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Home , Human rights in China, Ziyang

’s Political Reforms: A Net Assessment

By KENNETH LIEBERTHAL

ABSTRACT: China’s leaders since the death of have tried to reform the political system so as to reduce the level of political coercion, increase the use of rational/legal processes, put talented individuals into responsible positions, enhance their capacity to base decisions on pragmatic criteria, and restore and strengthen the legitimacy of the polity. Their efforts to further these goals have produced important results, but the reforms still have not taken root. The reforms have been hedged in by fundamental untouchables, resisted by uncooperative cadres, and undercut by the inherent incompatibility of different components of the reform package itself. The prognosis for the various elements of the reform effort depends both on keeping the initiative in the hands of the reformers at the top of the Communist party and on achieving good results in the economic arena.

Kenneth Lieberthal is professor of political science and research associate at the Center for Chinese Studies of the University of Michigan. Hefrequently visits the People’s Republic of China and has written many books, monographs, and articles on China’sforeign policy, national and local politics, and decision making. He consults for the Department of State and various other organizations. Professor Lieberthal formerly taught at Swarthmore College and served on the social science staff of the Rand Corporation.

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Chinese have been trying to their policies seek to achieve the fol- TJL HErevamp their political system lowing goals: since 1977. Like related efforts in --to reduce the level of political economics,’ these political changes are a coercion throughout the system; reaction to the enormous problems that Mao Zedong bequeathed his successors -40 reduce the salience of patron- when he died in 1976. client relations, of factionalism, Mao’s gargantuan attempt in his last and of corruption while expanding decade to steer China away from a the role of rational/ legal processes in &dquo;revisionist&dquo; course left a political the polity and bringing into shambles. The ’s power successors with functional encouragement of mass violence and expertise; factional conflict produced a radical de- --to enhance the capacity of the institutionalization of the political political organs to reach decisions system. Bureaucratic information chan- based on pragmatic criteria; and nels became blocked or dis- seriously -to restore and the torted. Factional conflict affected both strengthen legit- imacy of the polity. personnel appointments and policy outcomes. Political coercion within the The resulting political system will ideally governing bodies and toward the be more capable of managing a wrench- populace reached extraordinarily high ing evolution into modernity while levels. Fundamental disagreements maintaining the country’s political divided even the highest-level leaders stability. In more detail, the following over such basic issues as the rules by reform initiatives have been taken to which the system should be governed. date. The leadership’s capacity to acquire good information, to base decisions on Reducing coercion the substantive merits of issues, to have There has been much attention those decisions implemented in a devoted in the Western media to the prudent and conscientious way, and to vicissitudes of China’s toward elicit support from the population for policy intellectual freedom. The this entire process had all seriously &dquo;anti-pollu- eroded between 1966 and 1976. tion&dquo; campaign that flared up in the fall of 1983 raised the specter both domes- and abroad of another bout of REFORM GOALS AND tically INITIATIVES radical know-nothingism. Although the line that defines the politically permis- In response to this situation, Deng sible continues to shift erratically, two Xiaoping and his colleagues launched a basic changes have, on balance, made wide-ranging series of efforts to reform China significantly less coercive. the In broad political system. terms, First, political labels on individuals have been removed step by step. China 1. Good overviews of the economic reform as of 1976 practiced severe discrimination effort and its results are available in, for example, of based the symposium published in the China Business against large groups people on criteria. To have a Review, pp. 8-27 (Nov.-Dec. 1983). solely political bad label-as a landlord, capitalist, rightist, 21 bad element, and so forth-severely at a time when unorthodox thoughts limited one’s opportunities for employ- brought disaster. Since 1978, however, a ment, marriage, and perhaps even wide range of views is solicited on many freedom. This system has in the main problems-although not on fundamen- been dismantled since 1978. tal goals and priorities. Ministerial Virtually all of the approximately journals, technical periodicals, the 150,000 remaining rightists have been general media, and private conversa- restored to full citizenship. Landlords tions are often spiced with relatively and capitalists have generally been pro- clear advocacy of competing positions. claimed to be peasants and workers now The reduction in political coercion, in that they have &dquo;adequately reformed.