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COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

Edited by DAVID S. G. GOODMAN Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 First published in 1988 by Frank Cass and Company Limited This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

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Edited by DAVID S.G. GOODMAN Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016

FRANK CASS First published 1988 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED Gainsborough House, 11 Gainsborough Road, London E ll IRS, England

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data Communism and reform in East Asia. 1. East & South-east Asia. Communist countries. Social reform I. Goodman, David S.G., 1948- II. The Journal of communist studies 303.4*84 ISBN 0-7146-3340-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Communism and reform in East Asia. This group of studies first appeared in a special issue of the Journal of communist studies, vol. 3. Contents: Communism in East Asia / David S.G. Goodman — The reform process in the People’s Republic of / Tony Saich — Reform, local political institutions and the village economy in China / Elisabeth J. Croll — [etc.] 1. Communism—East Asia. 2. East Asia—Politics and government 3. East Asia—Social conditions. I. Good­ man, David S. G. HX410.5A6C65 1988 335.43*095 88-5032 ISBN 0-7146-3340-2

This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on Communism and Reform in East Asia of The Journal of Communist Studies Vol. 3, No. 4 published by Frank Cass &

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Editorial Preface vii Abbreviations viii Communism in East Asia: The Production Imperative, Legitimacy and Reform David S.G. Goodman 1 The Reform Process in the People’s Republic of China Tony Saich 9 Reform, Local Political Institutions and the Village Economy in China Elisabeth J. Croll 28 China: The New Inheritance Law and the Peasant Household Delia Davin 52 North : The End of the Beginning Aidan Foster-Carter 64 Ideology and the Legitimation Crisis in James Cotton 86 Vietnam: The Slow Road to Reform Michael Williams 102 The Mongolian People’s Republic in the 1980s: Continuity and Change Judith Nordby 113 The and the Pacific Century Gerald Segal 132 China and the Asia-Pacific Region Michael B. Yahuda 148 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Editorial Preface

In May 1987 the Journal of Communist Studies held its annual conference at the East Asia Centre, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Appro­ priately the theme for the papers presented at that conference was ‘Communism in East Asia’, and this volume has resulted from that conference. Despite the fact that six of the world’s states are concentrated in East Asia - China, North Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Laos - and that a seventh (the Soviet Union) is at least in some respects an East Asian power, those with an interest in communist studies still tend to regard it as a region on the periphery. One reason for that perspective may be the relative lack of literature on the subject. This volume cannot solve that problem but it can at least hope to take a step in the right direction. Many people were involved in the organization of the conference that led to this volume, as well as in the production of the book itself. The invaluable assistance of the staff of the East Asia Centre with the former, and of Professor Ronald Hill with the latter ought particularly to be acknowledged. In addition the East Asia Centre and the editorial board of The Journal of Communist Studies would like to thank The Nuffield Foundation for its generous support.

D avid S.G. Goodman East Asia Centre, University of Newcastle upon Tyne Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Abbreviations

ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations CCP Communist Party of China CGDK Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea CMEA Committee for Mutual Economic Assistance [Comintern] CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade MPR Mongolian People’s Republic MPRP Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party NIC Newly Industrialized Country PECC Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference PRC People’s Republic of China PRK People’s Republic of Kampuchea Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Communism in East Asia: The Production Imperative, Legitimacy and Reform

David S.G. Goodman

Western perceptions of communism in East Asia have changed dramatically during the last decade. Where once it was seen as a threat now the emphasis is on communism in reform. Moreover, because these communist party states are located at what is widely regarded as the centre of the ‘Pacific Century’, they have become economically as well as politically attractive within a relatively short period of time. The lure of China alone as an open market is a very seductive prospect for Western economies and businessmen. Equally, for the global strategists in the West, the possibility of isolating China and most of East Asia from Soviet influence appears attractive. The perceived Soviet need for a counter­ balance is undoubtedly one reason Gorbachev has sought to emphasize the USSR’s role in East Asia since his speech at Vladivostok in July 1986.1 There certainly does appear to be a reform process under way in the communist party states of East Asia. It can be said to have started in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at the third plenum of the eleventh Central Committee of the (CCP) in December 1978. The CCP had tried for two years after the death of to maintain the policies and structures of earlier years - a kind of ‘ without Mao’. However, by mid-1978 it became clear that a more radical break with the past was necessary if economic modernization - one of the CCP’s orginal long-term goals in 1949 - were to be attained. Incremental­ ly, new policies have been introduced which, for example, have decentralized the administration of the economy, reformed the price structure in favour of the market, de-collectivized agriculture, ended the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 state administration’s monopoly in the economy, and severely restricted its role in new developments. In short, there has been a radical reform of the command economy. At the same time there have been political reforms explicitly intended to support the drive to modernization, the most important of which have been the establishment of a functioning legal system, the overhaul of local government, and the acceptance of a greater degree of pluralism within the political process. An essential part of the reform process has been a change in China’s attitude to the outside world. Whereas once Mao proclaimed ‘self-reliance’, now China turned to the industrialized world for new technology and expertise. In return, Western investment and 2 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA involvement in the Chinese economy have been encouraged. Moreover, China’s foreign policy has been adapted to support the reform era. The goals are now the creation of a peaceful and stable international environ­ ment, and China’s integration into the international economic and political order, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.2 Although reform has advanced furthest in the PRC, during the 1980s the other communist party states of East Asia have (to varying degrees) also begun to experiment. Even North Korea - the most orthodox of all, in terms of its adherence to a popular image of - has started a programme of joint-venture economic enterprises with foreign investors. There is even some basis to the obvious argument that the reforms of the Gorbachev era to some extent follow China’s experience. G las nos t’ may have stolen the headlines in the USSR, but it is identical with ’s call for ‘socialist democracy’, and both are required in order to achieve economic modernization.3 There can be little doubt that economic factors have been a major stimulus to change throughout the communist party states of East Asia. In the 1970s the experience of the East Asian NICs (Newly Industrializing Countries) - , Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore - acted as a positive example, and at the least demonstrated that the countries of the region could benefit from Japan’s technology. At the same time, the economies of the East Asian communist party states were faced by severe problems. For example, Vietnam was faced by the legacy of civil war and the intervention of the USA. In North Korea, the initial economic successes had run out of steam, and indeed inspiration. In China, by the late 1970s living standards - however they are measured - had clearly fallen compared to the mid-. The cause of reform thus appears to be the production imperative: a recognition that continued economic modernization requires capitalist techniques, structures and technology, and also political liberalization. The communist party’s monopolization of power would appear to be efficient only in reaching fairly limited though none the less important goals: the achievement of government, national unity, and in most cases (Vietnam apart) economic recovery after war. However, its particular manifestation in the command economy seems to require modification by the market. From this production imperative there would appear to flow a whole series of reforms that have possible implications for the relationship Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 between the West and communist party states, both organizationally and ideologically. The reforms, especially as presented in the Chinese pattern, entail more than ‘peacefiil co-existence’ between the communist party states of East Asia and the industrialized, capitalist nations. They entail the integration of the communist party states into the world economy. The reforms not only present potential markets to the West, they present potential allies as well. Arguments about the ‘failure of ’ and the ‘triumph of ’ are well-rehearsed elsewhere, not least by those in the com­ munist party states of East Asia who are opposed to reform.4 However, it COMMUNISM IN EAST ASIA 3 is far from clear that the causes of reform are the same throughout the communist party states of East Asia, or that there is a single reform process under way, and in particular that the production imperative is as significant as is often suggested. These issues are important for under­ standing not only the development of individual countries, but also the dynamics of international relations, both within East Asia and on the wider stage. The extent of reform and the consequences are the concerns of the contributions to this volume. They demonstrate that, although the production imperative can be a stimulus to reform, it is neither a necessary nor even a sufficient condition. In individual countries the communist party’s search for legitimacy or its relationship with the USSR may equally be the spur to reform. Moreover, the production imperative may be a consequence of the communist party’s desire to reform rather than a cause. Overemphasis on the production imperative can impose a superficial pattern of uniform economic and political reform on the communist party states of East Asia. However, the causes of reform are neither so simple nor just economic. Reform may result from a number of factors - the production imperative, a change of leadership, a search for legitimacy, or a changing relationship with the USSR - which are not mutually exclusive and which can all exist, if to differing degrees, in each country.

The Causes of Reform As already indicated, the prospects of economic modernization are none the less an important reason for reform. The communist parties of East Asia had all come to power as nationalists committed to economic modernization. In some cases, for example North Korea and the PRC, up to a point the economic strategies they had initially adopted were suc­ cessful. However, by the late 1970s it was clear that such economic strategies, which owed much to the Soviet model - even where individuals such as Mao Zedong might seek to argue otherwise about the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution5 - were not as successful as those being implemented elsewhere in East Asia. The problems faced by the communist party states of East Asia were on the whole not new, but rather the familiar systemic faults of the Soviet Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 model already experienced in Eastern Europe and the USSR. These included an overemphasis on heavy industry, overcentralized and inef­ ficient planning, an inflexible price structure, and low productivity. Repeated attempts to adjust the command structure were frequently counter-productive. An example from the PRC is particularly instructive. In China after the mid-1950s most of the state administration’s responsibility for manage­ ment of the economy was decentralized to provincial level with the intention of increasing flexibility. (Although a level of non-central government, China’s provinces are far from small, each with an average 4 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA population of 40 million.) However, the consequence was that central government’s share of total budgetary revenue became less than that of the combined provincial authorities. Moreover, this was barely enough to cover central government expenditure let alone provide assistance to the poorer regions of the country through redistribution. Various adjust­ ments were introduced to these financial arrangements between centre and province before more far-reaching reforms were introduced. The last of these, which survived from 1974 to 1978, resulted in a process whereby in effect each province was encouraged to minimize revenue and maximize expenditure, and where overspending was rewarded.6 Although the production imperative may seem to present a good cause for reform, it is by no means self-evident. If it were, the question of the nature of reform communism in East Asia might very well not arise. The goal of economic modernization might not be regarded as so important an issue as to ignore any other priorities. For example, it is now widely accepted that during the last decade of Mao’s life (1966-76, the era of the Cultural in the PRC) the CCP emphasized redistribution and equality alongside economic modernization, even though the result was equal poverty.7 Again, however strong the production imperative might appear, a united leadership is unlikely to change the direction of policy. Such would clearly appear to be the case in North Korea. The evidence of near-constant personnel changes in the leadership of the Korean Workers’ Party should not mask the sociological phenomenon of a well- entrenched ruling class whose position would be threatened by a programme of reform. Such examples highlight the political conditions for reform. They also seem to emphasize the importance of changes in the leadership of the communist party (or equivalent) as a cause of reform. For example, in the PRC the reform era started in 1978 after the most comprehensive series of leadership changes since the Great Proletarian a decade earlier. Within 18 months of Mao’s death in September 1976, the leadership was once again dominated by those who had been in office on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, most of whom had had been removed in the interim. In both Vietnam and Mongolia, a slow road to reform has started with the removal of long-term leaders. The importance of leadership changes, in turn, indicates a further and perhaps more fundamental cause of reform. In a sense, leadership Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 changes are a condition for reform; a more definite cause is the associated search for legitimacy. Almost by definition, politics in the communist party states of East Asia are not institutionalized. Indeed, as the Chinese case exemplifies fully, that is one goal of reform. There is a desire to institutionalize politics so that there is a predictable legal and political basis for economic activity. However, because politics have not been institutionalized it is difficult for a new leadership group to inherit automatically its predecessors’ mantle of authority. There is, in short, if not a succession crisis, then certainly a succession dilemma. This dilemma is illustrated sharply in the case of the PRC. The COMMUNISM IN BAST ASIA 5 third plenum of the eleventh Central Committee of the CCP marked not only the start of the reform era in the PRC, but also Deng Xiaoping’s ascendancy. However, Deng’s power and authority is inherently personal. He has not formally held the senior position in the CCP, although he has been a member of the Political Bureau’s five-man standing committee. Since 1977 he has been neither chairman of the CCP (a post later abolished), nor general secretary of the CCP, nor premier of die State Council. At die same time as he has criticized Mao Zedong and others for their personalization of power, emphasized the need for , and led the drive to institutionalize politics, he has attained much by virtue of his own charismatic authority. In its search for legitimacy, it is then hardly surprising that a new leadership will turn to the production imperative, particularly in times of economic recession or falling living standards. Relatively quick economic success, such as has been achieved since 1978 in the PRC, can effectively buy legitimacy for the new leadership, its structures and policies. If in the process economic modernization can create a majority social constitu­ ency in support of the reforms, then a community of interests ensures the future of the new status quo. This requirement of legitimacy is one that East Asian communist party reformers have not been slow to appreciate. For example, Chen Yun - one of the key architects of the CCP’s reform programme - speaking shortly after the third plenum of December 1978, emphasized that it was not enough to have the right policies: they had to be explained to the population in the right way. There was, he argued, a crisis of faith in the Chinese population’s attitude to the CCP. They no longer believed it could or would deliver on its policies. If they were to be mobilized behind the goal of economic modernization, they had to be shown that the reforms would work, and would work quickly.8 The production imperative, changes in leadership and the search for legitimacy are all internal causes of reform. There is, however, at least one direct external cause. (It could be argued that the example of the East Asian NICs was an indirect external cause of reform to all the East Asian communist party states; or that similarly by example the PRC has been an indirect external cause of reform in the USSR and the Soviet-influenced states of the region.) The adoption of a reform programme in the USSR - however limited by comparison with that of the PRC - has already started to have an impact on those communist party states in East Asia heavily Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 dependent on the USSR. The consequences of the reform process in the USSR for Mongolia and Vietnam are still in their early stages. However, the available evidence would seem to suggest the USSR may no longer be prepared to support those two countries’ economies to the extent it has done in the past. Moreover, with its eyes fixed firmly on East Asian economic development, the USSR is now advocating greater regional co­ operation and less international tension. Since the summer of 1986, it has publicly encouraged both Mongolia and Vietnam to reduce the potential for problems with the PRC. 6 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA The Consequences of Reform Given that the reform process is barely under way throughout the communist party states of East Asia it is perhaps too early to speculate on the consequences of reform. Nevertheless, there are three areas where it already seems useful to consider the limitations of the reform process. The first is the importance of the production imperative; the second, the extent to which East Asian reform communism will lead to greater regional co­ operation; and the third, the consequences of reform for ruling East Asian communist parties. As has already been indicated, the production imperative is by no means the sole explanation of the reform process in the East Asian communist party states. It may be that in time it does come to dominate the development of those countries, but it has not been the catalyst for change. To the extent that the production imperative is taken as a characterization of East Asian reform communism, it is somewhat misleading since there is not one reform process but many. Of course, as has already been indicated, there are commonalities between the different reform processes in individual countries. However, there are also important differences. The USSR’s relationship with both Mongolia and Vietnam is radically different from that with the PRC. Even were it thought desirable, it thus seems unlikely that Mongolia and Vietnam would be able to introduce, for example, the kind of price reforms currently being developed in the PRC, if only because of the complications this might cause within the CMEA. North Korea’s development cannot be seen outside the context of the whole Korean peninsula, if only because that is the perspective adopted by its leaders. Technology transfers from South Korea may be interpreted in the PRC as ‘learning from the West’: in North Korea they would be an admission of failure, and even defeat. Many of Vietnam’s problems stem from the aftermath of the war in South-East Asia. Reform of chaos may result in an order not unlike that which is now about to be reformed away elsewhere in East Asia. From an international perspective, the communist party states of East Asia could previously have been characterized not only by their diversity, but also by conflict amongst themselves. Even though the production imperative does not yet dominate the reform process, its international

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 dimensions are significant. Reform seems to require a stable international environment. This requires not only that each East Asian communist party state should have peaceful relations with its non-communist trading partners, but also that tensions should be lessened amongst the East Asian communist party states. The equations of international relations are obviously complex, but a reputation for political instability or unreliability does not encourage foreign investment. Somewhat ironically, it appears that the East Asian communist party states have better prospects for regional co-operation with other non­ communist states than with one another. Partly, of course, this results COMMUNISM IN EAST ASIA 7 from the historical fear of China’s dominance of the region. However, that cannot be the whole story, not least since the other East Asian states have had the same historical relationship with China, and continue to have an ambivalent attitude towards China’s participation in Asia-Pacific affairs. On the whole, better relations amongst the communist party states of East Asia are likely to be an integral part of reform. Quite apart from the need to maintain a stable international environment, they represent significant markets to each other. However, the ramifications of the ambiguous Sino- Soviet relationship, Mongolia’s attitude to China, and Vietnam’s position in South-East Asia, are unlikely to result in co-operation. The most likely result is that a grudging tolerance will emerge, coupled with a wary rhetoric expressed at international conferences and institutions. The production imperative indicates certain consequences for internal affairs, and these may be less restricted than proponents of that view might hold. Indeed, the political consequence of the production imperative is liberalization, not simply in a relative sense, but towards some kind of model of . The production imperative requires talented individuals willing and able to harness their skills and technical knowledge to the service of the nation. There must be an intellectual atmosphere in which the individual is encouraged to use his or her intitiative, and is rewarded. Interest articulation must be possible, not only to maintain the unity of civil society, but also to sustain reform. It is at this point that the political consequences of the production imperative come into conflict with the role of the communist party. It is clear that a substantial portion of the reform process must involve reform, not only of the political system generally, but also of the communist party. This is precisely what Gorbachev has indicated by ’ and Deng Xiaoping by ‘socialist democracy’. However, there is considerable room for manoeuvre between the communist party’s absolute monopoly of political control and its surrender of ultimate control. Reform has a long way to go before it reaches the (as yet) unlikely latter situation. The current problem for each communist party is discovering its own middle ground, where it encourages initiative and limited pluralism but still maintains control. This aspect of the reform process has advanced furthest in the PRC, or at least the question has been debated there longest. Since 1978 there has been a frequently revived debate about the reform of the political system. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 At times quite astonishing proposals (given China’s political culture both before and after 1949) - such as a directly elected national parliament; or that public policy is best made by interest group interaction - have received official sanction.9 However, the crucial limits of debate were set in early 1979. Reform is desirable but it must accept the leadership of the CCP, the supremacy of --Mao Zedong Thought, the socialist road, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. 8 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

NOTES

David S.G. Goodman is Director of the East Asia Centre, and Reader in Chinese Politics, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

1. ‘The Development of the Soviet Far East and Asia-Pacific Affairs’, Soviet television, 28 July 1986, translated in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), 30 July 1986. 2. For a broad survey of these reforms see David S.G. Goodman, M. Lockett and Gerald Segal, The China Challenge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986). 3. David S.G. Goodman, ‘The Chinese Political Order after Mao: “Socialist Democracy” and the Exercise of State Power’, Political Studies, Vol.33, No.2 (1985), p.218. 4. See, for example, the speech by Peng Zheng, a member of the CCP’s Political Bureau and chairman of the National People’s Congress, in November 1986, discussing the ‘Resolution of the CCP on the Guiding Principles for Building a Socialist Spiritual Civilization’, translated in BBC SWB, 2 Dec. 1986. 5. E. Friedman, ‘Maoism, , Stalinism: Some Origins and Consequences of the Maoist Theory of the Socialist Transition’, in Mark Selden and Victor D. Lippit (eds.), The Transition to Socialism in China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1982). 6. Wang Zuyao and Fan Yong, ‘An Enquiry into Reform of the Financial System and the Strengthening of Central Government’s Financial Resources’, in Caizbeng (‘Finance’), 1986, No.12. 7. N. Eberstadt, ‘Has China Failed?’, The New York Review of Books, Vol.26, No.5 (5 April 1979), p.33. 8. Chen Yun, ‘Speech at Central Theoretical Work Conference*, Inside China Mainland, April 1980, p .ll. 9. For example, Liao Gailong, ‘The Road to Build Socialism in an All-Round Way*, Social Sciences in Yunnan No.2 (March 1982), p.l; also Li Fan, ‘The Question of Interests in the Chinese Policy-Making Process’, The Bulletin of Political Science, Nov. 1985, translated in The China Quarterly, No.109 (1987), p.64. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 The Reform Process in the People’s Republic of China

Tony Saich

The question of reform has dominated China’s political agenda throughout the 1980s. Differences about the scale, extent and nature of the reforms have been major topics of discussion. These discussions have produced a wide array of policies that have left no institution, organization or sector of the economy untouched. The reforms would not have been possible without major leadership changes, and they draw inspiration not only from previous reform attempts in state-socialist regimes but also from other Asian countries. The reform programme has as its core a significant liberalization of previous regime practice. In the economic sector, policy has revolved around the promotion of market mechanisms to deal with the inefficiencies of allocation and distribution that occur with the central state planning system. While considerable success has been achieved in the agricultural sphere, progress has been far less dramatic in the industrial sector. This shift to a more market-oriented economy was not readily served by a rigid, over-centralized political system dominated by the party, and hence calls have been made for reform of the political system. This reform will be the hardest of all to achieve because of the vested interests it encroaches upon.

In recent years, the terms ‘reform’ and ‘openness’ have become popular words in the political vocabularies of ruling communist parties. China, Vietnam and the Soviet Union have all begun to look at the legacy of economic and political structures derived from an over-reliance on the central planning apparatus and the highly centralized power structures and political organizations that accompany it. The latest round of reforms began in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), although they owed much not only to previous reform attempts in China during the early 1960s, but also to the abortive Soviet reforms of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 that decade and the initially more successful reforms of Hungary and Yugoslavia. However, the Chinese reforms have not consisted of a mere aping of previous reform attempts. In addition to the flexible policies adopted to attract foreign capital, new ground has been broken in the rural sector in particular. Nor has China been afraid of casting its net beyond the communist world for ideas that can help its economic modernization. Interest in the Japanese model is keen, and, although less openly expressed, study has been made of South Korea and Taiwan to try to gain clues about modernization within an Asian context. The question of reform has dominated China’s political agenda during the 1980s. Differences over the scale, extent and nature of the reforms 10 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA have been major topics of discussion. These discussions have produced a wide array of policies that have left no institution, organization or sector of the economy untouched. The reforms have moved beyond trying to deal with what the current leaders denounce as the ‘leftist’ excesses derived from China’s experimentation during the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution decade (1966-76) to attempting to come to grips with the fundamental flaws in the over-centralized system that China opted for in the 1950s. Here the intention is to outline the background to the reforms, some of their key aspects, and the problems that have arisen with their implementation.

The Background to the Reform Programme A number of writers have suggested that when the imperatives of economic modernization come to the fore, the need for reform in state- socialist societies becomes difficult to resist. The need for change thus summoned up is often aided by the passing of the revolutionary genera­ tion and its replacement by a generation that has grown up under the new state and is more concerned with purely technical prescriptions. This is when, to use John Kautsky’s terms, leadership passes from the ‘revolu­ tionary modernizers’ to the ‘managerial modernizers’.1 While one can see Gorbachev as a representative of a new generation, albeit one not solely technocratic in its approach to problem-formulation and solving, this is definitely not the case in China. Deng Xiaoping and the other leaders who have sponsored the reform programme are all members of the pre­ liberation communist elite and were actively involved in running the system from its earliest years. Although a new generation may be in power at the non-central levels, the centre remains firmly in the hands of the old guard. Without their initiative the reforms could not have been contemplated. Gordon White has provided a more recent analysis of the process of systematic change in state-socialist societies within the context of modernization. After consolidating power and building up the economic base, these societies are said to reach the point where ‘bureaucratic voluntarism’ becomes ‘increasingly irrational economically and increas­ ingly unacceptable politically’.2 To meet these problems, it is necessary to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 introduce a greater use of the market mechanism and give a larger role to democracy, albeit primarily for economically functional reasons. If a decision is taken in favour of reform, it is necessary to give more autonomy, and possibly more power, to those with professional and technical skills and try to restrict the power of the old administrative elite. In turn, this allows for the emergence of a new elite that bases its power not on its position within the politico-administrative hierarchy but on its possession of the scarce skills necessary for the modernization pro­ gramme. This can lead to conflict between the two elites and attempts by administrative cadres to frustrate the reform programme. However, while socio-economic advance may well build up for REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 11 change, it is not always the case that changes in the political superstructure do take place or that having occurred they will not be reversed.3 What is crucial for realizing change is the political will of the party and the drive for change among significant sections of the population. Over time all organizations develop a resistance to change. In ruling communist parties, where membership is tied to prestige, power and privileged access to goods and services, resistance to change will be strong. There must be a political will for change that is greater than the will to preserve the status quo. In the ideal situation, this ‘will’ should come from the party leader­ ship, or a part of it, and be supported by significant sections of the party rank and file and members of society. Change can occur without mass support, but the example of Poland in the early 1980s suggests that mass support for change in the absence of support within the top party leader­ ship will not result in success. Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s has demonstrated that it is possible to have both the political will of significant parts of the party leadership and mass support for change without being successful. In this particular case, Soviet perception of interest proved decisive and it moved to thwart reform. Independence from the Soviet Union has meant that the PRC has a greater degree of manoeuvre in comparison with those state-socialist societies that come within the Soviet sphere of influence. This indepen­ dence provides an important background factor explaining the speed and extent of change that has taken place in China, not only in the 1980s but also from the late 1950s onwards. While the Soviet Union is now trying to push its East European allies in the direction of reforms incorporating a greater use of the market and greater democracy, in the late 1960s and the 1970s it sought to limit the degree to which meaningful change occurred. By the late 1970s, the PRC appeared to fulfil the necessary criteria for reform attempts to be made. There was a leadership group under Deng Xiaoping committed to a wide-ranging reform programme that involved a significant liberalization of previous regime practices. There was a population of which large sections were dissatisfied with the arbitrary nature of rule that existed and were tired of ritualized political behaviour and the postponement of increased consumption. Both the leadership and the society at large had their perception shaped by the events of the decade 1966-76 during which time they had seen an increasingly arbitrary,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 autocratic political system develop out of the democratic and participatory promises of the Cultural Revolution. Furthermore, the reform programme has economic modernization as its clearly stated objective. The stress on economic development had specific causes deriving from China’s immediate past. Three reasons are highlighted here.4 First, living standards for much of the population in the late 1970s had barely risen from levels that pertained in the late 1950s. The government’s obsession with accumulation at the expense of consumption meant that rationing, queuing, and hours spent on laborious household chores were the daily fare for most. The lack of consumer goods was offset by the fact that few had sufficient disposable income in any case. In fact, the average wage for 12 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA employees in the state sector in 1977 was 5.5 per cent lower than it had been in 1957; for industrial workers it was 8.4 per cent lower.5 Part of the decline in the average figure is explained by the addition of many young workers in the lowest wage scales. However, it seems no exaggeration to conclude that China’s population had probably had enough of tightening their belts today in return for the promise of a bright tomorrow. Secondly, the failure of the initial post-Mao strategy significantly to improve economic performance caused the leadership to focus more sharply on the need for fundamental economic reform. The ascription of blame for economic failure to the ‘Gang of Four’, with the associated policy of returning to a ‘golden age’ before they existed, was seen as taking China into a dead end. Increasingly, it was recognized that the main problems were deep-seated structural ones. Also, the ambitious pursuit of ‘Maoism without Mao’ had led to serious short-term problems such as a towering budget deficit, increasing inflation and inflationary pressures. The politically inspired measure of offering the urban labour force increased wages and bonuses to win their confidence and allegiance was exhausted. Future increases in earnings would come only after real increases in productivity. While the economy might not have been in crisis, it was in bad shape. However, there was a political crisis in terms of a loss of faith by many in the party’s capacity to rule. The party was faced with the problem of legitimacy. The continual twists and turns of policy since the mid-1950s left the party’s claim to be the sole body in society capable of mapping out the correct road to socialism looking a little thin. The notion of the infallibility of the party was strained to breaking-point. This meant that the ‘fine traditions’ and the name of the party could no longer be invoked to ensure allegiance to a particular set of policy preferences. This was compounded by the fact that people had the feeling that they might be expected to give total allegiance to a different set of policy preferences. The criticism of Mao Zedong and the dismantling of the personality cult meant that his name could no longer be invoked effectively to underpin legitimacy. As a result, the party chose the option of promising a bright economic future for all within a relatively short period of time. In December 1978, the third plenum of the eleventh Central Committee made the decision to focus on economic modernization, subordinating all other work to the meeting of this objective. By 1979, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Deng Xiaoping and his supporters had tied their legitimacy to rule more closely to their ability to deliver the economic goods than had any other leadership group since 1949. In turn, this meant that more freedom had to be given to those groups that could devise and implement the plans to bring this delivery about.

