Andrew Lu - 2021 Mitra Scholar

2020-21 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient Difference and Divergence: China, the Soviet Union, and the Collapse of Communism in 1989-1991 Andrew Lu

Difference and Divergence: China, the Soviet Union, and the Collapse of Communism in 1989-1991

Andrew Lu 2021 Mitra Family Scholar Mentors: Mr. Stevens and Ms. Pelman April 14, 2021

Lu 2 In 1988, the Iron Curtain was beginning to show cracks. A wave of protests swept across Poland in the summer and again in the fall, pushing for the legalization of the Solidarity trade union. As the government acquiesced to the demands, it signaled a weakness that reverberated across Eastern Europe.1 The resentment of the Polish people spilled into the streets, and mass demonstrations in the spring of 1989 forced a Round Table agreement that reduced communist control.2 As one domino fell, the next rapidly followed, and the chain continued. In East Germany, protestors were beaten and apprehended in the fall of 1989, but their numbers continued to grow week after week. Soon, over half a million people showed up to demonstrate in East Berlin and Leipzig.3 Within months, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and other countries including Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria were no longer under full communist control.4 By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union (USSR) had dissolved, and communism in Eastern Europe had collapsed.5 Neighboring China watched intently as the series of events unfolded. Recently, the Chinese government had brutally suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests. As the rest of the communist world declined precipitously in a matter of months, China looked on with fear of further collapse and paranoia about its own prospects, wondering if it would be another casualty in the downfall of communism. Despite alarmist and reactionary policymaking in the late 1980s

1

Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe, The 1989 Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe: From Communism to Pluralism (Oxford: Manchester University Press, 2015), xv, Proquest Ebook Central.

2

McDermott and Stibbe, xv.

3

McDermott and Stibbe, 81, 17, xv.

4

Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 25, Proquest Ebook Central.

5

Silvio Pons and Allan Cameron, Global Revolution: A History of International Communism 1917-1991 (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2014), 313, Proquest Ebook Central.

Lu 3 and early 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persisted beyond the Eastern European crisis because it had laid the groundwork for survival through its ideological independence from the USSR and a policy of economic reform in the decades prior.

The Impact of the Sino-Soviet Split Since the foundation of the CCP in 1921, the USSR played an influential role in affecting policymaking in China. Indeed, from the beginning, the creation of a Communist China had been seen around the world as a win for the USSR. After decades of struggle between the Nationalist Party, backed by the United States, and the CCP, backed by other communist states, the CCP emerged victorious and quickly seized power in 1949.6 As a newly founded government, China found the USSR one of its closest allies, and the USSR had its own strategic advantages from a partnership with China. This was cemented as early as 1950 through the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance.7 For decades, the USSR helped guide the nascent political party in China in almost every regard — ideologically, politically, and economically. First, the USSR provided security, for if either country was invaded or attacked by a hostile force, the other would be compelled to come to its defense in a manner similar to NATO.8 Especially for a young government, such assurances allowed China to turn its attention inward toward self-improvement. The USSR also provided the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans for economic assistance to

6

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 175, Proquest Ebook Central.

7

8

Wasserstrom, 185.

"Conclusion of the 'Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance,'" Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, last modified 2014, accessed February 15, 2021, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/ziliao_665539/3602_665543/3604_665547/t18011.shtml.

Lu 4 jump-start an economy that was largely agrarian and not modernized.9 One key area for China’s economic growth was industrial technology, and the USSR provided thousands of technical advisors and scientists to help further develop important skill sets and technology needed to advance an industrializing country.10 Moreover, China followed a similar economic and ideological model, utilizing Five Year Plans to set goals for production and technological improvements beginning in 1953.11 As the USSR was one of the two dominant forces of the Cold War, China found itself under the aegis and auspices of a friendly ally whom it could emulate under close supervision and guidance.

Nevertheless, conflicting ideological beliefs manifested in practical differences, and in the late 1950s and 1960s, the CCP and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) began to drift apart.12 Stalin turned away from a system of rapid economic growth and more toward bureaucratic and moderate growth. He was also convinced that China’s economic forecasts and aid petitions were far too ambitious, disappointing the CCP and Chairman Mao Zedong with reduced economic support and requiring the repayment of earlier financial loans.13 When Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev gained control of the USSR. Khrushchev’s policy of de-Stalinization, highlighted in his “Secret Speech,” took aim at Stalin’s cult of personality and political system, which paralleled Mao’s strategies and which Mao viewed as.14 Lowell Dittmer, a scholar of

9

John Wilson Lewis, "China: Reconstruction and Consolidation, 1949–52," in Britannica, last modified February 9, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/place/China/Reconstruction-and-consolidation-1949-52.

10

Lewis, "China: Reconstruction."

11

Theodore Shabad, "Communist China's Five Year Plan," Far Eastern Survey 24, no. 12 (1955): 189, JSTOR.

12

Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-Yu Li, eds., China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010), 33-48, Proquest Ebook Central.

