N ADDITION TO Beijing, many other Chinese towns experienced demonstrations and violent repression during these weeks, notably Chengdu, in the heart of continental China, and Shanghai, where the movement continued for several days after the Beijing massacre. The interpretation given to this movement by capitalist press and governments alike was simple enough — for them the demonstrations showed the will of the youth, followed by the rest of the population, to see the reforms go more quickly in the sense of the development of both democracy and a capitalist market
Hu Yaobang and after him his successor Zhao Ziyang represented the current of the CCP open to reforms and opposed to the Stalinist old guard represented by Deng Xiaoping. In putting a bloody end to the movement, according to the western media, the old guard demonstrated its desire to put a brake on the reforms and the opening to the capitalist countries.
Through this explanation, the western media wished to signify not only that the opening to the capitalist market and democracy went hand in hand, but also that the maintenance of the bureaucratic planned economy was inevitably accompanied by a ferocious dictatorship.
The reality is otherwise, for inasmuch as the second assertion is true, the first is obviously not and some hundreds of millions of men and women have sad experience of the fact every day. Movement a result of Deng's policies
The deep roots of the 1989 movement came from the multiple and sometimes contradictory consequences of the policy implemented since the end of the 1970s under the leadership of Deng. It is necessary to recall only the broad contours of
This policy had four major economic
— in the countryside, it rested return to family-based cultivation with the aim of encouraging the peasants to diversify their production and move into small private industry. The consequences were many; an important social differentiation with a broad improvement of the standard of living, and an important growth cereal production with the partial freeing of prices, but also the development of
- the opening to investment from foreign capital on the Pacific coast (in the "special economic zones" and the "open cities) with an important state subsidy for the equipment and industrialization of these regions to the detriment of the interior of the country. Even if only four million workers (out of an active urban population of 128 million) are involved in these enterprises, which represent 1% of the industrial production of the country,
One year after the
Tiananmen massacre
CHINA ment began to seriously inflate the urban population of "clandestine" workers — estimated at between one and two million in each of the three principal cities of the country (Shanghai, Beijing, and Guang-
Discontent was spreading throughout the urban population, apart from those newly enriched, and, as on other occasions, the intellectuals were the ferment of
THE DEATH on April 15, 1989 of Hu Yaobang — general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1981 to
1987, and right hand man of Deng Xiaoping prior to being dismissed by the latter 15 months previously - was the signal, in the two months that followed, for the most important popular movement China has known since the end of the
Cultural Revolution. The most important, because it catalyzed all the social demands of the urban layers ten years after the introduction of Deng's reforms. The most spectacular, because for six weeks Beijing's Tiananmen Square, a place symbolic of the history of People's China, was under the control of demonstrators who erected a Goddess of
Democracy there in defiance of the regime. The "Chinese
May" movement received a broad international echo because the international media had kept television teams in Beijing following Gorbachev's visit in mid-May. They maintained a consistent coverage of the events until the morning of June 4,
1989, when the army put an end to the movement by a massacre (see IV 164, 165, 166, 167).
LAURENT CARASSO they have shown the will of the Chinese leadership to open up to the capitalist market and the new technologies.
- the urban population, for their part, have hardly been favoured by the past ten years, even if there are few Chinese people who regret the period of insecurity of the
Cultural Revolution. The modest advance in the standard of living has been counterbalanced by the precariousness of employment and, above all in the last few years, by galloping inflation.
- finally, the introduction of elements of the "free" market, even outside the special economic zones, has led to an impetuous development of the black market and corruption, even in the industrial domain.
Moreover, in the field of civil liberties, beyond the grand declarations on the separation of party and state, the grip of the bureaucracy on political and economic life has been heavily maintained, leading notably to growing discontent among the intellectuals and student youth.
All the economic and social contradictions began to come to a head in 1988, when, faced with an unsettled economic situation, the party leadership, advised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), launched a sweeping austerity plan, in the context of "the policy of rectification".
The effects of the liberalization in the countryside and the growth of corruption were beginning to combine, notably through a vertiginous growth in prices of fertilizers and of cereal production. The state could no longer pay cash to the peasants without the repercussion of price rises in the towns. Massive increase in prices of basics 50%, leading to widespread panic. The austerity plan, launched in the autumn of the same year, sought to arrest this inflation by putting a brake on the freeing of agricultural prices and concentrating the weight of the restrictions on the urban population. Parallel to this, popular dissatisfaction grew, as is shown by a survey made in 20 Chinese cities. In this study, it appeared overall that the price rises, the mounting of inequality, and insecurity about the future constituted the main preoccupations of wage earners. The authors of the survey denounced the self-enrichment of some.