The Nature of the Reforms The reform programme has at its core the liberalization of previous practices in both the economic and the political realm. While most of the REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 13 stress and the major changes have been in the economic sphere, reform of the political structure has been much talked about and some limited reforms have been introduced. The experiences of the Cultural Revolu­ tion, during which virtually all China’s current top leaders suffered, has convinced many of the need for a more predictable system regulated by law, and one that allows for more feedback of information from society. The terms ‘socialist democracy’ and ‘socialist legality’ are used to cover these reforms, ‘socialist’ in this context meaning reform under party guidance. A predictable legal system understood by and applicable to all is seen as conducive to stability and thus to development Similarly, a relaxation of control is seen as providing a lively atmosphere that will produce ideas useful for the modernization process. The adoption of a new development strategy at the third plenum (December 1978) made the need for reform of political structures all the more apparent. The shift to a more market- oriented, decentralized economy reliant on officials who could give expert technical advice was not readily served by a rigid, over-centralized political system dominated by the party and staffed by personnel who felt at home hiding behind administrative rules and regulations. The link between political and economic reform has been consistently acknow­ ledged. As Deng Xiaoping said in September 1986: The major problem is that the political structure does not meet the requirements of the reform of the economic structure. Therefore, without reforming the political structure, it will be impossible to safeguard the fruits of the economic reform or to guarantee its continued advance.6 Implicit in the quotation is the subordination of political reform to economic needs. Indeed the main reason why discussion of reform of the political system received much attention in 1986 was the fear that the economic reforms were in danger of reaching an impasse. Such a way of thinking, while opening up the potential for reform, immediately sets limits on the nature of that reform: the only political reforms necessary are those that will oil the wheels of economic modernization. Some Chinese writers, recognizing the possible limitations that this can set, point to the increasing diversification of economic life and the resultant social differentiation as creating a genuine need for political reform to deal with Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the growing plurality in Chinese society. It is not, they claim, mere ‘subjective’ whim that has led to the calls for overhauling China’s outdated political structure.7 In the economic sector, policy has revolved around the promotion of market mechanisms to deal with the inefficiencies of allocation and distribution that occur with the central state planning system. Awareness of the ‘new technological revolution’ has increased the Chinese leaders’ desire to make their system more flexible and thus more amenable to change. To take advantage of the market opportunities, more power of decision-making is to be given to the localities, and in particular to the 14 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA units of production themselves. Production units now have more autonomy to decide what they produce, how much they produce and how they sell it. At the core of this system lie the ubiquitous contracts that are expected to govern economic activity. Correspondingly, material incentives are seen as the major mechanism for causing people to work harder, and the socialist principle of ‘to each according to his work’ is to be firmly applied. Egalitarianism is attacked as a dangerous notion that retards economic growth. These reforms of the domestic economy have been accompanied by an unprecedented opening to the outside world in search for export markets and the necessary foreign investments, technology and higher quality consumer goods.8

Agricultural Reform The economic reforms began, and have proceeded furthest, in the agricultural sector. Indeed, while the industrial reforms present nothing that has not already been tried in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the agricultural reforms represent a radical new departure, throwing up the question of whether there is still a socialist agricultural system in China. The initial policy was to encourage growth in agricultural production by substantial increases in procurement prices and by modernizing agri­ culture through brigade and team financing.9 At the same time, policy was relaxed to let different regions make use of the ‘law of comparative advantage’. Also, private plots of land and sideline production were stressed as playing an important role in agricultural growth. To allow the peasants to sell their products - for example, their above-quota grain - private markets were again tolerated. This policy was firmly based on the collective and represented nothing radically new.10 In December 1978, it was decided that the procurement price of quota grain would be increased by an average of 20 per cent, above-quota grain by 50 per cent, and cotton by 30 per cent. However, the result of this policy was to increase massively state expenditures on agriculture. Nor did the policy of agricultural modernization bear fmit. A new strategy had to be found that would raise agricultural incomes, permitting modernization but without significantly increasing state investment. The most important reform was the introduction of the production Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 responsibility system. Although this was introduced in December 1978, it did not entail any significant undermining of the collective. However, by 1980 the more radical forms of contracting various activities to the household were becoming commonplace despite official denials. The household was clearly becoming the key economic unit in the countryside. The new system was codified in two documents: Document 1, 1983, and Document 1, 1984.11 The 1983 document officially endorsed the ‘responsibility system for agriculture’ (nongye shengchan zerenzhi) and its most common form for crop-growing, the household contracting system (baogan daohu). This makes the peasant household the nucleus of REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 15 agricultural production, working on a clearly stipulated piece of land for a specific period of time. It includes all raw materials and means of produc­ tion except land-use rights and access rights to irrigation facilities; the latter rights are made available by the collective.12 The 1984 document confirmed the situation in the countryside and added a number of new points such as extending the cropping contracts to over 15 years,13 encouraging the concentration of land with the most productive house­ holds, encouraging capital flow across regions for investment, and reducing the funds that the collective can demand from the peasantry.14 The leadership had chosen to sanction the abandonment of the collec­ tive as the key economic unit in the countryside. It is worth pointing out that the new incentive and the original contracting system were not incompatible with a collectivized agricultural sector. However, it seems that in many in China the collective as a political entity had become despised and distrusted. When given the opportunity, peasants rapidly removed themselves and concentrated production on their own households. The leadership, seeking to boost production quickly, was only too happy to install the household as the basic economic unit so long as its goals were achieved.15 It should also be pointed out that, despite the many problems with collective agriculture, its success in establishing an infrastructure and a drainage system provided the opportunity for this alternative policy of de-collectivization to flourish. It seems highly un­ likely that it would have been a viable option in the 1950s without massive state investment - something that was just as impossible then as now. In January 1985, in a further radical measure the state announced its intention to abolish its monopoly over purchasing and marketing of major faim products.16 Instead of the state assigning fixed quotas of farm products to be purchased from farmers, a system of contract purchasing was introduced. All products not purchased in this way could be disposed of on the market. Clearly, the aim of this reform was to improve the distribution of commodities and further reward efficient producers. It was hoped that this would encourage wealthier peasants to re-invest capital and labour in the land. As the Alew China News Agency noted in November 1984, ‘the funds for quadrupling the value of agricultural production must come mainly from the accumulations of agriculture itself’.17

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 The new strategy for agriculture has produced quite a remarkable improvement in agricultural performance and rural living standards. Thus, grain production has increased from 305 million tons in 1978 to 391 million metric tons in 1986. Annual per capita net income has increased from around 135 yuan in 1978 to 424 yuan in 1986. However, a number of writers have questioned whether such improvements are a one-time shot in the arm or are truly capable of producing sustained economic growth. Despite this progress, new problems have arisen in the countryside as a result of the new strategy. In particular, concern has been expressed about whether the infrastructure can be maintained now that the collectives have lost their political and economic strength. Will wealthy peasants 16 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA re-invest enough of their profits to maintain the road and water systems? Similarly, there apppears to have been a marked decline in the provision of rural welfare services. Will decent schooling and medical care be available only to those who can pay for it? Will the majority of the peasantry be left with inferior welfare facilities or will they be dependent on hand-outs from the new wealthy elite to build their schools and clinics? Here, two problems will be dealt with: grain production, and the emer­ gence of a new rural elite. One particular headache for reformers in the last year or two has been caused by the fall in grain production in 1985 to 379 million metric tons from the record harvest of407 million metric tons in 1984. Objectively this was not a major problem, as sufficient stocks were available to cover any possible shortfall and the harvest was still above those of the pre-reform period. But grain shortages in the past and the Maoist emphasis on grain production have caused some in the leadership to speak out critically on the question. Apart from bad weather, the decline was caused by farmers turning to more lucrative cash-crop production or small-scale industry. Also, between 1983 and 1985, average prices paid for chemical fertilizers rose by 43 per cent and those for pesticides by 83 per cent, which had the effect of reducing the net income gained from one hectare of grain by 30-40 per cent.18 This forced the reformers to make concessions to their critics. The price of fertilizers was dropped and priorities for loans were given to farmers growing more grain. Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang was even forced to amend his report on the seventh five-year plan to take into account worries of National People’s Congress deputies, particularly those from leading grain-producing provinces.19 As a result, the sown grain area was enlarged by two per cent and grain production rose to 391 million metric tons in 1986. More importantly, the new policies that give free rein to enterprise represent a clear abandonment of attempts to promote egalitarian policies in the countryside. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it will lead to the emergence of a new wealthy stratum in the countryside. For a while, the Chinese media extolled the virtue of the 10,000-yuan households as pioneers of the new China. This was toned down because of the envy and unrealistic expectations that it was creating among other sections of the population.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Families with large cash surpluses now have a number of mechanisms for extending their power throughout rural society. The authorities have promoted the concentration of land in the hands of the most skilled (or wealthiest) farmers via a process of sub-contracting or transfer of land-use rights. In theory, there is still no private land ownership in China: land is owned by the collective.20 The Land Administration Law, adopted in January 1987 makes the distinction between land ownership (the col­ lective) and land-use rights (the household).21 However, at the grass-roots level such distinctions begin to look very fine, especially when contracts run for over 15 years and when land is becoming concentrated in fewer hands. In addition, in order to strengthen their economic power further, REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 17 wealthy peasants may use their surplus capital to invest in setting up service companies or local enterprises. The question remains whether this new stratum can turn its economic power into political power, and this depends on its relationship with local party and government organizations. Party policy has swung from promoting such farmers as models and actively courting them, to pushing notions of restraint, plain living and hard work. If this newly emerging elite is co-opted into the party or can form an alliance with local party officials, the basis will be formed for a powerful new force in the country­ side that will make subsequent policy change very difficult. In the initial phase of reform, local party and state cadres were one of the main obstacles to reform as they saw their power being broken up by the dismemberment of the collective. However, where they chose to participate in the reforms they have been one of the major beneficiaries. A number of the new entrepreneurs in the countryside are now old officials who have privatized their former public contacts and set up lucrative marketing, transport and other service facilities. Current rural policy is clearly creating a much greater differentiation within the peasantry and to date we know too little to say whether existing political institutions in the countryside can cope with this. The fact that most political activity has taken place through informal channels would indicate that the party has not yet been capable of creating formal institutions for the political participation of the peasantry. It seems potentially dangerous for the regime if the overwhelming majority of society have to rely on political activities that are not sanctioned or exert their influence through withdrawal and non-co-operation. As noted, the increasing complexity of economic life at the basic levels in the rural areas gives rise to a variety of interests, some conflicting, that will have to be brokered and accommodated within the political system. Whether village committees22 and township governments will be up to this task remains to be seen. If they are not, it will lead in formal terms to the political marginalization of the peasantry.23

Industrial Reforms In contrast with the rural reforms, industrial reform has been a stop-go affair with consequently a far more limited impact. The success of the rural Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 reforms has provided ammunition for those who wished to introduce much more wide-ranging reforms into the urban sector. In fact, as the American political scientist Bernstein has indicated, the centralized industrial system has not been able to meet properly the needs of ‘increasingly commercialized decentralized agriculture’. The need for reform, and the reform experiments to date, were recognized in the Central Committee ‘Decision on Reform of the Economic Structure’ of October 1984.25 This Decision chronicles the problems of the industrial economy, noting that ‘defects in the urban economic sector ... seriously hinder the development of the forces of 18 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA production’. The measures proposed offered a more thoroughgoing reform than the piecemeal experimentation that had previously taken place. The key to the industrial reform programme is to make enterprises more economically responsible. Most important has been the introduc­ tion of enterprise profit retention. In 1983, a system of tax for profit was introduced and this was adopted in the 1984 Decision as a policy for all enterprises. This new system replaced the old system of requisition of profits or covering losses and the initial reform experiments of profit contracting. It is expected that the tax system will stabilize state revenues and ‘restore greater objectivity in determining enterprise incentives and fairness to the financial system’.26 To ensure that enterprises can take proper advantage of the limited market opportunities, managers of factories and other enterprises are to be given greater power of decision-making with respect to production plans and marketing, sources of supply, distribution of profits within the enterprise, and the hiring and firing of workers. While this provides the carrot, it was recognized by some that there should be a stick with which to beat inefficient enterprises. Thus, a draft bankruptcy law was made, and in August and September 1986 great publicity was given to an enterprise in Shenyang that won the fame of being the first enterprise to be declared bankrupt since the founding of the PRC. However, this measure provoked a strong reaction from opponents of reform and reformers alike. Decision on the law was shelved and in December 1986 the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress reached a compromise by adopting a ‘trial law’ to come into effect three months after the general enterprise law had been adopted.27 As with the peasantry, the main incentive to make workers work harder and raise labour productivity is a material one. Wage rises, bonuses and piece-rate systems have all been used to try to increase worker productivity, although to date the results have not been remarkable. Here, also, along with the carrot comes a stick: the ‘iron rice bowl’, the name given to the system under which it was impossible to fire workers, is to be abolished. Lifelong tenure is to be replaced by a system of fixed-term labour contracts. In October 1986, a new labour contract law and supplementary regulations were introduced to cover the recruitment and dismissal of undisciplined employees. This new system is intended to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 reward those who work well, provide the basis for dismissal of bad workers, and, at the same time, cut down the costs of social security and welfare.28 Again, problems and resistance have developed during the process of reform. The major problem with the increased use of market levers in China’s economy is that the market, such as it exists, is an imperfect one and is quite capable of distorting policy intentions. The irrational price structure was recognized in the 1984 Decision as ‘the key to reform of the entire economic structure’. But recognizing the problem and dealing with it are two quite separate matters. The decision suggests an extremely REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 19 cautious approach to the problem, and progress to date has been slow. While China’s leaders recognize the necessity for price reform, they fear the potential unrest caused by such an overhaul. It is too early to state how successful the urban industrial reforms will be, but the experience of other state-socialist societies is not, on the whole, encouraging. In fact, the whole programme for industrial economic reform was given a low priority during 1986-87. While a reversal of direction is unlikely, a stop-go process is a more probable outcome, with spurts of activity being followed by temporary halts as results are assessed and ways are sought to deal with problems that arise. In broad outline, the measures resemble those of the Liberman reforms introduced in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. The worst scenario would be that the reform programme became bogged down, losing impetus through bureaucratic inertia and resistance from lower-level cadres. Zhao Ziyang, in his Government Work Report of March 1987, complained that the decentralization of more decision-making powers to enterprises had ‘been held up at the intermediate levels in some localities and departments’.29 It will take a major change in thinking and practice for state organs to adjust to their more withdrawn role and for enterprise managers to exert fully their new entrepreneurial functions. Cadres will not easily be persuaded to relinquish their power over economic affairs,30 and at present China simply does not possess enough people trained to exploit properly the market opportunities that do exist. According to the 1984 Decision, a new generation of cadres and competent managerial personnel is to be trained, and a reshuffling of leadership in enterprises, especially key enterprises, was to be completed by the end of 1985. This does not seem to have occurred. A more successful scenario would see China’s industrial economy evolve in the direction of Hungary’s more market-oriented economy.

Political Reform31 Exactly what China’s leaders mean by reform of the political system is unclear and has become a major source of division within the leadership. As early as August 1980, Deng Xiaoping highlighted problems that were hampering China’s development, such as bureaucratism, excessive

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 concentration of power, patriarchal behaviour, lifelong tenure and abuse of privilege. These problems, Deng hinted, all derived from China’s organizational system. Deng also alluded to the need fully to develop democracy. According to Deng, it was important to make sure that the people genuinely had the power of supervision over the state in a variety of effective ways. In particular, they were ‘to supervise political power at the basic levels, as well as in all enterprises and undertakings’. Although this speech was not published at the time, it set the tone for subsequent discussions about reform. Its appeals to democracy were picked up and developed by reformers such as Liao Gailong,33 while the more conservative party apparat concentrated on tinkering to eradicate 20 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA the more obvious abuses of the system, particularly the increasing level of official corruption. During the early 1980s, a number of initiatives were undertaken to reform the political system, including the adoption of new party and state constitutions, measures to trim the bureaucracy, attempts to improve the quality of the cadre force, and steps to promote effective citizen participa­ tion.34 Although restructuring of the party and state continued throughout the decade, a major overhaul was resisted. In particular, the question of the party’s dominant role was not tackled, and many party cadres balked at the idea of any curtailment in their power. In fact, a number of measures already adopted tended in the opposite direction, particularly with respect to the degree of democracy and participation permissible. Promotion of adherence to the ‘Four Principles’ clearly indicated that there were limits to the reforms and suggested a range of obligations for those engaged in discussions about democracy. These principles had been put forward by Deng Xiaoping in March 1979 at a Central Theoretical Work Conference.35 The party also began to reassert its role as the guardian of the ideology. As its confidence was restored by its economic successes, it began once again to feel that it was sufficiently qualified to tell people what was in their best interests. Thus, by the middle of 1981, China’s leaders decided that conscious guidance in ideological and spiritual terms was needed. It was discovered that socialism had a moral-spiritual goal as well as a material one, and that these goals could be defined by the party alone. At the twelfth party congress (1982), the then General Secretary, Hu Yaobang, reversed the listing of the tasks of modernization, democratization and building of a high level of spiritual civilization: Hu placed the building of spiritual civilization before democratization, thus making it a prerequisite for democratization.36 Similarly, in the summer of 1986, when discussions on political reform filled the pages of China’s official media, often drawing inspiration from Deng’s 1980 speech, it was made clear that it would be limited and implemented gradually. This stress on caution stems from the leadership’s fear of spontaneous activity that may take place beyond party control, and from a lack of consensus within the top leadership about the precise nature of the reform. In public pronouncements, for example, both Deng Xiaoping and Secretariat member Wang Zhaoguo have been careful to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 stress that ‘ some reform of the political system is necessary to complement the current economic reforms’.37 Political reform became a divisive issue. A Hong Kong newspaper report referred to a meeting held at Beidaihe in the summer of 1986 at which some leaders expressed the view that, on the whole, the current political system was basically suited to the needs of economic develop­ ment and that reform could lead to the negation of the ‘Four Principles’. Disagreement on the issue led to the postponement of any decision until the next party congress, to be held in the autumn of 1987.38 In fact, the sixth plenum of the twelfth party congress (September 1986), instead of REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 21 discussing political reform, passed a resolution on the need to improve work in the ideological and cultural spheres. These are issues more closely associated with those who wish to limit the extent of political reform. The opponents of too radical reforms began to link far-reaching reforms with ‘bourgeois pollution’. In November 1986, member Peng Zhen warned against those who yearned for bourgeois democracy ‘as if the moonlight of capitalist society were brighter than our sun’. To reinforce the view that the party would remain firmly in command, Deng Xiaoping’s comments of March 1979 on the need to uphold the ‘Four Principles’ received wide publicity once again. Comments of Deng Xiaoping made in September 1986 show how little progress had been made on substantial issues and indicated what would be discussed at the thirteenth party congress. He stated: I think the aim of the reform of the political structure is to motivate the masses, raise efficiency and overcome bureaucracy. The sub­ stance of reform should primarily be separating the party from government administration, finding a solution to how the party should exercise leadership, and how to improve leadership. This is the key to the question.39 Without doubt, the most important aspect of political reform concerns the correct role for the party, and its relationship to other organizations. Any fundamental reform would lead to a decrease in the power of the party. However, such a reform will be much harder to realize than the proposed economic reforms because of the vested interests that will have to be eliminated. While party hegemony is an enduring fact of life, significant changes have taken place, albeit ones that do not challenge party hegemony. Having launched a development strategy that will create - and already has created - greater social differentiation and more interests to be brokered, Deng and his supporters have accepted that new institutions must be devised to mediate between the party and the officially sanctioned sectors of society. According to Jowitt, communist parties when faced with this situation must make an ‘attempt to expand membership in the regime in a way that allows politically co-opted social elites or activists to maintain their social-occupational identity, and the Party apparatus to maintain its institutionalized charismatic status’.40 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the party professes to be the only organization in society capable of defining the correct strategy for the attainment of communism. The current leadership has chosen a strategy that relies heavily on the advice of those with scarce professional skills - skills that are conspicuously absent within the party itself. Thus, the party is frequently in the position of having to make decisions, and supervise situations, about which it has little expert knowledge. This lies behind the party’s desire both to recruit more intellectuals and to extricate itself from the day-to-day decision-making process. The party thus wishes to loosen its grip somewhat over state and society. 22 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA As a part of the reform programme, power is to be redistributed, both horizontally to state organs at the same level, and vertically to party and state organs lower down the administrative system. To date, the party has so dominated the legislature, executive and judiciary as to make their independence a fiction. To add to the problem, the party has no effective regulatory mechanism. As a result, when the interests of the state or the individual are infringed, the legal system cannot automatically intervene, as it is controlled by the party. To improve this situation it is suggested that a clear separation of powers should be established with clear guidelines laid down for each organization. However, as long as ‘rule by man’, in this case ‘party man’, rather than ‘rule by law’ is the dominant ethos, the creation of new rules and regulations will not fundamentally resolve the problem. At the basic levels, attempts have been made to loosen the party’s grip in an attempt to improve economic efficiency. Thus, in the rural areas, the communes, where the will of the local party committee too often reigned supreme, have been broken up and power redistributed. In the urban sector, more power is to be given to the enterprise manager at the expense of the party committee. In experiments begun in 1986, the phrase used to describe them was the ‘managerial responsibility system’ rather than the previous description of ‘managerial responsibility system under the leadership of the party committee’. This is an attempt to make a clear demarcation between party and administration, and it emphasizes the need of the manager to act on certain matters without always first asking for the approval of the party committee. Not surprisingly, these reform attempts have met stubborn resistance. Thus, when discussions on the new enterprise law were held at the Standing Committee meeting that preceded the sixth session of the National People’s Congress (March 1987), it was made clear that this form of management was a key point of disagreement. Opponents of change argued that it would undermine the role of the party in die enterprise. As a result of disagreements, the Standing Committee did not put forward the draft of the law to the National People’s Congress session. Local officials have sought to resist implementation. Conflicts have emerged between those party officials who owe their position to their personal connections and to their political and administrative skills in working the old system, and those who derive their power from their detailed technical knowledge. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 While those with technical skills push for greater autonomy, many old party officials have fought to exert greater control over the enterprise’s work in order to maintain their pre-eminent position. As a last resort a party secretary can always invoke the ultimate authority of the party to ensure getting his or her own way. Similarly, it seems that local party officials have blocked the policy of recruiting more intellectuals into the party. They fear that ‘if intellectuals are promoted to leading posts and then join the party, they will have all the best jobs’.41 This causes some to think in the following terms: REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 23 While you have an education, I have the party membership in my hands. While you have the knowledge, I have qualifications and record of service. No matter how capable you may be, as long as you are not admitted into the party, you will remain under my leader­ ship.42

Conclusion The reform programme started in December 1978 was introduced to boost standards of living as quickly as possible and cure the problems that were seen as deriving from the ‘leftist’ course pursued in the previous 20 years. It was soon realized that this was only part of the problem and that deep-seated structural problems existed that had to be dealt with. The return of Deng Xiaoping to power enabled the wide-ranging programme to be launched. He was able to blame the problems on his predecessors and offer China a new start. However, the reform programme had no conscious blueprint but was marked by incrementalism. Problems arose and solutions were found; new problems arose and the process began again. As the reform programme continued, it became clear, however, that the policies were intended not as emergency measures but as part of a new long-term development strategy. Successful experiments in one area became reform blueprints for the whole nation. Most of the reforms began in trial areas and then were extended on the basis of their success to other areas. Indeed, the major reason for Zhao Ziyang’s appointment as Premier was his success in handling economic reform in the province of Sichuan. In this respect one bad trait of the bureaucracy was retained from the past. China has operated for thousands of years as a unitary state and has been unable to allow different regions to develop their own policy variants, or at least not to any meaningful degree. In the initial phase of agricultural reform, it seemed as though the leadership in Beijing would allow the different regions to find their own organizational forms. However, once the contract system was decided on, it was forced on most areas irrespective of their local conditions. One exception to this habit of ‘cutting with one knife’, as the Chinese

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 refer to it, has been the creation of Special Economic Zones. The zones have separate regulations to encourage the investment of foreign capital and to attract foreign technology. To varying degrees, these special measures have since been applied to 14 coastal cities, mainly the old foreign concessions in China. This is an explicit recognition that the coastal strip will be allowed to follow a more flexible, ‘open’, trade- oriented policy than the inland provinces. In fact, the liberalization of the economy in these areas seems to have been a source of conflict between the coast, which stands to benefit greatly, and the inland provinces, which fear being left further behind in the race for modernization.43 24 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Interestingly, Shenzhen in particular has provided a testing-ground for enterprise and labour legislation that has later been introduced through­ out the rest of the industrial sector.44 The reform programme has now progressed for a sufficient period of time for its contours to become clear and for problems to arise. Not everyone has been favoured by the reforms in equal measure. Whether or not the programme will continue will depend on the strength of the opposition. Apart from the opposition of groups already mentioned, it seems that at the centre there are two main focuses of opposition that pose a threat to any further extension of the reform programme. They may not want to turn back the clock to the Maoist years, but they are worried about the future direction reform may take. For them reform seems to have gone far enough, and they are not willing to see a further erosion of the pillars of the political and economic apparatus. First, there is a group of people who are worried on economic grounds: this group would include veteran leader Chen Yun. Chen, and others, are worried about the destabilizing effect of pushing the reforms too far, too fast. They have criticized the over-reliance on the market and were worried about the ‘over-heating’ of the economy caused by the rapid growth of the rural industrial sector. While Chen is not opposed to an increased role for the market - indeed he has been one of its main proponents - he did see the too-rapid introduction of market forces as causing the economic problems of early 1985. Chen has consistently argued for the importance and primacy of central planning within the economic system. Furthermore, this group fears that current policies will deepen regional inequalities between China’s poor hinterland and its more advanced coastal regions. Finally, they are concerned about the mushrooming of corruption that has sprung up as a result of the more liberal policies and increased contacts with the West. This group can count on the support of what Shirk has termed the ‘communist coalition’: those groups favoured by the old system - the heavy industrial sector, inland provinces, the central planning agencies and the industrial ministries.45 The second group contains people such as Peng Zhen, who have a more orthodox view of the party-state apparat, and Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun, who are worried about the consequences of liberalization for the social fabric of China. In their view, the more relaxed economic policies and increasing contacts with the West have led to a rise in corruption and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the appearance of decadent bourgeois thought and practices. However, Peng’s experiences in the Cultural Revolution have convinced him of the need for a strong legal basis for the reforms to govern both economic activity and civil society. Peng Zhen has been able to use the National People’s Congress as a forum for airing criticisms of the reform programme. The removal of Hu Yaobang as General Secretary of the party and the launching of attacks on bourgeois liberalization in the early months of 1987 represented a considerable success for the opposition. However, their inability to push the campaign any further attests to their ultimate REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 25 weakness, as it did with the campaign against Spiritual Pollution launched at the end of 1983. They have managed to silence more radical ideas about political reform, certainly those ideas that challenge Party hegemony, but they do not seem to have made any significant inroads into the economic reform programme. At the present time, it is difficult to see where sufficient support can come from to turn back the reform programme. Despite recognized problems, it does seem to be popular. Given China’s recent past, it would be extremely dangerous for the party to risk once again alienating its population, and particularly its intellectuals. Also, Deng Xiaoping, although no liberal, when confronted with the choice has always chosen to maintain the reform momentum. This has been a crucial factor. While a total reversal seems unlikely, the opposition may be able to gather enough strength to frustrate the reform programme. If that happens it will be up to to take the lead in developing the politics of reform within a state-socialist setting.

NOTES

Tony Saich is an Associate Professor at the Sinologisch Instituut, Leiden University. He has written numerous articles and books concerning political developments in China, including China: Politics and Government (1981) and China*s Science Policy in the 1980s (1987). At present he is editing for publication the Sneevliet (Maring) Archives for his period in China.

1. See the relevant sections in John H. Kautsky, The Political Consequences of Modernization (New York: Wiley, 1971). 2. According to White, the phase of ‘bureaucratic voluntarism’ occurs after the revolu­ tion has taken place and when it is becoming ‘institutionalized’; an increasingly complex bureaucracy develops that attempts to stimulate and oversee rapid economic development: see G. White, ‘Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World: An Overview*, in G. White, R. Murray and C. White (eds.), Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983), p.32. 3. On this point see, for example, Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 169—77 and ‘Communist Systems and the “Iron-Law of Pluralism”*, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 8 (1977), pp. 101-17. 4. This draws on information contained in Ch.6 of Tony Saich, China's Science Policy in the 1980s (forthcoming). 5. M. Korzec and T. Saich, The Chinese Economy: New Light on Old Questions, Working Paper No.28 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 1983), p. 16. 6. Deng Xiaoping, ‘Not Reforming the Political Structure Will Hamper the Development of Productive Forces’, 3 Sept. 1986 quoted in Beijing Review (BR), No.20 (18 May Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 1987), p.15. 7. See, for example, Wang Huming, ‘Heading for an Efficient and Democratic Political Structure’, Shijie Jingji Daobao, 21 July 1986, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (,SWB) FE/8832. 8. It lies beyond the scope of this article to discuss the reforms of China’s foreign trade structure and the new policies to attract foreign capital. However, it should be pointed out that its increasing involvement in the world economy makes the current leadership more dependent on factors beyond their control than at any other time since the founding of the PRC. For example, its importation of sensitive foreign technology depends on the attitude of foreign governments, particularly the USA, with respect to granting it favoured-nation status. Its export of textiles depends on quotas set by other nations where its influence is weak at best. 26 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

9. For an excellent account of the earliest phase of the agricultural reforms see A. Watson, ‘Agriculture Looks for “Shoes that Fit”: The Production Responsibility System and Its Implications’, in N. Maxwell and B. McFarlane (eds.), China’s Changed Road to Development (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1984), pp.83-108. 10. It was essentially based on the ‘Three Freedoms and One Guarantee’ policy of the early 1960s that had been introduced to revive Chinese agriculture after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward. 11. Excerpts from Document No.l, 1983, ‘Some Questions Concerning Rural Economic Policy’, can be found in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), 13 April 1983, K—1. A Translation of Document No.l, 1984, ‘Circular of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Rural Work During 1984’, can be found in China Quarterly, No.101 (1985), pp.132-44. 12. See F. Christiansen, ‘Private Land in China? Some Aspects of the Development of Socialist Land Ownership in Post-Mao China’, The Journal of Communist Studies, Vol.3, No.l (1987), p.58. See also F.W. Crook, ‘The Baogan Daohu Incentive System: Translation and Analysis of a Model Contract’, China Quarterly, No.102 (1985), pp .291-303. 13. This was done to give the peasants more incentive to invest in the land. The short-time contracts, previously three years, coupled with the peasants* fear that policy might change, caused them to maximize output from the land without due regard for its long­ term potential. 14. See K. Lieberthal, ‘The Political Implications of Document No.l, 1984’, China Quarterly, No.101 (1985), p.109. 15. Jon Unger, when interviewing 28 people from different villages, found that 26 of the 28 villages had received commands from county officials to divide all their land among the peasant households; out of these 26, 24 were instructed to adopt the same system: see J. Unger, ‘The Decollectivization of the Chinese Countryside: A Survey of Twenty-eight Villages’, Pacific Affairs, Vol.58, No.4 (1985-86), pp.585-606. 16. See ‘Ten Policies for Enlivening the Rural Economy’ (Document No.l, 1985), Renmin Ribao, 2 Jan. 1985. 17. Quoted in J. Fewsmith, ‘Rural Reform in China: Stage Two*, Problems of Communism, July-Aug. 1985, p.52. 18. Nongye Jingji Wenti, No. 11 (1986), quoted in E.B. Vermeer, ‘Agriculture in China’s Economy: A Statistical Picture*, China Information, Vol.2, No.l. 19. ‘NPC Gives Go-Ahead to 5-Year Plan’, BR, No.16 (21 April 1986), p.5. In discussing Zhao’s work report for the 1987 session of the NPC, it was reported that delegates criticized the government for not taking prompt and effective measures to solve problems in agricultural production, particularly grain production: ‘National People’s Congress: A Democratic Session’, BR, No.16 (20 April 1987), p.5. 20. Or by the state on the state farms. 21. For an interesting account of this Law and its implications see F. Christiansen, ‘An Analysis of Recent Developments in China’s Land Legislation: Some New Trends in Chinese Land Ownership and Land Use*, China Information, Vol.l, No.3, pp.20-31. 22. In 1982, village committees were set up to replace the brigades as the intermediate village-level political unit. The fifth session of the sixth National People’s Congress Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 (March-April 1987), after considerable discussion, passed draft regulations on villagers’ committees and authorized their trial implementation. However, before the trial law was promulgated, it was stressed that further investigation and revision were necessary. The committees are self-governing organizations and are not subordinate to the local government. Notably, the text of the draft law was not released. 23. See Tony Saich, ‘Modernization and Participation in the People’s Republic of China*, in J.Y.S. Cheng (ed.), China in the 1980s (forthcoming). 24. T.P. Bernstein, ‘China in 1984: The Year of Hong Kong*, Asian Survey, Vol. XXV, No.l (1985), p.38. 25. A translation of this document can be found in BR, No.44 (29 Oct. 1984), pp.i-xvi. 26. E.J. Perry and C. Wong, ‘Introduction: The Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China: Causes, Content, and Consequences’, in E.J. Perry and C. Wong (eds.), The REFORM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 27

Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 12-13. 27. See T. Vosbein, ‘Bankruptcy-The Limit of Economic Reform in China?’, China Information, Vol.l, No.3, pp. 1-8. 28. E.B. Vermeer, ‘China’s Labour Policies and the New Labour Contract Law’, China Information, Vol.l, No.3, p.9. 29. Zhao Ziyang, ‘Report on the Work of the Government’, BR% No. 16 (20 April 1987), p.XI. 30. See below. 31. This section draws heavily on information contained in Tony Saich, ‘Reform of China’s Political System*, in R. Benewick and P. Wingrove (eds.), Reforming the Revolution: China in the 1980s (forthcoming). 32. Deng Xiaoping, ‘Reform of the Leadership System of Our Party and State’, speech of 18 Aug. 1980, officially published in Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1983), p.282. 33. Liao Gailong, ‘Historical Experience and Our Path of Development’, Zhonggong Yanjiu, VoLXV, No.9 (1981). 34. For initial reforms of the state sector see David S.G. Goodman, ‘State Reforms in the People’s Republic of China since 1976: A Historical Perspective’, in Neil Harding (ed.), The State in Socialist Society (London: Macmillan, 1984), pp.277-98; for the party see Tony Saich, ‘Party-building since Mao: A Question of Style?’, in Maxwell and McFarlane, op. cit.; on cadre policy see Tony Saich, ‘Cadres: From Bureaucrats to Managerial Modernizers?’, in B. Arendrup et al. (eds.), China in the 1980s - and Beyond (London: Curzon Press, 1986). 35. For an early discussion of the significance of these principles see the editorial, ‘Firmly Grasp the Four Basic Principles in Order to Realize the Four Modernizations’, Hongqi, No.5 (1979), pp.11-15. 36. Tony Saich, ‘Party Consolidation and Spiritual Pollution in the People’s Republic of China’, Communist Affairs: Documents and Analysis, Vol.3, No.3 (1984), p.286. 37. Deng Xiaoping, Xinhua Report, 3 Sept. 1986, in SWB, FE/8355 and Wang Zhaoguo, Xinhua Report, 16 July 1986, SWB, FE/8315; emphasis added. 38. Cheng Hsiang, ‘News From Beidaihe’, Wenhui Bao, 8 Aug. 1986, in SWB, FE/8335. 39. Deng Xiaoping, ‘A Blueprint is Needed for Reform of the Political Structure’ quoted in BR, No.20 (18 May 1987), p.16. 40. Kenneth Jowitt, ‘Inclusion and Mobilization in European Leninist Regimes’, World Politics, Vol.XXVIII, No.l (1975), p.72. 41. Sun Jian and Zhu Weiqun, ‘What is the Current Situation in Implementing Policies on Intellectuals? An Investigation of Jiangsu Province Shows that “Leftist” Influences Stubbornly Persist and the Problem is Far from a Solution*, Renmin Ribao, 8 July 1985, p.2. 42. Cao Zhi, ‘Assess from the High Plain of Strategy the Question of Recruiting Party Members from Among Outstanding Intellectuals’, Hongqi, No.23 (1984), p. 18. 43. See S. Shirk, ‘The Politics of Industrial Reform’, in Perry and Wong, op. cit., pp.210-16.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 44. This was the case, for example, with the contract labour system that was started in the Special Economic Zones in 1980. 45. See Shirk, op. cit. Reform, Local Political Institutions and the Village Economy in China

Elisabeth J. Croll

Recent reforms in China have far-reaching implications for the form and content of village political and economic institutions and their relations with peasant households, family and kin groups. This article examines the recent separation of economic and political authority at the local level and the substitution of new township and village institutions for the commune, production brigade and production teams. With the development of the commodity economy and new economic associations, the government predicts a diminution in the production responsibility and autonomy of the newly emergent peasant household. However, a preliminary examination of the politics of the local economy suggest that peasant households may have developed alternative strategies based on new family forms and networks that potentially challenge village-wide political and economic structures.

