Political Lessons from China's 20 Years of Reform
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Third World Quarterly, Vol 20, No 6, pp 1157± 1177, 1999 Political incrementalism: political lessons from China’ s 20 years of reform YONGNIAN ZHENG ABSTRACT The recent crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party government on the efforts of Chinese dissidents to organise the China New Democratic Party has raised a serious question among scholars: why has the Chinese leadership been so reluctant to initiate democratic reforms? But an equally important question is: how has the Chinese political system been able to accommodate drastic socioeconomic changes? Although Chinese leaders from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin have strongly opposed the Western style of democracy, they have continuously adjusted the country’ s political system to prevent socioeconomic chaos from occuring, chaos that has troubled many former communist states and Third World countries. This paper explores China’ s political incrementalism and explains how incremental political reforms have worked. It argues that, although Chinese leaders have so far been successful in accommodating social changes through incrementalism, they are still uncertain about how to cope with increasing social demands for political reform and democratisation. The past two decades have witnessed unprecedented economic growth in the People’ s Republic of China. Real growth during 1978±97 was at an annual rate of 9.8%, although growth slowed to 8.8% for 1997 and 7.8% for 1998. With a per capita GNP of US$860, by 1997 China had moved away from the category of lower middle-income countries. In 1978 China’ s nominal GNP was only US$44 billion or about 70% of that of South Korea. By 1997 China’ s nominal GNP had grown to $1055 billion, which was ranked as the world’ s seventh largest.1 As a matter of fact, in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), the Chinese economy was the world’ s second largest, after the USA, in 1997. Will economic development lead to political democratisation in China? When China began to carry out its reforms and open door policy in the late 1970s, optimism prevailed both inside and outside China. It was believed that Deng Xiaoping had renounced Marxism±Leninism and that China was becoming the ® rst communist state to transform from a totalitarian to a democratic system. Now, two decades have passed and Chinese democratisation has not yet taken place, even with such impressive economic progress. Nonetheless, it is expected that the new leadership under Jiang Zemin might initiate democratic reforms. Recent developments, however, seemed to confound rather than elucidate the Yongnian Zheng is at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, AS5, Level 4, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260 Singapore. ISSN 0143-6597 Print; 1360-2241 Online/99/061157-21 Ó Third World Quarterly 1157 YONGNIAN ZHENG issue. On 18 December 1998 Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), spoke at the conference commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Congress of the CCP (1978), which led to the abovementioned rapid economic changes in the country.2 There was nothing unusual in the Party commemorating such an important event. Surprisingly, however, Jiang’ s speech caused enormous reaction, both at home and abroad. Before the speech, it was widely believed that political reform would be Jiang’ s central theme and would become one of the most important agendas of the CCP. This belief was not without sound foundations. First of all, China’ s political system needed to be reformed in order to accommodate drastic changes resulting from the economic reform. Second, Jiang Zemin had consolidated his power as the core of the third generation of leadership since the death of Deng Xiaoping in early 1997, and would probably initiate a new wave of political reforms to achieve what Deng Xiaoping had not done. In fact, there were signs suggesting Jiang’ s readiness for political reform. For example, when US Presi- dent Bill Clinton met Jiang Zemin in Beijing in mid-1997, they discussed Tibet and the 1989 `Tiananmen Incident’ during an hour of live television. Clinton praised Jiang as a visionary. Later, China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Naturally, observers at home and abroad proclaimed a new period of political openness in China, and optimistic Westerners predicted that another `Beijing Spring’ was coming. Third, the year 1999 was the 80th anniversary of the May-Fourth Movement (1919) and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’ s Republic. This would give Jiang and his fellow leaders an opportunity to initiate new measures of political reform. Encouraged by such signals, Chinese dissidents intensi® ed their activities. It was reported that, within a few months, preparatory committees of China’ s Democracy Party were established in 23 out of China’ s 31 provinces and in major cities, and applications to register the party were made in 14 provinces and big cities.3 Developments, however, proved