13

Bernstein and Li, 35-36.

14

Bernstein and Li, 39-40.

Lu 5 modern China and Sino-Soviet relations, contends that Mao held Khrushchev in “open contempt” for revisionism.15 Further ideological differences between the USSR’s policy of peaceful coexistence with the United States and China’s anti-Western philosophy continued to clash. The final meeting between Mao and Khrushchev occurred in 1959, where Mao presented himself as aloof and condescending. Khrushchev concluded, “When I look at Mao Zedong, I just see Stalin, an exact copy.”16 Soon, China began reclaiming territories that had become Russian on the basis of “unequal treaties” from a century before. It also provoked Soviet hostilities with its neighbors in what the USSR perceived as an attempt to destabilize their country.17 In the late 1960s, China’s hostilities led the USSR to station around 600,000 troops and nuclear weapons along the border with China.18 Thus emerged a bitter and tense conflict between the two most significant communist forces in the world.

The Sino-Soviet rift marks a critical moment in modern Chinese history because it was then that China broke free to develop its own ideological framework, untethered to the USSR. While Marxism-Leninism still formed the foundation of the CCP’s guiding ideology, it was free to adapt itself without direct interference from the CPSU. Mao and much of the CCP held Khrushchev’s policies and ideology of de-Stalinization in low regard and began to develop more independently—both economically and politically. With less influence from the USSR, the CCP began experimenting and adjusting its own governing philosophy rather than be shaped by the CPSU. At this point, the 1950s and 1960s, there was little evidence to suggest the inevitability of

15

Robert E. Bedeski and Niklas Swanström, eds., Eurasia's Ascent in Energy and Geopolitics: Rivalry or Partnership for China, Russia and Central Asia? (London: Routledge, 2012), 19, Proquest Ebook Central.

16

Qtd in Bernstein and Li, China Learns, 40.

17

Bedeski, Eurasia's Ascent, 66.

18

Bedeski, 66.

Lu 6 survival or collapse of communism, however, the Sino-Soviet rift was the beginning of a divergent path of policymaking in the two powerful communist states.

China’s Attempts at Reform During the mid-twentieth century, China’s economic situation differed significantly from that of the USSR and much of the developed world, and the context of China’s production capabilities is crucial to understanding the ensuing reforms. China’s society at the time largely consisted of peasantry and most of the output focused on agricultural products.19 Meanwhile, countries like the USSR had already become global leaders of heavy industry.20 By the mid1950s, the USSR was outputting close to $30 billion from its engineering industry.21 Over the next four decades, China would continue to experiment with economic reforms, with large successes and large failures. The economic situation of China in the 1980s and 1990s saw significant improvements, and the country’s growth played a major role in enabling the continuity of China despite the collapse of communist countries in the late twentieth century.

Serious prioritization of rapid growth started with the First Five Year Plan under Mao, who set ambitious goals of industrialization from 1953 to 1957. China targeted bold goals for industrial and agricultural production and even managed to surpass them. Industrial production increased by 16-18 percent per year, doubling the rate at the start of the five-year period.22 Nonetheless, China was considered a backward and largely agrarian country and needed substantial further development to enter the ranks of highly modernized states. In an attempt to

19

Pei, From Reform, 8.

20

Pei, 8.

21

Alexander Tarn and Robert W. Campbell, "A Comparison of U.S. and Soviet Industrial Output," The American Economic Review 52, no. 4 (1962): 717, JSTOR. 22

Wasserstrom, The Oxford Illustrated History, 187.

Lu 7 significantly adapt China’s economy, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a campaign of rapid industrialization, in 1958, shifting resources from the agricultural sector to heavy machinery and steel production.23 The plan had ambitious targets, but the results fell far short and mismanagement created devastating losses. Mao refused to accept lower estimates, such as those proposed in the Second Economic Plan and pushed officials for greater and greater output goals. With less than 7 million tons of steel production in the late 1950s, Mao was setting objectives close to 100 million tons by 1962.24 Food production was only one standard: education and the sciences were supposed to prosper, and illiteracy (in the double-digit percentages) was to be entirely eliminated within five years.25 In a timeline that spanned not decades but years, the Great Leap Forward attempted to revolutionize almost every aspect of life. Such goals necessitated a drastic adjustment of labor and capital toward industrial production, but severely inaccurate reports on agricultural production, in addition to natural disasters, led to a drastic shortage of food and resources.

Indeed, in 1960, GDP decreased 29 percent, with industrial production dropping over 40 percent.26 Within a matter of years, the ensuing famine caused 25-50 million deaths.27 The effects of the Great Leap Forward impacted far more lives, however, and Mao’s popularity and power waned significantly, with other party leaders including Liu Shaoqi and

23

Angang Hu, The Political and Economic History of China (1949-1976) Volume 2: The Great Leap Forward (1957-1965) (Hong Kong: Enrich Professional Publishing, 2013), 96-97.