&dquo; short, has permitted a very substantial About 2.9 million Party members who improvement in the quality of discourse were judged to be counterrevolutionaries on public policy. during the Cultural Revolution have been rehabilitated. And count- formally Rational/legal processes less thousands-indeed, probably and the succession millions-of others who bore one stig- Much of the effort since 1978 has matizing label or another have received aimed at relief via the efforts to redress past re-institutionalizing the polity mistakes .2 and, relatedly, at putting people of The formal declaration that class talent in leadership positions so these struggle and political campaigns would strengthened institutions will produce outcomes. As the Cultural Revo- no longer be the driving forces of good lution undermined standard China’s revolution gave doctrinal under- operating pinning to this substantial decline in the procedures and immersed individuals in a terror-filled ranks of the pariah groups. Campaigns environment, patron-client ties as to and struggles in the past had sometimes emerged the major way appeared from afar to involve fairly accomplish tasks and get ahead. Factions based on that ex- high-minded attempts to raise the pop- personal loyalties tended across formal institutional boun- ulace to new levels of political purity. But in China the and the labor daries became key combatants for the of the These camps were two of the key instruments spoils political system. of these so-called consciousness-raising factional ties were nurtured by exchang- efforts. ing favors that ranged from personnel Second, the decline in coercion has appointments to procurement of scarce of been manifested in genuine encourage- resources, provision political support ment of discussion and debate. or protection, and other similar prac- tices. In based on During Mao’s last decade, even top short, corruption leaders found that almost anything they political power became a defining char- acteristic of China’s said might well be regarded primarily as politics.’ This insidious had an indicator of their political orthodoxy- development many unhealthy ramifications for the

2. Richard Krauss analyzes this system of 3. On Chinese factions, see, for example, political labels in his Class and Class Conflict in Lucian Pye, The Dynamics of Chinese Politics Chinese Socialism (New York: Columbia Univer- (Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, sity Press, 1981). 1981). 22 political system. It became very difficult sures were preparatory to the projected to place the best-qualified people in three-year Party rectification campaign executive positions because these posi- that began in the winter of 1983-84. This tions were seen as part of the spoils of campaign is supposed to be aimed es- factional fighting. Rules on the books pecially at identifying and removing might affect forms and appearances, but those Party members who still support a they proved relatively weak in structuring more leftist position than current policy actual behavior. Political discipline and dictates. The campaign is also intended the prestige of the political apparatus to instill appropriate norms in the Party among the populace naturally suffered cadre. accordingly. Some political science liter- Beyond the use of disciplinary bodies ature notes that a little corruption can and related measures, a range of addi- have beneficent effects on the politics of tional initiatives aims at buttressing the a ,4 but the corrup- rational/legal elements in determining tion in China grew to such an extent that personnel appointments and policy out- it considerably harmed the polity. comes. For example, elections in which Sharp divisions over substantive candidates exceed posts have been held issues exacerbated the effects of corrup- for key positions up to the tion, as corrupt relationships shielded level of the county. These can be-and individuals who opposed and sabotaged have been-manipulated by the author- current policy.’ This lingering phenom- ities, but they have also to some limited enon still endangers the political and extent reduced the ability of individuals economic reforms because foot dragging to use political appointments as a way to by opponents makes it more difficult to build factional support. Within both produce the promised improvements in the Party and the government, more- standards of living and personal security. over, the personnel rules are being The pervasiveness and complexity of changed so as to try to encourage the the intertwined problems of patron- appointment of younger and better- client relations, factionalism and cor- educated people to executive positions. ruption sparked an appropriately wide- A related initiative aims at reducing ranging mix of measures to improve the dramatically the multiple hat wearing of situation. At the end of 1978 the Party office holders. Before 1978 it was decided to estabish a hierarchy of common for a high-ranking Party Discipline Inspection Commissions to official, for example, to hold a corre- investigate and root out corruption and sponding executive position in the gov- violations of rules within the Party. The ernment and/ or the military. This not new Party constitution, adopted in only overly concentrated power; it also 1982, considerably stiffened the rules for enhanced the potential for factional membership and training. These mea- domination of individual offices and units, as one key person and his 4. See, for example, Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 6. Barrett McCormick, of the University of CT: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 59-71. Washington, provides a good analysis of this 5. This is confirmed, for example, by the problem in his "Leninist Implementation: The Commentator article in People’s Daily, 14 Feb. Election Campaign," in Policy Implementation in 1984, trans. in Daily Report: People’s Republic of Post-Mao China, ed. David M. Lampton (n.p., China, 15 Feb. 1984, pp. K1-3. forthcoming). 