In the past few years, one of the most important developments in many East European and Asian planned economies has been the introduction of new and radical rural economic reforms. These have separated political and economic authority, redefined responsibility for agricultural produc­ tion and altered both the balance of production for the plan and the market and the balance of resource allocation between public and private forms. These reforms have far-reaching consequences for local political, social and economic institutions. In China it has been apparent since 1980 that such reforms have transformed not only the rural collective economy, but also the village social and political institutions that had encapsulated peasant households, families and kin groups since the late 1950s. Yet, although there has been much attention drawn by analysts of China to the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 economic repercussions of these recent reforms, less attention has been devoted to the far-reaching social and political implications that the reforms have for the form and content of village political and economic institutions and their relations with peasant households, family and kin groups. One of the most important components of the recent reforms in rural China has been the separation at the local level of political and economic authority and the emergence of new political and economic institutions. Indeed, after the establishment of the production responsibility system, the local separation of political administration from economic manage­ ment has been designated as the second most important of the economic REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 29 reforms in rural areas. In the past five years, and since the introduction of the new constitution in late 1982, the government has reformed local political structures by substituting new township and village institu­ tions for the commune, production brigade and production team, and redefining the scope of their authority and controls. The government has also established new forms of economic organization based on local corporations, co-operatives and economic associations, to expand pro­ duction, develop the commodity economy and service economic enter­ prises managed by peasant households either individually or jointly. As a result of these reforms, the government expects that within the village a new division of labour will emerge in which local political institutions remain in control of the local economy and are responsible for guiding, planning and managing its development, but where they no longer directly participate in production. Rather this is to be the responsibility of the individual household and co-operative or economic associations, which combine to make up a new two-tier system of local economic management. The individual peasant household will be responsible for the development of its own economy and the management of its own productive operations. The co-operative or economic associa­ tion will manage production services and enterprises that are beyond the capacity of the individual peasant household. However, the government also expects that with increasing productivity in agriculture, diversifica­ tion and specialization and the development of the commodity economy, co-operative forms of unified management will come to predominate over the individual household’s management of the local economy. A preliminary examination of new social, political and economic institu­ tions in the villages suggests that such a hypothesis does not take sufficient account of the degree to which the peasant household has acquired a new measure of independence and control over inputs, resources and output; nor does it take into account the emergence of new family forms and strategies in the countryside whose networks may increasingly challenge the authority and controls of the new local economic and political structures.1

New Political Structures The reforms that separated political and economic authority and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 established new local political structures began in 1982 in accordance with the Draft Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. From the turn of the decade there had been some discussion about the form this re­ structuring should take and some experiments had been conducted in Sichuan province; but within a very brief period, in 1984, it was reported that the new political structures had been introduced throughout China (with the exception of Tibet). The new political structures below county level include the township, the administrative village and village groups, and each coincides with previous administrative divisions of and within the commune2 (see Figure 1). 30 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

FIGURE 1 LOCAL GOVERNMENT STRUCTURES

Chinese Terms English Terms Past Equivalent Xian County County (County Government) Xiang Township Commune (Township Government) Xingzhengcun Administrative Village Production brigade I (Village committee) Cunmin Xiaozu Village Group Production team (Village leader)

The establishment of new township governments is the key to local restructuring and they have been set up to assume the government and administrative functions formerly vested in the commune. Thus town­ ship governments replaced the people’s commune governments which, originally introduced into China in 1958, combined economic and politi­ cal authority over the means of production and were responsible for the production, management and operation of economic enterprises and of individual peasant households. Within the commune, the production brigade and production team, based on the whole or part of the rural village depending on its size, comprised the basic units of production with responsibility for accounting, planning and distribution. Between the state and the commune and within the commune, there was a single organizational structure, and China’s countryside was characterized by a clearly defined, hierarchical, single line of command combining political and economic authority. The collective structure, with its three tiers of commune, production brigade and production team, had almost entirely encapsulated the peasant household and the village economy, and the co-ordination of political and economic authority had meant that the peasant household had very little independence within or outside these structures. Although historical forms of association and co-operation based on small kin relations and neighbourhood groups might have remained the focus of informal exchanges largely confined to ritual occasions, most of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the traditional forms of family and kin-based co-operation had been formalized, enlarged and magnified by the process of collectivization to include all households within the productive unit.3 For instance, the process of collectivization had demanded that peasant households place a high value on the mobilization of collective resources and co-operate on unprecedented levels and in larger collective-wide activities. The incorporation of peasant households into these large village production units with exclusive control of resources and the means of production meant that, although their very solidarity might derive from and draw on kinship and neighbourhood ties, there was little institutional competition to the collective from the family, kin and village. In production, the REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 31 peasant household had little or no access to alternative resources and inputs apart from those generated and distributed by the collective. However, it was the all-inclusive range of functions of the commune and its direct responsibility for production that were criticized by the reformers as an inefficient and institutional obstacle to rural economic development, and especially to the development of a commodity economy. The new township government, unlike the communes, is responsible only for the administration of political and social affairs, and for administering overall government and county plans for the local economy. Under the direction of the township head and two executive heads, it has offices to manage markets, disaster-relief, public security, welfare, health, culture and education. Although the township govern­ ment is charged with using economic, legal and other necessary administrative methods to guide and plan the economic development of the whole township, it is not charged with the administration of individual enterprises or organizing production by individual farmers. Indeed it is expressly prohibited from itself undertaking economic activities and from interfering in the specific production and management activities of individual and larger units of production. The township constitutes the lowest level of the formal local government administration hierarchy, and its officials, appointed and paid by the state, usually number some ten to 20 cadres. They are responsible for administering the affairs of the township and its constituent administrative villages. An administrative village, like its forerunner, the production brigade, is an administrative subdivision covering a geographical area made up of one large or several small and natural villages, usually comprising a total of 200-400 households. Each administrative village is governed by a villagers’ committee, whose members are recommended or elected by the villagers and approved by the township office. It is not a formal part of the government administration, since the members of the village committee are not employees of the state, but are rather part-time local leaders. The constitution stipulates that the villagers’ committees are ‘mass organizations of self-management’4 which manage the public offices and social services of the village and help the local government in administration, production and construction. The village committee is

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 usually made up of five persons, including the head or director of the village committee, two executive deputy directors, an accountant and a woman in charge of women’s affairs. Unlike the township and county, there is usually no division of personnel into branches. Instead, each person has multiple tasks and duties that might include the implementa­ tion of county or township policy, advising farmers on the development of their economic activities, taking charge of village construction work such as irrigation, forestry and roads, mediating in disputes, and overseeing the welfare of the poorest peasant households. Most of the members of the village committee expect to work one month a year on village affairs and they are usually paid 10-20 yuan a month to compensate for their loss of 32 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA production time. This sum is paid from village committee funds which are managed by the village accountant and derive from either direct annual levies on member households, calculated according to household size, or proceeds from a portion of die village’s cultivated land set aside and cultivated on a sharecropping basis for this purpose. The village committee is responsible for co-ordinating the activities of its constituent village groups. Each administrative village is divided into village groups with an average of 30-50 households and 100-150 persons in each. As for the former production team, whether the village group coincides with a natural village will very much depend on settlement patterns and the size of individual villages. Each village group has a village leader, who is elected or recommended by its constituent households, and it has access to the services of an accountant who may be responsible for the funds of one or several village groups. These two functionaries also receive a monthly sum, often six to nine yuan, contributed by the farmers to compensate for the loss of production time. The main functions of village group leaders are to acquaint villagers with government policy, to mediate in disputes, to be acquainted with the conditions of each member household in order to help them solve problems and advise them in the development of their incomes, and to disseminate information and technologies. The leader also arranges for each household to contribute labour for construction of village or township projects such as planting trees or developing roads, irrigation works or other community needs. In rural China in the past five years these political reforms have been introduced and implemented so that the new local political structures continue to constitute a single line of political authority reaching from the county through to the township village and peasant household. Although these bodies have been redefined in name and function to exclude direct responsibilities for and participation in production, they are expected to control the development of the local economy. A recent report in People’s Daily on political power at the grass-roots level outlined tire limits to the economic responsiblities of the local political organizations: To guide and manage the economic work of the township is an important power bestowed on the township government by the law. The township government should use the economic, legal and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 necessary administrative methods to manage the economy of the whole township and serve the development of commodity produc­ tion, but should not interfere in, undertake or even replace the specific production and management activities of economic organizations.5 In addition to and alongside this political restructuring and the establish­ ment of new local political institutions, the government also advocates the establishment of new forms of economic organizations based on a two-tier system of management combining households with companies, associa­ tions or co-operatives. REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 33 New Economic Structures

When the first steps were taken to separate local political and economic authority, the reform was expressed largely in terms of simply ‘stripping’ the communes of their governmental and political functions and leaving them as economic entities responsible for organizing production of local enterprises, collectively owned and managed. Gradually, however, the economic role of the commune has declined as collectively managed enterprises were frequently contracted out to individuals or small groups of households and made responsible for their own profits and losses. The commune, instead of assuming new economic responsibilities in the wake of de-collectivization, has gradually diminished in importance so that the very use of the term has passed from the local rural vocabulary. Instead, government policy has increasingly directed attention towards a new two- tiered system of economic management that combines individual management by the peasant household with co-operative and unified management of the larger services beyond the capacity of the individual household provided by local economic associations, corporations, companies and co-operatives. One of the most important dimensions of the recent rural reforms has been the new interest in and focus on the peasant household as an economic unit in the countryside. Although it has to be remembered that it was a more important unit of production than was generally surmised within the collective, it has now virtually replaced the collective as the dominant unit of production in rural China with primary responsibility for consumption and the welfare of its members. This substitution came about largely as a result of the new rural production responsibility system in which land was contracted out to the peasant household for use for a period of some 15-50 years.6 In practice, the peasant household has gained de facto control over the land, since it is encouraged either to invest in, accumulate, or sub-contract out its lands. The reallocation of responsibility for production also demanded that peasant households took charge of all field management from sowing to harvesting, and bore the expenses of production, including the hire and exchange of labour, animal labour and small machines, and the cost of the disposal of its agricultural products. Initially households had contracted to grow specified crops, and after allowing for taxes and the sale of mandatory Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 quotas to the state had retained control over only the surplus. However, in 1985 the state abolished the mandatory purchase of quotas for crops, and peasant households may now either take out contracts with the state or produce almost exclusively for the market7 The rural economic reforms not only allocate new responsibilities to peasant households in crop cultivation, but they also encourage peasant households to diversify their economic activities to include both agricultural and non-agricultural occupations as part of new diversifica­ tion programmes aimed at developing animal husbandry, cash cropping, industries and commercial activities within the rural economy. To 34 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA encourage the peasant household to expand its income-generating activities, the government has increased producer prices, provided local incentives and re-established rural fairs and markets where goods, foods, local handicrafts and manufactured goods may be exchanged between producer and consumer at prices set according to local supply and demand.9 In a new and increasingly important development, peasant households are also encouraged to diversify their economic activities so that they increasingly move outside agriculture and specialize in some form of commodity production.10 A household is normally said to be specialized if the main labour force works or manages some form of specialized commodity production, with the income from commodity production accounting for some 50 per cent or more of the household’s total income. In other localities it is simply the number of rabbits, poultry or other products that determines its classification. The introduction of this new category of households, ‘specialized households’, marks the beginning of a new type of household economy or one that is ‘small and specialized’ as opposed to ‘one that is small and complete’.11 It is estimated that approximately one-fifth of peasant households now specialize in the production of a single product or service,12 and since this proportion, already higher in coastal areas and the plains, is expected to rise with the development of commodity production, the characteristics of this type of peasant household are important in setting a trend for the future. The individual peasant household also remains the chief unit of consumption and welfare in the countryside responsible for meeting the basic needs of all its members, but it is now no longer aided and subsidized by collective structures and services to the same extent as formerly. As before, reorganized rural economy continues to demand that the peasant household should provide housing, non-staple foods, clothes and other basic necessities for all its members, but it is also responsible for procuring its own staple food supply now that the distribution of grain by the production team to its member households no longer takes place. Additionally, the peasant household is expected to take greater responsiblity for the economic support and welfare of its dependants, including its young, unemployed, elderly and disabled or otherwise handicapped members who are not able-bodied enough to be in full-time employment. Previously the production team absorbed all village residents into its labour force in some capacity or another, so they all Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 earned work points whose value was calculated simply by dividing the income of the production teams by the total number of work points. Now, those without labour power must be either incorporated into the income- generating activities of the peasant household or supported by the peasant household out of its own income. In sum, as a result of the rural reforms, the peasant household is a more independent and complex economic unit managing a whole new range of economic activities and requiring an array of new resources to maintain it as the dominant unit of production, processing and welfare. The main aim of the second tier of economic management, comprising REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 35 economic companies, associations and co-operatives, is to support and service the peasant households’ new economic needs and demands which have expanded on an unprecedented scale as a result of the introduction of the production responsibility system and the development of specialized commodity prodution. Previously, the procurement of raw materials, the purchase of the means of production, the introduction of new agricultural techniques and the acquisition of new technologies, transport facilities and markets were all the responsibility of the collective production unit, and few demands were made on the initiative and management qualities of the individual peasant household or its special skills and resources. The development of the individual household as a production unit, and the expansion of its commodity production, now requires the house­ hold to have access to new skills, resources and facilities quite outside its previous experience, and frequently beyond the capacity of the indivi­ dual household to provide. In recognition of this new situation in the villages, the government has increasingly encouraged the pooling of existing resources by households, combining to organize new economic associations and co-operatives. These are intended to service the peasant households, and especially those specializing in commodity production, thereby facilitating production, and more particularly easing circulation, distribution, transport, storage and marketing - all areas where the infrastructure in rural China is weak. At first, many of the new economic structures, including corporations and companies, were established by communes or production brigades before the latter’s demise, in order to take care of the capital resources previously accumulated and operated by the collective. Many local resources - irrigation canals, plant protection units, agricultural machinery, seedlings and storage and transport facilities - were trans­ ferred to company ownership, and maintained and operated by a staff for whose services and inputs peasant households paid a fee. From various provinces it was reported that communes and production brigades had established service companies to deal with irrigation, agricultural machinery or artificial insemination, or supply and marketing companies to make various inputs - such as fertilizer and seed - available to peasant households.13 At first, communes and production brigades administered these companies and received a portion of the profits; gradually,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 however, such companies have managed their own operations inde­ pendently. Staff and local peasant households have taken shares in these coiporations or companies and shared in the profits. In addition to these independently operated companies and corpora­ tions, the government has encouraged peasant households to set up their own economic associations and societies to serve their own production needs.14 Economic associations might be formed in several different ways. For instance, peasant households may combine to purchase an animal, a piece of machinery or other capital equipment which they then jointly own and operate. Alternatively, a group of households may employ personnel to perform certain specialist services on their behalf. For instance, reports 36 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA on the establishment of economic associations often quote a sequence of events in which individual households experience many difficulties in developing a specialist activity. They might spend much time and energy on searching for raw materials, acquiring new skills or obtaining market information in selling their products. Sooner or later a number of these households come together to appoint and send buyers and sellers to search for raw materials and markets, and import technicians to help them improve their knowledge and skills.15 In a third pattern of development, households may combine to invest in a small industry or a service centre, in which they either merely own shares or which they jointly operate by pooling their labour and resources. One of the main characteristics of these co-operatives and associations is that they are to be based on the principles of ‘spontaneous association and voluntary participation’.16 In pushing for new forms of co-operation and unified management of certain production services in the village, the government has taken great pains to persuade peasants that the new economic forms of co-operation are very different from those operating within the former three-tiered commune system. For example, an editorial in the People’s Daily in 1985 emphasized that these new economic organizations and co-operative systems were entirely different from former collectives in four main ways: First, it is not a highly centralized organization that integrates government administration and the management of the organiza­ tions into one, but a pure economic organization; secondly, the establishment of these organizations does not mean an amalgama­ tion of private property but, under the prerequisite of affirming household management, these organizations promote co-operation with regard to certain economic items, certain kinds of production, or certain technical links in accordance with the desires of the masses; thirdly, peasant households may voluntarily join or withdraw from these organizations, and the higher authorities never issue any orders to the lower levels for the establishment of these organizations; and fourthly, these organizations are established in accordance with local conditions and the demands of local peasant households. The practice of ‘demanding uniformity in everything’ or ‘trying to find a single solution for diverse problems’ is avoided.17 By the end of 1985 it was estimated that there were 480,000 new economic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 associations, mainly engaged in industry, transportation and construc­ tion, and commerce, catering and other service trades, which together employed a total of 4.2 per million employees and netted 13,300 million yuan.1® Increasingly the government has forecast that these new forms of economic co-operation will emerge spontaneously as the dominant economic organization in the countryside, in a three-stage cycle of development that began with the introduction of the responsibility system and the contracting-out of land, the diversification of the economy and the development of specialized commodity production. The concentration of land-use and the development of specialized households marks the REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 37 development of the second stage, in which some peasant households remain in agriculture while others develop specialized non-agricultural occupations. With the development of production and a commodity economy, a third stage would be marked by new levels of co-operation between households based on a mutual need for production services and on increasing specialization and the division of labour.19 Current campaigns aimed at perfecting the co-operative system also forecast a decline in household management and an increase in unified management by co-operative and economic associations, which will become the major new economic organizations in China’s countryside. The government thus expects that there will be a fundamental shift from individual household management of production and the economy to a co-operative or unified management, as productivity develops and the transition to a commodity economy proceeds.20 However, reports on the development of the new economic associations suggest that the establish­ ment of co-operative organizations based on the villages or a larger unit requires a degree of political and economic authority and control at local level and a related diminution of the economic independence of the peasant household. A preliminary examination of the politics of the local economy suggests that peasant households may be reluctant to give up the new independence and controls that they have acquired as a result of the new economic reforms, and that they may develop alternative strategies based on new family forms that potentially challenge village-wide political and economic structures.

Peasant Household Strategies The degree to which a peasant household has been able to take advantage of the new economic policies to expand or diversify its income-generating activities or specialize in any one activity is very much dependent on the household’s acquiring new and sufficient material and labour resources. In the search for new capital resources, the basis of any household strategy to expand and develop its economy is the generation of income to invest singly or jointly in fixed assets, tools for production and processing, as well as modes of transport. In the absence of inherited capital and accumulated individual material resources, the major means by which a peasant

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 household in present-day China can generate capital is through develop­ ing its allocated land resources, or accumulating savings from the sideline incomes and wages of its members. Although the primary material resource of most peasant households is still the land, the ability of cultivated land to support the household and generate a surplus for investment is very much dependent on the amount of land available for cultivation in a region, the quality of the land and increases in producer prices. Generally it seems that households for which land generates the major portion of their income have not increased their earnings as much as those that have diversified or specialized in addition to (or instead of) cultivating their land. For instance, one recent survey has revealed that 38 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA the richer, specialized and well-off households with surplus cash received an average of only 20-33.5 per cent of their incomes from farming, while poor peasant households depended on field cultivation for 66.5 per cent of theirs.21 Whereas before 1978 income from land cultivation was the major source of collective (and therefore household) income, now a much more likely source of savings are the wages or income from household members ’ various agricultural and non-agricultural sideline activities. Now much expanded, these activities furnished a larger cash income that could be accumulated and invested in production activities. In rural China, one of the most obvious achievements of the reforms has been to raise peasant household incomes. This rise is due to three factors: the allocation of land and the responsibility for production to individual households, with remuneration calculated according to output; the diversification of the rural economy; and the new pricing policies for agricultural products. There have recently been several surveys of peasant cash incomes. Although little is known of their sampling techniques (and consequently the definition and categorization of income cannot be taken too precisely), these suggest that peasant household cash incomes, after allowing for price increases, may have risen by as much as 100 per cent since 1978. After meeting basic needs, much of the surplus has been allocated to building new housing and the purchase of consumer durables; nevertheless, it is also estimated that peasant households may now set aside upwards of a quarter of this income for the purchase of capital goods and fixed production assets.23 Indeed, major changes in the rural market have been created by the increased individual demand for items such as farm implements and machinery, irrigation pumps, fodder-crushing plants and equipment for raising livestock, plus machinery to facilitate food-processing, handicrafts and small and medium-sized industries. At the end of 1984, it was estimated that on average each household possessed fixed assets for production worth 579.45 yuan at cost value, which represented an increase of 24 per cent over 1983.24 According to the same survey, the average cost value of machinery for agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing accrued by peasant households rose by 59 per cent over 1983; that of industrial and sideline machinery owned by each household rose by 43 per cent; and that of transport rose by 52 per cent. This all suggests that the production scale of peasant households has expanded markedly as they seek to extend and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 mechanize their operational capacity. One of the very important variables determining the degree to which a household may generate an income sufficient for its daily needs and a surplus for investment is the number and proportion of adult labourers in the household. In the first instance, the expansion, diversification and specialization of the peasant household economy relies on the accumulation and distribu­ tion of its labour resources. The correlation between the economic livelihood and welfare of the peasant household and its labour resources is not new, for even within the collective, the deployment of waged and unwaged family labour was the chief means by which a household fulfilled REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 39 its obligation to the collective production unit, cultivated its vegetables on the private plot, raised domestic livestock, and undertook limited produc­ tion of sidelines or handicrafts and domestic services for family members.25 This meant that access to and control over family labour resources was the major source of its economic support and welfare, and of income dif­ ferentiation within the collective. However, the demands on family labour have been greatly exacerbated by the new rural economic reforms, which now encourage the peasant household to expand and invest without limits in new and diverse income-generating activities. Compared with the past, when government regulation was the chief obstacle to economic expansion, it is now the limited labour power to which a household has access that is likely to be the major constraint. To meet the new and rapidly increasing demands on its labour resources, the peasant household has a number of short- and long-term strategies at its disposal. One of the means by which the peasant household might immediately augment its labour resources is to hire labour. In a radical departure from past policy, and in recognition of the potential demand for family labour, the government has relaxed the rule prohibiting the hiring of labour. Initially, and in some regions, there still seems to be a degree of uncertainty surrounding the details of the new policy and the number of labourers that any one household is permitted to employ. There also seems to be a wide variation in the extent to which the practice has been encouraged.26 In some villages there is very little evidence of the hiring of labour, while in others, such as in the Pearl River delta, it has not been unknown for field cultivation in its entirety to be undertaken by labour hired specifically for this purpose sometimes from outside the village. On the whole, though, the hiring of labour on any scale - which in the first instance also requires the generation of sufficient cash resources to pay wages - is still unusual: for the majority of peasant households, therefore, it is the intensification of existing family labour resources and the reproduction and recruitment of family labour that underlie household strategies. One of the only immediate means by which a peasant household might expand its activities and generate capital rapidly is to intensify or maximize the labour of existing household members, and the decline of the collective organization of family labour enabled the peasant house­ hold to do just that. The demise of the collective has altered the way in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 which peasants structure their working day, and in interviews they repeatedly (and quite spontaneously) contrasted past and present work­ ing methods.27 In the past, production team leaders, who had responsi­ bility for the production timetable, had allocated production tasks each morning, and the work points the peasant earned were directly related to (and were dependent on) their full-time daily presence in the fields. Now, however, agricultural workers control their own production timetables and work in the fields only when the production process necessitates it. At other times they turn their attention to alternative economic activities. Although they were quick to perceive the benefits of this flexibility, many also recognize that they now work harder than ever before. Women in 40 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA particular have noted that, although they have always had to work hard, the recent reforms have made their daily routines even more demanding.28 Children, too, have been pressed into some form of income-generating activities, as is confirmed by the decline in middle and even primary school attendance (especially among girls) in the past few years. Within the peasant household there has also been some reallocation of labour, and several common patterns have emerged that both maximize and diversify labour resources. In poor and inland regions, where there are few alternative forms of employment outside farming and where a peasant household continues to combine field cultivation with sidelines, payment by output and the contraction of the demands of field cultivation have combined with the expansion of alternative economic activities to bring about a new division of labour. Instead of both men and women of the household earning work points in the fields, the men continue to undertake field cultivation while the women have expanded previous economic activities or developed new ones. In some respects this is a reversion to a more traditional division of labour, since it has long been a characteristic of the fanm economy that the scale of sideline farm occupa­ tions - cultivating vegetables, tending livestock and producing handicrafts - was determined almost exclusively by the availability of female labour. After a period of contraction it has become common for women, once they were no longer needed in the fields, to develop and expand the scope of their income-generating activities, so that they frequently furnish a substantial portion of the household’s total annual cash income.30 It is also not uncommon for one of these activities to be developed to a point where it becomes a large-scale and full-time specialized occupation. Frequently what was originally a sideline or subsidiary product has been developed to become the dominant income-generating activity of the specialized households that are increasingly common in the richer regions of rural China.31 A quite different strategy for intensifying the labour resources of the peasant household has emerged where some of the adult members of the household are employed in non-agricultural occupations. Before the reforms, in regions where there were a number of employment op­ portunities outside agriculture, it was not uncommon for the men of the village to move into rural industries, capital construction projects, mining, fishing and forestry.32 In such regions it was often the women who Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 were the mainstay of the agricultural labour force of the collective. As a result of the reforms, it is reported that many households in the country­ side have become ‘half-side families’ in which husbands work in occupa­ tions outside the farm and commute from the village on either a daily, weekly or monthly basis, leaving the women and children to undertake all the farm activities.33 The men return to help at the busy agricultural seasons, but these peasant households are for all practical purposes headed and operated by females. Again there has been an intensification of labour, although most women also willingly admit that they now earn higher incomes than the men of the household and have a greater measure REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 41 of control over the domestic economy. It remains to be seen whether these female-operated farm households will receive their fair share of inputs and avoid the discrimination so common in peasant farming systems elsewhere. However, in all these strategies there are limits beyond which the intensification of existing labour resources cannot be pushed, and peasant households have also sought to expand household size through the reproduction and recruitment of family labour. The reproduction of family labour is a time-honoured means of augmenting the labour force of any household, even if it4s not immediate in its effects. That peasants have customarily perceived there to be a direct correlation between family size and income is reflected in a number of common folk-sayings linking more children with ‘greater blessings’. It was not lost on peasant households that many of the newly rich house­ holds that emerged in the first years following the rural reforms were recognizably larger than those of their neighbours. These impressions were confirmed by a number of surveys reported in the mass media, which also showed a direct correlation between household size and income.34 However, any attempt to maximize labour resources by this means not only has to be part of a long-term strategy, but in China brings the peasant household into direct opposition with current family planning campaigns that centre on the one-child policy. In more recent years this policy has been relaxed to permit two children in a wider range of circumstances related to family structure and level of economic develop­ ment.35 One of the reasons for this relaxation was the number of diffi­ culties and problems associated with its implementation in the face of considerable opposition in the rural areas deriving from the demand for labour, especially sons’ labour.36 Nevertheless, stringent family planning controls are likely to remain in operation in the countryside, and any expansion of household size on this basis is likely to be severely curtailed for the foreseeable future. A household is therefore likely to adopt alternative and short-term strategies to augment its labour force. One of the more obvious of these is to arrange for the marriage of sons and delay the establishment of separate nuclear households. An important interest for a peasant household in the marriage negotia­ tions of its sons is the recruitment of a daughter-in-law whose labour is very welcome.37 Parents very often express their support for early marriage in terms of their desire ‘to drink a cup of tea provided by a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 daughter-in-law’. This is particularly so in circumstances where a household’s labour has recently been depleted through the death of an adult labourer or the loss of a daughter to another household in marriage. Through early marriage, peasant households aim to ensure a plentiful and steady supply of labour by timing their sons’ marriages and the birth of grandchildren so that potential labourers might be recruited into the labour force about the same time as the older generation or grandparents retire.38 In recent years the premium placed on family labour has been one of the major reasons why parents have continued to control marriage negotiations despite legislation to the contrary, and why the costs of 42 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA marriage are rising in rural areas. In many regions of China, marriage has become a very expensive transaction between two households in which the ‘wife-givers’ have to be compensated for the loss of a daughter’s labour by the ‘wife-takers’. Although the cost of daughters-in-law frequently requires either the accumulation of family savings to meet the cost of the son’s marriage or the marriage-out of a daughter in exchange for a daughter-in-law, it is a means by which a household can increase its labour by delaying family division after marriage so that the household expands to accommodate more than one nuclear unit. Analysts usually distinguish three different types of households ranging in complexity: the nuclear unit made up of parents and children; the stem or three-generational household of parents, one married son, his wife and children and any unmarried sons of daughters; and the larger, complex or joint family household in which more than one married son resides with the parents. According to the stage of their developmental cycle smaller households frequently expand in size and complexity, while larger and more complex households often divide to form a number of smaller nuclear or stem units. Traditionally it has been a mark of mobility for peasant households to expand their size and elaborate the family structure once there was sufficient wealth to support a larger and more complex household.39 The Chinese sociologist, C.K. Yang, likened the Chinese household to a balloon which was ever ready to inflate should the expansion of its economy allow this.40 In the 1950s, a number of novel demographic and economic factors occasioned the expansion of the traditionally small nuclear peasant household41 into a joint household, albeit often for a brief period, which, however short, offered a new and unique opportunity for the peasant household, even within the collective, to make use of its expanded labour resources to diversify the economy and accumulate resources.42 From past experience, then, it might be expected that the recent income-generating opportunities would encourage a peasant household to delay household division indefinitely, or at least for a longer period, now that one of traditional constraints on the expansion of a household - the size of the family estate - has been removed. More than in any other period this century, the majority of China’s peasant households have extended their estate to include lands (de facto ownership), residences, enterprises, tools of production, livestock and household effects that would provide a basis for supporting larger Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 numbers than hitherto. Thus, both the expansion of the family estate and the exacerbated demands on labour could ostensibly lead to the elabora­ tion of greater numbers of peasant households into complex and joint forms. However, and perhaps surprisingly given the rise in numbers of joint family households since the 1950s, there is little evidence that any such expansion has taken place. If anything, there seems to have been a reverse trend with evidence of declining household size in China’s villages. A number of recent surveys of household size have shown there to be a marked rise in the number of smaller, nuclear households of one and two generations, and a corresponding drop in the number of large, REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 43 multi-generational stem and joint households.43 Several factors may have encouraged this simplification of household structure, including the new degree of material wealth, and particularly of house-building. There has also been new evidence of increased opposition expressed both by members of the younger generation, who in a time-honoured manner object to the authority of the older generation, and by members of the older generation, and particularly grandmothers, who object to the burden of domestic labour required of a large household.44 However, it is difficult to measure the strength and scale of this new opposition and its effect on household division. Instead, it seems likely that one of the main factors contributing to the decrease in household size is the emergence of a new family form that both acquires the resources and yet escapes the disadvantages of the joint family household.