24

Hu, 94.

25

Hu, 94-95; Pei, From Reform, 8.

26

Hu, The Political, 96.

27

Jisheng Yang, Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine, trans. Jian Guo and Stacy Mosher (London: Penguin, 2012), ix-x; no precise counts are available so 25-50 million deaths are estimates from recent scholarship.

Lu 8 Deng Xiaoping reinstating some of the pre-Great Leap Forward policies to help ease the economic missteps made in the late 1950s and early 1960s.28 Soon, however, Mao became angered by his lack of supreme leadership over the CCP and launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a violent campaign to purge capitalist and “right-leaning” remnants from the party that paralyzed and destabilized the country for a decade, until 1976.29 When Deng Xiaoping rose to power after the Cultural Revolution, his attention turned to the still severely lagging economy. The country was in such a condition that Deng remarked in December 1978, “If we again fail to implement reform, our modernization program and socialist cause will be doomed.”30 Even after three decades of control, the CCP had managed little economic growth and hundreds of millions remained in poverty.31 Since Mao’s struggle to constantly gain political power was no longer a factor, the goal of economic growth became the foremost priority of the CCP. With such a magnitude of discontent coupled with subpar living standards, the economy threatened the existence of the CCP, and one in need of successful leadership. Counting a population of nearly one billion, China was poised for dramatic economic growth.

Over the next decade, China would embark on a trajectory of gradual economic reform that vaulted the state into one of the fastest developing economies in the world. Deng Xiaoping’s platform was called “Reform and Opening-up,” a set of policies designed to normalize relations

28

Hu, The Political, 133.

29

Pei, From Reform to Revolution, 65.

30

Qtd in Pei, 13.

31

Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen, "Learning from Success: Understanding China's (Uneven) Progress against Poverty," IMF Finance and Development, December 2004, 17, accessed January 3, 2021, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2004/12/pdf/ravallio.pdf.

Lu 9 with foreign countries like the United States and allow a larger flow of trade, while privatizing collectivized, or communal, agriculture and dedicating resources to modernization.32 Indeed, within five years, 97 percent of the agricultural system had shifted away from communes.33 Furthermore, many other countries saw opportunities for strong growth and heavily invested in China’s developing economy. From 1983 to 1985, foreign investments tripled, then doubled again by 1992.34 As a result, China’s economy prospered to new heights. Indeed, in the period from 1980 to 1993, China’s GDP growth rate averaged 9.6 percent, with industry growing at 11.5 percent.35 Deng’s reforms, which were not political in nature, preceded those of Soviet perestroika by over eight years. In fact, the CCP strongly opposed political challenges to the one party system.36 The possibility of liberal democratic reform and the modern democracy movement in China began in 1978 with activists including Wei Jingsheng, who was promptly arrested and imprisoned for fifteen years.37 The CCP’s history of political rigidity predates 1978, however, and is especially visible through the Hundred Flowers Campaign.38 During the mid-1950s, the CCP encouraged the populace to bring forth criticisms of the government, only to crack down and persecute critics a few years later. As with the USSR and many other modern countries,

32

Pei, From Reform, 94.

33

Christopher Marsh, Unparalleled Reforms: China's Rise, Russia's Fall, and the Interdependence of Transition (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 39.

34

Marsh, 40.

35

Marsh, 40.

36

Bernstein and Li, 97-98, 468, 504; Bedeski and Swanström, Eurasia's Ascent, 1.

37

Baogang He, The Democratization of China (London: Routledge, 1996), 57, Proquest Ebook Central.

38

Wasserstrom, The Oxford Illustrated History, 326.

Lu 10 economic and liberal political reform were frequently associated, as seen through glasnost and perestroika. In modern China, these two aspects of reform were treated as entirely distinct. In the struggle for communist survival, the CCP used the carrot and stick approach: by continually improving the economic situation and living standards of its citizens, it gained the support of its people, while at the same time, compelling compliance through fear for those straying from the party line, in the form of political purges and violence (e.g., the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square). Economic reform had always been a key part of China’s priorities, but with ideological alignment with the USSR and Mao’s cult of personality remnants of the past, the CCP was free to focus on economic growth with its own strategies and planning. More than a decade prior to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, China was already concentrating on critical issues facing the country, based on its ideology of addressing existential survival through economic growth coupled with strict political coercion.

Tiananmen Square A decade after Deng Xiaoping launched his “Reform and Opening-up” program for economic liberalization and rapid modernization, the country had achieved astounding growth.

The CCP, however, had not budged on political reform during this decade of economic change.

When Hu Yaobang, a CCP leader who was forced to resign due to his comparatively liberal tendencies, died in April of 1989, large numbers of students gathered in support of Hu and his desire for political reform.39 But demonstrations were never well received by the CCP leadership. Prior to the protests, during President George H. W. Bush’s visit to China in February of that year, Zhao Ziyang,

39

Philip J. Cunningham, Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 63-64, Proquest Ebook Central.