23 followers could monopolize all the core parts is supposed to occur as much at the positions. Between 1978 and 1983, in at peak of the polity-in the politburo and least the most highly visible leadership its related organs-as in other units. positions down to the county level, this China’s media constantly tout the need phenomenon was nearly abolished. to rejuvenate the leading organs and Personnel changes have aimed at pass leadership on to a second and third more than reducing multiple hat wearing generation. The object is both to avoid and breaking up factions. During the another debilitating succession struggle Cultural Revolution China recruited and to guide the country to modern- about 18 million new members into the ization with technically qualified people Party, and many of these obtained in place of the old generals who survive official posts. After the Cultural Revo- from the early days of the revolution. lution, as already noted, about 3 million former officials were brought back to Enhancing decision-making power. The new reform initiatives, capacities however, required that many of the Ever since in the people from both these groups be of 1978 declared that China must removed-the former because they spring &dquo;seek truth from facts and make opposed current policy and the latter practice the sole criterion of truth,&dquo; the author- because they had become too old and ities have taken measures to lacked requisite skills. The attempts to many the remove these individuals have been improve political system’s capacity to make decisions. The combined with related efforts to slim pragmatic pre- noted increased freedom of down and rationalize the country’s po- viously litical institutions. lower-ranking cadres to state their views itself a The numbers reflect the effects of has contributed significantly to these efforts. During 1983 about 70 more pragmatic decision-making style. But the efforts in this have percent of the 1400 provincial-level sphere gone well the rehabilitees were removed and were beyond loosening ideological replaced by a smaller number of better- straitjacket. Several bureaucratic educated officials. Overall, the number initiatives merit attention. There a stress on of provincial Party secretaries has is renewed dropped from 300 to 150, and the aver- rationally allocating responsibility members of the and age age of these incumbents has declined among Party gov- ernment committees; the head of each from 63 to 56 years old. The percent committee is now from with some college education has risen prohibited his views on the from 10 to 40 percent. Comparable simply imposing changes have occured in the highest members. In addition, decision making positions in the State Council. Com- has been somewhat decentralized. decisions had to be parable figures are lacking, however, on Many previously made the central in the mass of cadres below the top leader- by organs , even these lacked ade- ship positions at each level of the though organs national hierarchy. quate information and cooperated only with The reduction in multiple hat wearing very poorly each other. Now, by some of these are and the replacement of older cadres by contrast, decisions made territorial younger and better-educated counter- by lower-level, Party 24 and government committees that are actually decrease the legitimacy of the close to the problems and better situated system for those individuals who rose to coordinate the efforts of the relevant rapidly when other priorities obtained local specialized agencies. during the Cultural Revolution. On Educated individuals are also being balance, though, a more pragmatic, effi- brought into executive positions. Many cient, rational/legal, and less coercive of those with a higher education who regime is likely to win some favor from had been purged and vilified during most Chinese, especially after the tur- Mao’s last years have now been given moil of the past. responsible positions. As political agen- But the hangover after the Cultural cies develop leading groups that are Revolution binge has proven prolonged more educationally competent, the use and painful; millions of youths, especially, of hard data as an element in decision are severely disillusioned. Corruption making should increase. and patriarchal behavior have raised There is also a more systematic effort charges about a new class of bureau- to gather and disseminate pertinent data. crats, while increased exposure to the The state statistical system was reduced outside world has created a revolution to bureaucratic rubble during the Cul- of rising material expectations. Modern- tural Revolution. Substantial efforts ization is itself a profoundly unsettling have been made since the late 1970s to transition, no less in China than else- resuscitate this system and to increase its where. 7 ability to withstand political pressures.7 Some reform policies seek specifically Numerous new publications, moreover, to cope with the legitimacy issue. Many are transmitting the fruits of this and of these have been economic, as the related data-gathering efforts to inter- ability to deliver a rising standard of ested parties throughout the polity. living has explicitly become one basis of None of the foregoing measures is a the ’s rationale panacea. All, though, contribute to the for governing. But other measures have system’s ability to reach good decisions been political. These include the new and to respond quickly to changing election system up to the county level, circumstances. mentioned earlier; strengthening the governmental representative bodies- Restoring and the People’s Congresses-and the var- strengthening legitimacy ious organizations; and the attacks on corruption by the Discipline Most reform initiatives help mitigate Inspection Commissions. the crisis of legitimacy-or what the On a broader level, the leaders are Chinese refer to as the crisis of confi- seeking a balance between greater dence-that the system suffered by the and the promotion late 1970s. Some measures, of course, 8. See, for example, the speech given by have had a double in that edge, they General Secretary on a tour of 7. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, and Guizhou Provinces, where he said, the State Statistical Bureau had only 14 people left "What do the people want the Communist Party in its central office. On the rehabilitated statistical to do? First, to gain liberation. Second, to get rich." Sichuan 8 Feb. trans. in system, see the series of articles in Daily Report: Radio, 1984, Daily 9 People’s Republic of China, 17 Feb. 1984, pp. Report: People’s Republic of China, Feb. 1984, K17-21. p. K11. 