mikhail Gorbachev stayed in China, the Deng faction did not dare to resort to confrontation, but as soon as he left (rather precipitously, not very happy with what he calls the Chinese "hotheads"), a violent debate broke out in the top leadership, very reminiscent of the one that occurred in Hungary in October 1956. A majority of the Standing Committee opted for the hard line. This was a double misjudgment.
It completely underestimated the determination of the students and of the popular masses supporting them.
But it was also a serious misjudgment of the mood of the army. Soldiers, misinformed by the government about what was really happening in Peking, wavered. Until now, no repression has occurred. In desperation, Li Peng issued an ultimatum to the students. They had to leave
Tiananmen Square by midnight, May 21. Nothing happened.
At the time of writing (May
22), the situation is in the melting pot. The army itself seems to be deeply divided. These events have already had a major impact in the USSR, where a rally of 100,000 people in
Moscow heard calls for solidarity with the Chinese masses and for transforming the Soviet
Congress of People's
Deputies into a constituent assembly.
ERNEST MANDEL
SAWERS BA of Chiang Kai-shek and overtly counterrevolutionary) in an Asian Development Bank conference in Beijing.
At the beginning, the mass demonstrations were made up primarily of students. They came in the wake of student agitation that had lasted for several weeks. Since the giant demonstration on April 27, which saw around 300,000 people on the streets, the inhabitants of Beijing (small traders, unemployed, workers in the "informal" sector and workers passing by) expressed their sympathy for the demonstrators. Building workers on sites along the route of the cortege shouted at the top of their voices: "Long live the students!" (Die Zeit, May 5, 1989.)
But on May 4 — the 70th anniversary of the 1919 student demonstration that "launched" mass action for the nationaldemocratic revolution - the movement took a new turn. According to the International Herald Tribune on May 5, a large contingent of young workers joined the demonstration with their own demands. On the same date, The Times of London noted that in the large industrial centre of Changsha, 1,000 workers joined 6,000 students. This is what the leadership of the Chinese nomenklatura were afraid of. And this is what they could not prevent.
During the 15 days from April 19 to May 1. The next issue of IV will include coverage of Gorbachev's visit to China and the implications of renewed Sino-Soviet relations.
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12 demands for a dialogue
Beijing students, who have formed an autonomous union, handed in a petition containing their 12 demands for talks on May 2 to the Standing the arrangements for the next round of dialogue. *
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4, the students centred their demands around three things: democratic freedom in general; their right to have a democratic organization that they controlled themselves; and denouncing the bureaucracy's
Committee of the National People's Congress, the State Council and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The government has rejected as "unreasonable" the preconditions set out in the petition, in particular the demand for the talks to be broadcast live. FOR A substantive dialogue to take place as early as possible, we, as the selected representatives, here on behalf of the masses of students of the institutions of higher learning in Beijing, want to raise the following demands vis-àvis the dialogue with the government and the Party Central Committee:
1. In the dialogue, the two parties should be completely equal in position and should sincerely work to solve the problems. Equal opportunities for speeches and questions should be guaranteed for both parties.
2. Student representatives participating in the dialogue should be acknowledged and selected by the majority of the students (especially by the students who took part in the patriotic and democratic movement). Meanwhile, we maintain that since the [official] student associations and graduate students' associations of the various Beijing universities and colleges failed to play any role in correctly guiding and helpfully organizing the movement, we absolutely refuse to let such associations designate student representatives. We also refuse to recognize the representativeness of those who were unilaterally and secretly invited by the government to be student representatives without the permission of the masses of students.
3. We demand that student representatives be created in the following ways: Since the self-governing union of students of the institutions of higher learning in Beijing, the organization that students spontaneously formed, has been playing the role of leader and organizer of this movement, and has won recognition from the masses of students, it is the self-governing union that should contact students and organize the selection of representatives. Each university or college should choose a few representatives, in accordance with the proportion of its students in the total number of Beijing students, to form a student delegation. Upon full discussion and consultation among the delegates, a number of students can be selected to act as the general spokesmen for the student side, while the rest can attend the dialogue meeting as observers. The observers can meet to discuss and supplement the speeches of the student spokesmen. They also have the right to question the government spokesmen.
4. Government participants to attend the dialogue meeting should be familiar with state affairs and have decision-making power....
5. It must be allowed that both sides invite representatives from the people or social groups to monitor the dialogue. Neither side should be permitted to refuse or to prevent their participation under any circumstances....
6. Spokesmen from each side must be given equal opportunities to speak, and the time for each speech should be limited....