At the same time, rural underemploythe revolt. It should not however be forgotten, and it will be necessary to return to this point, that the profound and durable crisis in the countryside would inevitably have, in other importance in a country where 80% of the
The Chinese tradition has always seen the intellectuals as the despised lackeys of the regime. The Chinese revolution, origifrom the countryside, did not change this tradition, even aggravating it when the Cultural Revolution made the intellectuals a target. Deng's modernization policy was nonetheless supposed to rely on the support of the elites, notably the researchers and academics who were asked to become the ambassadors of China to the capitalist countries.
However, during the ten years from the introduction of Deng's reforms, the intellectuals not only remained isolated from the regime, but, more importantly, their basic living conditions and their salaries remained below those of other social layers.
Obviously, this feeling of injustice was accentuated for all those, researchers and students, who were able to compare their position with the high status accorded to their equivalents in the capitalist coun tries.
Expulsion of intellectuals becomes symbolic
The expulsion in February 1987 of three intellectuals, Fang Lizhi, Liu Binya and Wang Ruowang, became a symbol for the mass movement. The real role of impul sion played by these intellectual circles in the launch and stimulation of the mass movement has been amply shown?.
This network, often linked to the reformist current (Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang), was central to the affinity felt by the movement of 1989 with the Beijing Spring of 1979-80, a movement more limited than that of 1989 but the occasion for numerous radical critiques of the bureaucracy, in conjunction with the movement of "plaintiffs" , victims of the Cultural Revolution who demanded justice from Deng Xiaoping. At the time Deng severely repressed this movement and its principal figure, Wei Jingsheng (author of "The Fifth Essential Modernization — Democ1. Zhu Qingfang, "The frame of mind of urban workers in 1988", Liaowang, Beijing no. 2. 2. era ion, April 25,19 uvey by Romain Frankin in 13 Libération, April 25, 1990. June 4, 1990 • #186 International Viewpoint
CHINA racy"), is still imprisoned?. But this impulsion and the role played by these university circles should not obscure the essential characteristics of the 1989 movement.
If it did not have the political sophistication of the 1979 movement, the 1989 movement was marked by a remarkable breadth and extended itself to the totality of the urban population — it was above all the occasion for the birth of organizations independent of the regime.
Some dozens of student organizations, among them the Independent Union of Beijing Students, grew up in a few weeks. The preceding movements to which that of 1989 could be compared seemed to define themselves in terms of factional struggles within the party. The essential characteristic of the 1989 movement was that the basic demand for the right to organize freely was rapidly raised — the population wished to form its own associations and a number of speeches and leaflets explained that the only guarantee against corruption and for democratic rights was organized vigilance. No moves towards formation of new party
Practically no genuine current advocating the creation of a new party emerged, both because of a wish to avoid a frontal collision with the regime and because of a lack of a sufficient maturing of the movement. The dominant tendency wished to put the party "under surveillance", knowing that no faction, even the current of Zhao Ziyang, was genuinely favourable to its demands. To appreciate the limits and the impact of the movement of May-June 1989, it is necessary to situate it in the context of the political conflicts at work
Since 1948, the Chinese Communist Party has monopolized political life in China. But, in contrast to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) or its satellites in Eastern Europe, the CCP has a tradition of fierce public factional struggles, undergoing numerous turns and torments, most obviously that of the Cultural Revolution. The apparatus and leadership of the Party represents then the sum and cumulation of the totality of these policies. For, at each new turn, only a small part of the protagonists of the previous policy were pushed aside. Thus, after the death of Mao and the elimination of the "Gang of Four", most of the provincial Maoist cadre remained in place. There is a very great cohesion of the apparatus inside a bureaucracy which, in contrast to the Stalinist bureaucracy, moulded itself directly from the leadership of the revolution. It is necessary also to note that this intense factional struggle has until now translated itself by very few physical eliminations in the higher ruling sphere (apart from the death of Lin Biao in 1971 and the 14 _ Jailing of the "Gang of Four")
The 1989 movement attacked the whole International Viewpoint #186 • June 4, 1990 of the bureaucracy and the leadership of the Communist Party, judged globally responsible for corruption, inequality and the absence of democratic liberties - this proved the growing disillusionment with the bureaucracy in its entirety. The democratic movement of 1979, for its part, had wrongly placed its confidence in Deng Xiaoping to establish a genuine socialisi democracy and render justice to the victims of the bureaucracy.
