TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/060589/06058900.050

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 14.8 KB | 279 lines

                o                                                            WORLD, Page 20

CHINA

Backed by the army and Deng Xiaoping, Beijing's hard-liners win

the edge over moderates in a closed-door struggle for power


By John Elson


    The first act of China's great political drama of 1989 was
played out with the panoply and sweep of a revolutionary grand
opera. While much of the world watched, for a time, via
satellite TV transmission, hundreds of thousands of students and
sympathizers filled Beijing's Tiananmen Square, demanding
greater democratization and an end to nepotism and corruption.
On Saturday, May 20, with the government and the Chinese capital
paralyzed, the curtain rang down ominously on Act I: Premier Li
Peng, a principal target of the demonstrators' wrath, and
President Yang Shangkun imposed martial law; troops from the
People's Liberation Army (P.L.A.) mustered to enter the city.

    Last week's Act II, although no less intense, was a more
intimate and beclouded production. The capital returned to a
semblance of normality, even though some 250,000 troops were
poised on the city's outskirts or headed for Beijing. The army,
however, maintained an uneasy standoff with a reduced cadre of
student protesters. The real drama took place in a walled
enclave in the western hills outside Beijing, where members of
the innermost circle of China's Communist Party met to resolve
a bitter power struggle that had the capital aswirl with
unfounded rumors and unanswered questions.

    At last the curtain fell again, with the disturbing clang
of a prison door closing. Li Peng appeared on television for the
first time since martial law was declared, receiving -- as if
to underscore his legitimacy -- a covey of newly arrived
ambassadors. The Premier declared that the soldiers would move
into Beijing as soon as the city's residents understood the need
to restore order. From all available signs, Deng Xiaoping had
cast his lot with the hard-line faction headed by Li. The losers
were a more reformist group led by party chief Zhao Ziyang.
Diplomatic sources said that Zhao had been stripped of his
power, although perhaps not his title, and put under house
arrest for daring to challenge the paramount authority of Deng.
As for Deng, he is believed to be in the capital, personally
directing troop movements by phone. Last week's power struggle
raised questions of whether he might be turning his back on his
own creation and whether modernization would outlast him.

    Though the leaders of the P.L.A. initially seemed torn by
the crisis, by week's end most active generals had sided with
the hard-liners, out of personal loyalty to Deng and concern for
the restoration of order. But a question arose: Could the troops
impose martial law without spilling the blood of hundreds and
perhaps thousands of fellow Chinese, thereby giving the lie to
the army's proud claim to be one with the people?

    Although George Bush's personal ties with China date back
to his years as head of the U.S. liaison office in Beijing
(1974-75), the President seemed as unsure of the situation as
anyone. Bush met with an old tennis-playing crony from his
Beijing days, Wan Li, chairman of the Standing Committee of the
National People's Congress. Afterward, Bush issued a cautious
statement that appeared both to back the students, by saying
that the U.S. encouraged the worldwide growth of democracy, and
to encourage the government, by vowing that he was committed "to
expanding normal and constructive relations" with China.

    Meanwhile, Wan, 73, cut short his visit to Washington
(canceling a tennis match with the President), ostensibly for
reasons of health, and headed home. But instead of returning to
Beijing, he landed in Shanghai, where he was put up in a
guesthouse outside the city -- possibly under house arrest. On
Saturday a statement was read on Chinese television saying that
Wan Li supported Li Peng -- dashing the hopes of protesters that
Wan would convene an emergency session of the National People's
Congress to consider Li's removal.

    For most of the week, contradictory signals emanated from
a country whose secretive rulers prize political stability above
all else. Perhaps the most curious sign involved the army. On
Monday seven retired generals, including former Defense Minister
Zhang Aiping, signed a letter to the party leadership demanding
that the P.L.A. not be used to quell the uprising. "The army
must absolutely not shoot the people," it read. Two days later,
the military's Liberation Army Daily quoted a letter from the
P.L.A. general staff (also dated Monday) urging troops to study
carefully a speech by Li Peng denouncing the uprising as a
counterrevolutionary threat.