7. In the course of a dialogue, both Chinese and foreign reporters should be allowed to do on-the-spot coverage of the event. The Central TV Station and the Central People's Broadcasting Station should broadcast the whole dialogue live. Both sides have the right to videotape, record and write down the events on the spot, and no organizations or individuals are permitted to interfere with
8. Dialogues should be held in turn in the places the government and student representatives propose respectively, and the time for the dialogue is to be decided upon by the two sides in consultation.
9. The government participants in the course of the dialogue should try their best to answer the questions that can be answered. And after the dialogue meeting, they should try their best to solve the raised problems that can be
10. In order for the results of a dialogue to have legal binding, the two sides should make joint statements on them, with signatures by the two on the document.
11. The physical and political safety of the participants on both sides must be guaranteed.
12. The results of each round of dialogue, after it has ended, must be truthfully reported by major national newspapers and the radio stations together with International Viewpoint #164 • May 29, 1989 privileges.
Aside from these demands, which seemed to be unanimously supported, there were debates and differences on a number of questions: exact relations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or, more exactly, with the present leadership team; and the attitude to the Maoist heritage and past. There is not enough information at present to pinpoint existing tendencies. But the very fact of these debates, which in some ways resemble those that took place in France and Europe in May '68, are themselves witness to the political awakening taking place. Differences between China and Eastern bloc
The scope of the demonstrations has visibly surprised and disconcerted the bureaucratic authorities, whose first response was repression. They then threatened to act even more harshly. Before the April 27 demonstration, they drew back in favour of dialogue with the "official" student organization. Finally, the threats of repression in relation to those who were supposed to have "broken the law" re-emerged. Everything was to depend on the development of the balance of forces in the days and weeks that followed. A hardening up of repression could hardly be ruled out. However, this would only have been stepped up in a situation where there was a serious ebb in the
While the mammoth demonstrations in Beijing came in the wake of events in the USSR and many countries of Eastern Europe, there were noticeable differences between the beginning of the political activity of the broad masses in the Soviet Union and in China that deserve to be high-
First of all, the USSR is only at the beginning of perestroika, of the "free-market" economic reforms whose effects (including negative effects for the workers) for the time being remain limited. This is something that the working class fears rather than suffers from already. In the People's Republic of China, the awakening of the masses occurs after ten years of reforms, whose effects - first positive and then negative - on living standards are extensive and visible to the naked eye.
Next, in the USSR, political reforms in the sense of limited but real democratization have gone alongside the beginnings of economic reforms almost from the start. In China, aside from some timid openings towards intellectuals in Prime Minister Hu Yaobang's time, political democratization has not begun. In addition, the social make-up of the demonstrators and oppositionists is very
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[From China Daily, May 5, 1989.]
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different in the two countries. While Beijing workers demonstrated their support for the oppositionists, they remain minority participants in the movement for the time being (something that could change, obviously). As for the peasantry, in contrast to the USSR, they continue to represent the big majority of the active population in China. While they have launched a number of local strike movements, they still do not participate in political activity.
Finally, there is a qualitative difference in terms of the attitude of the bureaucratic leaders to the mass movement. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev is undoubtedly endeavouring to channel the discontent in a way favourable to his overall orientation. He manoeuvres to keep control over the masses. But his attitude is still perceived by the masses as encouraging their autonomous participation in political life. The limited repression in Armenia and Georgia has not erased this impression, except in the regions concerned.
In China, on the other hand, the ruling group is seen as a team of autocrats who are not prepared to tolerate the least autonomy of the mass movement. This makes it the target of all mass mobilizations, which is not the case at present for the Gorbachev
The origins and meaning of these differences are clearly revealed by the dynamic and consequences of the "free-market" economic reforms in the People's Republic.
China is still essentially an agricultural country. The de facto suppression of "people's cooperatives" and the collective exploitation of land (measures whose unpopularity was underestimated in the rest of the world) allowed an initial rapid development of productive forces in the countryside. Supplies improved in the villages and towns. The real income of the masses increased practically everywhere?
Contradictions of the market reforms
As in Russia at the time of the New Economic Policy (NEP), but on a much vaster scale, small and medium private industry developed in conjunction with an agriculture that was practically reprivatized, boosting the development of a layer of enriched and well-off peasant/ entrepreneurs, and non-agricultural activities expanded rapidly in the countryside.
But, little by little, the contradictions of the "market" reforms began to rear their heads and, starting from 1987, they became increasingly explosive. Growing inequalities were bitterly resented by the mass of poor peasants.
In addition, the expansion of big industry, indubitably stimulated initially by the financial autonomy of firms and administrative decentralization, opened up a veritable overheating of the economy: an excess of investments, growing disproportions between sectors, and a lack of certain raw materials.