25 of an ideological orthodoxy to legitimize ideological system; that the socialist the system. The new orthodoxy is an path remain the sole legitimate path the uneasy amalgam of several elements: country can follow; and that the those parts of Mao Zedong’s legacy that people’s democratic dictatorship remain are most compatible with current policy; the country’s state system for the indef- the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping,9 inite future. which gives definition to the new polit- These principles have themselves been ical priorities; and broad appeals based subject to varying interpretations on on the patriotic bonds that are supposed specifics-for example, as to what, con- to unite all Chinese. cretely, defines &dquo;the socialist path&dquo;-but they are in their entire thrust profoundly OBSTACLES TO REFORM restrictive. The Communist Party will monopolize political power, but the efforts to reform the The political Party in turn must be disciplined and led system are wide ranging. Nevertheless, from the top down. While &dquo;practice is the been in reforms have hedged by the sole criterion of truth&dquo; on concrete resisted fundamental untouchables, by and limited matters, all fundamental and undercut uncooperative cadres, by truths must derive from, or at least be the very incompatibility of different made compatible with, Marxism-Len- elements in the reform package. While inism-Mao Zedong Thought. Although reforms have nevertheless significant economic reforms may permit foreign taken hold, it is important to under- direct investment in China, de facto stand the factors that have limited-and decollectivization of agriculture, and will continue to circumscribe-the the encouragement of small-scale private results of these initiatives. industry, the bulk of the industrial, there are First, sharp conceptual finance, and trade systems must remain limits to the scope of the reforms. Even publicly owned and operated. And the the reformers are still leading basically people’s democratic dictatorship is a Leninists and will not tolerate a shift state form designed to oppress those from a toward away patriarchal system who disagree over fundamentals. a more democratic and fundamentally This broad approach clearly pene- rational/ legal polity.’° Deng Xiaoping’s trates into how the leaders think about &dquo;four basic this fact. principles&dquo; highlight everyday problems. For almost every demand that the Communist They party issue, the path to improvement is still remain the sole in China; leading party proclaimed to lie in having the leaders at that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong each level properly understand the the &dquo;enrichment&dquo; Thought-including problem, commit themselves to it, and of the latter and other by Deng top pay attention to it until it is solved. The leaders-remain the sole permissible key, in current Chinese thinking, thus remains always with the leaders, not 9. There have also been related publications with any autonomous bodies or staff. of the selected works of Liu Zhou Enlai, Shaoqi, also, career success and . Fundamentally, has continued to go to those 10. These leaders are also influenced by primarily China’s long tradition of statecraft, which is who carefully cultivate a bureaucratic likewise profoundly nondemocratic. base and then nurture that base as they 26 progress up the system.&dquo; This basic serve a patriarchal system while at the pattern of career mobility naturally same time reforming it. strengthens the grip of patron-client relations on the polity and inhibits the Balancing the political parts selection of leading officials solely on The reform effort also an the basis of talent. presumes altered balance the basic terri- Conceptually, in brief, the political among torial and bureaucratic blocks reforms are the brain children of indi- building of the Chinese system in a way that viduals who themselves are very much invites from the losers to products of the Chinese system. While attempts redress the balance. Territorially, the much significant tinkering may go on, reforms-economic as well as political- therefore, more radical changes such as should shift power and resources toward the creation of a truly multiparty system the coastal cities and away from the are not in the offing. heartland. the reforms In the rough and tumble of Chinese Bureaucratically, have for the five politics, also, the reforms must contend important implications basic building blocks of the system: with significant opposition. In some economics, secu- cases, those in charge of some specific culture-, rity, personnel, and the hierarchy of first reform are also the targets of that same secretaries of committees. initiative. This has been very much the Party The economic bureaucracies are in case with local cadres who must oversee charge of economic management and the nomination and election process to Reform for them means en- fill the offices that they themselves hold. growth. and a new Similarly, the Discipline Inspection hancing efficiency achieving sectoral balance that lower Commissions were initially put under gives pri- to of the the leadership of the Party committee at ority development producer- industries. The cultural bureau- their own bureaucratic level. But the goods cracies, contrast, have primary targets of the Discipline Inspec- by responsibility for a while tion Commissions were to be the very maintaining political esprit to the demands of the economic Party committees-and their subordi- adapting The reform nate organs-that had charge of them! &dquo; development program. has the cultural bureau- The current three-year Party-rectifica- program given cracies the twin tasks of freeing scientific tion campaign suffers from the same and research from problem, and these examples could be technological political constraints while a commit- multiplied many times over. They reflect bolstering ment to socialism and a of the tensions inherent in trying to pre- spirit patriotism throughout the populace. 