Lu 11 general secretary, told him, “If [political reform] is carried out, chaos will result, and reform will be disrupted.”40 This mindset was a recurring theme of ideology that viewed political reform as a threat. By the end of the month, Deng Xiaoping had written an editorial regarding the demonstrations: “This is a well-planned plot ... to confuse the people and throw the country into turmoil. ... Its real aim is to reject the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system at the most fundamental level. ... This is a most serious political struggle that concerns the whole Party and nation.”41 Whether it was truly what Deng asserted or not, the CCP leadership treated the events as a threat to the fundamental existence of the CCP. This fear continued through May of 1989. Li Peng, the premier, stated privately in a Politburo Standing Committee meeting, “Their goals are to topple the Chinese Communist Party, to overthrow the People’s Government that was legally elected by the National People’s Congress, and to completely repudiate the people’s democratic dictatorship.”42 Yang Shangkun, the president, concurred, “Pretty soon we won’t be able to call this capital of ours a capital anymore! This really is extremely serious.”43 In spring 1989, the CCP saw turmoil and demonstrations across Eastern Europe, and Deng reacted, “once [the people] caused trouble, the government backed off; and when the government backed off, the people caused more trouble.

The government backed off a second time, but it still was not enough, so they backed off a third time. It is never enough, unless the Communist Party falls.”44 Refusing to see a repeat of what

40

Qtd in M. E. Sarotte, "China's Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example," International Security 37, no. 2 (2012): 166, JSTOR. 41

Qtd in Zhang Ting Liang, Andrew J. Nathan, and E. Perry Link, The Tiananmen Papers (London: Abacus, 2002), 100.

42

Liang, Nathan, and Link, 235.

43

Liang, Nathan, and Link, 235.

44

Sarotte, "China's Fear," 171.

Lu 12 was happening in Eastern Europe, many in the CCP leadership vowed to take a stronger, hardline approach.

On June 4, 1989, as the demonstrations increased, the CCP enacted martial law and violently suppressed the dissent by sending army troops into Tiananmen Square and other parts of Beijing, where protesters had gathered. The United States Secretary of State’s morning brief detailed that “troops shot indiscriminately into crowds of unarmed civilians, including women and children, often with automatic weapons.”45 In an attempt to subdue the will of the demonstrators, thousands were wounded or killed by their own government.46 In this way, fear of similar situations in Poland and Hungary yielded a severe reaction from the CCP leadership.47 Around the world, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was swiftly and widely condemned, particularly by Western countries, and even many communist powers.48 China’s economy likewise suffered, as trade relations became significantly more tenuous. The country was not admitted into the World Trade Organization until years later, in part due to the events in Tiananmen Square, and assistance and investment from foreign countries stalled.49 GDP growth likewise decreased significantly, from 12 percent to 4 percent.50 At least in the short term, the

45

Memorandum to James Baker, "Secretary's Morning Summary for June 5, 1989," June 5, 1989, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/docs/doc17.pdf.

46

Memorandum to Baker, "Secretary's Morning Summary."

47

Sarotte, "China's Fear," 161.

48

Memorandum to Baker, "Secretary's Morning Summary."

49

Joseph Fewsmith, China since Tiananmen: The Politics of Transition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 204, Proquest Ebook Central.

50

Barry Naughton, "The Impact of the Tiananmen Crisis on China's Economic Transition," China Perspectives, nos.

2 (78) (2009): 63, JSTOR.

Lu 13 Tiananmen Square Massacre seemed to create instability and simultaneously damage the economy.

However, in reality, the Tiananmen Square Massacre must be viewed through the lens of China’s consolidation of power. The CCP certainly knew that there would be strong repercussions as a result of its actions but decided to pursue them anyway. At a time of political turmoil, the government needed to reassert control over the state, especially when it viewed potentially existential threats. Deng justified the crackdown after the fact, “If the plots of the people who were pushing the riots had gotten anywhere, we'd have had civil war.… We had no choice but to come down hard.”51 The CCP’s brutally repressive actions fall squarely within a characterization of prioritizing the survival of the state by any means necessary—in this case, with an added sense of fear and paranoia. Violence and suppression have always been part of the repertoire of the CCP to maintain dominance and single party rule, and with Tiananmen Square, their actions showed no departure from their ideology of political rigidity. Yet, simply violent suppression would not be enough in the long run. As Deng biographer and East Asian scholar Ezra Vogel contends, “Deng believed that to regain the support of the public, the party desperately needed to keep the economy growing quickly.”52 Both the economic and political aspects were crucial to the survival of the CCP. The Collapse of Eastern European Communism The late 1980s were a time of political discussion and change. For decades, discontent had festered underground and informally, but repressive regimes in Eastern Europe had largely

51

52

Liang, Nathan, and Link, The Tiananmen Papers, 235.

Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 640, Proquest Ebook Central.