The top layers of the bureaucracy, frightened by this evolution, tried to put the brakes on the "liberalization" process in September 1988. What they put on the agenda was in no way the restoration of capitalism. It was to send out tens of thousands of functionaries to "restore" order in the firms, the provinces and the villages by typical bureaucratic means. This increasingly explosive economic dynamic is unfolding in the background to what is the most serious long-term social problem facing China as well as for all the underdeveloped countries: unemployment and under-employment.
Unemployment and under-employment
In the framework of high-technology industry, China does not have the necessary resources to create 200-250 million jobs. Mao tried to resolve this by massive deportations of young people from the towns to the countryside and by mobilizing excess labour in the villages for nonagricultural activities. This excess labour was integrated into the collective sector, with minimal output and a miserable standard of living. The result was an economic
The reforms undertaken by Deng Xiaoping from 1979 on implied the return of the young urbanites to the cities, and the freedom for them to set themselves up as self-employed in small trades. In the countryside, the excess labour was reabsorbed by private non-agricultural activities, including the growth of medium-sized firms. This labour therefore served to enlarge the private sector, which became preponderant in the villages with 80 million wage-earners in 1987. The result was firstly growth in productivity and higher living standards, and then the series of tensions and crises already mentioned. In this sense, the student explosion, like the Red Guard movement in the 1960s, also reflects the problem of the lack of possibilities for satisfactory jobs, which is a worrying problem of existence for millions of young people.
To the absence of a possibility of future employment as a motive for student discontent should be added their miserable living conditions. The Far Eastern Economic Review of May 11, 1989, stated that seven students are packed into dormitories of 15 square metres. Most of them can only eat bad quality rice with a little sauce and vegetables. Insomnia and illnesses caused by vitamin deficiency are widespread. On May 4, the China Daily admitted that the situation among young university teachers was scarcely better. They leave the universities en masse. At Beijing University, 70% of them cannot find lodgings where they can live with their spouse. The assistants earn 70 yuans a month [about $19], less than half a workers' wages and clearly less
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For the time being, this or that measure indispensable to the satisfaction of the legitimate material demands of the masses can come to the fore. This seems to be the case with the anti-inflation struggle in China from the workers' point of view, because it implies a monthly index-linked sliding scale of wages. (IHT, May 5, 1989.) But all these measures, as urgent as they are, can only really be implemented in an effective and lasting way if the monopoly of power in the hands of the bureaucracy is broken. The students are therefore quite correct to prioritize democratic demands.
With a remarkable political instinct, the Chinese students have linked a harsh denunciation of the bureaucracy's material privileges to their central democratic demands. The leading bureaucratic circles do not cling on to their monopoly of power essentially because of ideological dogmatism or political fanaticism. They cling on to it so as to defend and extend these privi-
To justify its obstinate refusal to give in to the democratic demands of the students and their intellectual supporters, the nomenklatura puts forward two sorts of argument.
First, the "conspiracy" fomented by the students to "undermine the social stability" that China so desperately needs. This argument is as old as every massive protest movement in history. It is the first reaction of every regime with its back to the wall.
### Fighting for pluralist democracy
The second argument is that the merits of the Chinese CP justify its monopoly of political power. The party's general secretary, Zhao Ziyang, explains that the CCP could only commit "errors" that are quickly put right, as can be read in his speech published in China Daily on May 4. But if the Chinese CP has the historic merit of having led the revolution to victory in 1949, this was not followed by simple "errors" but by disasters whose victims can be counted in millions. One can only think that these disasters could have been avoided, or rapidly curtailed at less cost, if the Chinese masses had been able to choose between various political alternatives. That is the meaning
In fighting for this type of democracy, the Chinese students are fighting for the workers and poor peasants and for renewed progress in the direction of socialism, whatever their ideological confusions, which are inevitable after decades of the dictatorship. In this sense they must be given total support by all proletarian revolutionaries.
At the end of the Beijing demonstration on May 4, one of the student leaders, Wu Kai, announced the ending of the action on 2. For a more detailed analysis of the reform, see
151. 0 yar 31 new over 14,1 amv, IV 150 & 5
151, October 31 & November 14, 1988. May 29, 1989 • #164 International Viewpoint
CHINA • BRITAIN May 5, while other student leaders do not seem to have said the same thing. Will this represent a retreat of the mass movement and a victory for the nomenklatura? That is not certain because it was the repression itself which, with the savage beating-up of some of the 5,000 or so demonstrators on April 19, played a detonator role for the massive demonstrations that followed. (Far Eastern Economic Review, May 4.)
In addition, the remarkable structures of self-organization - involving hundreds of thousands of Beijing students and something that has not been seen since 1927 -are continuing to function and to demand recognition by the authorities, and are becoming increasingly immutable. Bureaucracy divided over reactions to movement