11. This is the major lesson to be drawn from The security bureaucracies cover David M. Lampton’s careful study of the careers everything from crime and fire fighting of six major Chinese officials: Paths to Power: to Elite Mobility in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor, political dissidence, counterespionage, MI: Michigan China Center, forthcoming). and national defense. Reform to them 12. See Lawrence Sullivan, "The Role of the means increasing adherence to law, Control Organs in the Chinese Communist Party, lightening , limiting 1978-1982" (Paper delivered at the Conference of foreign subversion, and the New York State Political Science Association, modernizing the Liberation The 1983). People’s Army. per- 27 sonnel bureaucracies control careers made the task of these bureaucracies through the maintenance of personal more complex and difficult. dossiers and control over employment The security bureaucracies are in and promotion. While personnel units some ways in an even worse position. are embedded in economic enterprises With the 2.9 million rehabilitations and other organs, they in fact have their following the Cultural Revolution, own sets of regulations independent of numerous cadres who had been detained the host organs. Under the reform pro- and abused by the security organs gram, the personnel bureaucracies should returned to positions of power. In addi- cultivate and promote younger and tion, power within the security bureau- better-educated individuals and weed cracies has now been divided somewhat. out former leftists still in responsible With the great increase in China’s con- positions. tacts abroad, moreover, the tasks of Finally, the hierarchy of secretaries these bureaucracies have also become who lead the territorial Party committees vastly more complex. reached a high point of power and The military side of the security influence as of the mid-1970s, when it system has also had a mixed time with was said that the &dquo;Party takes command the reforms. Reportedly, high-ranking of everything.&dquo; The reforms, however, officers have been disgruntled over the have forced these top Party executives denigration of Mao, have bridled at the to give up their concurrent posts in the greater political and cultural freedom government and/ or military hierarchies. allowed, and have chafed under the tight In addition, the watchword of the 1980s defense budgets that have accompanied is to pull the Party out of detailed the relegation of defense to fourth decision making in favor of having it priority among the four modernizations. concentrate on more general political The personnel system has been put in tasks. charge of cultivating and bringing into The reform program has thus had a power a younger generation of better- complex effect on each of these bureau- educated cadres. Numerous reports cracies. Some generalizations are, never- indicate, however, that this bureaucracy theless, possible. First, the economic had become a real stronghold of the bureaucracies have to date gained the leftists by the end of the Cultural Revo- most, overall, from the program. They lution. have greatly enhanced their control over Finally, as noted earlier, the leading economic decision making, allowing far secretaries in the territorial Party com- less intrusion by the Communist Party mittees have had to yield both con- than had previously been the case. current political positions and much The power of the cultural-propaganda decision-making authority. bureaucracies, by contrast, has been cut The economic bureaucracies thus back. The reform program has played have clearly fared better than the cul- down the role of politics, when the tural, security, personnel, and Party raison d itre of these bureaucracies pre- secretarial systems under the reforms. In viously was to enforce political ortho- the past, though, these other bureau- doxy. Extensive contacts with overseas cracies have time and again proven able Chinese and with foreigners have simply to assert their interests vis-a-vis the 28 economic organs. It will still be some can keep the effort on track even when years before a stable balance is struck the reforms are still too new and untried among these sectors.’3 to produce the promised results. The There are, finally, structural contra- notion of radical change in a patriarchal dictions among the various elements in system simply does not conform easily the political reform effort itself. For to the political preference for seeking example, initiatives have been taken to and maintaining a consensus among disperse and institutionalize authority. decision makers. In Beijing, therefore, there is no longer a cult of personality that permits one A NET ASSESSMENT individual to be the unquestioned ar- It is to biter of major policies. The position of simply inappropriate proclaim the success or failure of Party chairman has been abolished, and China’s post- Mao reforms. It is four major organs-the politburo, State political possible, to indicate to what extent Council, Secretariat, and Central Ad- though, various visory Commission-make policy; important dimensions of the system have Even this effort whereas in Mao’s last years only the first changed. conclusions two existed.&dquo; The degree of overlap of inevitably requires drawing where some data are either office holding has also diminished con- impression- istic or inconclusive. On siderably. And the determination to balance, then, to what extent have real reforms taken prevent ruinous factional struggles and hold in the Chinese since the polarization of politics has meant that polity death of Mao? constant efforts have been made to There has been a real and marked fashion a consensus on issues in con- tention. 15 reduction in the level of political coercion. The state has The dispersion and only partial insti- essentially de- clared that a tutionalization of authority and the considerably narrower band of and should be stress on consensus, while central com- thought activity deemed in the sense that the ponents of the reform effort, also have political state should monitor the effect of attenuating other dimen- and control it. China in this sions of that effort. Far-reaching change has, sense, become far less a totalitarian requires the centralization of authority society, although it remains authoritarian.&dquo; in the hands of a reform group so that-it highly Several concrete changes that are 13. This analysis draws from Kenneth Lieber- part of the reform effort have taken thal, "Reform Politics," China Business Review hold. There has been a substantial 10(6):10-12 (Nov.