The Aggregate Family Instead of delaying division in order to maximize family labour resources, it may be that households now divide sooner rather than later; however, is not as complete as it was in the past when the peasant household was fully incorporated into the collective structures and economy. In other words, at the same time as a large and complex household divides into smaller units - and in many regions the enormous amount of new housing may have encouraged division - its members may continue to hold some property in common and share in economic ventures that include some form of joint investment and exchanges of labour. In addition, close-kin related households that divided in the past may now combine to invest in and develop on a joint basis common income-generating and other activities. The new and emerging family form is thus made up of a number of peasant households related by close kinship ties that have developed new or more intensified forms of associa­ tion and co-operation based on economic, social and political links and exchanges. The new family form is here termed an ‘ aggregate’ family. The adjective ‘aggregate’ has been selected because, although families are fragmented into separate households, it is the linkages or the relationships between them of co-operation and assocation which are of major importance to the analyst rather than concern with their internal divi­

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 sions, boundaries and fragmentation. In taking the single household as the unit of investigation, analysts frequently tend to isolate and conceptualize the household itself, and so minimize the links and exchanges between households and their importance for the household itself. In much of rural China in the future, it may well be that the important unit of analysis is not so much the individual household and its structure, function and boundaries as the aggregate family and the important kinship, neighbourhood and economic, social and political links and relations that underlie its formation and maintenance. The basis for co-operation and association between households within the aggregate family are, first of all, kinship and proximity of residence, and 44 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA secondly, the mobilization of resources to meet the new economic, social and political demands on the household that guarantee mutual obliga­ tions or claims for assistance. The aggregate family is first distinguished by its close patrilateral kinship ties, usually made up of brothers, fathers’ brothers and fathers’ brothers’ sons: that is, of those males descended from a common male antecedent and extending to some three generations. The co-operative kinship unit corresponding to this group is frequently identified by villagers and referred to as ‘own family’ (jiating or zijia) or ‘close kin’ (jinqin). Field investigation in one village in Guangdong province sug­ gested that villagers identified their ‘close kin’ (jinqin) as comprising brothers who had established separate households, fathers’ brothers and fathers’ brothers’ sons; moreover, a line was drawn between them and fathers’ fathers’ brothers and their sons, who were either designated as distant kin or not cited at all. The village itself was characterized by geographically concentrated clusters of agnatic kin, consisting of groups of either brothers or fathers’ brothers.45 In a village in Jiangsu province, residents placed much emphasis on the ‘family’ (zijia) as the co-operative kinship unit.46 It corresponded to a patrilineage, consisting of a group of men descended through males from a single male ancestor, plus their wives and unmarried sisters and daughters, and dispersed among several diffferent households; usually, however, there was a degree of residential proximity among close kin-related households. It is interesting to note that these clusters frequently correspond spatially to the primary units of kinship co-operation identified in field studies by anthropologists in villages before 1949. This is despite the fact that subsequently (until 1978) the economic and political significance of the relations within such units had been reduced, as the individual household was incorporated into larger economic and political structures: these units had remained the main focus of various ritual forms of co-operation, however. Since 1978, by contrast, relations between post-division and close kin-related households have been reinvested with a new economic and political significance. Although the new demand on the material and labour resources of the household may be beyond its capacity, a careful accumulation and distribution of resources may fall within the capacity of the aggregate

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 family. The economic process by which an aggregate family may be formed and then maintained can take one of several forms. An aggregate family may simply continue to operate a number of joint ventures that were developed by the father and his sons prior to the division of the household, and that continue to be jointly operated after the brothers have dispersed into separate households. The operation of these joint ventures may continue to necessitate common investment, management and exchanges of labour between fathers and sons and their household members. Alternatively, one household may initiate an economic activity that becomes so profitable that kin-related neighbouring households are encouraged either to contribute their resources to enlarging the venture, REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 45 or to set up their own parallel ventures; these also will perhaps involve a certain degree of co-operation at various points in the production, processing and marketing processes.47 A household might, for example, have cultivated mushrooms, raised rabbits or established small industries or services, and then have proceeded either to help close kin establish similar activities, or to incorporate them into the same venture. So far, individual households running successful and lucrative ventures have shown some degree of interest in aiding their kin-related and neighbouring households. There is some evidence to suggest that the richer and particularly specialized households, which have acquired outstanding wealth in the few short years since the economic reforms, have felt their position to be somewhat threatened by a change in government policy or the attitudes and actions of their fellow villagers.48 Rather than draw exaggerated attention to themselves as individuals richer than their neighbours, they would sooner forestall criticism and envy by sharing or pooling resources to develop the local economy. It may be that in the future the constituent households of an aggregate family may evolve a division of labour, whereby one household undertakes to cultivate the lands, another household promotes some kind of commodity production or service, and yet another provides transport, technical or commercial marketing expertise. In this way, the member households would be to a large degree interdependent and self-sustaining. However, if the aggregate family is more self-sufficient, it is also less likely to be spatially defined or its activities localized or bounded by the village.

Family Networks One of the most interesting repercussions of the recent rural reforms is the fragmentation of the village, with the result that its corporate interests, its politics and its productive capacity are now less important to the peasant household. The reduction in the political and economic role of the production team and higher collective has meant that the aggregate family has become less dependent on village facilities and the village govern­ ment. The fact that the aggregate family no longer finds it necessary or so advantageous to focus on inter-household relationships within the village, which in turn no longer possesses the means to meet its major needs, has turned the attention of the aggregate family beyond the village. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 So kinship ties outside the immediate village - especially those with relatives in small towns and urban centres - have become increasingly important over the past five years. It is interesting to note the growing tendency for peasants to invest in towns and urban centres. Some surveys within villages suggest that the highest earners in the villages are usually cadres, ex-cadres, demobilized soldiers, returned students or educated youth: precisely those individuals who were in a position outside the village to cultivate relations and alliances that give them access to raw materials, markets and market information.49 Thus many close-kin households located within cities, towns and distant villages have been to a 46 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA greater or lesser extent incorporated into the aggregate family economy to aid in the production and marketing processes, thus activating kinship ties outside the village and across urban and rural divides. However, because of the restrictions on migration in the past, many aggregate families have no existing extensive ties beyond the village, and they have commonly set out to establish them. There are several means by which aggregate families without extensive and useful kinship ties have established such relations outside the village. The first of these is the time-honoured device of negotiating the marriage of daughters so as to establish advantageous affinal alliances. The control of marriage by the older generation means that marriage negotiations can be employed to serve a similar economic and political purpose as pre­ existing agnatic kin ties, and there is some evidence that such puiposive alliances have increased in frequency over the past five years.50 Secondly, aggregate families may establish a new household to set up one of its members in a local small town or urban centre, thereby gaining access to a new set of resources and market outlets.51 So long as the aggregate family can provide grain for the subsistence of this town or urban house­ hold, there are now few strictures against the movement or permanent migration of family members to small towns and urban centres. They may find employment there in any of the expanding number of new collectively-operated or state enterprises, or they may establish their own individually-operated enterprises processing or marketing goods produced by the aggregate family in the village. On a more humorous note, it is likely that no urban kin with a ground floor flat out of whose windows produce or articles can be sold will be left unclaimed! It has already proved interesting to follow the movement of the labour force to the small towns and cities. In a survey of young tailors in Chengdu, it was discovered that the majority had come from rural villages of varying distance from the city. Each had been established, set up with tools of the trade and provided with grain by their families residing back in the village.52 Some of their families had even bought a house for them in Chengdu, where it was intended that other family members might also reside. Similarly, informal surveys of market stall personnel in the cities indicate that produce and articles of rural origin are often sold in markets by a representative of a group of closely kin-related households.53 Analysing the chain of migration will prove interesting over the next few Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 years, and it is likely that sometime in the future the study of intra-familial urban and rural relations will come to resemble the dispersed family characteristic of Republican China and Taiwan, as depicted by Lin Yueh Hwa in The Golden Wing for the Republican era54 and Myron Cohen in House United and House Divided for Taiwan.55 The elaboration of these family networks alters both the power relations in the village and the cohesion of the village itself. REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 47

Family and Village There is increasing evidence to suggest that peasant households them­ selves have perceived that the balance of power in both production and reproduction has been altered in their favour, and has increased their own bargaining power vis-a-vis local political and economic structures. There is also increasing evidence that these structures themselves have been affected by the fragmentation of the village in the economically developed regions of China as a result of the recent promotion of commodity production. For instance, there are several reports that peasants have disregarded reprimands for, say, damaging village property by local political leaders,56 or resisted their authority to implement unpopular policies such as family planning, because now ‘they cultivate the land and eat their own grain’.57 In some regions cadres, in the interests of maintaining their own authority, may either counter the reforms and impose fines and constraints on the independent development of house­ hold economies58 or take advantage of new positions as village brokers in procuring raw materials and markets. In response, households may mobilize the support of fellow members of the aggregate family in order to resist undue administrative pressures, fines or taxes that may be unlaw­ fully exacted from the richer households. Perhaps more than any other factor, it is their control over the land and its products that has provided peasant households with a new sense of independence, and this affects their relations with local cadres and the new political and economic structures. Even in poor regions, cadres report that they have had to take account of the new independence of the family, and redefine the ways in which they exercise their authority;59 in richer regions that very authority is threatened. One of the reasons peasant households may have acquired new opportunities to exercise their bargaining power in richer regions is that they are now required to operate in a local political arena characterized by new divisions and a greater competition for village and outside resources. One of the characteristics of rural villages in the past few years has been the exacerbation of existing income differentials and competi­ tion between neighbouring peasant households, accompanied by the fragmentation of the village. Although the range of per capita peasant household incomes has risen since 1978, there are still wide variations Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 both in absolute levels of income and in the percentage rise since 1978. In 1982, the government itself had foreseen that in the next few years 30-40 per cent of peasant households would become rich, 40-50 per cent would achieve considerable improvements, and 15-20 per cent of peasant households with little or no planning or business acumen would still encounter difficulties in meeting basic needs.60 In a similar vein the government has forecast that within any one community, it is likely that on average richer households will earn two to three times the income of poorer households; most of the income surveys within villages or counties suggest that there may have been a quantitative increase in the range of 48 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA income within regions.61 Qualitatively, too, there is evidence of a new degree of polarization within the village, suggesting that inter-household relations within the rural community may have deteriorated. There are a number of media reports that note that one of the main problems facing the rich households, and particularly specialized households in villages, has been threats to and attacks on their crops, property and person. In response, kin-related and neighbouring households have shared facilities and combined to protect their crops as they ripen in the fields. In the bid to acquire new resources, there is also increasing competition between households within the villages for their share of resources such as land and other productive tools and assets. As a result of divisions in collective assets and inputs, and the acquisition of individual respon­ sibility for production and remuneration accorded to output, there is a new measure of competition within the village for a share of resources. One or two studies of the allocation and distribution process suggest that former and present cadres are in a position to influence this process63 and thus favour their immediate kin with better quality lands and a larger share of fertilizer, seeds, capital and other inputs.64 Within the village the aggregate family, rather than the individual households, may provide a more effective power base in the competition for such resources, many of which are still scarce. In the past few years there have also been numerous reports of the use of wider kinship and clan ties in the settling of disputes over resources.65 The new local political and economic structures, many of which constitute new forms of self-management in the economy, political affairs and social services of the village, may provide yet another opportunity for aggregate families to expand their influence and further their own interests within the village and beyond. This applies especially to those that are large and affluent and have extensive ties outside the village. There is thus a complex social, economic and political process under way in Chinese villages: the increasing incorporation of the peasant household into aggregate families and their expanding involvement in the broader economy is leading to a weakening of local economic and political structures, accompanied by the fragmentation of village cohesion and solidarity. This, indeed, may come to be designated as one of the most significant changes to have been occurring in the People’s Republic of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 China in recent years.

NOTES

Dr Elisabeth Croll is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has undertaken regular investigation of village and family in the People's Republic of China, and her many books include Feminism and Socialism in China, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China, and Women and Rural Development in China.

1. This article rests on a documentary study of the appropriate resources and incorporates REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 49

observations and interview materials from several recent visits to China. 2. This section on political structures is based on extensive interviews in villages in Henan province, Feb. 1987; also, ‘More Township Governments and Villagers* Committees Established’, Beijing Review, 12 March 1984; ‘People’s Communes No Longer Govern*, ibid., 7 Jan. 1985. 3. For elaboration of this thesis, see Elisabeth Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 4. ‘More Township Governments ...’. 5. ‘Reform of the Rural Grassroots Political Power Structure’, Renmin Ribao (‘People’s Daily’), 14 Nov. 1986. 6. For articles on the rural responsibility system, see ‘Quota Fixing at Household Level’, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), 28 Dec. 1979; ‘Discussion on the Systems of Responsibility for Output Quotas by Production Team in Rural People’s Communes’, Jingji Yanjiu (‘Economic Research’), 20 Oct 1980; ‘Fixing Output Quotas for Individual Households’, ibid., 20 Jan. 1981; ‘Communist Party Central Committee Discusses Agriculture’, NCNA (New China News Agency), 19 May 1981; ‘Prospects for Development of Double-Contract System*, Renmin Ribao, 9 March 1982. 7. Xinhua News, 5 Aug. 1984; ‘Jilin Implements Contract Purchasing of Grain’, BBC SWB, 21 March 1985; ‘Heilongjiang Decision on Replacing Unified Purchases of Grain with Contracts’, ibid., 28 March 1985; Jingji Yanjiu, 20 Aug. 1984; Zhao Ziyang, ‘Reorganizing Agriculture and Loosening Price Control’, Xinhua, 30 Jan. 1985. 8. For discussion of domestic sidelines, see Elisabeth Croll, ‘The Promotion of Domestic Sideline Production in Rural China, 1978’ in Jack Gray and Gordon White (eds.), China's New Development Strategy (London: Academic Press, 1982), pp. 235-54; ‘Defence of Domestic Sideline Production*, BBC SWB, 27 April 1978; ‘The Encouragement of Domestic Sideline Production’, Jingji Yanjiu, 20 Aug. 1979. 9. NCNA, 14 June 1980; ibid., 16 Aug. 1980; ibid., 30 Aug. 1980. 10. Zhao Ziyang, op. cit.; Renmin Ribao, 1 Aug. 1983. 11. ‘Developing Specialized Households is a Major Policy’, Renmin Ribao, 23 Jan. 1984. 12. In a few regions the majority of peasant households are classified as specialized. For example, in one group of villages in Shanxi province only one-third of peasant households remained in diversified farming activities by 1983. The other two-thirds were equally divided between those specializing in industrial and sideline production, or providing services such as transport, commerce and water conservation, and those in commodity grain production. The latter third cultivated about 58 per cent of the responsibility lands allocated, and they supplied grain to most of the households specializing in services and in non-grain commodity production: see ‘Anhui Regula­ tions in Specialized Households’, BBC SWB, 28 April 1984; Nongye Jishu Jingji (Economics of Agricultural Production Technology), N o.ll, Nov. 1983; and ‘Expan­ sion of Rural Production*, BBC SWB, 1 Feb. 1984. 13. ‘More Township Governments and Villagers* Committees Established’, Beijing Review, 13 March 1984; A.R. Khan, ‘The Responsibility System and Institutional Change*, in K. Griffin (ed.), Institutional Reform and Economic Development in the Chinese Countryside (London: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 76-131; ‘Rural Specialized Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Households in Heilongjiang*, BBC SWB, 21 Jan. 1984; Hongqi (Red Flag), 28 March 1984. 14. See ‘Peasants’ Economic Co-Ordination Societies’, Renmin Ribao, 11 July 1985; Dai Yannian, ‘Beefing up Rural Co-operative System*, Beijing Review, 23 June 1986. 15. Ibid. 16. Renmin Ribao, 11 July 1985. 17. Ibid. 18. Dai Yannian, op. cit. 19. NCNA, 9 March 1982. 20. Dai Yannian, op. cit. 21. Results of 1983 Survey of the Rural Economy, Renmin Ribao, 1 April 1983. 22. Lee Travers, ‘Post-1978 Economic Policy and Peasant Income in China’, China 50 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

Quarterly, Vol. 98 (1984), pp. 241-60; see ‘Sample Survey of Peasant Household Income and Expenditures’, Beijing Review, 24 Oct. 1983; ‘Report on 1983 Economy’, BBC SWB, 1 May 1984; ibid., 29 April 1985. 23. Tongji (Statistics), 17 June 1984, pp. 12-13. 24. Ibid. 25. For discussion of this aspect see Elisabeth Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China; Elisabeth Croll, ‘Production versus Reproduction: A Threat to China’s Development Strategy’, World Development, Vol. 11, No.6, (1983). 26. Interviews in China, 1983-87. 27. Ibid. 28. For example, Liu Fanrong, ‘A Hill Family Goes All Out’, Women of China, July 1983, p.2. 29. ‘The Women’s Movement in China’, China Reconstructs, 1 March 1979; Women in China, 1 May 1985; Cheng Nai-xin, ‘Universal Nine-Year Education’, ibid., 1 Jan. 1986. 30. Liu Fanrong, op. cit.; Xiao Ming, ‘What the Responsibility System Brings’, Women of China, 1 Nov. 1983. 31. Li Zhenying, ‘On a Chicken Farm’, Women of China, 1 July 1983, p.2. 32. For a discussion of this pattern see Elisabeth Croll, Women in Rural Development: The People's Republic of China (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1979). 33. Xiao Ming, op. cit. 34. ‘Analysis of Reproduction of Rural Population’, Jingji Yanjiu, 20 June 1982. 35. Elisabeth Croll, ‘China Steps up One-Child Campaign*, People (London: Inter­ national Planned Parenthood Federation, Jan. 1984); Elisabeth Croll, ‘China Refines One-Child Family Policy’, ibid., May 1985. 36. Jingji Yanjiu, 20 June 1982. 37. See Croll, The Politics of Marriage. 38. W. Parish, ‘Socialism and the Chinese Peasant Family’, Journal of AsianStudies, VoLXXIV, No. 3 (1985), pp.613-30. 39. Members of peasant households seldom distinguish between fellow residents of the same household and their close kin who do not reside with the same household; they frequently refer to both as members of the ‘same’ family (jia or jiating). For analytical purposes this article follows the usual practice and uses the term ‘household’ to refer to members who are co-resident and ‘family* for close, genetically-related members of different households. 40. C.K. Yang, : The Family and the Village (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1959); I.B. Taeuber, ‘The Families of Chinese Farmers’, in M. Freedman (ed.), Family and Kinship in Chinese Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970), pp.63-86; Croll, The Politics of Marriage. 41. For discussion of household division prior to 1949, see M. Cohen, House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), p.59; Fei Hsiaotung, ‘Peasantry and Gentry’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LII (1946), pp. 1-17; M. Freedman, ‘The Chinese Domestic Family: Models’, Vie Congres international des sciences anthropologiques et ethnologiques, Vol.2, Part I (Paris, 1963), pp.97-100; Croll, The Politics of Marriage. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 42. Croll, The Politics of Marriage. 43. ‘Chinese Families Getting Smaller*, BBC SWB, 6 April 1984; ‘Nuclear Families Dominate Countryside’, Shehui, quoted in Beijing Review, 1 Jan. 1985. 44. Academy of Social Sciences, Attitudes of Young People in China to Family Formation (Paris: UNESCO, 1984); Wu Ming, ‘Some Older Women in China’s Countryside’, Women in China, May 1982. 45. Elisabeth Croll, ‘Chiang Village: A Household Survey’, China Quarterly, Dec. 1977, pp .786-814. 46. N. Gonzalez, ‘Household and Family in Kaixiangong: A Re-Examination*, China Quarterly, March 1983, pp.76-89. 47. ‘Shanxi Calls for Support for Specialised Households’, BBC SWB, 15 Feb. 1984; Renmin Ribao, 23 Jan. 1984; ‘CCP Document No.l in the Countryside’, BBC SWB, 16 REFORM AND THE VILLAGE ECONOMY IN CHINA 51

May 1984. 48. ‘Questions and Answers on Rural Work’, Shaanxi Ribao (Shaanxi Daily), 11 Feb. 1984. 49. ‘Assisting the Rural Poor’, Beijing Review, 19 Sept. 1983. 50. ‘Marriage Law and Socialist Morality*, BBC SWB, 4 Feb. 1982; ibid., 14 Dec. 1984; ‘Arranged Marriages’, Xinhua, 8 March 1985. 51. Interviews in China, 1984. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Lin Yueh Hwa, The Golden Wing (London: Routledge, 1948). 55. Cohen, op. cit. 56. John Gittings, ‘From Blossoms to Bricks’, China Now, Summer 1984, pp.3-6. 57. ‘Rural Population Policy’, BBC SWB, 18 Feb. 1982; ‘Population and Education in Family Planning Work’, Renmin Ribao, editorial, 29 Sept. 1981; BBC SWB, 24 July 1984. 58. ‘Relieving the Peasants* Burden’, Liaowang (Outlook), 19 Aug. 1985. 59. Interviews in Henan Counties and administrative villages, Feb. 1987. 60. NCNA, 9 March 1982. 61. ‘Responsibility System Revives Jiangsu Countryside’, Beijing Review, 28 Nov. 1983; interviews in Henan province, Feb. 1987. 62. ‘Protection of Specialized Households’, BBC SWB, 28 Feb. 1984. 63. ‘“Clan” System and Nepotism in Cadre Appointments’, Renmin Ribao, 18 March 1986; ibid., 18 April 1986. 64. A. Chan, R. Madsden, and J. Unger, Chen Village: The Recent History of a Peasant Community in Mao's China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984). 65. ‘Ending Clan Fights’, Nanfang Ribao (Southern Daily), 5 Nov. 1981; ‘Clan Strife’, BBC SWB, 5 Nov. 1981; ibid., 19 Nov. 1981; ibid., 23 March 1982; ibid., 5 April 1982; ibid., 2 July 1986. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 China: The New Inheritance Law and the Peasant Household

Delia Davin

The new Chinese inheritance law gives men and women equal inheritance rights. This article argues, however, that the stability of the peasant household economy would be threatened by any interference with the custom of patrilineal in­ heritance, and that it is therefore unlikely that this clause will be implemented in the countryside.

In the past decade there has been a concerted effort in China to construct the institutional framework now seen as appropriate to a modem state. Prominent among the reforms have been the codification of law, the extension of formal legal institutions, the political rehabilitation of the legal profession after its downgrading in the period of the Cultural Revolution, and attempts to heighten the general awareness of the law. Legal reformers frequently assert that the development of the rule of law, and of legal processes whose outcomes are predictable and fair, is necessary to the future economic development of the country. Not surprisingly, commercial law has received special attention in recent years, as has its implementation. There are other areas where law seems to play a different role and where adherence to the letter of the law is probably not expected, at least for the time being. Those who frame the law are aware that for many in China, and especially for the four-fifths of the population that is still rural, custom is likely to influence behaviour at least as strongly as law. This is particularly true in such areas as family relations, marriage, divorce and inheritance. Inheritance is a vital part in the Chinese family system, for property usually passes between close kin, reinforcing kinship bonds and shaping

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the relationships between the individuals involved. It is hardly surprising that the state’s attempts to intervene in this process are sometimes ineffective; they are none the less highly significant. China as a socialist state is committed to upholding certain ideals, amongst which is the equality of men and women. However, as the subordination of women is an essential characteristic of the rural family system, attempts to uphold women’s rights have often proved to be socially and economically disruptive. By enshrining equal rights for women in its constitution, and by including them in the legal code, China is able to retain its socialist credentials while officials can frankly admit the obvious truth that, for the CHINA: THE NEW INHERITANCE LAW 53 moment at least, women are far from achieving equality. Thus certain laws have a special role; instead of regulating the way people actually live, they represent the way the legislators think in a better world they would live, and, for the moment, they provide a sort of code of ‘good practice’.

The Growing Significance of Property and Inheritance in Contemporary China Since 1978, with the waning of the collective system in China, the rural household has once more become a major unit of production and ownership. Individuals and family groups are able to accumulate private property on a scale quite impossible in the earlier decades of the People’s Republic. In part this is simply the result of greater prosperity. Where 20 years ago, ordinary people reckoned wealth in terms of quilts, bicycles, watches, vacuum flasks and fountain pens, many now aspire to own such consumer items as transistor radios, televisions, rice-cookers and even refrigerators and washing machines. Much new private housing has been built in the countryside, and even in the city the previously stagnant stock of private housing is now growing. All this is of course a natural accompaniment of economic growth: as people’s incomes rise, they are able to own more. However, the increase in private property has an even more significant side. The new economic reforms allow and indeed necessitate the private ownership of quite significant means of production. In both city and countryside there is now private ownership of small plant and machinery, vehicles for haulage, and at a more mundane level, sewing machines, knitting machines and equipment for other crafts and trades. In agriculture privately-owned property includes tractors and other agricultural machinery, and tools, draught animals and other stock. A contract or contracts may also be important among family or individual assets. Both agricultural and non-agricultural production is now commonly carried out under contract. The party to this contract is most often the head of household acting on behalf of his household, but may also be either an individual or a group of individuals. Contracts are not themselves defined as property, and they are not supposed to be bought or sold, although a market in them certainly exists. They are of great importance to the rural family economy as they give use-rights to the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 land in an arrangement not unlike a lease, and, in the case of non- agricultural production, give the small entrepreneur a guaranteed outlet for his goods. Household contracts are expected to be taken over by the next genera­ tion when the household head dies. The law also allows contracts made with individuals to be passed on, but this is conditional, and is not referred to as inheritance. The present leadership in China sees property rights guaranteed by the state as essential to its current strategy for economic growth. It is anxious to condemn the attacks on property that took place during the Cultural 54 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Revolution, and to dissociate itself from any notion that property is theft, or even bourgeois. In keeping with the regime’s proclaimed interest in a codified legal system, this preoccupation is increasingly reflected in law. The 1982 constitution stipulated: ‘The law protects the right of citizens to own lawfully-earned income, savings, houses and other lawful property’ and ‘the state protects by law the right of citizens to inherit private property’.2 A new Inheritance law, the first such law of the People’s Republic, came into force in October 1985.3 As inheritance customs and regulations affect and are affected by kinship structures, the household economy and the relative treatment of men and women within the society, the Inheritance law has extensive implications for the way Chinese society functions. The focus in this article is on inheritance law in relationship to the peasant household. It is claimed that the new law will support both the stability of the household economy and women’s inheritance rights, yet in rural society there is a clear contradiction between the two. A woman’s inheritance rights, if implemented, would produce the transfer of her share of property from the family of her birth to her husband’s family, with effects that could be highly disruptive to the economic activities of the former. The demise of the collective system in agriculture and the devolution of responsibility for production to the peasant household have strengthened the state’s vested interest in the stability of the peasant household economy, so this is potentially a serious problem. The law is also of topical interest because it attempts to deal with the problem of the care and support of the elderly. China’s draconian family planning policies will soon produce an ageing population, and the subject of providing for the old has been widely discussed. A wish to protect the state from having to assume this huge financial burden is reflected in the inheritance law’s provision for rewards to family members or non-related ‘elective heirs’ who undertake the support of an old person.