This difference constitutes a fundamental break in mass consciousness — no longer did any party leader seem capable of restoring confidence in the CCP. The demand for, and the setting up of, independent organizations was symbolic of this absence of confidence in any wing of
At the same time, and this is not contradictory, the students, at least those in Beijing, had the feeling of being supported by a wing of the Party. In 1986, Hu Yaobang had been dismissed for having refused to send the army against the student movement — since then, he had become a sort of martyr in the eyes of the students. In 1989, also, the student leaders consciously applied pressure on the so-called liberal wing of the leadership around first secretary Zhao Ziyang to meet their demands, which, over several weeks, had been limited to a simple reprise of official slogans (against corruption, for the independence of the National People's Assembly and the government from the CCP).
### Refusal to evacuate
Tiananmen Square
This policy in relation to the CCP explained the enormous sense of legitimacy which the movement had (reinforced moreover by the support of the whole of society), its insolent audacity towards the regime - illustrated by its refusal to evacuate Tiananmen despite the proclamation of martial law and the demand for negotiations with the regime on the basis of equality. The movement was also marked by a fanatical legalism which, up to the end, refused to envisage a direct test of forces. It is in this context that it is necessary to understand the role played by several intellectuals who were at least close to Zhao Ziyang, if not in the leadership itself, in the permanent liaison between the leaders of the movement and the high cadres of the Party. It is in this context also that the demand for independent unions and organizations, which was quickly raised in all the principal cities of the country, can be seen as the expression of a profound political maturation. There, the experience of the previous ments (1978, 1986) bore fruit.
It is, on the other hand, striking to note that so far as a more global vision of society and economic and political demands is concerned, the students fell well short of the 1978 movement and in fact echoed the themes developed by Deng and Zhao themselves on the opening to the west and remained practically at a secondary level — the questions put most often to the fore were those of democratic rights and corruption. The general pro-market orientation appears more visible today in the declarations made by the spokespersons of the Federation for Democracy in China, issued from the movement in exile.
The other major element of this movement was the entry onto the scene of the urban workers. Already the year 1988 had seen a multiplication of strikes. The stimulus of the student movement led to the discreet emergence of workers contingents on April 27, 1989 and a massive workers' presence during the big demonstration of May 17, 1989. On this day the Independent Union of Workers founded in Beijing, a union which -despite its short existence and its some hundreds of members — received a great echo in all the factories of Beijing, inspiring the creation of identical unions in all the cities of the country.
"We have the right to overthrow all tyrants"
It is incontestable that, even in their limited and elementary character, the declarations published by the Independent Union of Workers of Beijing showed clearly the demand to see the workers genuinely assume power: "The People's Republic of China is under the leadership of the working class, we have the right to overthrow all tyrants". In the face of the more confused political character of the student declarations, those of the workers could give a powerful dynamic to a movement in which the workers and unemployed of the big cities could participate. However, the regime, all factions together, could not accept the development of a movement which directly contested the bureaucracy and in which the workers began to organize themselves.
The massacre of June 4 was the result of the crisis within the leadership and obviously an admission of weakness, given that the population of Beijing had defied the declaration of martial law.
It was not a military coup d'état, but a decision consciously taken by the leadership of the party in its entirety, even if the first secretary paid the price for it - it meant then neither a radical turn in the 3. In 1978, the dissident intellectuals who had been driven out of the universities and sent to work in the countryside became the spokespersons for all those who had suffered injustices during the Cultural Revolution. 4. This group of leaders of the CCP (among them Mao's widow) had supported Mao in launching the Cultural Revolution against the other factions in the party. In power after the fall of Lin Biao, they pursued the policies of the Cultural Revolution. They were arrested after the riots of 1976 and tried and condemned in 1980-81. 5. In December 1986, student demonstrations for democracy took place in several Chinese cities.
policy of the party, nor a massive liquidation of its liberal wing. This is proved by the fact that the National Assembly, in its
Zhao Ziyang, accepted completely the consequences of the repression. As a counterpart Zhao himself, although removed from his post, has not been designated as responsible for the movement and a number of his collaborators have kept their positions.
