World

Protests highlight political reform

Continued from page 1

Although thousands of students, in
Beijing as well as in other centres such as
Shanghai, continue to demonstrate for
their demands, the main contingent in the
square has wound down its protest in the
face of what appears to be renewed
government action against them. Premier
Li Peng, who at one point attacked the
demonstrations as the work of a number
of “conspirators,” has become the effec-
tive spokesman for the government while
CPC general secretary Zhao Ziyang has
apparently been removed.

Despite those disturbing changes, the
gulf between the government and the peo-
ple of China is probably not nearly so
great as it seems. The country is still over-
whelming rural — 80 per cent of the
population — and the students in the
square, even with the support of workers,
still represent only a tiny minority of the
Chinese people.

Still, it is a minority whose views hold
great significance for China.

The economic reform program launched
by China in 1978 has transformed the
country, increasing per capita incomes
more than threefold, boosting economic
growth rates on a sustained basis and
opening the country to economic co-
operation with foreign companies.

But the political reform has so far not
been an important part of the equation:
China has been slow in separating the state
functions from those of Communist Party
and although there have been some
reforms in the election procedures for the
Communist Party, the country’s parlia-
ment, the National People’s Congress, is
still largely unchanged. Public organiza-
tions such as trade unions — a vital part
of socialist pluralism — still play only a
minor role in Chinese public life.

The lack of changes in those areas have
also been accentuated by the increasing
tempo of political change in the USSR —
changes which Chinese students have
apparently watched closely.

There was much that was abstract and
incoherent, however, in the students’ call
for “democracy” and the demand itself
was expressed in a variety of ways and
undoubtedly reflects a multitude of ideas
for change. Whether there was any com-

Some of the thousands of students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Monu-

Their headbands announcing they are on hunger strike, students continue protest in Tiananmen Square.

mon ground for agreement is also unclear.
But the case the students presented for a
political dialogue with the government
was a compelling one and was echoed
around the world.

That the outpouring of support for the
students has continued over a period of
months — there were earlier demonstra-
tions in April — also indicates that it is
not just a response to a temporary crisis
but part of the demand for more emphasis
on the political side of the reform equa-
tion, voiced in this case by students and
intellectuals. And significantly, the dem-
onstrations posed no challenge to social-
ism in China, the Communist Party or to
the reform program.

ee

ment to the People’s Heroes is in the background.

A more immediate and tangible issue
raised by the students was the corruption
that appears to have growr in tandem
with the new opportunities for private
businesses and new connections with for-
eign companies.

Much of the economic decision-making
has been decentralized, giving local town-
ships a free hand to make contacts with
international investors and initiate invest-
ment decisions. But it has brought corrup-
tion, as local bureaucrats take advantage
of special connections, to enrich them-
selves and to dispense favours to family
members and friends.

That it is an acknowledged problem is
evidenced in the numbers of cases regis-
tered last year. According to a special
report on China prepared by the Soviet
weekly, New Times, 47,000 documented
complaints of corruption were filed with
authorities in 1988, 13,000 of them involv-
ing government officials. China’s Com-
munist Party daily paper, People’s Daily,
reported that between 1983 and 1987,
650,000 Communist Party members were
disciplined and 100,000 expelled for cor-
ruption.

But even that crackdown is not suffi-
cient, the students contend, pointing to
corruption and nepotism in the highest
levels of Chinese society.

The economic reform itself has proba-
bly been a factor in the support given the
students by workers, particularly in Beij-
ing and Shanghai. The rapid escalation of
prices — the result of both price de-
control and considerable speculation in
the private market — has eroded wage
levels while the economic upheaval has led
to increasing demands for job security.

So far, however, People’s Daily has not
been a significant part of the public debate
over controversial issues — although there
are scores of letters each day which do
raise points of contention. :

Although it is printed simultaneously in
several cities in China, People’s Daily’s
circulation remains at four million (as
against a Communist Party membership
of 47 million). That is a sharp drop from
the figure just after the Cultural Revolu-
tion when there were six million readers,
an indication that the paper is not per-

ceived by many to be 1..e voice that it was a
decade ago and has a diminished ideologi-
cal influence.

Initially, the paper did report on the
demonstrations in the square but in recent
days there has been sharp criticism in Peo-
ple’s Daily of the students’ actions and
warnings of the “chaos” that they threa-
tened. There are also unconfirmed reports
that People’s Daily editor Tan Wenrui,
who was persecuted during the Cultural
Revolution, has been removed from his
post.

For the Chinese leaders, however, the
threat of “chaos” was understandably
more than just a inflammatory word, since
the demonstrations did touch off convul-
sions in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,
a key eccnomiz indicator for China. A
lingering perception of instability would
affect foreign investment and trade con-
tacts and could also have an impact on the
domestic economy, in production and
price levels.

That was undoubtedly what Ma
Wenpu had in mind in our conversation
last year — that the leadership must con-
trol the pace of political reform according
to the economic agenda to avoid the insta-
bility that stunted the development of
China in the two decades before the
reform program. But the students’
demands suggest that the reform program
also creates its own timetable for change.

In his discussions with Mikhail Gorba-
chev during the Sino-Soviet summit, Zhao
Ziyang is reported to have told the Soviet
leader: “Political structural reform and
economic structural reform should basi-
cally be synchronized. It won’t do if one
outstrips the other or if one lags behind the
other.”

Whether that view will prevail given the
changes in the leadership is one of the
many unanswered questions in the wake
of the students’ demonstrations. But what-
ever the immediate outcome, the evidence
from the last few years in the socialist
countries points to a compelling truth —
that building socialism today requires the
active and committed participation of all
sections of people. And winning that par-
ticipation can be just as difficult as dou-
bling the Gross National Product.

8 e Pacific Tribune, June 5, 1989