Lu 14 prevented mass-scale movements or protests. However, in the spring of 1988, the dominance of communism in Eastern Europe was reaching the beginning of the end. Polish workers, led by the Solidarity movement, launched a series of strikes that crippled the economy, and the communist regime was forced to the negotiation table.53 One by one, neighboring countries and their citizenries began to launch protests and demonstrations themselves, leading to the Revolutions of 1989 in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

During the fall of 1989, the dominos of satellite communist regimes began to fall.

Inspired by demonstrations in other parts of Europe, citizens felt undeterred by the threat of repression or violence.54 Although there was little success in effecting real political change in China, the willingness of its citizens to protest in Tiananmen provided further encouragement, as if the entire communist world was rising against their regimes. Soon, Hungary’s communist government was forced to yield power after free elections, and in one way or another, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and others followed in a similar trajectory.55 The sequence of events and ultimate outcomes after 1989 for Eastern Europe and China were vastly different and can only be analyzed within the context of prior circumstances. Only through recognizing where the Eastern European countries fell short and how it differed with China, can the CCP’s continued persistence be fully understood.

One critical point of difference was the method of establishing governance. Popular support is the foundation of almost any sustainable government. It provides the government legitimacy to pursue its agenda and objectives while knowing the people are, for the most part, in

53

McDermott and Stibbe, The 1989 Revolutions, xv.

54

McDermott and Stibbe, 81, 17.

55

McDermott and Stibbe, xv-xvi.

Lu 15 alignment with its policies. Popular support does not necessarily require free and fair elections, but it does necessitate that the people have some form of positive or negative motivation to align with a government. In the case of China, economic growth provided positive motivation to support the government, while brutal repression compelled others into line. Most of the Eastern European countries were formed as Soviet satellites by force in the aftermath of World War II, primarily as a result of coercion, or negative motivation. For example, Czechoslovakia established a communist government in 1948, after a coup within the highest ranks of government forced the resignations of non-Communist members under the threat of armed military action.56 Hundreds were arrested immediately, and thousands were fired from their positions. Forty years later, Soviet satellite states created by force in Eastern Europe were among the first or the quickest to fall.57 It is no surprise, then, that Czechoslovakia, previously a functioning democracy and the last Eastern European country to become communist, took only one and a half months after demonstrations to topple the communist regime.58 Compared to Eastern Europe, China’s communist foundation differed significantly in its base of support. Through decades of conflict with the Nationalist government during the Chinese Civil War, the Communist faction gained significant popular support. Whereas many communist regimes in Eastern Europe were established through military threats, the CCP had a large peasant backing. One reason for this was the respect accorded to peasants and civilians by soldiers during the Civil War, as detailed in the Eight Points for Attention, a set of instructions Mao gave the

56

Ivo Duchacek, "The February Coup in Czechoslovakia," World Politics 2, no. 4 (1950): 522-24, JSTOR.

57

Pei, From Reform, 18.

58

Bogdan Iacob and Vladimir Tismaneanu, The End and the Beginning: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History (New York: Central European University Press, 2012), 172, Proquest Ebook Central; Carole Fink, Cold War: An International History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014), 241, Proquest Ebook Central.

Lu 16 Red Army.59 In this way, the CCP won not only militarily but also by gaining the support of the general Chinese population.60 Even during the pro-democracy protests of 1989, popular support for the CCP in rural areas in particular was strong.61 Communism in China, unlike many Eastern European countries, was home-grown, rather than exported and compelled by an outside entity.

In this way, the juxtaposition of most Eastern European states and China highlights a key political difference between the two: the CCP’s continual struggle was one to maintain existing support, while Eastern European regimes were retroactively attempting to build support, or at least coerced compliance. Through this lens, the reason for China’s fear and paranoia is clear: any group calling for democratic campaigns undermines the support they had previously built for the current regime. The second part of their ideology involves incremental growth: as long as individuals see economic improvements in their lives, such as through the “Reform and Opening-up campaign,” some may support a regime, even when it forcefully rejects political liberalization. Empirically, the difference between China and Eastern Europe’s policies can be seen in two aspects of the 1989 demonstrations. First, the Tiananmen Square protests were largely student-led and consisted of other university students demonstrating; in contrast, those in Eastern Europe comprised a multitude of groups, from workers, to students, to intellectuals.62 In other words, support for the CCP among working-age adults remained stronger in China than in

59

Mao Zedong, "On the Reissue of the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention -Instruction of the General Headquarters of the Chinese People's Liberation Army," Marxists Internet Archive, last modified 2004, accessed February 15, 2021, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selectedworks/volume-4/mswv4_23.htm.

60

Nina Bandelj and Dorothy J. Solinger, Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged: Eastern Europe and China, 1989-2009 (Cary: Oxford University Press, 2014), 48, Proquest Ebook Central.