On the other hand, the May-June movement found a favourable echo amongst numerous local members and cadres of the Party, very many of them participating in the demonstrations. The movement and the repression have shed light on a weakening of the role of the army in the ruling spheres of the bureaucracy, which is moreover shown by the greater role taken by Yang Shankun, president of the republic, and several of his collaborators 6.
The Chinese situation has an essential difference to that of the countries of Eastern Europe. The country has experienced ten years of economic reforms and the movement of May 1989 was at once the bearer of democratic demands comparable to those raised in Eastern Europe and social demands derived directly from the negative effects of the reforms already undertaken. This double phenomena will inevitably weigh on future democratic
The Chinese leaders have for two years implemented "the policy of rectification", of "reform within the reform", which seeks precisely to prevent and limit the most grave consequences of the economic measures, in particular the urban crisis. But the majority of the problems today are the direct effects of this reform, notably the disequilibrium between the interior of the country and the coastal zones, and the development of corruption, nepotism and
Indeed, the basis of this policy of the introduction of the market, and appeals to capitalist investment has never been put in question by the bureaucracy. The capitalist countries, for their part, have above all used the situation to obtain better facilities and more profitable investments. A boycott or break in economic relations an ideological illusion. Thus President Bush has opposed any "excessive" reaction from the U.S. Conagainst the Chinese government, and sent an anvoy to China in July 1989, only a month after the Tiananmen massa-
Deepening crisis in the countryside
In the countryside, several features of the crisis combine; growth of unemployment among the peasantry, accentuated for the past year by the closure of a great number of rural industries; the government's inability to pay for crops at the prices demanded by the peasants; and reduction of all agricultural investments reflecting the general discontent of the latter. Thus, the layer of the peasantry which has profited from the reform is going to itself create a disequilibrium which will accentuate the scarcity and the dearness of food products in the cities.
Also, the maintenance of austerity against the wage earners in the cities can only increase the deep discontent of the urban layers and increase the number of jobless. As to corruption and the growth of inequality, it is the product both of the power of the bureaucracy and the pursuit of a socio-economic policy, as much as
CHINA the greed of some individuals.
The regime itself envisages that 20 to 30 million urban workers will lose their jobs in the coming years, which will add to the 30 million already unemployed today.
The reforms have accentuated the dismantling of the system of social
Thus, the financing of medical services by the state has continued to decline. In addition, rents, until now modest, must rise by around
500%, accentuating social discrimination in access to housing.
On the other hand, the international context is hardly favourable to the
Chinese bureaucracy. The movements in Eastern Europe are only going to reinforce the will of the intellectuals to do away with the absence of democratic rights. Moreover, this context lessens the major political interest the capitalist countries have had in China as a counterweight to the Soviet bloc.
At the economic level, the penetration of Eastern European markets could prove a more attractive proposition for the capitalists than investment in Chi-
It is then certain that a new crisis will emerge in the short term, and moreover that the death of Deng, which cannot be far away, will upset the fragile equilibrium established in June 1989 at the summit of power.
Clandestine networks of opposition
Undoubtedly, some clandestine networks of opposition and resistance have been able to maintain themselves since last year. The government declared in November 1989 that it had smashed a new union of independent students in Beijing. The ferocious repression unleashed against the workers has, however, undoubtedly made it difficult to maintain any urban nuclei of resistance.
As for the Federation for Democracy in China, set up in exile, its leadership is dominated by those formerly close to Zhao Ziyang, like Yang Jiagi, former director of the Institute for Political Science, or Xan Rennan, former director of a big private enterprise, who was at the head of the economic reform. These have now become the spokespersons of a restoration of capitalism, and they condemn the 1949 revolution. And yet it was the consequenc-
"pro-capitalist" reform that the 1989 movement rose against!
However, supporters of a genuinely socialist and revolutionary perspective will have to work hard to get a hearing in a country where, in the name of socialism and planning, the bureaucrats have heaped poverty and injustice on the people. * 6. Yang Shankun was one of the "28 Bolsheviks" (supporters or Stiline phry apoen dof the 192 factional 15 struggle within the party at the end of the 1920s. June 4, 1990 • #186 International Viewpoint
Poverty and repression behind
MOROCCO ty above all other considerations. It recently asked to join the Socialist International, with which it has long maintained ties.
