Julian Gewirtz muses on the idea that China’s great debates of the 1980s may one day be revived, along with political reforms. Frank Dikötter’s view is rightly bleaker
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskElsewhere such an event might seem humdrum. Not in China. Mao had only been dead for just over a decade. Many features of the highly secretive and repressive political system he installed had remained in place. China’s “reform and opening” had been under way for even less time. In cities, most people still worked directly or indirectly for the state.
Reaching this point had been a struggle for Zhao. The 13th congress was the culmination of a dramatic year in Chinese politics, starting with pro-democracy demonstrations by students at the end of 1986. Those were followed by the toppling of a reformist general secretary, Hu Yaobang, by hardliners, and a campaign against “bourgeois liberalisation” that took aim at free-thinking intellectuals.
The author calls this a “forbidden history” because, he says, the party has created a “myth” around it—that China progressed smoothly from Deng’s rise to power in 1978 to new heights of wealth and modernisation, the clampdown in 1989 marking only a harsh interruption before reforms picked up again in 1992. He says the party has fostered this over-simplified view by suppressing sources and cultivating a narrative that erases key figures and covers up debates.
Mr Dikötter is damning of Zhao and his ilk. He notes Zhao’s speech at the 13th congress, in which the general secretary said China would never copy the separation of powers and the multi-party system of the West. He quotes a remark by Zhao to Erich Honecker, then East Germany’s leader, that once living standards had been raised, “we can gradually reduce the scope for liberalisation further and further”.
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