    At considerable risk to their careers, 500 intellectuals,
including Ba Jin, China's best-known writer, signed a letter
denouncing Li and urging an end to press censorship. Until the
hard-line faction emerged victorious, China's official press
and television reported with neutral accuracy on the
pro-democracy demonstrations. By contrast, last Friday's
prime-time TV news was constricted to official statements of
support for martial law.

    For a city theoretically under martial law, Beijing seemed
amazingly lacking in tension throughout the week. "There is
absolutely no sense of anarchy here," reported TIME
correspondent Richard Hornik, who had returned to the capital
for the first time since serving as the magazine's Beijing
bureau chief from 1985 to 1987. "Buses are running again, and
the streets are full of bicyclists. The markets are full of both
shoppers and produce, and there have been only scattered reports
of hoarding.

    "By Thursday, Tiananmen Square contained hardly any more
people than it would on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. The
difference was that the 20,000 to 30,000 students still there
were camped out on tarps covered by makeshift tents of clear
plastic or by clusters of umbrellas, which made it look like a
beach outing in places. But living on the square's paving stones
was no day at the beach. Downwind, the aroma of urine was
overwhelming.

    "Health problems have become a major concern. Guo
Changshou, a 23-year-old medical student, said that virtually
all the protesters had some kind of illness: `Most have colds
or diarrhea, but we have had cases of hepatitis.' In fact, it
is something of a miracle that there isn't an epidemic of the
disease. Food donated to the students by factories and other
work units was piled in the open. Nearby, garbage rotted in the
morning sun, and by midafternoon, the temperature often topped
90 degrees F. City sanitation workers threaded their way through
the clusters of protesters to pick up the bulk of the garbage,
but a good bit got left behind."

    The peaceful character of the sit-in was a tribute to the
political skills of the student leaders. When three youths
defaced a huge portrait of Mao in the square with blotches of
red and black paint, students handed the vandals over to the
People's Armed Police for punishment and replaced the portrait.
The three best-known leaders of the protest, who proved to be
almost as elusive as their political elders meeting in the
western hills, are Guo Haifeng, 23, a graduate student in
international politics at Peking University; Wang Dan, 20, a
history major at Peking University; and Chai Ling, 23, a woman
grad student in education at Beijing Normal University.

    Fewer than 10,000 students remained in the square at week's
end. Many of the original demonstrators had returned to campus,
to be only partly replaced by students from outside the capital.
With the protest fizzling, student leaders indicated that they
would pull out by this Tuesday -- but vowed to stage a march
through Beijing of 1 million people as a parting gesture.

    Other factors contributed to the calm. When troops first
appeared in Beijing's suburbs, they were met by crowds of
citizens who peacefully blocked their path -- a Chinese version
of "flower power." According to some Western analysts, the army
leaders were made hesitant by the ambiguity of their situation.
For example, the capital's hard-line mayor and party secretary
passed on the martial-law order to the Beijing military command
but without instructions as to when and how force was to be
used.

    Though the army turned out to hold the balance of power
last week, its influence has fluctuated over the past four
decades. For the first three years after the 1949 Communist
seizure of the mainland, China for all practical purposes was
run by the military. After the transition to civilian rule in
1954, the army played a subordinate role, even though it had
enough seats on such institutions as the Politburo, the Central
Committee and the National People's Congress to guarantee its
power base within the party structure.

    At the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the P.L.A.
initially stood aloof. As the Red Guards ran amuck, Mao Zedong
urged the military to challenge them -- but with rhetoric, not
guns and bayonets. Some officers rebelled against what they felt
was the ambiguity of their position. In Wuhan district, the
military commander, General Chen Zaidao, was ordered to support
the local Red Guard faction. He refused and seized as hostages
three party officials who were sent to confront him. Premier
Zhou Enlai had to negotiate their release.

    Mao's wife Jiang Qing used General Chen's mutiny as an
excuse to unleash the Red Guards against "capitalist roaders"
within the military. Commanders were dragged from their camps
and publicly humiliated until Mao ordered a halt to the attacks.
Belatedly, he realized that the army was the only stable
institution in a nation threatened with anarchy.