The 1985 Law in Summary The new law defines heritable property as including the citizen’s income, houses, savings, articles for daily use, trees, livestock, and poultry, means of production as permitted by law and rights in copyrights and patents. As Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 to contracts, it stipulates that an heir may continue working under the same contract ‘where the law permits’. Presumably it is envisaged that individual contracts may themselves contain clauses allowing or disallow­ ing this possiblity of passing them on. The law recognizes two classes of natural heirs: first-class heirs, who are spouses, sons and daughters, and parents; and second-class heirs, who are brothers and sisters, paternal grandparents and maternal grandparents. Second-class heirs inherit only when there are no first-class heirs. The law prohibits discrimination between the sexes in the right to inherit. Although generally speaking heirs in the same class inherit equally, an CHINA: THE NEW INHERITANCE LAW 55 heir who has supported the deceased person may be specially favoured, while the heir who has failed to support the deceased may be disadvantaged or disqualified: an heir who has difficulty in earning a living must be taken care of. Someone who would not normally be an heir, but who has supported the deceased or been supported by them, must get an appropriate amount. The law grants considerable testamentary powers to the citizen, who may use a will to discriminate between heirs-at-law or to benefit a legatee who would have had no inheritance rights had the citizen died intestate. Citizens may sign an agreement under which they leave property to an individual or a collective unit in exchange for support and assistance. Family property and conjugal property both receive special considera­ tion. Widows and widowers retain their rights over inherited property even in the event of remarriage. The division of the heritable estate must be favourable to the needs of production. Both the heir and the legatee may waive their rights if they so wish. Some of these points will be discussed in greater detail later. This summary is intended only to show that the inheritance law, like other laws of the People’s Republic of China, lays down general principles, but in many areas leaves matters extraordinarily vague. It is obvious that at times even some of the principles of this law are likely to conflict and that disputes could arise for which the law gives no guidance. Those who have to implement the law in China can in fact refer not only to the law itself, but to explanatory commentaries - a genre that plays an interesting role in the Chinese legal system, as in other communist systems. Commentaries are of course written by people with a certain amount of authority, but they go in and out of print and have a briefer life than the law itself. Divorce is a good example: there were marked differences in the ease of obtaining a divorce between 1950 and 1980, yet during all this time it was governed by the 1950 marriage law. Changes in policy on divorce and in the interpreta­ tion of the law could be made known to legal workers, officials and the population at large by commentaries or question-and-answer materials.4

Property and Inheritance in Traditional China

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 An important prerequisite to understanding many of the formulations of the new law and some of the problems likely to be encountered in implementing it in rural China is a knowledge of pre-1949 laws and customs in relation to property and inheritance. It is not easy to give a brief account of these. Law, which probably mainly reflected and influenced the practice of the well-off, did not always coincide with custom, by which the mass of the people lived. In custom, of course, one finds significant regional variations and variation across time. None the less certain broad generalizations are possible and may be useful. Both custom and law recognized ownership by the lineage, by the family and by the individual. In rural society, the most important form of 56 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA property was family property (jiating gongtong caichan or jiachan). All members of a family that shared a common budget had a right to use family property and to live on the income generated from it. However, the right to a share of the property was limited to the male members of the family.5 This became apparent at the time of family division, an event that occurred usually once in a generation on the marriage of a young man or the death of an older man with adult sons. A large household would split into two or more units, each consisting of a couple and their young children if they had them. Elderly parents would reside with one of their sons and his wife. Thus household division usually produced one three- generation household and one or more two-generation ones, each with its own property and its own budget. At the time of a household division, the adult males of the old household - that is, the brothers and their father if still living - each received a share of the family property. The housing, land, domestic and agricultural equipment and so on thus distributed provided the essentials of life to the newly formed households. A widowed mother of the older generation would normally be provided for by a co­ resident son who might receive extra property in recognition of his responsibility. If she set up an independent household, she would receive a share of the property, but it would of course revert to her sons at her death. A widowed daughter-in-law might successfully claim a share of the property in her capacity as representative of her late husband, but this was normally permitted only if she was not expected (or required) to remarry, and she would in effect be holding the property in trust for her sons. Daughters had no right in normal circumstances to a share of family property. Only in the case of girls for whom an uxorilocal marriage had been arranged would inheritance pass through them to their sons, who became, under this arrangement, the continuation of their maternal grandfather’s line. As long as a family group shared a common budget, the earnings of each of the male members of the household were supposed to go into that budget Even when a member of the household lived apart and had a separate income, until division took place he was supposed, in theory at least, to plough it back in. Any attempt at private accumulation could cause great resentment, although the system did begin to break down in some areas well before 1949, under the effects of migration and urbaniza­ tion.6 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 In rural society sources of legitimate private property were few. One was the wife’s dowry which was not supposed to be pooled but was reserved for the use of the couple. In cases of extreme need, however, the rule was doubtless ignored; after all, even the person of the wife herself could be pawned or sold by her husband - a transaction forbidden by law but not particularly rare in practice. Shuzo Shiga asserts that women were allowed to keep any income that they themselves were able to earn, since they were held to have fulfilled their duty to the household through household work.7 He therefore regards their incomes as a source of private property. This does not tally either with other accounts of rural CHINA: THE NEW INHERITANCE LAW 57 life, or with the obligation felt by women who become workers away from the home in various Chinese societies to remit a considerable part of their earnings to their families.8 It is certainly clear that women’s rights to property in traditional China were insignificant and that this arose from their peculiar relationship to the patrilineal family. Unlike their brothers and husbands, they moved between families and could not therefore be used for the transmission of family property from one generation to another within the same family. In theory, family property was controlled by the family head, usually the father, on behalf of the other members. He had to agree to the division of the property that took place when the decision was made to split a common budget household into two or more household units, an event, as we have seen, usually precipitated by the marriage of a brother, the death of a father or friction within the household. Again, in theory, the father could not bar any son from his share of the property, nor was he supposed to distribute the property inequitably among his sons. In practice, a strong father might break such rules, and even in theory his other powers were considerable. He could choose to consult his sons on the sale or purchase of land, but was not bound to do so; he could refuse a division requested by his sons; and he took the ultimate decision on large purchases and items of expenditure like bride-price and dowry. It is hardly surprising, when this degree of control over the family property was exercised by the father, that it was often referred to as the ‘father’s property’. The confusion was exacerbated by the fact that household division frequently took place on the death of the father when the process might easily be misunderstood as the inheritance by the sons of their father’s property.9

Forms of Property and the 1985 Law If we switch back from the complexities of pre-modem law and practice to what we might expect to be the more clear-cut situation today, the new law can be seen to have some odd omissions and areas of vagueness that will make its application in rural China far from straightforward. The new law deals basically in terms of individual property rights and gives scant attention to the traditional property system. Conjugal property is dealt with in Article 26, which provides that half the property jointly owned by a married couple shall be reserved to the surviving spouse, while Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 half is treated as the heritable estate of the deceased to be divided among the heirs. The same article contains the only reference in the new law to the existence of family property (jiating gongyou caichan): ‘If the estate is part of family property, the property of other family members shall be taken out first when the estate is to be divided. ’ Curiously, no definition of family property is provided by the law, nor is any guidance given as to which family members have rights in it or how it is to be divided. Given the persistence and indeed the recent strengthening of the peasant family as a property-owning group, these omissions seem bound to make the settle­ ment of inheritance disputes in the countryside more difficult. 58 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

Communist Policy and Women’s Property and Inheritance Rights Women’s property rights have been an area of concern for the communist party since the days of the first Chinese soviets. All communist land laws from the 1920s to 1950 stipulated that women were entitled to their share of land, and most communist marriage laws since the first in 1931 have included clauses dealing with women’s property rights.10 Inheritance has not often been a subject for legislation in communist history, although in the 1940s the liberated areas of both Shaan-Gan-Ning and -Cha-Ji (controlled by the CCP throughout the anti-Japanese war and the Civil War) produced regulations guaranteeing women’s inheritance rights.11 There was no inheritance law in the People’s Republic prior to 1985, but printed legal commentaries on inheritance and the courts themselves upheld the principle that there should be no discrimination between the sexes in matters of inheritance.12 Both the 1950 and the 1980 marriage laws laid down that husband and wife had equal rights in the possession and management of property, and the right to inherit from each other. They also stipulated that children and parents had the right to inherit from each other.1’ In practice, rural women continued to have a raw deal in regard to both property and inheritance rights. Campaigns in the early 1950s to enforce women’s rights to land, and to allow wives who wished to divorce their husbands and take their share of land with them, resulted in violence on an enormous scale and the murder of tens of thousands of women.14 Once land and the major means of production were collectivized, rather less was at stake, but peasant women still came off badly in the event of divorce or remarriage after widowhood. Although in the course of their married lives they quite clearly contributed to the accumulation of such family property as new housing, consumer durables and savings, they forfeited all right to it when they left the household and were allowed to take with them only personal possessions such as clothing and jewellery.15 Daughters fared no better with their natal family estate, despite the equal rights with their brothers that the law accorded them. As virilocal marriage remained the norm, to concede rights in family property to an unmarried woman would have meant allowing her to take it with her when she left to become a member of another family in another village. Her parents and her brothers would obviously oppose any such arrangements Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 and even local cadres were unlikely to uphold the woman’s rights if she went so far as to appeal to them, since such a transfer would represent a loss of resources to their work-team or brigade. In most cases women themselves probably felt they had no claim.16 Surveys of court records do reveal cases in which daughters successfully asserted their rights. A study of 135 inheritance cases adjudicated by courts in north China in the 1950s showed that the children of the deceased were by far the most numerous of the litigants, and that 62.5 per cent of them were daughters. The report insists: ‘The court always protected the rights of inheritance of the children; even if the daughters were married CHINA: THE NEW INHERITANCE LAW 59 they were classified as first-order heirs’.17 Revealingly, however, most of these daughters were said to be contesting their inheritance not with their brothers but with male cousins, the nephews of the deceased who under the law did not enjoy the status of even second-order heirs. Unfortunately the report is very much a summary and omits the detailed information that would have made it really useful. However, from what it does provide we can infer two characteristics of a daughter’s ability to inherit. First, the fact that there were fewer disputes between brothers and sisters probably means that daughters were unlikely even to attempt to assert their rights of inheritance when they had brothers. And second, a daughter’s right to inherit was still so little accepted that nephews found it worthwhile to attempt to assert their claims to an uncle’s estate over those of a deceased man’s daughter. Other reports of legal judgements make it clear that the fulfilment of legal responsibilities towards deceased parents normally had a bearing on decisions taken in court on inheritance. Thus, a daughter who had contri­ buted to the support of her aged parents had, if she contested it, a good chance of receiving at least a share of the inheritance. In the far more common case where their support had been left to her brothers, it would be more difficult to assert her rights. In most cases she would waive them.

The 1985 Law and Inheritance by Females The new inheritance law appears at first sight to make a fresh assault on the practice of patrilineal inheritance. It explicitly asserts the equal rights of daughters and sons rather than using the collective ‘children’.18 Com­ mentaries on the law call attention to this assertion and spell out that daughters remain first-class heirs even when they have married out and gone to live elsewhere.19 Widowed daughters-in-law and widower sons-in- law are given the right to inherit from their parents-in-law provided they have supported them, and widows and widowers are first-order heirs of their deceased spouses. Moreover, Article 30 gives them control over their property when they remarry after their spouse’s death - a clause specifically intended to protect the widow who remarries. It requires little thought, however, to realize that in the majority of cases thorough implementation of a daughter’s inheritance rights could disrupt the new household-based economy, just as in the past it would Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 have disrupted peasant land-tenure arrangements. In practical terms, in a case where a man left a widow, two sons, and two daughters already married away, and the property he formerly controlled was treated as family property, one quarter of it would be considered his heritable estate of which two-fifths, that is one-tenth of the total family property, would go to his married daughters. In other possible scenarios, for example when daughters were treated as having a direct claim on the family estate, or where there was no surviving widow or where the property was treated as conjugally rather than family-owned, the daughters would stand to inherit more. 60 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA It is obvious that the brothers are likely to oppose any of these scenarios if they can see a way of doing so. The loss of even a tenth share of a family property consisting of housing, machinery, stock and working capital will be deleterious to family enterprises. In many cases the property will be difficult to divide and of little use to a woman in another village. Even commutation to cash could put the household in debt for years or endanger the running of its economy. Another solution, sometimes employed when it proved impossible to divide a family business between brothers, would be to persuade absent daughters ^to leave their part of the inheritance in the family property and treat it as shares on which interest is paid.20 In the majority of cases, however, it seems reasonable to assume that daughters will continue to be deprived of their inheritance. The new law contains several points that have been used against their inheritance rights in the past and could be similarly used again. First, under Article 13, the rights of heirs are affected by the role they have played towards the deceased. Thus an heir who has provided for his aged parent or has lived with him or her may get extra when the estate is divided. An heir who could have provided for the deceased but has failed to do so gets less, or none at all. As we have seen, in earlier court cases, those women who had provided for their parents had the best chance of asserting their inheritance rights. In the majority of cases, however, once daughters have moved out of their natal families, parents expect to live with and rely on their sons, who can then use this stipulation in the law to challenge their sisters’ rights. After consultation, the heirs may agree to divide an estate unequally between themselves (Article 13), while under Article 25, heirs may waive their rights to an inheritance. The evidence we have is that prior to the introduction of the new law, sisters did normally waive their rights in favour of their brothers. These articles will further encourage such action by giving it a recognized basis in law. Article 29 requires that ‘division of heritable estate shall be favourable to production and the needs of daily life and shall not harm the usefulness of the estate’. This again is a stipulation that could be used against the inheritance rights of women resident in other villages. Finally, the new law gives strong support to the right of the citizen to dispose of his or her property by means of a will. A testator may bequeath Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 property to persons other than the legal heirs, the main limitation being that a sufficient share of the heritable estate must be reserved for heirs who cannot work or have no source of income. This clause would seem to allow a parent the testatory power to disinherit daughters in favour of sons. China has a weak tradition of testatory inheritance, and it seems unlikely that millions of peasants are going to start writing wills, but the strategy may well be used to preserve the integrity of small family businesses in circles where the idea of written legal documents has taken hold. CHINA: THE NEW INHERITANCE LAW 61

Care-Legacy Agreements Article 31 provides another way for the property-owner to choose who is to inherit. It allows the citizen to sign a binding agreement with an individual who agrees to support and assist the citizen during his or her lifetime and to bury him or her after death in exchange for a bequest. This is an interesting development. Inheritance in China has customarily taken place between close kin. The care-legacy agreement encourages in certain circumstances the selection of non-kin as an heir, possibly even at the expense of close kin who might otherwise have inherited but who are unable or unwilling to assist an old person. However, the measure is not such a shaip break with custom as it might as first appear. People without any children, or without satisfactory ones, in traditional China sometimes adopted children, or even adults, to support them in old age. Article 31 also allows for similar agreements to be made between the citizen and a collective unit whereby the citizen wills property to the unit in exchange for support, assistance and burial. This represents a clarification of the former system under which the destitute received the ‘five guarantees’: food, shelter, fuel, clothing and burial from the collective. After death the disposal of the property of such people was often disputed between the collective and close relatives.21 Care-legacy agreements thus legitimize the creation of a surrogate filial relationship in which obligations and rewards are defined by contract. They allow old people without support to purchase it, and as far as the state is concerned they provide a private self-financing solution for the care of isolated old people who own enough property to tempt a ‘carer’ or supporter. This last condition does not necessarily confine the agreements to the well-off: many otherwise poor old people in the Chinese country­ side actually own their own housing. The growth in the numbers of elderly people, and the ramifications of the single-child family, have produced a heightened concern for the elderly in China.22 The usefulness of care-legacy agreements to the state and to old people in difficulties is quite apparent. Its effects on women as daughters will not be beneficial. It is old people without sons who are most likely to resort to such agreements. Such old people will not necessarily be childless, but both a lack of control over income and the weight of social custom make it difficult for married daughters to divert resources from Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 their in-laws’ households in order to give financial support to their own parents, while distance may preclude regular practical help. In such cases daughters will inevitably be disinherited in the interests of the contractual ‘carer’. If the new law does not succeed in guaranteeing women inheritance rights in their natal families, is it likely to strengthen their rights to property and inheritance in their husbands’ families? In the collective economy of the Chinese peasant family, these rights are truly tested only when a woman is widowed or at the time of divorce. As we have seen, the inheritance law defines half of the conjugal property as belonging to the 62 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA widow. She is a joint heir of the other half, together with her children and her husband’s parents. A widowed daughter-in-law becomes a first-order heir to her parents-in-law if she has fulfilled her duty of caring for them. Although this insistence on the woman’s rights in her own person is alien to Chinese custom, the practice implied by the law is not necessarily so; in the past, if she had inherited, it would probably have been as the representative of her dead husband, or of her young sons. The point is that in such situations when a woman gains some property she does not take it away from the family. It is remarriage and divorce that are likely to produce the real conflict over the property rights of the wife or daughter-in-law, because both of these events should, if the law is complied with, result in her taking away property regarded as belonging to the family. If any attempt is made to implement the law on women’s rights, it is reasonable to expect it to be in such cases. A majority of families have daughters and the right of the daughter to patrimony is potentially a highly disruptive issue, simply because of the numbers it would involve. Far fewer peasant families are directly affected by widows who remarry or women who wish to divorce. It is not yet clear, however, that any such effort will be made. The inheritance law was drawn up primarily in order to promote a clear and stable system of property and inheritance which it was felt would encourage hard work, high levels of economic activity and the accumulation of wealth. It is probable that a large number of those responsible for implementing it would see women’s rights as a disruptive threat to all this. As households become wealthier and are permitted to own as private property assets that would formerly not have been privately owned, the injustice of women’s lack of rights of ownership or inheritance over the property they have helped to build up is becoming more blatant. In the household-based economy they have a use-right to the means of produc­ tion that is dependent on their relationship to men, and this ceases if they leave the household. Strong or fortunate women, especially those who play a leading role in the economy of specialized households, may be able to use the law to assert their rights. The majority, however, are forced into a position of dependence by the whole structure of the peasant household. That structure has been strengthened by the economic reforms and it is not likely that legislation alone will help them. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016

NOTES

Delia Davin is a lecturer in social and economic history at the University of York. Among her publications are Womanwork: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China (1976), and various articles on Chinese society. She is the editor and translator, with W.J.F. Jenner, of Chinese Lives, a volume of 60 life histories collected by the Chinese writers Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye (forthcoming).

1. Ramon H. Myers, ‘Price Reforms and Property Rights in Communist China since 1978*, Issues and Studies, Vol.21, No.10 (1985), p.20. CHINA: THE NEW INHERITANCE LAW 63

2. Constitution of the People's Republic of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1983), Art. 13. 3. Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Jichengfa (‘Inheritance Law of the People’s Republic of China*), adopted at the third session of the Sixth National People’s Congress, April 1985, in Zhonghua renmin gongheguo zhongyao falu xuanbian (‘Selected Major Laws of the PRC’) (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1986). 4. See Elisabeth Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and Delia Davin, Womanwork: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), Ch.3. 5. Shuzo Shiga, ‘Family Property and the Law of Inheritance in Traditional China’, in David C. Buxbaum (ed.), Chinese Family Law and Social Change (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1978). 6. Olga Lang, Chinese Family and Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), p.234; Martin Yang, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), p.234. 7. Shuzo Shiga, p. 112; see also Yang, p.76. 8. Lang, p.49. 9. Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society (London: Athlone Press, 1966), pp.53-5; Shuzo Shiga, pp. 127-50. 10. M.J. Meijer, Marriage Law and Policy in the Chinese People’s Republic (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1971). 11. ‘Nuzi caichan jichen quan tiaoli’ (‘Regulations on Women’s Property and Rights of Inheritance’), in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengce tiaoli huiji (‘Collection of Political Measures and Regulations of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region’) (no publisher, 1949); Administrative Council of the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Area, Xianxingfa huiji (‘Collection of Laws in Force’) (no publisher, 1945). 12. For example, Shi Huaipi, Luelun woguo jicheng zhidu de jiben wenti (‘Brief Discussion of Basic Problems in our System of Inheritance’) (Beijing: Falu chubanshe, 1958), p.18. 13. Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1950), Arts. 10, 12 and 14; Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1982), Arts. 13 and 18. 14. Davin, p.87. 15. William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1978), p. 195. 16. See, for example, ‘Planning her Family’, an oral history collected from a Sichuan peasant woman in Zhang Xinxin; also Sang Ye, Chinese Lives (Beijing Ren), English edition edited by Delia Davin and W.J.F. Jenner (London: Macmillan; New York: Pantheon, forthcoming). 17. Quoted by and discussed in Meijer, pp.324—31. 18. Inheritance law, Art. 9. 19. Tang Dehua and Peng Shixiang, Jichengfa jianghua (‘Talks on the Inheritance Law’) (Beijing: Beijing Publishing House, 1985), p.42. 20. For a discussion of these possibilities dating from the 1950s, see Meijer, p.338. 21. Meijer, p.261. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 22. See Deborah Davis-Friedmann, Long Lives: Chinese Elderly and the (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). North Korea: The End of the Beginning

Aidan Foster-Carter

In surveying the condition of North Korea in the late 1980s, 40 years after the state’s foundation, it is argued that, despite its initial dynamism and considerable social change, Kim D Sung’s regime is now seriously stagnating. The economy suffers from deficiencies in planning, organization, technology, consumer goods and foreign trade. In international relations, friends have been handled more skilfully than enemies, and North Korea has clearly now lost in the competition with the South. The polity and society, in a sense a reductio ad absurdum of tendencies visible in other communist countries (but mostly in the past), are stifled by extreme formalism and the cult of the personality. While this has produced a certain kind of stability in Kim’s lifetime, it has also prevented much- needed reform, and will pose huge problems for his successor - who may not be Kim Jong II.

In the late 1980s, North Korea1 is an anomaly whether compared with other communist states, or in its regional context, or indeed by global standards. For one thing, Kim II Sung is the world’s longest serving political leader, having been in effective power since 1945. North Korea is thus the only established communist regime other than Cuba still ruled by its original founding leader. Moreover, after Mongolia it is the second oldest communist regime in Asia. As a communist-party state North Korea is characterized by its personality cult, the predominance of the state over civil society, and the relative absence of economic reform. Notoriously, and by its own account,2 Kim II Sung’s regime has carried forward to a unique degree the totalitarian impulse implicit in Marxism-Leninism, to the point where the North Korean state has practically swallowed up civil society. Closely related to this is a personality cult of gargantuan proportions, embracing

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 not only Kim II Sung but also his father, mother, first wife and (since 1980) his son and heir Kim Jong II. If all goes according to plan, North Korea will thus become the first (although not the only modem Asian republic) to experience a dynastic transfer of power. North Korea, in contrast to other communist-party states, almost wholly lacks a commitment to economic reform. At a time when not only China but Gorbachev’s USSR and most recently Vietnam are engaged in far-reaching economic overhaul, things in by contrast appear static indeed. Toes have been put gingerly (and quietly) into the water, but North Korea has not plunged in, nor is it likely to do so under the present regime. This is not to say that it does not need to. On the contrary, despite NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 65 Pyongyang’s incessant Panglossian paeans about living in a paradise on earth, it is clear that the regime’s initial economic dynamism has long since exhausted itself. This makes North Korea in turn a regional anomaly. It is perhaps unfortunate, for Kim II Sung, that his stagnating kingdom sits in the midst of the most dynamic part of the global economy. By other Third World standards, North Korea’s performance remains moderately respectable. Yet to be in north-east Asia, on the eve of the 1990s, and unable to produce a silicon chip4 is problematic indeed. In particular - and quite crucially, in terms of Pyongyang’s own priorities - this indicates that by the fifth decade of Korea’s division the North has definitively and unequivocally lost its competitive battle with the South. A further anomaly might perhaps seem more positive. Both in its regional context and within the communist world, North Korea is very much its own master. It has remained firmly neutral in the Sino-Soviet dispute, a unique accomplishment among Asian communist-party states. It has never joined CMEA, and no foreign troops have been stationed on North Korean soil since 1958. Among communist countries only Albania has shown similar independence - but only in recent years, and rather negatively, in contrast to Pyongyang’s formally good relations with both Moscow and Beijing. Regionally, meanwhile, North Korea’s relatively autonomous (some might call it maverick) status constitutes an important asymmetry, in comparison to South Korea’s close relations with the United States. Is there a pattern to these anomalies? It is important to specify their parameters accurately. Hereditary succession in a republic has non­ communist precedents, some of them close at hand - in India, in Taiwan, perhaps soon in Singapore. As this example suggests, comparative analysis may help avoid the trap of too readily conceding North Korea’s ‘uniqueness’. While nowhere else in the world today is quite like Pyongyang, neither is it a complete ‘one-off’. In this sense, North Korea today represents a reductio ad absurdum of tendencies that are neither peculiar to it, nor perhaps all wholly negative in themselves. Both in its origins and in its accomplishments, Kim II Sung’s regime is comparable to other communist-party states, especially those of Eastern Europe. Like them, it obtained state power through the presence of the Soviet army

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 (even though this crucial fact has been downplayed subsequently).5 Like them, too, its historical role has essentially been to carry out forced-march industrialization and primitive accumulation, in a context where these processes were previously but little advanced. Even the extent of and the cult of the personality have their precedents - in Stalin and Stalinism, which is surely Kim II Sung’s abiding role model. What is distinctive about North Korea is, first, that it adopted Stalin’s system while avoiding (or indeed escaping) Stalin’s embrace. Considering that in 1945 the young Kim II Sung’s almost sole claim to fame was that he was the Russians’ man, his subsequent independence of action - first clearly manifest in June 1950 - is the more 66 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA remarkable. (A limited parallel, but only as regards foreign policy, would be Romania’s Ceausescu.) Most striking of all, however, is the fact that in the late 1980s North Korea is still ploughing a furrow now abandoned by almost all other regimes that were once somewhat comparable to it. (Again, only Albania and Romania spring to mind.) In the 1950s, Kim II Sung’s regime did not seem especially different - economically, politically, ideologically - from many others in the communist ‘bloc’. Thirty years later, by contrast, Pyongyang is very much the odd one out, and not only because it is still playing an old song, while everyone else in the band has changed the tune. Other communist-party states have changed, but North Korea has not stood still either; but while they have got better, it has got worse. Kim II Sung, having divested himself equally of Soviet control and domestic critics, has in the past 20 years cemented a system that patently finds it impossible to institute the changes it knows it requires increasingly desperately. In this sense, Kim II Sung has literally lived too long, and his once dynamic regime is now a dead weight. Further advance, economic or political, is mostly unlikely in his lifetime. Once he is gone, almost anything might happen - despite his strenuous efforts to tie up the succession in advance.

The Korean Background While this is no place for a detailed ,6 some aspects of the Korean background are essential for understanding North Korea today. The sense of being a small country, chronically prey to the designs of powerful neighbours, is one of them. Korea is not only relatively small (more so in area than population), but is also a very old and unusually homogeneous nation; there are virtually no ethnic minorities. Some form of Korean identity goes back at least 2,000 years, and most of the peninsula was unified by a d 668. Formally a tributary of China, Korea came under Chinese cultural influence, especially neo-Confucianism in the last dynasty, the Yi or Choson (1392-1910). Yet Korea always retained a distinct cultural identity, often symbolized by its language and alphabet. The latter was devised in the 1440s, and is now used on its own by North Korea, while the South

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 employs Chinese characters as well. By the late nineteenth century, Korea was firmly in decline.7 Like Japan, its rulers attempted a policy of seclusion (earning the soubriquet of ‘hermit kingdom’). Unlike Japan, however, Korea did not use its isolation to buy time and modernize itself. As a result, by the turn of the century it was clear that whoever established control of north-east Asia would dominate Korea. Having defeated China in 1894-95 and in 1904, Japan gained de facto power in Korea in 1905, formally annexing it in 1910. The four decades of Japanese rule, up to 1945, form a crucial basis for understanding both North and South Korea.8 Psychologically, it was experienced as a massive humiliation: Japan was a neighbour, an old NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 67 enemy, seen as an inferior who had acquired (Chinese) civilization via Korea. There were also more material effects. Japan’s colonial rule was ‘late’ and systematic, and experienced the typical impact of the spread of capitalist relations of production in a highly concentrated form. Most peasants were reduced to tenancy, often in dire poverty. Many lost their lands, and were proletarianized into the mines and industries that the Japanese developed, especially in northern Korea, which was rich in minerals. There was little effective resistance to the Japanese. Factional conflict was the hallmark of Korean , both between and within Left and Right.9 In the Comintern, Korea was a byword for factionalism, and several attempts to organize a communist party were rapidly infiltrated and broken up by the Japanese authorities. Outside Korea, activities included the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai (whose most prominent member was ); and small skirmishes with the Japanese in , in which the young Kim II Sung played a minor part. When the liberation came, in 1945, it was not accomplished by Koreans, and it had a wholly unforeseen twist. Japan having collapsed more rapidly than expected after the two atomic bombs, the USSR and USA agreed a ‘temporary’ at the 38th parallel. Interpretation of the 1945-50 period, when both the present Korean states were founded, remains controversial.10 It has too often been marred by the implicit use of one of two opposing teleologies, according to which the ‘free world’ and ‘democracy’ are pitted against ‘national liberation’ and ‘socialist revolu­ tion’. The processes that led up to the formal declaration of the ‘Republic of Korea’ and the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ in 1948 are none the less essentially similar. Both were ‘projects’, which had to be accomplished, not to say enforced. It is far from certain that most Koreans wanted either of them, or indeed the country’s partition. It is easy to overstate the extent of manipulation by either the USA or the USSR. Neither had a clearly articulated policy, although the Soviet Union proved more adept in practice. Moreover, the rhetoric of ‘satellite’ and ‘puppet’ should not blind us to the capacity for autonomous action exercised from the first by both Kim II Sung and Syngman Rhee. Both proved consider­ able thorns in the flesh of their respective sponsors. In Kim II Sung’s case, that autonomy was clearly exercised in June 1950. The was a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 massive gamble, and a disastrous failure. By the time it ended, three years later, North Korea had become the only communist-party state ever to be physically occupied by the USA and its allies.11 It had been saved from obliteration only by the intervention of a foreign power: China. That Kim II Sung’s leadership survived such a monstrous debacle is remarkable in itself. He seems to have accomplished this by pinning the blame on others, especially the Southern communist Pak Hon-Yong, who was subse­ quently executed. The scale of wartime destruction, both human and physical, was immense almost beyond calculation. Indeed, to anyone contemplating the smoking ruins of the Korean peninsula three and a half decades ago, it 68 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA must have seemed implausible in the extreme that any part of Korea would accomplish anything in the foreseeable future. As it turned out, though, not one but two ‘miracles’ of economic growth have occurred in Korea during the past third of a century. The South Korean case is the better known, and ultimately the more impressive (although it was later off the mark), but it is not our concern here.12

The Economy: From Dynamism to Stagnation The current stagnation and indeed crisis of the North Korean economy should not blind us to its earlier dynamism and accomplishments. During the first two decades after 1945, North Korea was transformed from an overwhelmingly agrarian to a mainly industrial economy. According to Joseph Chung’s authoritative work, national income rose by 30.1 per cent per annum during 1954-56, 20.9 per cent in 1957-60 and 7.5 per cent in 1961-70 (the first three post-Korean War planning periods). The gross value of industrial output for the same three periods increased by 41.8, 36.6 and 12.8 per cent, respectively, and went on to average 16.3 per cent for the next decade through 1980.13 (All these, it should be remembered, are annual growth rates.) Evidently, some preconditions worked in the regime’s favour. North Korea was lucky in its mineral endowments, despite lacking oil, gas, or coking coal. Like most small ex-colonial Third World states today, without such mineral wealth it could scarcely even have contemplated a strategy of Soviet-style industrialization. Equally, the legacy of Japanese development of those resources, in mining and industry, was not as wholly negative as Koreans are wont to claim.14 Thirdly, massive aid from the USSR, China and others after 1953 provided a critical early base for accumulation. On the other hand, after 1945 North Korea had to mount a three-pronged drive to reduce sheer economic backwardness, the distor­ tions of a colonial economy, and the impact of losing that half of the country which was the rice bowl as well as the centre for light industry. After 1953, it had to start all over again. Furthermore, it seems clear that the USSR itself had different, less ambitious economic plans for the Pyongyang regime. Kim II Sung’s insistence on doing what the Russians had themselves done, rather than what they now said, became a source of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 scarcely concealed dispute.15 Primitive accumulation and industrialization were no less harsh in North Korea than anywhere else. Consumption was certainly sacrificed to investment, agriculture to industry, light industry to heavy. None the less, Kim II Sung’s strategy was successful. No other course could have laid a basis for future development, nor preserved the country’s independence.16 On the other hand, this strategy cannot be prolonged indefinitely.17 The regime’s stubborn persistence in the same methods and priorities for a further two decades has been less successful, and it has failed to undertake meaningful economic reform. As a result, North Korea in the late 1980s is still running a seriously overheated 1960s economy, using the 1950s’ NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 69 methods of strict central planning coupled with yelling at people when things fail to go according to plan. It will be convenient to examine Pyongyang’s current economic malaise under five headings. Planning Pyongyang’s planners have rarely been precise in hitting their targets. While the five-year plan (1957-61) was fulfilled one year early, the ensuing first seven-year plan (1961-70) was extended by three years - ostensibly because of unforeseen defence burdens. The next, the six-year plan (1971-76), was followed by a ‘year of adjustment’ in 1977, while the second seven-year plan (1977-84) was succeeded by two years (1985-86) for which no plan was announced at all. Only from 1987 has a third five- year plan (1987-93) been announced. Amidst this distinctly chequered record, two further trends are apparent. First, over the past 20 years Pyongyang has published fewer and fewer actual figures of economic accomplishments. Those for the 1977-84 plan period are particularly thin, inconsistent and unconvincing.18 Second, even the targets for growth rates have tended quietly to decline and recede over time. This is particularly true of the much-touted ‘ten long-range economic goals for the 1980s’, which have now been relaunch­ ed as targets for the current plan (ending in 1993).19 Such problems could have been foreseen: indeed, they were foreseen. Twenty years ago, some North Korean economists were arguing that the pace of economic growth must decline over time, and that ‘the more the economy develops and its scale grows, the less becomes the possibility of increasing production’.20 Such problems - for example, over the transition from ‘extensive’ to ‘intensive’ growth - were already current in other communist countries, and have become more familiar subsequently with the work of Komai and others.21 In North Korea, however, they received short shrift: The ‘theory’ that large-scale economy cannot develop rapidly is but a sophistry brought forward by some people to justify the fact that their technical progress is slow and their economy stagnant because they, talking about ‘liberalization’ and ‘democratic development’, did not educate their working people and, as a result, the latter are

