With the advent of the Cultural Revolution, we see the utilization of what Ruth Cherrington calls the “Political” or “Lost” generation; youth heavily indoctrinated with Mao’s “anti-bourgeois” obsession; heavily politicized, though “Lost” because of the uncertainty, chaos, confusion and general lack of stability prevalent in this period. This state of confusion, and what would eventually emerge from it, is of great importance in the analysis of the reforms in China, and in many ways the events of the earlier protest can be seen as a prelude to what would occur in 1989.
The Cultural Revolution campaign featured ‘vast dehumanization, persecution, violence and desperation…the relentless nature of the movement destroyed trust among the people, throwing the society into chaos, disillusionment and desperation.’
The main qualities in society are summed up by one author as, ‘Dependence, Powerlessness, Ignorance and Cruelty.’ Young people were powerfully betrayed; first indoctrinated as Red Guards, then sent to work in the countryside where they realized the double standards that were applied by many officials in the CCP, corruption ensuring little justice ever occurred.
All these goings-on had an extraordinary effect at the time of the death of Zhou Enlai. The confusion, sense of betrayal, loss of identity and the general fearful atmosphere was taken to breaking point with the death of Zhou Enlai, the leading moderate in the CCP leadership. The protests were brutally put down, and blame was put on Deng Xiaoping, the reformer who would later seize power after Mao’s death which followed soon after.
It can be seen this protest’s origin lay in the confusion and anger created by this period, whereas the later 1989 protest would arise, not out of confusion, but out of a very thorough understanding of the situation and the fact that an order existed which made no sense to the sensibilities of Chinese. As a matter of identity, the reforms were critical; and the transformation that resulted was not just an inner one, but also changed the outer world view of the Chinese. The reformists did not speak of ‘changing souls’ as it was in the Maoist era, but they challenge the meaning of Chinese culture as economic reforms stimulate a desire for self expression, and political reforms heighten the aspirations of groups of people for more participation in the political process.
Thus, we can see the big impact on the identity of the Chinese people, and the various particular social circumstances which would allow such a globally-broadcast protest which is widely known about by the masses to occur. In one instance, you can see the broad economic reforms as having a direct input on democratic desire, despite Communist insistence that a market-based economy does not necessarily entail democracy.
The environment of great permissiveness and encouragement to consumerism gives people the freedom to pursue materialistic goals, which leads to desire for other freedoms, contrary to the wishes of the Communist regime.
Economic reforms also lead to increasing awareness of contradiction in the population; people say images of Western prosperity on TV which contradicted the earlier Maoist idea that Communism was “on the skids”, leading reformist intellectuals such as Fang Lizhi to declare that “…complete westernization is the only viable approach”, in relation to reform. Similarly, it was the possibilities of global communication that empowered these intellectuals and gave them a platform to express their ideas; Party officials were losing the ability to control the discourse of intellectuals because of global communications, which enabled intellectuals to communicate with the academic community outside China. Leading on from this observation, the dissemination of media forms such as television also offered a method by which TV producers and documentary makers could air their views to the people; One such TV show, was the River Elegy, which claimed that embracing full westernization was the only path for China, a ‘society in decline.’
Interestingly, in one sense, the reforms have ‘privatized’ Chinese values; centralizing concerns on one’s self, instead of having the wider concern for society which was the emphasis of Maoist-era values. Awareness of a situation comes about from realizing that the ‘official line’ is different to everyday experience, and the students who protested in 1989 had a very real experience of what they perceived as the lack of moral order of the time; not just their low living standards, and the dual blessing and curse of having high traditional status in Confucianism and yet living in semi-poverty under Deng (and total ostracisation and inability to participate in society under Mao).
Those who might dismiss their ‘patriotism’ as being mostly in their own self-interest should take note of the variety of people who were willing to participate in such protests, some in seemingly comfortable positions under the new regime; One such group, ‘The flying tigers’, made up of young entrepreneurs, rode around on motorbikes to support the students. If there was any failure in the linking up of students, workers and businesspeople to make the protests effective, it was the traditional sense of superiority of the intellectuals, prevalent in Chinese culture. So it can be observed that despite the reforms, and the changes that occurred in Chinese society, a sense of the Pre-Mao social reforms was re-established in a sense, and it was the re-emergence of some of these characteristics which impeded the protests and the good intentions of those involved.
The protests occurred with the realization that the rhetoric and actions of the CCP were quite different; despite its declaration to be the vanguard of the people, in many people’s eyes Deng was no different from Emperors of old. China is still reforming and changing, and it will be interesting to see how the commitment to humanist ideals and a Confucian sense of social order will combine in the next generation’s view of the world.
Bibliography:
Books/Journals/Articles:
Calhoun, Craig: Neither Gods nor Emperors, Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994.
Cherrington, Ruth. Deng’s Generation: young intellectuals in 1980s China. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Davis, D & Vogel, E. (eds.) Chinese society on the eve of Tiananmen: the impact of reform, Cambridge, Mass: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1990.
Lin, Jing. The opening of the Chinese mind: democratic changes in China since 1978. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1994.
Gallagher, Mary Elizabeth, “Reform and Openness”: Why China’s Economic Reforms Have Delayed Democracy, World Politics, Vol.54 No.3, (Apr.2002.).
Goldman, Merle, Restarting Chinese History, The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 1. (Feb., 2000).
Ma, Shu-Yun, The Chinese Discourse on Civil Society, The China Quarterly, No. 137, (Mar., 1994).
McCormick, Barrett L., The 1989 Democracy Movement: A Review of the Prospects for Civil Society in China, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 65 No.2, (Summer, 1992).
Moore, Rebecca R., China’s Fledgling Civil Society, World Policy Journal, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring 2001).
Rankin, Mary Backus, Some Observations on a Chinese Public Sphere, Modern China, Vol. 19 No. 2, (Apr. 1993).
White, Gordon, et. al., In search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors, 1994, p. 215.
Lin Jing, The opening of the Chinese mind, 1994, p,3.
Ruth Cherrington, Deng’s Generation, 1997, p. 26.
Lin Jing, The opening of the Chinese mind, 1994, P. 11.