that such an expectation was unrealistically optimistic. Central to Jiang’ s speech was the notion that sociopolitical stability would be the CCP’ s highest priority in the coming year(s). Even though Jiang did not reject gradual political reform and argued for a Chinese-style democracy, he strongly insisted that his country would never copy Western political systems.4 Certainly, for those who live in the Chinese political system, this represented a signal that the CCP would not give up its hardline stance against democratising the political system in a Western way. During an interview with German journalist Peter Seidlitz, Li Peng, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’ s Congress (NPC), argued that NPC had no plans for initiating major political reforms to challenge the CCP’ s dominant power position. Li also 5 indicated that the CCP would not allow any opposition parties to be established. In a speech to cadres attending the National Meeting on Political and Legal Work, Jiang claimed that any stirrings of organised political opposition would be `nipped in the bud’ .6 Consequently, the CCP leadership intensi® ed its crackdown on organisers of the ¯ edgeling China’ s Democracy Party (CDP), and many dissidents were sentenced for allegedly `threatening state security’ .7 1158 POLITICAL LESSONS FROM CHINA’ S 20 YEARS OF REFORM On the other hand, the government seemed to have sound reasons to worry about social instability. Economic reforms had resulted in an increase of unemployment and off-post workers, known as xia-gang.8 Workers’ strikes took place in a number of cities over the country. If opposition parties were allowed to emerge, they would certainly seize the opportunity of chaos to challenge the authority of the government. Given the fact that many sensitive anniversaries, including the founding of the People’ s Republic (1949), the Tiananmen Square crackdown (1989), and the May-Fourth Movement (1919), came in 1999, Jiang Zemin could not afford even a small sprouting of the bud, since, as an old Chinese saying had it, a single spark could start a prairie ® re. The leadership could never forget how the communist regimes collapsed in the former Soviet Union and other East European countries. Because of the crackdown, outsiders have become suspicious of Jiang’ s seriousness over political reform. It seems to them that as long as China remains a one-party state, another `Beijing Spring’ or democratisation will not be possible.9 How should China’ s political changes be assessed? This article argues that it is not enough to ask: `why has democratisation not occurred in China yet?’ and `why has the leadership been reluctant to initiate democratic reforms?’ Instead, we need to ask some more profound, practical questions: how has the Chinese political system been able to accommodate drastic socioeconomic changes resulting from rapid economic growth?’ and `how has the Chinese leadership prevented socioeconomic chaos from occurring, chaos that has troubled many former communist and Third World countries?’ China has undertaken reforms for two decades, which provides us with a time period of considerable length to review the measures of political reform which have been introduced and to follow the path of the country’ s political changes. This article attempts to show how Chinese leaders have perceived the country’ s political reform and what they have learned politically from the past 20 years of reform. By doing so, I also attempt to conceptualise the Chinese way of political reform, namely, political incrementalism, and show what progress has been made and what dif® culties lie ahead for democratisation under such an in- cremental approach. The analysis of political incrementalism here focuses on three areas, namely restructuring relations between the CCP, the government and the economy; institutionalising central±local relations; and democratising rural governance.10 The article is divided into three sections. The ® rst section attempts to de® ne political incrementalism in the context of economic development and political domination. The second section discusses how incrementalism has been embed- ded in all these changes. The last section discusses the limitations of political incrementalism and the challenges that the CCP has encountered. A caveat is to be added. In using this approach, I do not mean in any sense that China’ s political reforms have been limited only to these three areas. Incremental changes have also taken place in other areas, such as state±society relations, legal reforms, and so on. Nonetheless, I believe that these three areas are the most important institutions of the Chinese political system as a structure of governance. 1159 YONGNIAN ZHENG Political reform as political incrementalism China’ s politics has long puzzled scholars and policy makers outside China since Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms two decades ago. In the 1980s scholars hypothesised that economic reform would go together with political reform, and that marketisation would necessarily lead to political democratisa- tion.