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 ideologically so soft as to fiddle about and loaf on the job.22 Since being in public dispute with the ‘Great Leader’ is unlikely to be conducive to good health and long life, it seems safe to assume that the ‘debate’ ended there. After 20 years, it can be little consolation that Kim II Sung was wrong, and his opponents right: the lot of a planner, or any kind of economist, in North Korea cannot be easy. What is striking about the quotation just cited is not only its note of menace, but the sheer unbridled voluntarism. Kim is perfectly explicit about this: ‘In socialist society, the people’s high revolutionary zeal is the decisive factor which causes the productive forces to multiply.,23 In consequence, the Pyongyang press in 70 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA the late 1980s is still, as it has been for 40 years, urging its readers to scale this or that height of production, complete their targets early (usually in honour of Somebody’s birthday), and so on.24 How rational economic planning can take place in such circumstances can only be wondered at. In this as in other spheres, the doctrine of leader infallibility is a serious handicap. Economic Organization Closely related to planning is the whole question of economic organiza­ tion. It goes without saying, perhaps, that the kinds of dilution of central control pioneered in Budapest and Beijing have not found favour in Pyongyang. Yet changes there have been. For one thing, the whole structure of economic ministries has recently been reorganized - not once but twice in little over a year. First, in November 1985, 13 formerly separate ministries were streamlined into six major new ‘commissions’. Then, in December 1986, the number of ministries was increased again, while the number of commissions was reduced.25 It remains to be seen whether such ‘shuffling of the chairs’ will have the desired effect. More significantly, it is not widely known that there has been some measure of economic reform in North Korea. Pyongyang sources, typically, have said nothing overtly about this, but China has briefly reported it, and there has been unofficial Soviet confirmation. According to Xinhua, Korean ‘factory directors and enteiprise managers will be able to make more independent decisions about labour, equipment, materials and funds’. Also, ‘they will be permitted to allot up to 50 per cent of their excess profits for the expansion of production, welfare benefits or bonuses’. Within enterprises, the new measures include ‘a responsibility system at the team or group level’, under which ‘groups of four to six workers plan their own schedules and set their bonus rates’. Above the enterprise level, control of budgeting is to be transferred to ‘an inde­ pendent or semi-independent accounting system for integrated enter­ prises and government organizations’. Finally, ‘the state will also allow and encourage individuals to undertake small private handicraft produc­ tion such as knitting’ 26 Intriguing yet fragmentary as this report is, in the absence of confirma­ tion from Pyongyang we have no way of knowing how widely such changes are being implemented. Two caveats seem in order, however. First, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 unofficial Soviet reports are slightly different in emphasis, suggesting that Pyongyang’s model is the East German Kombinat, whereby enterprises organically linked engage in horizontal co-operation at management level within a basically still centralized economic framework. That certainly sounds more likely to appeal to North Korea than any more radical , or re-structuring. It is also consistent with such little light as Pyongyang occasionally sheds on what it calls ‘complexes’, for example the Kyongsong Ceramics Complex.27 Second, it is hard to imagine that any radical reform could coexist easily with the endless exhortations that still pour forth unabated in the NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 71 Pyongyang mass media, telling everyone (economic functionaries, workers, peasants) to do as they are told, often in so many words; not to think for themselves or question orders from the centre, but uncondi­ tionally to obey party policy.28 Even though is translated as ‘having the attitude of a master’, economic risk-taking in North Korea must still continue to carry politcial risks as well. Technology The particular bottlenecks of the North Korean economy are clear enough from constant repetition. In sum, there is not enough of anything: not enough raw materials, especiallly coal and iron; not enough electricity; and not enough transport, to ensure that inputs arrive on time and delivery dates for output are met. A particular constraint, it is increasingly clear, is technology. From the early 1970s this was perceived as a problem, and it inspired North Korea’s well-known large-scale purchases of Western technology at that time. But these backfired in two ways, only one of which has attracted much publicity. Notoriously, North Korea failed to pay for almost everything (as it has earlier failed to pay the Soviet Union, something that one suspects eager Western lenders were not aware of).29 As a result of its default, Pyongyang acquired the world’s worst credit rating, and effectively cut itself off from further technological transfers from hard- currency countries. The debt and default are notorious. Much less noticed, and no less interesting, is North Korea’s chronic difficulty in absorbing such new technology as it does manage to acquire. Here evidence is of necessity fragmentary or anecdotal. But, to take a key example, North Korea seems unable to produce a silicon chip, despite strenuous efforts to that end, including a aid project. Part of the reason, it appears, is simple inability to ensure quality control.30 Somewhat speculatively, one might suggest that while ‘guerrilla’ methods may work for ‘old’ indus­ trialization - mining, iron and steel, basic construction - they will not do for the ‘new’ industries of computers and high technology. Korean scientists and engineers, although numerous, almost certainly lack the width and depth of education, the material resources and the peace of mind to be able to ‘deliver’ in this crucial area. Significantly, recent

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 pronouncements have indicated that looking after scientists properly is a problem area.31 Meanwhile, North Korea in practice continues to get the bulk of its technology from an old and trusted source: despite the rhetoric of juche, the USSR has all along provided most of North Korea’s technology, most the training to use it, and most of the money to pay for it. Soviet sources in recent years have been as forthcoming about die extent of this fraternal aid as Pyongyang has kept silent on it.32 Indispensable as such assistance is, it has clear limitations. At least part of the reason for the accelerating gap between the North and the South Korean economies is simply the difference between Soviet and Japanese technology. 72 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Consumer Goods The continued priority given by Pyongyang to heavy industry has a predictable corollary: consumer goods, in both quantity and quality, are a problem. They are even an admitted problem. With a critical note rare indeed in a pro-Pyongyang source, the president of Pyongyang’s Light Industry University was quoted in 1986 as saying that ‘frankly speaking, our light industry is backward’.33 More commonly, the North Korean media alternate between fatuous claims that all problems have been solved in ‘the people’s paradise’, and frantic exhortations to all and sundry to solve ‘completely’ the problems of food, clothing and the like.34 The reality, so far as one can discern, is that to an unknown but probably unique degree consumer goods are allocated by rationing rather than being sold as commodities. Life in North Korea is, to put it mildly, frugal for most people.35 Interestingly, light industry is one area of the North Korean economy over which there seems to have recently been what almost looks like a debate. In December 1984, an article in the party theoretical journal Kulloja called for a change in the pattern of consumer goods production. Perhaps unexpectedly, light industry to date in North Korea has been relatively decentralized, especially since 1973, with each province supposed to organize its own. Li Tong Ho, the author of the article, accepted that this was satisfactory for foodstuffs but not for major light industrial goods. Their production should be centralized, in order to reap economies of scale, raise skill levels and improve quality while avoiding wasteful duplication.36 While undoubtedly a reform, this would of course increase rather than reduce centralization. Nor is there any role foreseen for markets. Rather, ‘economic guidance functionaries should ... meticulously plan ... to implement party policy on the basis of the principle of absoluteness and unconditionality’37 - an all-too-familiar note in the North Korean media. But in any case it looks as if Li’s call has gone unheeded, since the main emphasis recently has been given to a very different line of attack: to encourage ‘sideline teams’, whereby people (mainly women) are urged to produce baskets (and whatever else they can) in their spare time.3 Whether they get paid for this is unclear. What is clear is that this is yet another instance of voluntarist rhetoric and pressure being substituted for a real, organizational solution. Ominously, too, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Rodong Sinmun weighed in with the rider that an individual’s commodity production record ‘may be regarded as a scale to measure [his] degree of loyalty to the party’.39 In North Korea, voluntarism has teeth.

Foreign Trade In at least one sphere, the North Korean economy has undergone a U-turn in recent years. It used to be Pyongyang’s boast that its economy was free from any fluctuation caused by world economic trends. That note is now heard rarely, if at all. More common are explicit calls to promote produc­ tion for exports. Some new North Korean factories are specifically NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 73 designated as centres of export production, while others, for example in textiles and household goods, declare their willingness to produce goods to buyers’ specifications.40 Unfortunately for Pyongyang, however, the outside world is not interested. This can be seen by the lack of results from Pyongyang’s most tangible volte-face to date: its joint venture law of 1984. Modelled on that of China, its only definite customers so far have come from the much put- upon ranks of Chongryon, the Pyongyang-oriented assocation of 41 At a time of global recession and rising protectionism it really is late in the day to try to break into world markets, especially for a small country with few friends, little clout, a reputation for unpredictability and the world’s worst credit rating. Not for the first time, juche here comes across above all as self- importance, an inflated ego, excessive self-regard, and a consequent misunderstanding and mismanagement of North Korea’s rather lowly and shabby true place in the global scheme of things. In practice, for trade as for technology (and for aid which links the two), the USSR and its allies will continue for the foreseeable future to loom largest. For a rational North Korea, this would be a second-best. Eastern Europe is far away, and there is - politics aside - little basis or need for trade. One of these days history and geography will overcome politics and ideology, and there will be a big economic breakthrough with Japan. The rumours, and the shopping lists, have been about for two or three years.42 As with so much else about North Korea, however, there is little sign of tangible progress as yet.

The Polity As may be imagined, hard evidence concerning politics in North Korea is even more elusive than information on its economy. This information vacuum might be regarded as a challenge to deploy a combination of sensitive comparative analysis and disciplined a priori reasoning. Know­ ing what problems other communist societies have, we can form a plausible picture of Pyongyang’s behind-the-scenes politics also.43 The formal political structures of the North Korean regime are comparable to those of other communist party states and need not be

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 described here.44 There is the customary parallel structure of party and state - except that North Korea since 1972 has had a unique state body, the Central People’s Committee, as the top policy-making body standing above the State Administration Council (cabinet). Within the party, in 1983 membership of the Supreme Presidium of the KWP Politburo was reduced from five to three: Kim II Sung; his son and heir Kim Jong II, who first formally surfaced in 1980 but who still holds no state position; and O Jin U, the elderly minister for the armed forces. North Korea has characteristically taken to extreme tendencies already present in other communist regimes. What might be called the ‘formalization’ of politics is one of these. No other country has dared, as 74 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA North Korea has since 1962, to claim what is statistically impossible: that 100 per cent of the electorate vote in general elections, and all vote yes. The 655 deputies thus elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) meet only twice a year, for a few days. In the newly and expensively rebuilt Mansudae assembly hall, they all sit in plush armchairs, facing the same way, gazing down a gentle slope towards a gleaming white alabaster statue of the Great Leader. Little is required of them, except occasional use of their Siemens microphones to say ‘Yes’. Clearly, this is a theatre, and MPs are not actors but audience. The second tendency taken to an extreme is, of course, the cult of personality. Pursuit of power by a single leader is far from unique in the communist world. Kim II Sung in 1945 was by no means an obvious choice of leader, nor did he go unchallenged. It took him a little more than a decade to liquidate other communist factions, both domestic and those with links to the USSR and China. The last major challenge to his rule seems to have come in 1956.45 The past 30 years have seen the construction of an edifice of totalitarian control without parallel elsewhere. How exactly this was accomplished, and how exactly it operates in practice, is not wholly clear. The proportion of party membership is uniquely high - some three million members, or about 15 per cent of the entire population - while women’s, youth and other organizations ensure that no one is excluded from the embrace. The formal face of the North Korean system is thus what it proudly proclaims as Yuilsasang, monolithic ideology, or even ‘ideological monochro- maticity’46 - stressing unity and loyalty, ceaselessly and in the most extravagant terms. Nevertheless, the fact that the North Korean polity is officially presented as a kind of blend between a stage spectacular and an act of worship, in permanent session, evidently does not exhaust the task of political analysis. After all, Pyongyang is not exempt from the need to make decisions - strategic and day-to-day, at national and local levels. Moreover, as the state of the economy suggests, some of those choices are difficult and urgent. Quite clearly fierce debates must rage among the North Korean political elite. At least three massively contentious areas - economic policy, international alignments, and the succession - cannot possibly command unanimity of view, even if, as regards the last of these, a kind of unanimity has been imposed for the time being. On economic issues, at least, faint echoes of debate surface from time to time in articles in Rodong Sinmun Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 that, while never explicitly contradicting one another, at least point in somewhat contrary directions. For example, one editorial says Pyongyang must increase exports as a top priority: another warns of the ideological inroads of capitalism. One article trumpets juche\ another preaches the virtues of greater integration into the ‘socialist international division of labour’. One report warns economic cadres to obey orders from the centre unquestioningly; another tells them to consult their workforce before doing anything.47 International relations are discussed later. Here, the most palpable evidence of disarray in Pyongyang is the on-off state of talks - or talks about talks - between North and South Korea. Initiated in late NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 75 1984, these were broken off in early 1986; at the time of writing, there are some indications that they may be resumed. South Korean sources, ironically, take Pyongyang’s claims of ‘monolithism’ too much at face value, and tend to assume that such twists and turns are the devious slitherings of an untrustworthy serpent. Far more plausible, however, is the simple conclusion that they cannot make up their minds in Pyongyang whether to talk to or not. Attitudes to South Korea constitute one touchstone of a divide between verkramptes and verligtes, diehards and reformers in Pyongyang. Attitudes to economic reform provide another. But economic reform comes in different forms: in Chinese or East German style, and nowadays even a la Russe. So this links to a third divide: partisans of China and Moscow respectively, both in turn opposed by the laager-mentality juche diehards. This still leaves two crucial linked issues. Who is associated with each of these positions? And what about the succession? On the former, there is almost no solid information. The verligtes are likely to include Kang Song San and Kim Yong Nam, appointed as prime minister and foreign minister respectively in the wake of the Rangoon bombing of October 1983 - a serious debacle for the verkramptes. The newly appointed prime minister, Li Gun Mo, is also a probable verligte. Conversely, older and enduring figures in the leadership - Li Jong Ok, Rim Chun Chu, Ho Dam, and O Jin U - might plausibly be cast as verkramptes. Yet all this is very speculative. Moreover, it is noteworthy that recent changes look more like reshuffles than purges. Figures like Kang Song San and Kim Hwan have been moved back and forth between party and government responsibilities, but it seems impossible to detect a clear pattern of vertical ascent and descent. In particular, despite the bizarre rumours of Kim II Sung’s assassination in November 1986, organizational changes a month later do not show the fall from grace of any significant figures. Last, but certainly not least, there is the topmost leadership. Almost nothing that matters is known about Kim Jong II, in particular on the crucial questions of whether he has either a power base or any ideas of his own. On the latter, while Seoul sources (especially at the time of the Rangoon bombing) regarded him as a hard-liner, it seems no less plausible that he is a would-be modernizer. As to the former, one theory has it that Kim Jong II made his power base in the ‘Three Revolution Teams’, a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 movement somewhat akin to China’s Red Guards, which from 1973 onwards has acted as a ginger group in economic enterprises and elsewhere.48 It is also widely stated that Kim Jong II is now in day-to-day charge of internal affairs, although he still has no formal state, as distinct from party, post. In the end, Kim II Sung will die and then we shall see. As regards that future, it is hard to disagree with James Cotton’s view that the ‘Dear Leader’ is most unlikely to long survive his father’s demise.49 Meanwhile, one might suggest that Pyongyang is afflicted by a strange kind of political paralysis - as indicated, for example, by the two years without a plan. 76 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Perhaps Kim II Sung has semi-abdicated, leaving Kim Jong II partly but by no means wholly in control, thus creating a situation in which neither those two nor anyone else has the capacity to grasp nettles and take firm decisions. Paradoxical as it might seem, Pyongyang’s tight ship looks increasingly rudderless: it drifts, or zigzags, or seems marooned, as if no hand were on the tiller. That, perhaps, is the ultimate irony of North Korean politics. For reasons that are understandable in view of past Korean political history, Kim II Sung has worked on the principle that unity is strength. Yet he has taken this to such extremes as to pose a grave threat to North Korea’s ultimate stability after his death. His personalized absolutism has ultimately suffocated politics, leading a once dynamic system to flounder and stagnate. That which appears as strength will turn out to be extremely brittle, and the facade of monolithic unity will rapidly crumble.

The Society Although much has been implicit in the last two sections, it is worth posing explicitly the question of what North Korean society is really like. Clearly it has undergone enormous change since 1945. The dispossession of landlords and (the few) capitalists, the destruction and chaos of war, and the subsequent industrialization and urbanization, add up to a 40-year social transformation no less profound than the preceding 40 years of Japanese . The result is a society of puzzling contrasts. Much, at the level of reality and ideology alike, is unmistakably modem. As in other communist-party states, the Promethean themes of science and progress, ‘man’ transforming nature, are constantly played. The classic Stalinist imagery of industrialization abounds. The higher education system is strongly technological and vocational in orientation. Most North Koreans live in cities, and work in factories or offices. Another modem theme much trumpeted is welfare. Education is free and compulsory, for 11 years. Health care is also claimed to be comprehensive, although there are likely to exist distributional inequality and qualitative inadequacies. Even such symptoms of modernity (and specifically Western modernity at that) as ties for men and high-heeled shoes for women have been officially recommended in recent years. Yet this modem society is also strikingly traditional. Foreign visitors Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 have remarked on a curiously old-fashioned atmosphere and mores. The anarchy of capitalist modernity is conspicuously absent. This is a Third World country apparently without shanty towns or an informal sector. Pyongyang has very little traffic, and even bicycles are banned as dis­ orderly. Casual street life appears not to exist. Above all, there is no getting away from the neo-traditionalism of authority relations - again, both as they are and as they are portrayed. Although juche is translated as ‘having the attitude of a master’, the reality is that North Koreans must have the attitude of having a master. Kim H Sung’s omnipotence is their impotence. Again and again they are reminded that they are nothing NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 77 without him. Mundane and miserly state rationing over and above the norm - a coat here, a couple of ballpoint refills there - is represented in the terminology of feudalism, as generous gifts from a benevolent monarch to his unworthy subjects. In no other communist-party state has the basis of legitimation, in Weberian terms, become so overtly patrimonial, and indeed patriarchal. But if Kim 11 Sung’s societal project was in itself bizarre, what is still more remarkable is that he appears to have pulled it off. Uniquely in the communist world, there is no trace of dissidence, or of East European- style irony and political humour. Nowadays even Albania has its graffiti: not so Pyongyang. All the North Koreans one meets really seem to believe in their system. Unsurprisingly, comparisons with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four have been freely made51 - although Huxley’s Brave New World might be more apt, for a populace seemingly not so much cowed as brainwashed. Caution is in order here, however. Undoubtedly the North Korean regime has gone to unique lengths to quarantine its citizens against influences from and information about the outside world, and then to use its monopoly of the means of socialization (starting in the creche) to push one line and one line only. Should even that fail, there is undoubtedly an intricate and massive network of surveillance, plus a Gulag for those who dare to deviate. Even so, there is one source of anomaly whose emergence and perception cannot be prevented, namely, the yawning chasm between the Panglossian picture of a ‘people’s paradise’ as painted by the Pyongyang media, and ordinary people’s everyday experience of how they live.52 Seen in this light, the shrill and frenzied exhortations that are Pyongyang’s staple media fare take on a different meaning. Despite the absence of overt dissidence, and although people do do as they are told, there is little sign that ordinary North Koreans freely put much effort or commitment into their work. Why should they, when conditions are so spartan and rewards so meagre? Conversely, there is evidence that the visible privileges of the party elite are well known and resented.53 Hence, while the media are frenzied, the people are not. It seems likely that when the post-Kim era finally dawns, we shall leam that many people in North Korea maintained a formal commitment to the regime and did as they were told while privately reserving judgement. Another case in point here is religion. As well as Buddhism, Christianity Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 was strong in Pyongyang before 1945. Although no public places of worship are open in North Korea today, evidence from other communist countries makes it reasonable to suppose that religious belief has only gone underground, rather than having been eliminated. In this as in other respects, it is doubtful whether North Korea is all that it appears and proclaims itself to be.

International Relations If economic stagnation provides an internal source of problems and hence 78 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA pressure for change on the North Korean system, the shifting pattern of international alliances in recent years has led to equivalent pressures from the country’s external environment. The ‘blocs’ that produced the division of Korea are not as they were, and Pyongyang in consequence faces new challenges. As with the economy, however, there is little sign of any unanimity on how to respond to these changes. In the first place, there is no denying Kim II Sung’s nationalism. Despite his initial ‘Russian’ origins and non-existent internal power base, he early freed himself from Soviet control. Firmly neutral in the Sino-Soviet dispute, never having joined , and allowing no foreign troops or bases on its soil, North Korea must be a deep disappointment to the USSR, especially since the latter has always been Pyongyang’s major source of financial and technological aid. It is important to re-state these themes, at a time when some analysts have made too much of North Korea’s ‘tilt’ towards the Soivet Union in recent years. It is true that both Pyongyang and Moscow have sought, and to some degree established, more effective co-operation in both economic and military terms. It is equally clear that, on the North Korean side, this move not only reflects those economic and military needs in themselves, but also indicates severe displeasure with China for its rapidly expanding and increasingly insouciant unofficial links with South Korea, as for example in trade and sports exchanges. This process has its limits, however. North Korea may grant overflying rights for Soviet planes to spy on China, and engage in joint naval exercises with the USSR, but Kim II Sung could never give the Russians the warm- water bases which they would dearly like. (Whether his successors might do so is another matter entirely.) On broader foreign policy issues, too, North Korea hews to its own line. It recognizes - but also Democratic Kampuchea, and Prince Sihanouk turned up as usual in 1987 at his old friend Kim II Sung’s birthday celebrations. In sum, Kim II Sung has proved adept at avoiding too close an embrace from either of his major allies. By contrast, North Korea’s relations with its ‘enemies’ have been a more or less unmitigated disaster. Admittedly US and Japanese recognition of Seoul as the seat of the only legitimate government of Korea places inherent limitations on what can be accomplished. Yet there is no intrinsic reason why North Korea and Japan should not be enjoying the kind of thriving unofficial economic and other Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 links that now obtain between South Korea and China. Pyongyang desperately needs such relations, to modernize its economy. They will come in the 1990s but they could have come one or even two decades sooner, were it not for North Korea’s excessive and unrealistic prickliness on various political issues. Above all, they have been stymied by the crass decision not to repay to Japan debts incurred in the early 1970s. With the USA, North Korea has spoiled its chances by a mixture of extravagantly venomous rhetoric on the one hand, coupled with some clumsy and transparent manoeuvres in recent years to try to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul. While it is true that the USA (and Japan) NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 79 might nevertheless have attempted earlier to play the kind of peace­ making role on the peninsula that China has commendably attempted in the 1980s, it must be said that North Korea has offered very little incentive to do so. Recent US gestures55 have in fact been favourably received in Pyongyang; it remains to be seen if there is a substantive response. Finally, there is the other half of Korea, ever the real focal point of Pyongyang’s foreign policy. This too is a major failure for Kim II Sung, who must be haunted by the very different outcome in that other once- divided East Asian country, Vietnam. Despite partition, the Vietnamese communists never lost their purchase on events in the South. They eventually had their victory, pyrrhic though it turns out to have been. Vietnam really did defeat the USA. North Korea ludicrously claims to have done so, when in fact it was not only all but annihilated (but for Chinese intervention, after 1951 there would have been no North Korea) but also lost all chance of influencing events in the South. In post-war economic competition, North Korea’s initial lead was lost by around 1970, and the South’s far greater dynamism means that the gap grows ever wider. As against this, Pyongyang has scored success of a kind in the Non-Aligned Movement, by keeping Seoul out. Yet the hollow formalism of this ‘success’ is as little beside South Korea’s substantial bilateral economic relations in the Third World, even with such allies of Pyongyang as Libya. Above all, although there is a depressing history of intransigence and posturing on both sides, the major responsibility in the late 1980s for the state of relations (or lack of them) between North and South Korea must rest with Pyongyang. The North’s proclaimed insistence on settling the big issues first - in the form of a ‘Confederal Democratic Republic of Koryo’ - is patently unrealistic, unless preceded by the kinds of small-scale contacts and confidence-building measures that the South would like to start with. (Ironically, 30 years ago this was Pyongyang’s policy, and it was Seoul that refused all contact.) Eventually, there will be a ‘Germanization’ of the Korean peninsula: mutual recognition {de facto or de jure), ‘cross-recognition’ of both by the other side’s major allies, economic exchange, some degree of family visits and communication, and a general reduction of tension. It is not yet quite impossible that this will happen in Kim II Sung’s lifetime. The dialogue begun in 1984-85, and broken off in early 1986 by

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Pyongyang, may recommence in 1987. There remains even just a chance of North Korea accepting a deal on the 1988 Olympics, which would finally create an irreversible momentum towards better relations with the South. As with economic reform, however, the fear must be that in the final analysis the present North Korean leadership lacks the imagination or courage to abandon familiar postures, even when these have patently failed.

Future Prospects and Evaluation The late 1980s provide an appropriate moment for an evaluation of North 80 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Korea, for these are certainly the twilight years of Kim H Sung, and of Kimilsungism. Both man and system alike are showing intimations of mortality. Kim II Sung will die in the 1990s, if not before, and his system with him. Constructing future scenarios for North Korea is an even more speculative exercise than interpreting the present. Once again, none the less, a mix of comparative analysis and logical deduction may help. Other communist countries have managed a relatively painless transition after the death of a dominant initial leader, as for example Vietnam, Yugoslavia or Albania. In North Korea, paradoxically, the survival of Kimilsungism as a system or framework might have been more likely, had it not been for Kim Jong II. The converse may also be true: that if Kim Jong II is to have any chance of retaining power at all, it might only be if he abandons Kimilsungism - not overtly, but by ‘modernizing’ it out of all recognition, rather like China today vis-a-vis the legacy of Mao. In general, as argued above, the personalism of Kim ft Sung’s rule and his failure to establish rational-legal forms of legitimation will be profoundly destabilizing for North Korea once he has gone (even as they have ensured a kind of stability while he lives). In the absence of any ground rules, vicious infighting and power struggles may be expected. Dynastic successions historically have always provided ample scope for discontent and intrigue, in Korea not least. To predict a precise outcome is impossible. Given the great weight of the army in North Korea, some kind of miliary coup is quite conceivable. Its political character could be diverse: pro-Soviet, pro-Chinese, or neo-juche nationalist. Alternatively, if economic logic alone ruled, one might foresee a North Korean equivalent of Deng Xiaoping, or even Gorbachev. This might be some technocrat, at present known or unknown. It might just conceivably be Kim Jong II, at least as a figurehead. Yet even if the ‘dear leader’ wished to be a modernizer, it must be doubted whether he has the charisma, ability or political skills to overcome the acute contradictions of such a role once his father is dead. Whoever or whatever constitutes the successor regime in Pyongyang, both internal and external pressures upon it will be acute. Issues that are at present being hedged or fudged, in economic reform and international relations, will have to be resolved one way or another. A more fulsome acceptance of the Soviet embrace is one option, involving CMEA Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 membership, Soviet bases and a degree of glasnost'. This would alarm China and displease Japan. The USA, however, might privately reckon there were stabilizing gains of a kind: better a predictable satellite than a dangerous maverick. Should the next North Korean leadership wish to avoid the ‘satellite’ option, there remains the strategy of continued neutrality, imitation of China in economic reform and an opening up to South Korea. Any and aft such steps will require political risks, yet they may also reap dividends, as does any regime after a dictatorship which at least eases up a little and lets it subjects breathe. However, for the North Korean state to follow the NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 81 Chinese example, by opening up to the outside world and allowing various spheres of civil society to operate more autonomously, will be a radical U- tum indeed. Yet, in some form or other, it has to happen, for there is no future in the present North Korean road. Quite apart from the obvious ethical and political critiques of Kim II Sung’s extraordinary dystopia, the most pertinent criticisms are finally sociological. The type of society that Kim II Sung has striven to create is not only unpleasant, but also ultimately impossible to sustain. The claim of infallibility for leader and party is not only a lie; it also deprives the leadership of any feedback mechanism for correcting error - thereby guaranteeing that mistakes will be made. A proclamation that the people’s zeal is the decisive factor in raising the forces of production leads to a ludicrous voluntarism which ensures that rational mechanisms for resource allocation will wither and the economy will suffer. Above all, a model of society based on Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity - with all hearts beating and minds thinking as one, individua­ tion minimized, and difference penalized as deviance - cannot ultimately run a modem society, whose prerequisite is the institutionalization and celebration of difference. Granted, die growth of a complex division of labour poses new and difficult challenges for a modem society, there are risks of anomie, and an organic solidarity rooted in difference and interdependence cannot easily be created. But nor can the challenge be evaded. In this sense, Kimilsungism can be understood as an attempt to accomplish modernization whilst eschewing modernity. It is striking how much Kim II Sung’s vision of the good society resembles the ‘traditional’ side of most of the classical sociological dichotomies: not only Duikheim’s mechanical solidarity, but also Toennies’s gemeinschaft, and even Spencer’s ‘military society’. Perhaps something of this contradiction is inherent in all socialism, whose efforts to construct a vision of a future different from the chaos of capitalism all too often hark back to the ‘order’ (good or bad, real or imagined) of some kind of past. Yet even if the dilemma is universal, North Korea (as usual) stands out for having taken things to an extreme. Others may lament the world they have lost, but few have attempted so resolutely to push the clock both forward and back simultaneously. The explanation for this behaviour lies in Korea’s particular modem history, or at least Kim II Sung’s reading of it. As seen from Pyongyang today, the taewongun and others in the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 nineteenth century who pursued the ‘hermit kingdom’ approach were correct: they were right to keep the world out, but wrong (and fatally so) in failing to modernize the country behind the walls they had erected.56 Hence Kim II Sung, a century later (and after decades in which Korea went to hell and back, by any standards) has tried to accomplish what the taewongun could not. It helped, no doubt, that the model of Stalinist autarkic industrialization chimed in so readily with this fierce pre-existing . Both worked in the same direction, yet this has also had its price. The quest for juche in self-defence against , independence from the world market, quarantine against contamination 82 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA by ‘pagan’ Western cultural influences, and autonomy even from one’s friends and allies, has ‘succeeded’ to such a degree that North Korea has all but abandoned any kind of universal norms or canons of judgement (including, for all practical purposes, Marxism-Leninism). In a very real and literal sense, Pyongyang is a monumental ego-trip. Nationalism has become , ‘socialism’ has been turned into neo-patrimonialism. As anyone knows who has ever tried, one cannot tell the North Koreans anything. They know it all already, because they have it all already, thanks to the Great Leader and the juche idea. This is a very sick body politic indeed, and getting sicker - a kind of political autism, a peasant mentality profoundly ignorant and contemptuous of the world beyond the parish pump.57 North Korea can ill afford such attitudes. Once, perhaps, stubbornness was a virtue - in surviving the ddbacle of war, and in reconstructing. But now the whole of the rest of the world (including even Albania) is marching to a different beat. Or rather not marching, but breaking up into increasingly diverse, pluralistic, and creative forms of activity. Only in North Korea are they still, literally, marching. Yet, for all the square-bashing, they are marking time, notwithstanding the increasingly frenzied yells from assorted sergeants- major.

NOTES

Aidan Foster-Carter is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Deputy Director of the Centre for Development Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Sociology of Development (1985), and has contributed various articles on theories of development. He visited North Korea in 1986.