61

Martin K. Dimitrov, "European Lessons for China," in The Long 1989: Decades of Global Revolution, by Piotr H. Kosicki and Kyrill Kunakhovich (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2019), 74, JSTOR. 62

Cunningham, Tiananmen Moon, 63-64; Bernstein and Li, China Learns, 97; Iacob and Tismaneanu, The End and the Beginning, 81.

Lu 17 Eastern European countries due to their respective economic circumstances. Second, demonstrations in the fall of 1989, the peak of protest in communist states across the world, were largely nonexistent in China. There may be a variety of reasons, including the CCP’s willingness to use excessive force the previous summer while regimes in Eastern Europe were less willing to do so. China’s ideology and policymaking based on both coercion and economic prosperity yielded significantly greater support through positive and negative motivation.

Indeed, the economic situation differed substantially between China and the Eastern European communist states. China’s reforms caused significant growth and improvement in lifestyle for its citizens because of its philosophy of prioritizing economic development, whereas the economic conditions in Eastern Europe stagnated or worsened in the 1980s.63 Lack of consumer goods was frequent and public utilities were deteriorating.64 In the example of Poland in 1986, 50 percent of citizens were dissatisfied with the state of their economy. Eastern Europe’s economies grew at half the rate of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.65 Some attempts at reform were made but were largely insufficient and austerity policies continued to cripple the economy. Economic discontent was on the rise in these communist states. Compared to the average GDP growth of China, 9.6 percent between 1980 and 1993, those of Hungary and Poland were flat, with annual growth rates of -0.1 percent and 0.7 percent respectively.66 While the CCP believed economic policy was something worth adapting significantly to China’s needs, Eastern European countries were unable to

63

Terry Cox, "1989 and the Transformations in Eastern Europe," Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 9 (2011): 1530, JSTOR. 64

Cox, 1530.

65

Pei, From Reform, 16-17.

66

Marsh, Unparalleled Reforms, 40.

Lu 18 prioritize economic growth in a meaningful manner. In addition to a deteriorating economy, many of the Eastern European countries reduced their use of military coercion. Whereas in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Prague Spring of 1968, protests were suppressed by the military, Eastern European countries were more reluctant to use military force in the late 1980s, perhaps because the protests were more widespread. Ultimately, lack of popular support through these key differences lead to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and enabled the CCP to weather popular uprisings.

These key differences are best understood within the context of the Chinese reaction to the events of fall 1989. Eastern Europe began to quickly collapse on itself, and the Chinese state media reacted quickly by beginning a campaign to paint the states as weak and failing to stay true to socialism and Marxism-Leninism.67 Moreover, the panicked CCP communicated ideas to other communist states including Romania and Bulgaria to prevent a potential decline. When even Romania collapsed, the CCP leadership began to turn inward and attempt to learn from the recent events, fearful of further turmoil in China.68 As the discussions continued, a CCP member stated after watching the videotapes on Romania, “We’ll be like this if we don’t strengthen our proletarian dictatorship and repress the reactionaries.”69 Deng Xiaoping reminded them about the other side of the coin, “Yes, we’ll be like this, if we don’t carry out reforms and bring about benefits to the people.”70 Just years later, after the USSR’s collapse, Deng would follow through with another push for reform.71 Yet interactions like these underscore the fear that motivated the

67

Marsh, 105.

68

Marsh, 105-06.

69

Qtd in Marsh, 106.

70

Qtd in Marsh, 106.

71

Zhao, "Deng Xiaoping's," 742.

Lu 19 CCP’s policymaking: China always maintained a willingness to learn from others for the sake of its own survival, and utilized both economic reform and political repression to create stability.

USSR Collapse and Connections to China Ultimately, the last domino to fall was the USSR itself, dissolving in December of 1991.

To China, this was perhaps the most alarming event in its modern history and created significant anxiety and debate about the direction of China. However, by continuing to apply the same lens to understand the causes of the collapse of the USSR, it is clear that the CCP’s existence was not equally under threat at the time for several key reasons. Scholars propose a variety of causes and effects, but fundamentally, the reasons behind the CCP’s continuity are largely founded on its ideology of existential problem solving to gain support through economic growth and by sustaining the regime through forceful compliance.

In 1991, the fear surrounding a potential collapse of communist China following the breakdown of the USSR was palpable. The CCP allocated large sums of research grants to better understand the reasons for the USSR’s downfall.72 Dozens if not hundreds of papers, books, and documentaries were published on the subject. The main conclusion it yielded was that the responsibility fully lay on Gorbachev, who “betrayed socialism” and caused the collapse.73 Others saw specific faults in obsolete thinking, poor economic planning, and ethnic differences, ultimately concluding that the reason was the CPSU had lost the people’s confidence.74 These conclusions are often either too vague or too specific. “Betrayal” of socialism is a difficult criterion to evaluate, since China itself adapted the meaning of socialism for its own purposes in

72

Bernstein and Li, China Learns, 506.

73

Bernstein and Li, 510.

74

Bernstein and Li, 509.