-Dec. 1983). change in the people who hold positions 14. Of these four, the Central Advisory Com- at the vice-ministerial level and above in mission is clearly the least powerful. Nevertheless, at the level and it does to some extent further disperse authority at Beijing, vice-governor the apex of the Chinese system. above in the provinces, and at the vice- 15. For an excellent discussion of consensus magistrate level and above in the coun- and reform, see Christopher M. Clarke, "Changing ties, with for the most part comparable the Context for Policy Implementation: Organ- izational and Personnel Reform in Post-Mao China," in Policy Implementation in Post-Mao 16. See Michel Oksenberg and Richard Bush, China, ed. Lampton; and David M. Lampton, "China, 1972-1982: From Revolution to Reform," "Water: Challenge to a Fragmented Political Problems System," in ibid. of (Sept. 1982). 29 changes occurring in the corresponding Nor is age a problem only at this positions in the Party apparatus. Gross highest level of decision making. Hu statistics, as noted previously, reveal Yaobang is 69 and is 66. that the new incumbents are generally The other sixteen members of the polit- younger and better educated and that buro average 73 years old; only four of the instances of multiple hat wearing them are under 70. Of the nine members have declined dramatically. of the Secretariat, eight are 68 to 71 While these measures appear impres- years old. And the five leading members sive, it is hard to gauge their real impact. of the Military Affairs Commission New leaders appointed to provincial average 82.5 years old; at 79, Deng is the posts, for example, typically must work youngest of them. When one considers with an apparatus that remains loyal to that the Central Advisory Committee their predecessors, who, more often was to be the body to which older than not, remain on the scene in some leaders would retire with honor, the honorific post. Patterns of personal problem with removing aged people interaction will change only slowly, and from power stands out in even bolder in many cases clear institutional boun- relief. daries have yet to be drawn. China thus Fundamentally, moreover, individ- remains very much in a transitional uals remain more important than insti- stage, where some of the critical tutions in China, and the promulgation building blocks of a reformed polity of new laws and administrative decrees have been put into place, but where they alone will not change this in any serious have not yet taken root. Current policies way. To alter this situation substantially will have to be maintained for some would require a very basic change in years with constant attention devoted to both ideology and psychology. making the reforms take hold before The question of legitimacy remains one can have real confidence in the another difficult issue.&dquo; The reformers permanence of the reform initiatives. are trying to walk what may be a very This issue of policy continuity focuses thin line. They are pursuing a program attention on the apex of the political that should encourage the development system-the Party politburo and its of pluralistic forces and have decried the related organs. While Deng Xiaoping kind of political fanaticism that charac- has tried hard to put into place capable terized the Cultural Revolution era. But successors such as Hu Yaobang, Zhao they are still determined to maintain a Ziyang, , and , on patriarchal system, where some com- balance what is impressive is the degree bination of patriotism, commitment to to which the old generals and aged socialism, material satisfaction, and fear revolutionaries still cling to power. The of social instability binds the populace most powerful men currently, in terms to the polity and legitimizes the system. of setting the broad outlines of policy, Legitimacy is hard to measure, more- include Deng himself, who is 79 years over, because no methodologically rigor- old; Chen Yun, 79; , 82; , 78; and Ye Jianying, 86. The 17. Frederick Teiwes has wrestled with the order in which these men leave the legitimacy issue in his Leadership, Legitimacy, can the political stage affect thrust of the and Conflict in China (Armonk, NY: M. E. political-reform effort. Sharpe, 1984), esp. pts. 2 and 3. 30 ous opinion surveys have been done. an industrial society, and from myriad Also, the degree to which the current other sources. system enjoys legitimacy inevitably Since 1977 China’s leaders have varies greatly among different popula- proven willing to test an impressive tion sectors. range of political reform measures to try Many peasants have benefited enor- to cope with the new challenges con- mously in material terms from the fronting the largest polity in the world. recent reforms; former Red Guards, by This task is so daunting and complex contrast, have generally been shunted that there is no way at this point to aside to make way for the better-educated specify the degree to which each of these younger generation. To the extent that reform initiatives will succeed. Clearly, proposed changes in labor policy are much will depend on the smoothness of actually implemented, ambitious workers the succession at the top during the will benefit while others will lose the coming years. Economic performance greatest benefit that the system had will also greatly affect the support that given them-total job security. The legit- current policies engender, both among imacy of the system is unlikely to in- the populace and within the elite. On crease for these latter individuals. balance, the political reforms have not Numerous additional obstacles to en- proceeded nearly as far as have their hancing the overall legitimacy of the much heralded economic counterparts. system loom on the political horizon. In the future, political rejuvenation will Challenges will arise from the continuing likely continue to trail behind economic exposure to foreign accomplishments, change, and the tensions between the from increasing inequality in the distri- two may at some point emerge as the bution of domestic resources, from the central issue confronting the People’s inevitable tensions of the transition to Republic of China.