1. The official name of the country, since 1948, is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. 2. For instance, in May 1974 Kim II Sung could in all seriousness criticize party officials in Pyongyang for not knowing exactly who had seen which revolutionary operas and films: At the moment the Pyongyang city party committee does not even know how may citizens have seen the revolutionary operas and how many have not seen them. This shows that it is not supervising and guiding the political and cultural life of the citizens as it should ... [I]t must know which of them has seen what films, which of them has seen what operas, and who has not seen what... [Y]ou must not leave the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 showing of these pieces to chance. See Kim II Sung, Works, Vol. 29 (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House (FLPH), 1987), pp. 177-8. 3. ‘Our socialist system thus emerged [sic] under the great leader is the most excellent one .... It is based on the entire people’s political and ideological unity emanating from the great Juche idea ... and its vitality is invulnerable’: The People’s Paradise (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1978), pp.8-9. 4. See my article ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, Far Eastern Economic Review (PEER), 14 Aug. 1986, pp.100-101. 5. North Korean sources have tended to say little or nothing about the Soviet role, unless as a minor sidekick to Kim II Sung and the ‘Korean People’s Revolutionary Army’ (KPRA). For a typical example, see History Research Institute, DPRK Academy of NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 83

Social Sciences, The Outline of Korean History (Pyongyang: 1977), p. 154. With North Korea’s more pro-Soviet tilt in the past two or three years, however, a slightly less grudging approach has begun to surface. 6. On Korean history, see Takashi Hatada, A History of Korea (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1969); and Lee Ki-Baek, A New History of Korea (Seoul: Ilchokak, 1984). 7. On the late nineteenth century, see Key-Hiuk Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); and Martina Deuchler, Confucian Gentlemen and Barbarian Envoys (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1977). 8. On the colonial period, see Andrew J. Grajdanzev, Modern Korea (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944); and Andrew C. Nahm (ed.), Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule (Kalamazoo, MI: Center for Korean Studies, Western Michigan University, 1973). 9. On nationalism, see Chong-sik Lee, The Politics of Korean Nationalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965). On early Korean comunism, see Dae-sook Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918-48 (Princeton, NJ: University Press, 1967); and Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, , Vol.l (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972). 10. The outstanding source on the 1940s is now Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Vol.l (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). See also Soon Sung Cho, Korea in World Politics, 1940-50 (Berkeley, CA: Univeristy of California Press, 1967). 11. This point is made by Jon Halliday, in his very valuable ‘The North Korean Model: Gaps and Questions’, World Development, Vol.9, Nos. 9-10 (1981), p.893 and p.903, n.27, p.903. See also his ‘North Korean Enigma’, Review, No. 127 (May-June 1981). On the Korean war itself there is a large and still growing literature. A most useful recent introduction is Peter Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War (London: Longman, 1986). 12. For a comprehensive summary of South Korean development, see Edwin S. Mason et ai, The Economic and Social Modernization of the Republic of Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), and its several companion volumes. Somewhat different emphases may be found in Kyong-Dong Kim (ed.) Dependency Issues in Korean Development (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1987), Part II. 13. Joseph S. Chung, The North Korean Economy: Structure and Development (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1974) is the standard work, but stops at 1970. The figures cited are from his more recent chapter ‘Economic Planning in North Korea’, in Robert A. Scalapino and Jun-yop Kim (eds.), North Korea Today: Strategic Issues (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1983), p.172. 14. A point emphasized by Jon Halliday in his ‘The Economics of North and South Korea’, Ch.3 of John Sullivan and Roberta Foss (eds.) Two Koreans — One Future? (Philadelphia, PA: University Press of America, for American Friends Service Committee, 1987), pp. 19-20. 15. Soviet-North Korean policy disputes are discussed in Gordon White, ‘North Korean Juche: The Political Economy of Self-Reliance’, Ch. 12 of Manfred Bienefeld and Martin Godfrey (eds.), The Struggle for Development: National Struggles in an Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 International Context (Chichester: Wiley, 1982) p.331ff. See also Ellen Brun and Jacques Hersh, Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Develoment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976). 16. This case is argued, with unusual cogency for a Pyongyang source, in Economic Research Institutue, Academy of Social Sciences of the DPRK, The Building of an Independent National Economy in Korea (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1977). 17. A point made more generally by Gordon White, in his ‘Developmental States and Socialist Industrialization in the Third World’, Journal of Development Studies, Vol.21, No.l (1984) (Special Issue). 18. See the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Quarterly Economic Review of China [and\ North Korea (EIUIQER), 1985, No.2, pp.30-33; title changed in 1986 to Country Report, China [and] North Korea (EIU/CR). 84 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

19. EIUICR, No.2, pp.37-44. 20. Kim II Sung, ‘On Some Theoretical Problems of the Socialist Economy’ [1969]; Ch. IX of Revolution and Socialist Construction in Korea: Selected Writings of Kim II Sung (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 160. 21. J. Komai, The Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1980). 22. Kim II Sung, ‘On Some Theoretical Problems’, p. 165. 23. Ibid., p.161. 24. Thus in 1987 workers were urged to emulate those who pledged to complete first quarter assignments by 16 Febrarary and half yearly tasks by 15 April, the birthdays of Kim Jong II and Kim II Sung respectively: see North Korea News (Seoul), No.357, 26 Jan. 1987, pp. 1-2, quoting a KCBS broadcast of 16 Jan. 25. Vantage Point (Seoul), Vol.VIII, No.12 (Dec. 1985), pp.13-14, and Vol.X, No.l (Jan. 1987), pp. 15-21. 26. See EIUIQER, 1985, No.3, pp.33-4; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB) FE/7953, B/2 (17 May 1985), citing Xinhua for 14 May. 27. On all this, see my ‘Crisis Mismanagement* and ‘Combining to Boost Exports’, FEER, 14 Aug, 1986, pp. 100-101, and ‘Place Order [sic] for Ceramics with our Complex’, Foreign Trade of the D.P.RX., 1986: 1, pp.8-9. 28. ‘Our people’s trust in our party is an absolute and unconditional belief by which they consider our party the greatest guide in the world for their destinies and by which they follow our party as the most generous and benevolent mother’s bosom! ... It is through our people’s endless loyalty that they firmly belive their party’s policy to be absolutely right at any time, in any place, and do not hesitate even to jump into water or fire if it is the party’s call!*: from ‘A Mother Party’, Rodong Sinmun, 14 Feb. 1987, as broadcast on Pyongyang home service and quoted in BBC SWB FE/8497, B/2, 20 Feb. 1987. It might be added that, while reading stuff like this is bizarre enough, hearing it on the air is something else again: typically with one or more speakers, their voices at once declamatory yet quaking with emotion, and often against a musical background that contrives to sound both martial and marshmallow. 29. On debts to the USSR, see George Ginsburgs, ‘Soviet Development Grants and Aid to North Korea, 1945-1980*, Asia Pacific Community (Tokyo), No. 18 (Fall 1982), pp.42-63. 30. For more detail see, see my ‘Smoke and Mirrors*. The UNDP-aided integrated circuit- testing pilot project finally came on stream, years late, in April 1987. 31. EIUIQER, 1986, No.l, p.41. 32. Soviet broadcasts (many in Korean) giving chapter and verse on aid are legion: see, for example, EIUICR, 1986 No.4, pp.32-4. For an overview, see M. Ye. Trigubenko (ed.), Koreiskaya Narodno-Demokraticheskaya Respublika (Moscow: Nauka, 1985), Part III, Ch.2, pp.170-91. 33. People's Korea (Tokyo), 2 Aug. 1986. 34. Thus the April 1987 ordinance of the Supreme People’s Assembly had a section titled ‘On Solving Problems of Food, Clothing, and Housing for People More Satisfactorily*: see EIUICR, 1987, No.2, p.41. 35. As confirmed by a recent defection of a family of ‘boat people*: see EIUICR, 1987, No.l, pp.31-3. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 36. See EIUIQER, 1985, No.l, p.41. 37. Ibid. 38. EIUICR, 1986, No.3, pp.34-5. 39. Rodong Sinmun, 2 Aug. 1986. 40. See note 27 above, or any recent issue of the official magazine Foreign Trade of the D.P.R.K.. 41. See the article ‘Pyongyang Increasingly Dependent on Chongryon for Capital*, Vantage Point (Seoul), Vol.X, No.2 (Feb. 1987), pp.21-4. 42. Thus pro-Pyongyang sources in Japan publicized a very extensive North Korean list of would-be joint ventures in late 1985: see EIUIQER, 1985, No.4, pp.42-3. 43. I have attempted this in ‘Reading the Entrails of the Pyongyang Goat’, FEER, 28 Aug. 1985, pp.28-30. NORTH KOREA: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 85

44. Useful sources are Tai Sung An, North Korea: A Political Handbook (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1983); and Frederica M. Bunge (ed.), North Korea: A Country Study (Washington, DC: US Government Printing House, 1981), Ch.4; ‘Government and Politics* (by Rinn-Sup Shinn). 45. See Scalapino and Lee, op. cit., Vol.l, pp.510ff. 46. I have been unable to trace this phrase, which is certainly genuine. Possibly it sounds better in Korean. 47. See ‘Reading the Entrails ... ’. 48. This is Rinn-Sup Shinn’s view: op. cit. (note 44 above), pp. 185-6 (see also pp. 133-4). 49. See his contribution to this volume, ‘Ideology and the Legitimation Crisis in North Korea*. 50. A useful overview is Donald M. Seekins, ‘The Society and Its Environment*, Ch.2 of Bunge, op. cit 51. See, for example a South Korean propaganda work, George Orwell's 1984: North Korea (Seoul: Tower Press, 1984). 52. I explore these themes further in a hitherto unpublished paper, ‘North Korea, the Emperor’s Clothes’. 53. Kim Man-chul, the leader of the family of ‘boat people* who defected in January 1987, left behind a letter to Kim II Sung which made this point: ‘People here lead miserable lives ... while ranking Communist party officials are living in luxury’, Vantage Point, Vol.X, No.3 (March 1987), p.17. 54. ‘Samdech, whenever April comes round you come to see us and congratulate us upon our birthday without forgetting it.... The Korean people will always stand firm by the Cambodian people who are fighting for freedom and independence*: Kim II Sung at a banquet for Sihanouk in Pyongyang on 11 April 1987: BBC SWB FE/8543/A3/1, 15 April 1987. 55. For more details, see EIUICR, 1987, No.2, pp.35-6. 56. The North Korean view of Korea’s history is summarized in a (typically) collective- anonymous work: History Research Institute, DPRK Academy of Social Sciences, The Outline of Korean History (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1977): see my quasi-review, ‘A Historical Outline of Korean Chauvinism*, FEER, 2 Oct. 1986, pp.96-8. 57. I pursue this theme further in ‘Patriarch and Deity for North Korea’s Peasants’, FEER, 5 June 1986. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Ideology and the Legitimation Crisis in North Korea

James Cotton

The origins of Kim II Sung’s contribution to Marxism lie in his struggle to legitimize his leadership position and justify the nationalist practice of his North Korean regime. His son now seeks to buttress his own rise to power by posing as the first exegete of philosophical depths in his father’s ideology unrecognized by former commentators. Juche is the ideology of the present age and an improve­ ment on Marxism not least because it addresses itself to the problem of political succession. Behind this theoretical manoeuvre, which bears some resemblances to the strategy of the ‘Gang of Four’ in China, lies the first improbable attempt in a communist state to create in the political institutions of North Korea as much as in the ideology a hereditary personality cult.

It is now the proud claim of spokesmen for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) that the ideology there affirmed as the guide to all action and policy is unique, owing nothing to external influences and precedents. In bookshops the Marxist classics are not normally to be found, the stock dominated by the works of Kim II Sung (now in their collected form amounting to some 35 volumes; more are in press) and of his son and designated successor Kim Jong II. Kim makes few references to Soviet or Chinese example, although on those limited number of occasions judged appropriate, the assistance given by Korea’s two socialist neighbours during the 1945 liberation and the Korean war receives acknowledgement. China and the Soviet Union have indeed been the major source of armaments, aid and loans given to the regime since its inception, but ideological solidarity cannot be the principal reason for their support. Rivalry and the geo-strategic postion of the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 peninsula account for their continued sponsorship of the Kim dynasty. The Chinese do not take Kim’s ideological claims seriously, and recently Soviet spokesmen have taken some pains to make public the extent to which key North Korean construction and modernization projects have been made possible as a result of their aid, despite the offence this causes in Pyongyang, where all progress is attributed to self-reliance. In this article, the claims made by the North Koreans concerning the originality, scope and character of their ideology will be subjected to critical scrutiny. It will be argued that the principal function of the ideology is to legitimize the complete dominance of the two Kims, changes to it in recent times serving to justify the planned succession of Kim Jong II IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 87 and the rise of a new party elite of his generation. Particular attention will be paid to the writings of the younger Kim since he is now regarded as an original authority in ideological matters, having newly defined the philosophical basis and alleged uniqueness of his father’s thought.

Origins and Functions of the Juche Idea The origins of Kim II Sung’s political ideas may be traced to the circum­ stances of his early life and education, and to the exigencies of the guerrilla struggle against the Japanese.1 Kim spent much of his childhood (from age seven to eleven, and from thirteen) in Manchuria where he received something of a Chinese education. His position in those formative years must have presented great difficulties. Although his family had emigrated to China at least partly for patriotic reasons, the growing influence of Japan in that region made the Chinese population doubly suspicious of the Korean community. The early death of Kim’s father placed a heavy burden on the 14-year-old shoulders of this fourth-generation eldest son. The precise details of Kim’s revolutionary activities are disputed, North Korean sources claiming that he founded the Down-with-Imperialism Union at the precocious age of 14, but it is clear that from an early age he was fiercely nationalistic. During his years with the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement Kim was under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Apart from the influence of his evidently patriotic father, such political education as he received was derived from his contact with the CCP, and from his experience as a guerrilla fighter. This must have generated ambivalent feelings, since, although Kim clearly imbibed much of the CCP outlook, the Koreans in the movement were not fully trusted and were the subject on occasion of expulsions. When Kim with a small group of followers sought refuge in the Soviet Union in 1941 he was a seasoned leader with, it may be assumed, a fixed outlook. Whilst presiding over the creation of the North Korean regime he was under the tutelage of Soviet advisers, but the failure of his erstwhile patrons to give him further support, after the failure of his invasion of the south, undoubtedly rankled. Chinese remained his only foreign language, and there is much in his early pronouncements and programme that shows an awareness of developments in China.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Kim’s major claim to originality is founded upon his use of the term juche. For the last two decades this concept (having the literal meaning of self-reliance or independence) has been identified as the core notion in his ideology. The term itself was undoubtedly chosen for a variety of reasons. It is general enough to admit of a number of connotations, permitting the leadership to describe most practical policies as consistent with the regime’s ideological tenets. It is also a term with strong nationalist overtones that simultaneously serves a multiplicity of purposes. The notion that Koreans could build through their own efforts a technologically and socially advanced society undoubtedly appeals to the aloofness, pride, and dislike of outsiders to be found in the political culture. In 88 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA particular it can be interpreted as a manifestation of defiance and self- assertion following the humiliations of the Japanese colonial period, and the devastation inflicted by superior American arms during the Korean war. And it has obviated die need for North Korea to take sides in the dispute between its two socialist patrons, justifying also subsequent North Korean criticisms of both neighbours for actions that were interpreted as unwarranted intrusions in domestic affairs. With the passing of the years, and the growth of the Kim II Sung personality cult, the concept has broadened, and an earlier date has been ascribed to the time at which it came to assume pre-eminence in the leader’s thought. The first important reference to juche in Kim II Sung’s writings occurs in a speech of 1955 made immediately after the purge and execution of Pak Hon-yong, the most notable of the ‘domestic’ faction of the party. Kim uses the occasion to condemn various opponents within the Korean Workers’ Party, asserting that a correct basis for the Korean revolution may be developed only by adopting a strictly national stand: What is Juche in our Party’s ideological work? What are we doing? We are not engaged in any other country’s revolution, but solely in the Korean revolution. Devotion to the Korean revolution is Juche in the ideological work of our Party. Therefore, all ideological work must be subordinated to the interests of the Korean revolution. When we study the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the history of the Chinese revolution, or the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism, it is entirely for the purpose of correctly carrying out our own revolution.2 This passage is strongly reminiscent of Mao Zedong at the time, during the late 1930s, when he was simultaneously establishing his claim to pre­ eminence in the Chinese Communist Party and undertaking what he then described as ‘the Sinification of Marxism’.3 In the same speech, Kim spoke also of the need for the whole population to learn from the work-style of the guerrillas. He also complained that until recently former members of his guerrilla band had not been sufficiently honoured in revolutionary Korea. Kim’s position in the party in 1955 may be compared with Mao’s in his early days in Yanan. Both were shrugging off the leadership of Moscow

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 and embarking on the making of a revolution conforming to their own idiosyncratic view and programme. Indeed, the theory was clearly intended to provide a justification for the monopolizing of power in the hands of the Kim faction. The experience of those Korean communists who had served in the Soviet or Chinese was thereby condemned as inappropriate for the circumstances of Korea, and those who had been active in the communist underground (as opposed to the Manchurian guerrillas) were also condemned for the factional way in which they mechanically applied foreign formulas to the particular problems of the peninsula. The double irony of this position lies in the fact that during his guerrilla days Kim was under the command of the Chinese IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 89 Communist Party, whose regional committee, in the north-east unlike in Yanan, was closedly supervised by the Comintern.4 It should be pointed out, lest too great an importance should be given to the role of ideology, that even while he lacked the theory, Kim II Sung was able to purge many of the domestic faction in the party in 1953 as scapegoats for the failure of the war strategy. This reading of what was portended in the discovery of juche, as well as the fate of Pak Hon-yong, undoubtedly gave an impetus to the members of other party factions to attempt to dislodge Kim II Sung from the leader­ ship. Emboldened by the criticism of Stalin voiced within the Soviet Communist Party, and encouraged by a speech at the third Korean Workers’ Party congress in April 1956 from Leonid Brezhnev, in which he censured the Korean party for over-ambitious economic plans and for the absence of collective leadership, members of the Yanan and Soviet factions attempted at an emergency plenum of the Central Committee to dislodge Kim while he was absent in the Soviet Union.5 This strategy failed, but after direct intervention by Peng Dehuai (who had commanded the Chinese People’s Volunteers in the Korean war) and Anastas Mikoyan, Kim was persuaded for a time to reinstate his critics. This intervention, and the fact that Moscow was apprised of the attempted coup, subsequently increased Kim’s resolve to rely upon his own chosen followers. As a consequence by 1958 Kim had purged his critics, and in agricultural and industrial policy North Korea began to follow something of the new Chinese model of socialist development. In a lecture delivered in 1965 which expands on the importance of juche as the only guide to policy for the regime, Kim makes it clear that in 1955 occurred die turning-point at which ‘our Party set forth the definite policy of establishing Juche’.6 From being an idea discovered at a particular phase of the Korean revolution, juche has been transfoimed into the theoretical core of Kim’s ideology. In recent times the concept has been detected in Kim’s writings of the 1930s (some of them made public only in 1978), and Kim Jong II has now pronounced that it was an independent discovery first expounded (by the 18-year-old Kim II Sung) at a meeting of the communist youth groups in Manchuria in 1930.7 One consequence of this view, of course, is that it has the youthful Kim II Sung Koreanizing Marxism some seven or eight years before Mao came to Sinify it. As the history of the concept has been rewritten, so the potential for its Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 application has been expanded. Now the programme of the Korean Workers’ Party consists in nothing less than ‘modelling the whole society on the Juche idea’,8 and ayuc/ie-oriented policy can be found in every field from agriculture to linguistics. It is, moreover, preached as a panacea for the problems of the Third World whenever Kim II Sung pronounces on this question.

Kim Jong IPs Ideological Contribution So far, the ideological phenomenon described, though unfortunate, is 90 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA also unremarkable. Korean pride and the exigencies of party strife have induced the communist leader of a small and somewhat beleaguered country to claim excessive originality and consistency for an ideology largely drawn from the usual Marxist-Leninist stereotypes. With that leader’s death or decline, history would be reinterpreted to adjust those claims where necessary. But the hereditary succession in North Korea, which has been in hand since 1974, has contributed a new element to this development. Having made no material contribution to the Korean revolution, Kim Jong II evidently seeks to legitimize his position through his contribution to the regime’s ideology. This contribution, however, must be one that underscores his father’s originality, since he owes his candidature solely to his father’s support. He has solved this problem by adopting the pose of his father’s exegete, claiming to find in the elder Kim’s writings subtle and profound truths never before properly under­ stood. Although the content of their ideas differs, something of this strategy was employed a decade ago in China by the ‘Gang of Four’. It is then not altogether surprising to discover that Kim Jong II exhibits a similar obsession with ideological and cultural matters, particularly the cinema and the performing arts. Thus the earliest work of this ideological prodigy now available is a talk he gave (at the age of 29) to film workers in 1970, and visitors to the Korean Film Studio outside Pyongyang are informed with some fervour that he has paid no fewer than 37 visits to give ‘on the spot guidance’. It is necessary to discuss the more important of Kim Jong fl’s ideological writings in order to make clear the scale of the claims made for both members of the dynasty. Expressed succinctly, the elder Kim has made contributions to ideology so profound as to have solved the problems of a new age (these contributions deserving the appellation ‘Kimilsungism’), and the younger Kim has proved his genius by being the first to point out these truths. His treatise On the Juche Idea is the most comprehensive of Kim Jong D’s writings. As all events of any significance in North Korea are linked to the leader’s birthday it is perhaps unsurprising to leam that this work first appeared at a symposium on juche held to mark Kim II Sung’s 70 years. By such actions do North Koreans affirm their loyalty to the regime, and loyalty is now the pre-eminent virtue for the population. But the symbolic importance of this event should not be underestimated. The manipula­ Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 tion of symbols and icons is of great importance to the political system. All over North Korea, by the roadside and in all public buildings, may be found countless murals and tableaux depicting the leader and his followers. He is always at least a head taller than those around him, and the scenes depict at once a nation of plenty and content, and one where the only personality and source of all wisdom is the leader. These have been joined recently by a picture painted in ethereal hues of the two Kims standing before the volcanic lake at the summit of Paektu San. This place has been chosen because it is both the holiest of mountains in Korean mythology, as well as the alleged site of Kim’s revolutionary base in the IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 91 1930s and the birthplace of Kim Jong II. By making his ideological treatise available and thus stating his claim to be a major authority in this field at the leader’s seventieth birthday, Kim Jong II simultaneously affirmed his own loyalty and made the observance of the ideological tenets expressed therein an act of loyalty for others. According to Kim Jong II, juche affirms that ‘man is the master of everything and decides everything’. This sentiment has been expressed many times before, and no arguments old or new are adduced in support of it. But behind this somewhat vacuous observation the younger Kim detects a new and original philosophical conception of man. Alone of the animate creatures, man possesses chajusong (independence); that is, he is a being with ‘creativity and consciousness’ and is desirous of making and shaping the social and natural world. Students of the early Marx would be excused for finding some parallels in Marx’s conception of man as homo faber, but this anticipation receives no mention. History is a struggle for the realization of chajusong, and the masses are the motive force in this struggle. But though the masses make history, they cannot do so correctly without proper leadership: Only when they receive correct guidance from the party and the leader, would the working class and the masses of other people be able to vigorously develop the deep-going and complicated revolu­ tionary struggle to transform nature and society, achieve national and class liberation, build a socialist, communist society success­ fully, and run it properly.9 Whereas it is commonly observed that Lenin’s contribution to Marxism was to render the party leaders indispensable for the success of the revolution, and in practice most Marxist regimes are dominated by a single personality, nowhere before has the need for the dominance of a particular leader been stated in such forthright terms. The juche ideology is original in this respect, if in no other. As Kim Jong II points out with disarming frankness in another work, ‘the revolutionary theory of the working class’ had ‘never systematized as an independent theory’ before what he describes as the ‘correct leadership method’.10 A national stance consistent with chajusong is, it is claimed, one that is ‘independent’. In specific terms (and here Kim Jong II repeats points

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 made many times in his father’s speeches) this implies national inde­ pendence and sovereignty, self-sufficiency in economics and technology, and self-reliance in defence. The most important manifestation of chajusong lies, however, in ideology. What is called for is ‘national dignity and revolutionary pride’ founded on a sound knowledge of the country: Koreans must know well Korean history, geography, economics, culture, and the custom of the Korean nation, and in particular our Party’s policy, its revolutionary history and revolutionary tradi­ tions. Only then will they be able to establish Juche and become true Korean patriots, the Korean communists.11 92 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA These sentiments are, of course, fully consistent with those expressed by the elder Kim in 1955. But they are also a signal for the younger generation of communists to take only Korean materials as their texts for study - in a narrowly nationalist fashion - and to pay attention to the Korean experience alone. That such an attitude is likely to engender an ignorance of and disdain for other nations and their contributions to Korean (or even world) history is to be expected. Thus, this author, on a conducted tour of Pyongyang’s Central History Museum in March 1986, was confidently informed that China had never conquered any part of Korea and that the artefacts on display from the first century AD were all from Koguryo tombs near the city, rather than of Han colonists. Even though the title page of each of Kim Jong ITs writings is emblazoned with Marx’s original slogan, ‘Workers of all countries, unite’, we are some way removed from the assertion also found in the Communist Manifesto that ‘the working men have no country’. And this nationalist stance also affords a stick with which to beat the South Korean regime, which is alleged to be dominated by ‘flunkeyism’ (sadaejuui: dependence upon the great), a particularly heinous sin in Pyongyang’s lexicon. So far, although there is a wide divergence between North Korean ideology and practice, there is little that is new in Kim Jong Il’s argument. In both respects there has been much borrowing from China and the Soviet Union, and even now Soviet aid is crucial for North Korean technological and military modernization. But considering the ideology in its own terms, it is a cruel contradiction that a system which proclaims the complete mastery by man of his fate is also one in which no individual other than the leader can express a personal point of view or make an original contribution. This has been expressed in a recent ideological production from Pyongyang which, with unintended irony, employs two of the metaphors of Hobbes’s Leviathan: The leader of the working class imbues the popular masses with the revolutionary thoughts, unites them into a political force and sets forth the scientific strategies and tactics. He is the brain setting up ideologies and theories, the centre of unity and cohesion.... He also stands for the working people’s will, demand and interest and carries in himself their fate .... In truth, the relation of the youth with the leader and the Party can be likened to that between the living matters

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 and the sun. The sun, with its rays and heat, gives life and light to all the creatures on the earth. The benevolent sun that gives political integrity to the youth and leads them to the bright future is the leader and the party of the working class.12 Hobbes, of course, begins from premisses diametrically opposed to those of Marx. Man in the mass is no more than a collection of proud, selfish and mistrustful beings who can be given form and unity only if they surrender their natural right to a sovereign who henceforth has carte blanche to determine their terms of association. For Marx, however, the common experience and consciousness of the working class gives them a mission for IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 93 the attainment of which particuluar leaders and ideologists are incidental. But this last quotation captures the reality of everyday life in North Korea today. While loudspeaker vans tour the suburbs exhorting the citizens of Pyongyang to save electric power, and unlit and overloaded trolley buses carry workers home slowly through the dimly lit streets, the many monuments and statues dedicated to the leader are brightly illuminated as if to give visible expression to the regime’s priorities. There are, however, noteworthy if not exactly original aspects to this treatise. Although lip service is paid to the ‘mass line’, it is clear that Kim Jong Il’s Marxism-Leninism is singularly ‘voluntarist’ in its expression. In this view ‘the remoulding of ideology’ by direction from above is the most important task, whose execution guarantees success in all other activities. This explains the younger Kim’s early and continuing interest in cultural activities. It is also undoubtedly a reflection of his own life experience. Even while still an undergraduate student (at the aptly named Kim II Sung University) he effected a complete revision of the curriculum, and later while superintending cultural affairs and then occupying a position in the party secretariat (ultimately as his father’s assistant) he would have become accustomed to imposing his will on subordinates with ease. It would be difficult for a person of sensitivity and intelligence, let alone a mediocrity, not to become preoccupied with the most efficient direction of other people whose opinions by definition were unimportant

Juche as the Ideology of the New Age It is in connection with the relationship between these views and existing Marxist theories and writings that Kim Jong II indulges in claims so fantastic that they would be dismissed as hyperbole in any other political system. Having conceded that Marxism-Leninism solved for the first time certain philosophical and historical problems of crucial importance for the advance of mankind, he then dismisses the ideology in its classical form as a thing of the past. History has entered a new era, where the masses are now not the object of history but its subject. A new era requires a new ideology based on a new elucidation of man as the master of the social and natural world. As Kim Jong II expresses it in a talk recently published, but originally given in 1976 while his succession was still a matter for discus­ sion only within the elite of the Korean Workers’ Party: ‘The revolutionary Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 theory of Kimilsungism is a revolutionary theory which provided solu­ tions to problems arising in the revolutionary practice in a new age different from the era that gave rise to Marxism-Leninism.’13 Now this observation on the status of man under socialism is as novel as The German Ideology of Marx and Engels (of 1845-46) and is offered as though Soviet and Chinese ideologists had never tackled this question. Of course, it is one that raises profound difficulties for Marxism, as can be seen from the vexedSdiscussion of humanism and alienation in China in 1983. If the socialist era is genuinely different from what has gone before then the satisfying of human needs and demands must be the principal 94 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA objective of the state. Indeed, it would not be inconsistent to affirm that any deficiency in the satisfying of those needs and demands, if man in the socialist state is really now (from the philosophical point of view) the ‘subject’ and determines all, would be quite illegitimate. North Korean commentators often refer to the country as a paradise where the people want for nothing, but they also concede that many tasks remain unful­ filled in the matter of the people’s livelihood, and crime and selfishness are still to be found. These concessions show that the North Korean state is in actuality much like most other states, in so far as decisions must be made concerning the allocation of relatively scarce resources, and laws must be promulgated and enforced. This in turn implies that some needs and demands are met at the expense of the others, and yet others are judged illegitimate. But, as we have seen, what the ideology gives with one hand it takes with the other, since, in the manner of Rousseau, North Korean man is a ‘subject’ only to the extent that his will and that of the leader coincide. This new outlook, and the example of the Korean revolution which exemplifies it, is relevant not merely to the Korean peninsula but to the world. In a passage reminiscent of Chinese statements during the later phases of ‘the Great Leap Forward’ when the ‘communist wind’ prevailed, Kim Jong II makes the following claim: The Juche idea has led the revolution and construction straight along the new road which had never been trodden by others before. The Korean revolution has paved an absolutely correct path for national liberation in a colony and opened a short cut to socialism. It has created a best socialist new life which the world’s people call a ‘model of socialism’, and is successfully pioneering the untrodden path to socialism and communism. Because the Juche idea illuminates the way, we have been able to advance along the shortest route and thus achieve in a brief period of time a great victory in the struggle for independence, sovereignty and socialism, a success which is amazing to the world.14 In other words, the experience of the Soviet and Chinese revolution counts for nothing, and no model but that of Korea deserves to be emulated by the nations of the Third World. Nothing less than naked expediency could induce the Soviet Union or China to co-operate with a regime with such ideological pretensions. The North Koreans claim that Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the relationship of their country with China is ‘unlike any that exists between any other two countries on this earth’.15 Now it is true that Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang accorded the younger Kim a rapturous welcome during his ‘unofficial’ visit to China in 1983, as the subsequently released film of the visit showed, but the explanation for the nature of this relationship is not to be sought in ideological solidarity. When Kim Jong II finally makes an official trip to the Soviet Union, rumours of the invitation for which have circulated for the last two years, it will be revealing to see what if anything is said in Moscow of his ideological contributions to Marxism-Leninism. IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 95