Lu 20 the “Reform and Opening-up” campaign. This is more likely a retrospective justification than a rational explanation for the series of events in 1989-1991. The meaning behind “betraying socialism” may focus on the political liberalization that occurred in the USSR, but even then, these policy changes were more an effect of previous events than the root reason in and of itself.

The other aforementioned reasons did help precipitate a rapid collapse, but they fail to explain the underlying cause in the first place: unlike China, the USSR did not treat the existential problems that caused diminished support until it was too late.

The USSR saw itself as the dominant force in the communist world and often concerned itself more with outward expansion than with internal improvements. While the CCP closely analyzed the USSR for lessons that would help improve its governance, the CPSU cared little about events in China.75 Embroiled in the heat of the Cold War, international relations and geopolitical tensions were just as important—if not more important—to the USSR compared to the internal state of affairs. On the other hand, China, while occasionally venturing into other countries’ affairs, mostly focused on its own improvements, attempting to further develop its economy.

Partly, this difference in focus is unsurprising due to the nature of generational leadership differences. The USSR was established by Vladimir Lenin in 1922, close to forty years before the CCP had established itself as the ruling party of China. Lenin and Stalin were active in leading the Russian Revolution, during which the Bolsheviks gained popular support and took control of the government, and they were acutely aware of the political circumstances and views of the peasants and workers. Gorbachev, on the other hand, was not born until after the Russian Revolution, and gradually CPSU leaders became more and more detached from the internal state

75

Bernstein and Li, 450.

Lu 21 of affairs, neglecting internal operations while looking outward to address expansion and international influence. On the other hand, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were heavily involved in the Chinese Civil War, knew the existential problems facing the country, and continually attempted to address them.76 In other words, China’s dilapidated state pushed China’s leaders to constantly focus on addressing the issues within the country, whereas in the USSR, the leaders in the late twentieth century had begun to lose touch with their supporters because they had stopped treating internal problems as existential threats.

One key area of discussion that both countries attempted to answer is the importance of economic versus political reform. The CCP continues to demonstrate that it is firmly against significant political reform of any nature, both during the 1980s and also now. At the same time, the CCP also blamed the USSR’s collapse on its attempts at political reform. However, it is more probable that the circumstances during Gorbachev’s leadership were the reason behind his actions. Long before Gorbachev became the leader of the USSR, he was already concerned about the state, relaying to a close friend that he believed they “couldn’t go on like this.”77 First and foremost, the economic stagnation was crippling the USSR, even before Brezhnev’s death. The economy two decades before its collapse was already beginning to show signs of deterioration, and by 1986, one year after rising to the General Secretary post, Gorbachev was calling for “radical economic reform.”78 Thus began Gorbachev’s perestroika. Yet, it was soon shown to be ineffective and terminated.79 Circumstances in the USSR differed significantly from those of

76

Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 25-27.

77

Pei, From Reform, 15.

78

Bernstein and Li, China Learns, 91.

79

Pei, From Reform, 8; Pei, 133.

Lu 22 China, and poor management led to ineffective reform. Over the years, the USSR’s system had become too structured, and it could not introduce market incentives without significant internal resistance. Consequently, the private sector was never fully able to develop in a meaningful way.80 In the final two years of the USSR, the economy declined more than 8 percent in total.81 Where Deng’s economic reforms had been successful, Gorbachev’s fell short, leaving glasnost, or political reform, his only other option.

Ultimately, the differences in ideology between the USSR and China account for significantly different trajectories throughout the second half of the twentieth century and their outcomes. China expressed a constant willingness to learn from the USSR to the point of paranoia.82 But what is more important than the research China conducted on the USSR is the kind of ideology that being willing to learn implies. China had embarked on a continuous mission to maintain its support through economic growth, while also punishing those who did not support the CCP, whereas the USSR neglected its economy for a decade while concerned about external affairs of the Cold War and communism at large. As Niklas Swanström, scholar of Chinese foreign policy, argues: The Sino-Russian relationship is often characterized by a diverse view on security where Russia tends to have a preponderant military focus in its national security concerns, while China demonstrates a broader mix of security that includes the military dimension and has consciously stressed human security—especially in the economic realm through the far-reaching reforms initiated in the late 1970s. Chinese authoritarianism has not pursued

80

Pei, 123-26.

81

Marsh, Unparalleled Reforms, 51.

82

Bernstein and Li, China Learns, 450.

Lu 23 the forms of human security where protection and enabling of individual latitude and liberty is the central focus, but increasingly there are hints that parts of the state apparatus recognize that national security cannot be achieved without addressing and enlarging human security categories of economic and social rights.83 Whereas the USSR maintained a strong military focus in its external and internal conflicts, China tended to include economics as a particularly important aspect of the country’s survival. By the time Gorbachev had the power to affect policy at the highest level, the economic structure had become so solidified that reform could do little to address its problems.