* * *

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q (Ralph Goldberg, University of the up to and perhaps as of Columbia): What is the far as , which will be the center of present strength of regional influences China’s entrepreneurial skills; and then in China, and how do such influences the northern region around Beijing and either help or hinder any of the efforts at southern Manchuria, which will be a central reform? heavy industrial base and also obviously A: I believe that the current reform the bureaucratic center. effort will, if it is carried through, signif- People who currently staff leading icantly enhance regional inequality in organs in China in general come not China. The regions that will grow from these regions but from the interior. rapidly and that will become major There is a question of whether, over the economic forces throughout Asia are longer run, the gradual redistribution of Southeast China, especially resources in the country will be sus- Province, stretching into Guangxi, tained by a central leadership that which will be primarily energy related; largely hails from the areas that will be the eastern end of the Yangtze from losing out in relative terms. I have asked 31

some Chinese about this and one of the to the degree we do; and comments that I have heard is that, if the these are the vast majority of govern- current reforms continue, over time we ments of the world, as you well know. will see more and more people from the The question is, How much can be eastern regions moved into the top accomplished by condemning those positions, because they are the techno- and using U.S. public crats in the bureaucracies in central resources to try to isolate them in the ministries. These technocrats will be world arena, versus trying to work with able to sustain this type of growing those governments and potentially in regional inequality. some indirect and obviously limited way COMMENT (Lee): One way the improving the chances of a more tol- Chinese are going to deal with that erant political system? I think that in the problem is to centralize the party or Chinese case we have opted for the parties so that the top level will maintain latter. My own sense is that that is a tight political authority over the pro- more productive approach, and there- vincial party, while at the same time fore it is one I would support. I do not allowing the decentralization of the think that we should totally neglect operation of the government. human rights in China. If repression were to increase again, I think we should certainly take note of that and make Q (Dr. Stikliorius, Wallingford, representations privately to the Chinese Pennsylvania): The reforms occurring about it. But I believe that the public in China do not change the fact that the condemnation should be done by pri- government there is a brutal Communist vate groups. On a government-to-gov- dictatorship that has murdered millions ernment level, all sides, including the more people than even Hitler and Stalin. Chinese people, are better served by a The human-rights record of the Chinese cooperative, reasonable, and non-vitu- regime is atrocious. We frequently perative bilateral relationship. condemn the Republic of South Africa for its bad record. Therefore, should we also boycott Communist China, or is our greed for profits from the Chinese Q (Stikliorius): The Chinese Com- market so big that we forget about the munists are friendly to us because they beautiful principles of human rights? are eager to get our advanced technol- A: I would agree that the human- ogy, nuclear plants, computers, and so rights record has been pretty bad and on. What assurances do we have that that during the height of the Cultural they, after having received all our most Revolution and at the height of earlier advanced technology, will not turn back campaigns in China, it reached truly to their old friends in Moscow? dramatic proportions. It is also impor- A: I think the simple answer is we tant to understand that that record has have no assurances. We have no credible improved a great deal since the Cultural assurances in part because the current Revolution. leaders will not still be on the political The United States is always caught, stage 20 or so years from now, which is to a degree, in a dilemma when it deals the period that you are looking at. I with governments that do not have our think instead what we have to ask political system and that do not respect ourselves is, What kind of China do we 32 want to see 20 years from now, and how Revolution up to the fall of the Gang of do we want to position ourselves with Four. My feeling is that that was a relation to that country. What I fear, transitional period where the power frankly, over the next 20 years is not so balance among the factions characterized much a strong China, allied with the the system. No faction was in a dom- Soviet Union, as a weak China that inant position to impose one ideological invites aggression from the Soviet view. Union. I think that will be highly desta- COMMENT (Lieberthal): Let me just bilizing, and that is a concern that I draw a couple of distinctions around the think should be high on our political terms that you used, Marc. I referred to agenda. China as a patriarchal society. By that I I suspect that 20 years from now, if did not mean patron-client. To me a China’s modernization