    When the Cultural Revolution subsided, so many political
jobs had been left vacant as a result of the struggle that by
1969 military officers held 40% of the Communist Party's key
posts. By this time, though, Mao had a new threat to contend
with: the ambition of Defense Minister Lin Biao, then his
designated successor. The impatient Lin laid plans to oust Mao
via the euphemistically named "571 Engineering Project," but his
coup plot was discovered, and Lin died when the plane in which
he escaped from Beijing crashed in Mongolia. After Lin's death,
that most deft of diplomats, Zhou Enlai, reduced the army's role
in political affairs.

    The process has continued during Deng Xiaoping's decade of
pragmatic reform. In 1981 all P.L.A. members were required to
take a special pledge of loyalty to the party, the government
and Deng's modernization program. To save money and to lessen
tensions with the Soviet Union, the P.L.A. was trimmed from a
peak strength of 4.5 million to its present level of 3.2
million. The increasing prosperity of farm life means that the
army has been forced to enlist more urban youth, who are more
inclined to question orders. Despite such lures as family
benefits and monthly bonuses, local officials often find it
difficult to produce their annual quota of recruits. As a
result, some communities have begun to impose fines on youths
who refuse to enlist. "Recruitment is even harder than family
planning," a military officer complained. "You can drag a person
to the hospital (for an abortion), but you can't drag one into
the army."

    Except for the top veteran commanders, for whom having a
peasant background is a badge of honor, officers are mostly
urbanites, educated at one of the army's 25 technical
academies. Their pay has not kept up with China's inflationary
pace. A major earns about 250 yuan a month (roughly $67), while
a hard-working Shanghai taxi driver can clear 2,000 yuan ($537).
Such perks as free housing and food allowances, however,
compensate somewhat for the income differential. Deng, moreover,
has worked to maintain ties with the leadership by insisting on
faster promotions based on skill rather than seniority.
Nonetheless, promotion to the top ranks, particularly the
political commissars, is still made on the basis of personal and
political loyalties.

    According to some reports, Deng last week traveled to Wuhan
and Shanghai to rally the support of the generals. There is
little doubt that his survival depends on the good offices of
the P.L.A. To the rebellious students and their supporters,
Deng, the progenitor of reform, is now viewed as an autocratic
and imperious obstacle to it. It must have been particularly
galling that many of the demonstrators' abusive slogans echoed
his own words. WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T RETIRE? read one sign in the
square, reflecting Deng's frequent statement that he cannot step
down because the country needs him.

    One problem is that Deng conceived of China's modernization
almost exclusively in economic terms. His reforms unleashed
long-suppressed entrepreneurial energies but at a cost of
soaring inflation (30% annually) and unemployment. Meanwhile,
some party officials began to talk of the unthinkable: political
reform that would eradicate China's endemic corruption and
loosen party strictures on freedom of speech and the press.
Those nascent views were given their fullest expression in the
slogans of the student protesters in Tiananmen Square. Some
demonstrators even suggested that China should have a multiparty
system.

    The apparent triumph of the hard-liners reduces those goals
to impossible dreams. But it does not by any means solve Deng's
political problems. On the contrary, Li Peng is widely regarded
as a drab mediocrity -- and a potential scapegoat for having
allowed so much popular discontent to surface. Deng might try
to push him aside once order has been restored. And what price
have the hard-liners had to pay to guarantee the military's
allegiance? "The party must control the guns," Mao wrote. "The
guns must not control the party." But in China's postwar
history, the military has frequently filled political vacuums.
Could that happen again if a hard-line victory leads to a purge
of reformers?

    Much has been made of the differences between Mao and Deng.
Mao was massive; Deng is diminutive. Mao was an ideologue; Deng
is a pragmatist. But they have had one shared frustration:
arranging an orderly succession. First Liu Shaoqi and then Lin
Biao disappointed Mao; Hua Guofeng, his last designated
successor, held power after the Chairman's death, from 1976 to
1978. In 1980 Deng put his approved team in place -- Hu Yaobang
as party General Secretary and Zhao Ziyang as Premier. Seven
years later, Hu was forced from power as a deviationist. Now
Deng is purging Zhao and other liberals who were the true
believers in his reform program. And this, for China, could be
the tragic Act III of its great political drama: by siding with
Li's hard-liners, Deng is effectively repudiating his great
dreams for the country, tarnishing his own reputation in the
process.