A left current emerged within the USFP at its Third Congress in 1978. This current claims to represent the radical populist royal charade tradition of the party and its historic leaders, such as Mehdi ben Barka or Omar
Bejelloun.2 Situating itself to the left of the present party leadership, this current
ON MAY 3 AND 4, WITH GREAT POMP AND CEREMONY, the
Moroccan king, Hassan Il, celebrated the twenty-ninth anniversary of his coronation in the city of Agadir, "the gate to the southern provinces,
" as he calls it. This was a reassertion of the regime's presence in the territory of Western Sahara, the object of the 14-year-long conflict with the Polisario Front, which is fighting for independence for the area.!
In December 1989, the Moroccan people voted massively in a referendum for postponing the legislative elections for two years, so that the vote could take place after a definitive settlement of the Sahara conflict under the auspices of the
United Nations. All the opposition parties accepted this proposition, while demanding respect for the electoral rules — which are generally trampled on by the regime. This "national union" was essentially around the question of "territorial integrity." The opposition, on the other hand, intends to demand a new debate on the 1990 finance law, which calls for applying the IMF's drastic austerity plans to the letter. In fact, a grave economic crisis is afflicting this country, where the worst poverty exists side by side with the luxury and ostentation of the nabobs of the monarchy.
The following interview was given to Erdal Tan and Luiza
Maria in Paris in January by Karim Maghrebi, a Moroccan revolutionary Marxist activist.
AN YOU give a general picture of the political forces present in Morocco?
The main bourgeois party is Istiqlal, which led the national liberation struggle against France from 1940 to 1956, when the country became independent. There are also a series of parties created by the regime since the start of the "democratization" process in 1975, when there were elections. They include the Independents'
Party, the National Democracy Rally and the Constitutional Union.
But even the regime does not have confidence in them. It wants Istiqlal to take part in the government, but in a subordinate role, with very narrow margins for maneuver.
You have to be aware that there is really a difference between Hassan Il's policy and that championed by Istiqlal. After taking part in government from 1977 to
1985, Istiqlal was sidelined in the parliament and now finds itself in opposition. In
• Morocco, election results are always falsi-
16 fried. The seats are allotted before the vote,
International Viewpoint #186 • June 4, 1990 sometimes weeks before. Even the press reports this!
The programs of the bourgeois parties are not clearly distinguished from that of the regime. They, above all Istiqlal, consider that the priorities today are the recovery of the Sahara and the unification of the national territory. In the last analysis, they tail-end the king.
The Istiqlal party, however, has a mass influence. It even has a base in the workers' movement, through yellow unions. The other parties of the right are groups of notables or technocrats.
On the left, the main formation is the Socialist Union of People's Forces (USFP), which comes from a split in Istiqlal in 1959. It has a petty-bourgeois composition, with transmission belts in the mass organizations, especially in the Democratic Labor Confederation (CDT), a union formed in1978 under the impetus of the USFP. The party's program does not go beyond the limits of bourgeois populism, and it remains timidly reformist. The USFP also puts territorial integrirejected the "liberalization" offered by Hassan II and fought for a real democratization. It adopted "scientific socialism," implying Marxism as its reference point, and even declared itself for the creation of a revolutionary party.
After 1983, this current declined and was expelled from the USFP the bureaucratic leadership. Since then, it has formed an independent organization but has neither clear perspectives nor a definite political and strategic line. It has been active in student circles, and presently it publishes a journal Ettariq, the most leftwing legal journal in Morocco, but its sales are dropping. • What about the Communist Party?
As for the Communist Party of Stalinist origin, the Progress and Socialism Party 3 it joined the "national union" around the throne in 1975-1976, and is presently pursuing a policy further to the right than that of the USFP. Its general secretary is in parliament. This is the only party allowed to work in the Moroccan Union of Labor (UMT), the oldest and biggest union federation, which was founded in 1955. It is impossible to give an exact figure for UMT membership. But at the beginning of the 1960s, with about 600,000 members, it was the biggest union in Africa. Today, it is much weaker. It suffered a split in 1978, under the pressure of the USFP, which gave rise to the CDT. The new union justified itself by pointing to the UMT's bureaucratization.