TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/060589/06058900.050

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 15KB | 264 lines

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.