In the years immediately following 1991, China continued with the same ideological foundation, further resolved to establish a stable country. More than anything, it understood the critical importance of legitimacy through popular support, continuing one-party rule as a way to remove potential challengers who may influence its citizenry against the CCP.84 Further, spurred by the prospects of a collapsing China, Deng Xiaoping launched his Southern Tour just three weeks after the dissolution of the USSR, sharing his perspective with party members on the urgent need for continued reform, just another instance of party leadership stressing the need to address economic problems.85 The country and CCP reaffirmed the same principles. As noted by Barry Naughton, economist and scholar of Chinese policymaking, “The political crisis of June 1989 was the catalyst for a shift in the overall pattern of Chinese economic transition. In both political and economic terms, the crisis gave urgency and legitimacy among the ruling elite to a model of concentrated power wielded more effectively. This led … to a regime more capable of

83

Bedeski and Swanström, Eurasia's Ascent, 1-2.

84

Pei, From Reform to Revolution, 47.

85

Suisheng Zhao, "Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour: Elite Politics in Post-Tiananmen China," Asian Survey 33, no. 8 (1993): 742, JSTOR.

Lu 24 mobilising resources for economic development.”86 Thus, after Tiananmen, the CCP continued to pursue the same path that it had utilized to weather recent turmoil and protests.

Despite the perceived fear of a collapse of the CCP, no serious threat ever materialized in the years immediately following 1991. China had laid the groundwork in the years prior, both in raising the standard of living through a prosperous economy, and by compelling dissidents into silence or alignment with the party line. Several key turning points, including the Sino-Soviet rift and the rise of Deng Xiaoping’s platform of reform, viewed through the lens of ideological and existential survival enabled the CCP to focus its goals on tangible effects and keep China under one-party control long before international turmoil led to the collapse of communism in 1989 to 1991.

As communist states all across Eastern Europe began to topple in 1989, it seemed well within the realm of possibility that China, too, would follow suit and collapse soon after.

However, what outside observers failed to recognize was that while nominally similar in their ideologies, China and the USSR had become fundamentally different in their governing philosophies and objectives. When the CCP was first established as the dominant party of China in 1949, this was certainly not the case, but growing differences most critically seen in the SinoSoviet rift led the two states down starkly different paths, with China all but certain to survive the Revolutions of 1989. While the fear of the dominos of communist collapse spurred the CCP to pursue renewed efforts at policy reform, it had long before formed a steady ideological foundation that distanced itself from other communist states in Eastern Europe, and the precipitous events in Europe did little to shake China. The CCP’s mindset of constant economic

86

Jean-Philippe Béja, ed., The Impact of China's 1989 Tiananmen Massacre (Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 154, Proquest Ebook Central.

Lu 25 growth while yielding little politically allowed the party to maintain its support at a time when the rest of the communist world was in stagnation and decline.

Yet, in recent years, the focus on internal improvements and internal affairs has lessened as China turns its attention outward to foreign policy. The Belt and Road initiative, perhaps its largest example, plans to cross every continent and establish China as a global player.87 Whether this echoes the USSR’s mindset of external expansion due to its dominance, or whether it is merely an extension of economic policy, remains yet to be seen. What is clear is that the rhetoric and mindset of survival, emphasized so strongly by Deng Xiaoping and other earlier leaders, has largely disappeared.88 While more recent policies attempt to implement reform in a similar direction as previous ones, China’s ideology has become centered less on survival and more on world influence and dominance.

This shift in the CCP’s thinking toward global expansionism, ideologically and economically, may be demonstrating similarities to the USSR in some regards, playing out decades later.89 China is now in its fifth generation of leadership, with its current leader born after the establishment of the CCP as the governing party of China. With the existential threats under Mao and Deng confined to the past, it has become easier to neglect smaller economic and political problems. After all, the CCP has been in control just three years longer than the CPSU had been at its end, and it is beginning to show similarities to the USSR. With global affairs becoming a more prominent issue for China, United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense

87

Terry Mobley, "The Belt and Road Initiative," Strategic Studies Quarterly 13, no. 3 (2019): 52, JSTOR.

88

Michael Clarke, "The Belt and Road Initiative," Asia Policy, no. 24 (2017): 72, JSTOR.

89

Paul Blustein, Schism: China, America and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System (Waterloo, ON: Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2019), 226, Proquest Ebook Central.

Lu 26 Jed Babbin and Defense official Edward Timperlake, among others, see resemblances to a second Cold War between China and the West.90 China certainly also has differences from the USSR in the manner of its expansionist program and knows to not repeat the mistakes that led to the collapse of communism in 19891991, but the trend away from the ideology of survival and toward one of global dominance is becoming clear. With new phases of development, the CCP will face its share of new challenges, but in recent years, one thing is clear: China’s founding ideology of focusing on existential internal problems is on the decline, and the country has ushered in a new stage of governance, with new risks and new chances for success.

90

Jed Babbin and Edward Timperlake, Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006), 1-2.

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