proceeds in a patriarchal society is one in which the reasonably smooth and consistent way, top leadership presumes that it essentially that it will be a country that we find monopolizes the wisdom on what poli- uncomfortable to deal with. It will be cies are correct. Decisions therefore more assertive in the international flow downward, rather than being arena, and it will still have values and developed by a range of reasonably priorities that are not totally in line with autonomous bodies that compete with our own. But I do not see any reason for each other in some way. In that sense I assuming that the Soviets will be any think China under Mao was patriarchal. more comfortable with the Chinese or China under Deng Xiaoping is, I think, that Soviet and Chinese values will be equally patriarchal in that fundamental any closer than our values are to either way. I also noted that China under Mao of theirs. was totalitarian. In fact, in a strict sense, You are dealing with different cul- there are all kinds of problems with that tures, with significantly different polit- classification, but in relative terms, ical systems. They share a long border, &dquo;totalitarian&dquo; to me means that a society and I do not think that that is a situation has an extremely wide range of things that will be conducive to future close considered to be political. In other cooperation or future alliance simply words, the boundary between politics because the Chinese have managed to and society is not strong; politics develop their economy with reasonable pervades almost everything. And while, speed and efficiency. as all China specialists know, those boundaries shifted at different times under Mao, fundamentally China was a Q (Marc Blecher, Oberlin College, society in which an extraordinarily wide Ohio): How would one characterize the range of things was considered political. Maoist system in terms of combinations I think that has changed very substan- of patron-client, patriarchal, bureau- tially since Mao died; and China is now cratic, totalitarian, and authoritarian a more authoritarian society, in which elements? essentially there are a lot of things that A (Lee): I have been trying to avoid the state really does not care about. If a using any particular labels for the Maoist person wants to raise canaries and walk system and the political system that along the street with them, that is not a existed in China after the Cultural political statement. If a scientist wants 33 to advocate a particular theory in should now be more centralization, nuclear physics, that is not a political more law and order, more economic statement. Those things were political control. From a lesson of its intolerance, before. though, and its lack of diversity, the The patron-client ties, I think, exact opposite conclusions might be became important because under Mao drawn-that there should be more plu- there was a de-institutionalization of the ralism, more participation, more gather- system. While the level of political ing of information from all sorts of coercion was high during the Cultural people. Revolution, it was not monopolized and Are the reforms and the modern- institutionalized, but rather was diffused ization ambiguous? Are the legal reforms within the society. As normal political to protect non-state persons or merely institutions broke down, bureaucratic to rationalize and make more predict- ways of accomplishing things ceased to able-as, for example, Stalin’s legal be effective, and old personal ties reforms in the 1930s did-a state appa- became increasingly important for ratus ? Are the administrative stream- getting things done. It is those patron- lining and the quick turnover of per- client ties that I am talking about. sonnel, presumably recruited on a some- The current trend is toward a re- what consistent set of principles, going institutionalization of the system and a to make for less diversity? Are these reaffirmation of bureaucratic approaches reforms going to increase the scope of to accomplishing things. In a top-down people to decide or oppose decisions or system, though, it is difficult to make will it really increase participation? fundamental progress in that. Once you A: There are inherent contradictions have a highly faction-ridden system, it is in the reform effort, and that is one difficult to rout it out. To the extent that reason I have termed it an effort and not it is routed out, there will be an in- a program. There are a lot of thrusts to creasing importance of bureaucratic what the Chinese are trying to do, some pluralism in the politics of the People’s of which require a dispersion of author-. Republic of China. ity while others require a concentration of authority. It is not clear how one reconciles that. The Chinese are trying Q (Lynn White, Princeton University, to make the ideology looser, if you will, New Jersey): Are the reforms that are more compatible with a wide range of described really consistent? Are they different kinds of initiatives. No one logically unified? They seem to be a really knows what eventual balances reaction to the Cultural Revolution, but should be struck. At the same time, they the Cultural Revolution might have two are seeking to articulate an ideological very different lessons. From the lesson framework that would legitimize the of its chaos, a Chinese might think there whole effort.