Preparing the Way for the New Generation The emergence of Kim Jong II as his father’s successor has been under way since an unpublicized plenum of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party in 1974. The techniques adopted to quell opposition within the regime and to render this strategy acceptable to the population are well documented.16 Kim Jong II was not initially mentioned by name, but a mysterious ‘Party Centre’ (hitherto a shorthand designation for the Central Committee) began to give advice and guidance. The Kim family cult, already firmly entrenched in the official political culture, took on an additional aspect with the publicizing of the revolutionary activities of Kim Jong Suk, Kim II Sung’s first wife and the mother of Kim Jong II. From that time the need to ensure the successful continuation of the revolutionary programme ‘generation after generation’ became a major theme in North Korean ideological writings. When the sixth congress of the Korean Workers’ Party was held in October 1980, Kim Jong II, although not previously in the Central Committee, joined the Political Bureau (and its Standing Committee, then consisting of five members) and a rationale was presented for the political succession. As the revolution would take more than one genera­ tion to complete, the leadership would have to be handed on to one from the new generation, personally instructed and moulded by the leader and completely loyal to his precepts.17 Who better suited for this role could there be than the leader’s son? With his usual modesty Kim II Sung was able to say in his address to the congress that the question of succession which is ‘the fundamental question decisive to the destiny of the Party and the revolution has been solved splendidly in our country’.18 Needing no further cue, contributors to the proceedings of the congress lauded this organizational innovation as a discovery of epoch-making proportions, as though no theorist, east or west, had ever characterized traditional East Asia as (in Max Weber’s terms) a ‘patrimonial’ bureaucratic hierocracy: Whether the wise leadership of a leader is available is a basic question determining the ultimate destiny of a revolution. Never­ theless, ... no one had ever dared to put forward the question of inheritance of the leadership - the life-and-death question in the achievement of the socialist and communist cause. The experience

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 of history shows that when the inheritance of the revolution is not guaranteed, the Party may degenerate, and the revolutionary cause pioneered by the leader may face a serious ordeal. This important question of the role of the leader and the inheritance of the leader­ ship in carrying out the cause of the working class, was brilliantly solved for the first time in history only by the great leader Comrade Kim Il-sung, who fully understood the long-standing yearning of the people to be led by an outstanding leader - in unprecedented^ difficult circumstances - and who led our revolution along the single road to victory regardless of difficulties. The great leader Comrade 96 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Kim Il-sung, basing himself on a comprehensive analysis and understanding of the experience and lessons of the international communist movement, put forward a unique theory and method for the inheritance of the revolution, which would provide a dependable guarantee for our people to ensure wise leadership from generation to generation.19 Here at least is the admission that the study of precedents other than those to be found exclusively in Korea is necessary for the discovery of this correct principle. Once the solution to the succession question was made a matter of public knowledge, the regime began to create a cult around the achieve­ ments and lineage of the younger Kim in much the same way (though with much less to work on) as had been done for his father.20 A multi-volume biography and numerous shorter pieces appeared on the subject of the ‘dear comrade leader’, and within four years of the party congress no fewer than three books (one running to two volumes) had been published on the life and exploits of Kim Jong II’s mother. Of even greater significance was the appearance of ideological material critical of the shortcomings of older cadres and laudatory of the role of youth. This argument can be traced back to the emergence of the ‘three revolution work teams’ of young cadres and intellectuals who, between 1973 and 1975, were sent to units and collectives across the country to provide ‘guidance’ in the ideological, technical, and cultural revolutions. Success in the ‘three revolutions’ was deemed necessary lest the revolu­ tion lose impetus, but with hindsight it can now be seen that this was a stratagem to undermine possible opposition to the political succession. Thus it has recently been asserted, in a manner reminiscent of Marx ’ s view of the historical mission of the proletariat, that the youth in North Korea are the ‘vanguard’ force in the construction of the new society. Whereas age brings ‘passivity and conservatism’, youth is the time when people have ideals and energy, though of course young people need the discipline of correct leadership. There is a clear parallel here with some of the criticisms offered of the Chinese Communist Party by the ‘Gang of Four’ whose spokesman Zhang Chunqiao claimed in 1975 that there were party members who had been left behind by the revolution and who were so blinded by their power and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 privileges that they could not see the necessity of carrying the revolution further.22 But Kim Jong II, although he shares with the ‘Gang of Four’ a fascination with the connection between culture and ideology, does not draw such radical conclusions on the defects to be found (and eliminated) in Korean communism. He does, however, detect a certain lack of interest in maintaining an atmosphere of struggle and vigilance: ‘The working class ... should be made to have a correct viewpoint on war. organizations must ensure that the industrial workers and other members repudiate war-phobia and war-weariness, eliminate pacifism, and live and work militantly, always alert.’23 And he is scathing on the presence of IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 97 ‘senility’ in the leadership of some organizations. There is hope however for sufferers of this malady. Since its basis is as much ideological as physiological, individuals who live in ‘fidelity to the Party and the leader ... will not become senile in thinking even though in an advanced age’.24 Bourgeois ideas, revisionism, and ‘flunkeyism’ must be resolutely opposed, but a failure to conform to the requirements of socialist society may be attributed to a lack of the proper consciousness. This in turn may be traced to the tenacity of ‘outdated ideological remnants’, the cure for which is yet more ideological remoulding. Unlike the ‘Gang of Four’ Kim Jong II finds no fundamental defects in the structure of party or state. This is to be expected given the identity of their architect, and the fact that he has so far enjoyed a clear run to the succession.

Political Culture and Political Structure in the Change of Generations Although the idea of a hereditary leadership may be attributable ultimately to Kim II Sung’s evident craving for adulation, and perhaps to his desire for immortality, these speculations must remain mere hypotheses in the absence of firm information concerning his personality.26 It may be contended with greater confidence that such plausibility as the notion possesses for the North Korean population derives from remnants of the traditional political culture. In Confucian societies the household of the ruler was the focal point of the state, a fact that led Max Weber to interpret the ruler’s governmental authority as an extension of his family authority. Thus the sound moral example of the ruler was taken to be the most efficacious means for achieving the good order of the society. As is often pointed out, the quasi-familial role of lesser bureaucratic functionaries was reflected in the popular description of them as ‘father and mother officials’. Although in contemporary North Korea the customary loyalties to the family have been very much weakened, Kim II Sung has deliberately constructed a myth of the leadership of the revolution by his forebears to reinforce the present dominance of his family and relatives by marriage.27 And as ‘sun of the nation’ and ‘father of the people’ he has manipulated family symbolism to create an atmosphere of unthinking loyalty to the present members of this revolutionary family. This strategy has been facilitated by the strict political division of labour in Confucian societies where the business of government is only a matter for the officials, and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 where within the governing class a rigid hierarchy prevails. Without employing the past as a complete explanation of the present it should also be noted that from the fifteenth century Korean Confucianism was dominated by a factional spirit so pervasive that the struggle for office led to the monopolization of bureaucratic preferment by one faction to the total exclusion of others. The current ideological obsession with ensuring that the revolutionary inheritance is passed on ‘from generation to generation’ has roots in the political culture, but it also possesses an institutional aspect, which has been documented by Dae-Sook Suh. The Korean Workers’ Party is 98 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA unusual in the very high turnover of its elite. Considering membership of the Central Committee, each party congress produces a Central Committee in which a majority of the members have never served before. Thus, of the sixth Central Committee of 1980 only 67 of the 145 full members were not newly elected, and of the fifth (1970) only 31 of the 117 were not newcomers. Even more significant is the fact that of those Central Comittee members who have served on more than one occasion, only a handful (39 of 317) have served more than twice. Of the existing leadership only Kim II Sung has been a member of all six Central Committees, and no other individual has been a member of any five.28 Even since 1980 a number of young cadres never seen before have taken up senior posts. By comparison, whereas the twelfth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party elected in 1982 saw the rise (or reappearance after an interval) of an unusually large number of cadres, of the 210 full members 112 had served in that capacity before.29 In the eleventh, tenth, and eighth Central Committees the number of new members drops to one-third, and only in the ninth, convened as a result of the Cultural Revolution, does the membership turnover match what is the normal pattern in the Korean Workers’ Party.30 Although the party conference of September 1985 resulted in significant personnel changes, the new ‘younger’ leaders were individuals predominantly in their fifties or sixties, while a number of veteran cadres remained in the Political Bureau.31 The most revealing comparison of all is to consider the composition of the very upper reaches of the party elites. In China the five members of the Standing Committe of the Political Bureau elected in 1987 (Zhao Ziyang, Li Peng, Qiao Shi, Hu Qili and Yao Yilin) do not comprise a single faction. Indeed, there has been public disagreement at the highest levels in the regime in the past two years concerning the speed of economic policy reform. In the equivalent three-member body in Korea the Kim family are now in a majority, the third member being an old guerrilla comrade of Kim II Sung’s, O Jin U, now apparently in eclipse. This turnover of leadership in North Korea must be supposed to be a device by which Kim II Sung ensures that no faction stays in the elite long enough to constitute itself as an opposition. Kim’s experience in the party, when he found himself at various times opposed by a domestic (southern) faction, a faction of Koreans originally from the Soviet Union, a group who had been in Yanan before returning to Korea, and even some of his Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 old guerrilla comrades, has undoubtedly taught him the efficacy of this tactic.32 Indeed, when his younger brother, Kim Yong Ju, rose in the party elite in the 1960s (becoming number six in the hierarchy at the party congress in 1970 before disappearing due to ‘illness’) many observers linked his appearance with the emergence of new personnel supposed to have been Kim Yong Ju’s supporters. Events in the past ten years may be interpreted as a repetition of the same phenomenon, this time introducing to the upper echelons of the party a cadre of members loyal to Kim Jong II. Although personal data concerning the North Korean political elite are notoriously hard to uncover, there is some evidence that at the top a IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 99 change of generations is taking place in the literal sense. According to Dae-Sook Suh, a significant group amongst the present leadership includ­ ing Kang Son San (KWP Political Bureau member and former premier), O Kuk-yol (Chief of General Staff), Son Song-pil and Yo Yon-gu (Vice- Chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly), are all children (or the spouses of children) of members of Kim II Sung’s Kapsan guerrilla faction.33 It is not surprising, then, that so much emphasis is placed on the need to hand on correct leadership ‘generation after generation’. Kim II Sung’s ingenious and original solution to the succession problem in the party is evidently being applied on a scale more extensive than is commonly recognized even in North Korea.

Conclusions In recent years Kim Jong II has been described as personally involved in many new construction projects in North Korea. In the capital he has taken a particular interest in the erection of monuments, as the grotesque ‘Tower of the Juche idea’, allegedly symbolic of his loyalty to the leader, bears mute testimony. He has also played an important role in the reconstruction of whole sections of the city, the new shops and 30-storey apartment blocks of the renamed Changwang Street being apparently a model for even more grandiose architectural schemes. As he is reported to have remarked, when attending the opening of a building on the street: ‘It is my ideal to enable all people to live in houses like this’.34 From the point of view of aesthetics, some might find these uniform prefabricated structures with their stark coloured panels monotonous if not ugly. The inhabitants, however, are likely to view them from a different perspec­ tive, even if only because they derive advantage from those regulations that provide for only buildings over ten storeys to be equipped with lifts. For the perceptive observer, however, Changwang Street is more remarkable as the exhibition of a political rather than an architectural model. From the junction with Haebangsan Street north right across the capital almost to the Potong Gate the way is closed to ordinary traffic. Armed sentries scrutinize those who approach, and at night a boom is placed across the street to exclude any unwanted vehicle. The new Mercedes limousines at the gates, and the air-conditioning units at windows of these buildings show that no ordinary inhabitants are housed Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 therein. In this quarter of the city live members of that generation who are the chief beneficiaries of the North Korean revolution. It is to justify their position and power that the juche ideology now serves.

NOTES

James Cotton is Deputy Director of the East Asia Centre, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is at present Visiting Fellow at the National University of Singapore, Department of Political Science. This article is based on research supported by the University of 100 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

Newcastle upon Tyne and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK (ref. no. E 00 23 2203). The author is indebted to David Goodman for his comments on an earlier draft.

1. On Kim’s early life, see Sung Chul Yang, Korea and Two Regimes. Kim II Sung and Park Chung Hee (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1981), pp.27-46 and 75-96. On the early history of the communist movement in Manchuria, see: Dae-Sook Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918-1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967); R.A. Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea, Part 1: The Movement (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972). 2. Kim II Sung, ‘On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work’, in On Juche in Our Revolution, Vol.I (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House (FLPH), 1980), p. 150. 3. Stuart Schram (ed.), The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung, revised ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p.172. 4. Chong-Sik Lee, Revolutionary Struggle in Manchuria. Chinese Communism and Soviet Interest, 1922-1945 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), pp.l58ff. 5. Chong-Sik Lee, The Korean Workers’ Party: A Short History (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), pp.92-100; Joungwon A. Kim, Divided Korea: The Politics of Development, 1945-1972 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 188-201. 6. Kim II Sung, ‘On Socialist Construction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the South Korean Revolution’, in On Juche in Our Revolution, Vol.I, p.470. 7. Kim Jong II, On the Juche Idea (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1982), pp.7-8. 8. Kim II Sung, Tasks of the People’s Government in Modelling the Whole Society on the Juche Idea (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1982). 9. Kim Jong II, On the Juche Idea, p. 18. 10. Kim Jong II, On Correctly Understanding the Originality of Kimilsungism (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1984), p.5. 11. Kim Jong II, On the Juche Idea, p.38. 12. Position and Role of the Youth in the Development of Social History (Pyongyang: Kumsong Youth Publishing House, 1984), pp.34—5. 13. Kim Jong II, On Correctly Understanding the Originality of Kimilsungism, p.3. 14. Kim Jong II, On the Juche Idea, p.79. 15. Young C. Kim (ed.), ‘Interview with Yong-nam Kim, Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’, Journal of Northeastasian Studies, Vol.4 (1985), p.67. 16. M.E. Clippinger, ‘Kim Chong-il in the North Korean Mass Media: A Study of Semi- Esoteric Communication’, Asian Survey, Vol.21 (1981), pp.289-309; Chong-Sik Lee, ‘Evolution of the Korean Workers* Party and the Rise of Kim Chong-il’, Asian Survey, Vol.22 (1982), pp.434-48; Dae-Sook Suh, ‘Kim Il-sung: His Personality and Policies’, in R.A. Scalapino and Jun-yop Kim (eds.), North Korea Today: Strategic and Domestic Issues (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1983), pp.43-64. 17. Young C. Kim, ‘North Korea in 1980: The Son also Rises’, Asian Survey, Vol.21 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 (1981), pp.112-13. 18. Kim II Sung, ‘Report to the Sixth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea’, in On Juche in Our Revolution, Vol.III, p.449. Recently, this statement has been amplified in a lecture to party workers: Kim II Sung, Historical Experience of Building the Workers’ Party of Korea (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1986), pp.103-4. 19. Hwang Chang-yop, ‘On Inheriting the Leadership* (Pyongyang home service, 12 Oct. 1980), BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, FE/6554/C1/2. 20. B.C. Koh, ‘The Cult of Personality and the Succession Issue*, in C.I. Eugene Kim and B.C. Koh (eds.), Journey to North Korea: Personal Perceptions (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1983), pp.25-41. 21. Position and Role of the Youth in the Development of Social History, p.3. 22. Chang Chun-chiao, On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie IDEOLOGY AND LEGITIMATION IN NORTH KOREA 101

(Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), pp.18-19. 23. Kim Jong II, On Further Improving the Work of the Trade Unions (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1986), p.6. 24. Kim Jong II, On Further Improving the Work of the Trade Unions, p.21. 25. Kim Jong II, On Increasing Obedience to Socialist Laws (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1986), p.5. 26. The best assessment of the fragmentary information concerning Kim’s personality is to be found in Sung Chul Yang, Korea and Two Regimes, pp.27-46, 75-96, 161-220. 27. On the manipulation of elements of the traditional political culture, see Thomas Hosuck Kang, ‘Changes in the North Korean Personality from Confucian to Communist’ in Jae Kyu Park and Jung Gun Kim (eds.), The (Seoul: Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungman University, 1979), pp.61-110. The same volume documents the occupation of positions in the leadership by members of Kim’s family: Jae Kyu Park, ‘Power Structures in North Korea*, p. 137. The strongly ‘patrimonial* character of the North Korean political system may be taken as a partial validation of the recent application of the Weberian thesis to Korea by Norman Jacobs: see his The Korean Road to Modernization and Development (Urbana and Chicago, II: University of Illinois Press, 1985). 28. Dae-Sook Suh, Korean Communism 1945-1980. A Reference Guide to the Political System (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1981), pp.347-9. 29. W. Bartke and P. Schier, China*s New Party Leadership. Biographies and Analysis of the Twelfth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp.60-61. 30. D.S.G. Goodman, ‘Changes in Leadership Personnel after September 1976*, in J. Domes (ed.), Chinese Politics After Mao (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1979), pp.37-69. 31. D.S.G. Goodman, ‘The National CCP Conference of September 1985 and China’s Leadership Changes’, China Quarterly, No.105 (March 1986), pp.122-30. 32. Dae-Sook Suh, ‘Communist Party Leadership’, in Dae-Sook Suh and Chae-Jin Lee (eds.), Political Leadership in Korea (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1976), pp.159-91; Chong-Sik Lee, The Korean Workers’ Party: A Short History, pp.86ff. 33. Dae-Sook Suh, ‘Changes in North Korean Politics and the Unification Policy*, Korea and World Affairs, Vol.9 (1985), pp.704-5. 34. Choe In Su, Kim Jong II, the People’s Leader (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1985), Vol.2, p.330. The best account of living conditions in Pyongyang is by Adrian Buzo, ‘North Korea - Yesterday and Today*, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society (Korea Branch), Vol.56 (1981), pp. 1-25. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Vietnam: The Slow Road to Reform

Michael Williams

Vietnam, the third largest communist state, faces a growing internal crisis because of the country’s virtually complete international isolation, its involvement in Kampuchea, and its ageing party leadership. Within the communist bloc only the Soviet Union offers Vietnam significant assistance. This economic dependence is set to grow in the coming years. At Vietnam’s sixth party congress, in December 1986, the three senior communist leaders all resigned, raising expectations of thoroughgoing change. Subsequent developments indicate, however, that the necessity of retaining a balance between reformists and traditionalists within the leadership has meant that meaningful reform of the country’s economy still remains for the future. The substantial delay in matching changes in government with those in the party leadership indicates that the reformists are still lacking a full mandate for tackling the country’s problems.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is the third largest communist country after the USSR and China and has been ruled by the Vietnamese Communist Party since 1975. The party assumed power after an extra­ ordinary straggle not only against the former colonial power, France, but also later against the United States. Twelve years after the conclusion of that conflict, Vietnam’s communist government finds itself in the midst of a profound internal crisis prompted by the country’s dire economic situation, its virtually complete international isolation, the continuing war in Kampuchea and the inability of the communist party to free itself from a now rapidly ailing and ageing group of leaders who have effectively dominated it since 1945.

The Impact of Revolution and War

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 The Vietnamese Communist Party presents a paradox among ruling communist parties in the sense that, although it has been a ruling party for more than three decades, at least in North Vietnam since 1954, no other party has had such an extraordinarily prolonged experience of revolution and war. This has involved it successively in conflicts with Japan, France and the United States, and after reunification in the first inter-communist wars with Democratic Kampuchea and China. This legacy has bequeathed the country with the world’s third largest standing army, and an economy that is hopelessly dependent on the Soviet Union, and condemns its people to one of the lowest living standards in Asia, and certainly in East Asia. This continuing experience of war and revolution - with an estimated VIETNAM: THE SLOW ROAD TO REFORM 103 140,000 troops in Kampuchea, 40,000 in Laos and tens of thousands along the border with China - has postponed Vietnam’s transition to meaningful economic reconstruction. The absorption of South Vietnam’s basically capitalist society in 1975 placed enormous strains on the already inadequate administrative capacity of the government of North Vietnam. This was especially so given the huge toll the war had taken of revolutionary cadres in the south and the speed with which reunification took place - just over 12 months. Full reunification was proclaimed with the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 2 July 1976. The period 1976-80 (the second five- year plan) was marked by the euphoria following the fall of Saigon in 1975. Unrealistic plans were adopted, geared towards collectivization of agriculture in the south and rapid development of heavy industry. The government premised these plans on a combination of strict social discipline and large foreign aid inflows, including war reparations from the United States. However, the failure to attract western aid on any significant scale, the withdrawal of Chinese aid in 1978 (in circumstances closely resembling the withdrawal of Soviet aid from China in 1960), the subsequent invasion of Kampuchea followed by the Chinese incursion into Vietnam and the massive exodus of much of the country’s intelligentsia and middle class in the late 1970s laid these plans to waste. Since 1980, the party has veered between tentative steps toward reform, as in 1980-82 (and more recently), and returning to the themes of socialist control and centralization. In 1983, for example, there was a reining-in of the burgeoning free market and a sharp reduction in the de facto independence of enterprises. Although half-hearted attempts were made at economic reform in 1985, and there were other attempts to reduce the level of economic subsidies and to give enterprises a greater degree of individual responsibility, these succeeded only in worsening the country’s economic problems. As a result of price, wage and currency reforms, inflation has been in three figures for most of the last two years. The country also achieved a record budget deficit in 1986, with food produc­ tion lagging seven to eight per cent below target, exports as much as 30 per cent behind, and industrial production 40 per cent below target. Foreign currency reserves are estimated to have reached the point where they are

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 no more than adequate to cover two weeks’ worth of imports. These economic problems have in turn given rise to widespread black marketeering and corruption within the country, so much so that in a significant theoretical article last May, Le Due Tho spoke of corruption ‘tainting every level of the party’.1 The country’s economic situation is all the more pressing when it is remembered that since the mid-1970s neighbouring countries such as the members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) - Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei - and also China have witnessed rapid economic growth. 104 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA The Problem of Isolation Much of Vietnam’s present economic predicament is of course the result of its almost total international isolation. This is particularly galling for a communist party that has historically always laid great stress on inter­ nationalism, both within the communist movement and in the wider sense in the international community. Throughout the , for example, the Vietnamese Communist Party avoided taking sides in the Sino-Soviet split - one of the few communist countries not to do so - and received aid from both Moscow and Beijing. In a wider sense, Vietnam received much moral and diplomatic support from the Third World and even from some western countries, such as Sweden. There is little doubt too that after the Paris Peace Agreement of 1973, and despite the rapid collapse of the Saigon regime two years later, the Vietnamese leadership genuinely hoped for and expected not only diplomatic relations with the United States but also war reparations. The nearest the United States came to according diplomatic recognition to Vietnam was in 1977, when President Carter sent a mission to Hanoi. This foundered, however, over Vietnamese insistence on war reparations. Despite this disappointment, Vietnam had widespread international support when it entered the United Nations in 1975, and the Non-Aligned Movement at its Colombo conference of 1976. But the tide turned rapidly against Vietnam in the late 1970s as a result of its treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in 1978, its membership of Comecon dating from the same year, and, of course, its 1978-79 invasion of Kampuchea. Because of these moves, no western aid of any significance has reached Vietnam since 1979, with the exception of the Swedish aid programme now running at US $45-50 million a year. Even social democratic governments such as France and Australia in the early 1980s, when they considered the idea of giving aid, found themselves under pressure from the United States, China and ASEAN not to do so. This isolation from the West has meant that since 1979 Vietnam has also received no financial assistance from the multilateral agencies such as the IMF, the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank.2 If the behaviour of western governments was at least predictable, that of Third World countries was less so. To its bitter disappointment, Vietnam has found that the government it established in Kampuchea in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 January 1979 - the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, led by Heng Samrin - has even today, eight years after its establishment, been recognized by only one non-communist country, India. In addition, several communist countries such as Yugoslavia, Romania, North Korea and, of course, China, have failed to recognize this regime. The United Nations still accords recognition to the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK), and indeed does so by a larger vote each year - in 1986 by 116 votes to 21 - inflicting a humiliating isolation on Vietnam. Just as dispiriting for Vietnam’s leadership has been its stepmotherly treatment by other communist states. It is known that its membership of VIETNAM: THE SLOW ROAD TO REFORM 105 Comecon in 1978 was not without controversy, with several East Euro­ pean countries reportedly objecting. More striking have been develop­ ments of the last few years, with the countries of Eastern Europe failing to offer significant economic assistance or even diplomatic support to Vietnam. Vietnam’s growing isolation within the communist bloc itself has been a bitter blow to the leadership. Hanoi has long had to watch as one delegation after another from Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, went to Beijing to sign trade, cultural and economic agreements with China. But during 1986 it became clear that the countries of Eastern Europe were also interested in forging political ties, including party-to- party relations, with China. In September, the Polish leader General Jaruzelski, followed in October by the East German leader , both visited China. They were the first leaders of East Euro­ pean countries closely aligned to Moscow to do so in more than a quarter of a century. Both leaders also visited North Korea and Mongolia, but not Vietnam. In the case of East Germany, formal party-to-party relations with China have now been restored. In May 1987 the Bulgarian leader bacame the latest in the queue to reach Peking. This process of cementing ties between Eastern Europe and China was sealed in June 1987 with the visit to Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria by the Chinese Prime Minister and acting communist party leader Zhao Ziyang. In fact, no signficant communist leader has visited Vietnam in the last five years. Even the Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega, who visited Asia in 1986 on a journey that included India, China and North Korea, did not include Hanoi on his travels, even though he said in Beijing that he did not agree with China over the question of Kampuchea. Vietnam’s isolation was also evident at the funeral in July 1986 of the veteran party leader Le Duan. Apart from Vietnam’s close allies, Laos and the Heng Samrin administration in Kampuchea, only the Soviet Union sent a delegation to attend the funeral. In this situation, Vietnam’s relationship with the Soviet Union is clearly critical. The Vietnamese leadership has been unsettled by trends in Sino- Soviet relations since Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the leadership of the Soviet communist party. When Gorbachev made an important speech in Vladivostok at the end of July 1986, he offered China important conces­

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 sions on Afghanistan and on Sino-Soviet border issues.3 On the question of Kampuchea, the Soviet leader took what for Hanoi must have been an alarmingly neutral stance, saying that Vietnam and China should sit down in a comradely manner and discuss the issue. The Soviet Union has also long dropped its public reassurances of the pre-Gorbachev era that Sino- Soviet relations would not be allowed to improve at the expense of what were called ‘third parties’. Moreover, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping has made it clear in response to these Soviet initiatives that it is Kampuchea that remains the most substantial obstacle to better relations with the Soviet Union. If there were to be an improvement on this, Deng said in September 1986, he would make the last foreign trip of his lifetime 106 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA for a summit with Gorbachev. Vietnam was shocked too by the Soviet Union’s willingness for the first time in October 1986 to discuss the question of Kampuchea with China at the regular twice-yearly normaliza­ tion talks that the two communist superpowers had been holding since 1982. The Soviet Union had always previously refused to discuss this question with the Chinese. Another worrying development for Vietnam has been the invitation extended to the Chinese Communist Party to attend the celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1987. All of this must leave the Vietnamese leadership worried that, as with the Sino-American rapprochement in the early 1970s, a dramatic improvement in Sino-Soviet relations could take place at Hanoi’s expense. Regarding Kampuchea itself, the drain on Vietnam remains sub­ stantial. While the security situation has improved markedly from Hanoi’s viewpoint, especially since the Vietnamese offensive in the 1985 dry season, the Democratic Kampuchea forces still pose a threat. The Coalition Government forces comprise the Khmer Rouge, the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front led by Son Sann, and forces loyal to Prince Sihanouk, who is president of the CGDK. Of these three groups, it is the Khmer Rouge that presents the only real mili­ tary challenge to the Vietnamese and their allies, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. This will remain the case so long as the Chinese continue to supply the Khmer Rouge via Thailand. More worrying, perhaps, from Hanoi’s viewpoint has been the failure of the PRK administra­ tion to establish itself fully within Kampuchean society. The regime’s armed forces, the administration and the communist party itself (the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party) remain painfully weak. The conjunction of Vietnam’s international isolation and its grind­ ing economic misery - it is classified by the United Nations as one of the 20 poorest countries in the world - has contributed to a grow­ ing disillusionment within the country with the leadership of the com­ munist party. One of the more remarkable developments of 1986 was the spread of this disillusionment within the communist party itself, where an increasingly frank debate ensued about the leadership’s short­ comings. This debate intensified after the appearance in May 1986 of a major act

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 of self-criticism by a senior Politburo member, Le Due Tho, the negotiator of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords.4 Writing in that month’s issue of the party’s theoretical journal Tap Chi Cong San (‘Communist Review’), he was damning about the shortcomings in the party’s ranks, and he ascribed most of these shortcomings to middle and senior-level party cadres. Among ordinary party members indulgence and fear were said to reign, with the present atmosphere leading to sycophancy and opportunism. Amongst the cadres themselves, examples of corruption, bribery, smuggling and dissolute living were said to be common. Not only were these highly critical admissions unusual, but the fact that the author of the article had been at the centre of Vietnamese communist politics for almost VIETNAM: THE SLOW ROAD TO REFORM 107 four decades added tremendous force to what amounted to a damning indictment of party life. One of the most significant aspects of the article was Le Due Tho’s frank admission of the age problem in the party: as he put it himself, many cadres ‘are now too old to be able to do much work’.5 Moreover, there was a partriarchal attitude in the party that discriminated against younger people. People have forgotten, he pointed out, that in 1945 when the Vietnamese Republic was proclaimed, most ministers and senior party officials were little more than 30 years old. The sense of crisis within the party accelerated after a meeting of the Central Committee in May 1986, which, according to General Secretary Le Duan, was marked by a consistent analysis of the shortcomings and weaknesses of guidance of its own leaders.6 The meeting was followed in July by the death of Le Duan, who had been unwell for some time. To the dismay of reformers within the party, his place as general secretary was taken by Truong Chinh, the country’s head of state who, at 79, was the same age as Le Duan. Moreover, Truong Chinh, who has long had a reputation for being a hardliner, had in fact been the party’s general secretary in the mid-1950s, but was dismissed for his over-zealous handling of land reform.7 He thus achieved the remarkable feat, unique in the annals of communist history, of resuming leadership of a communist party he had led 30 years earlier.

The Sixth Party Congress Despite the concern that reformists in the party may have felt at the appointment of Truong Chinh, expectations of change were high at the sixth party congress in December 1986, if only because old age and ill health were rapidly catching up with many Vietnamese leaders. Further­ more, the Soviet Union has not hidden in recent years its concern at Vietnamese mismanagement of aid, while the accession to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and the reforms he has instituted within the CPSU are believed to have encouraged Vietnamese reformers. Expectations of change were more than fulfilled by the resignation at the congress of all three senior leaders - Truong Chinh, Pham Van Dong and Le Due Tho - from the party’s highest organs, the Politburo and the Central Committee, in a move virtually without parallel in the history of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 any mling communist party. There had been suggestions that Truong Chinh might relinquish one of the senior posts he held, but it was thought likely he would retain the party post. Officially the party said that all three men resigned on the grounds of advanced age and failing health. And although the three senior leaders are all in their late seventies, old age has not previously been an obstacle to the holding of high office in the Vietnamese Communist Party. While age and health clearly are a factor behind the resignations, at least in the case of Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, who is 80 years old, the main reason for the dramatic development lies in the fundamental failure of the country’s economic policies, for 108 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA which the leadership has now taken full responsibility. This was openly recognized by Truong Chinh in his political report to the congress.8 Clearly the resignation of Vietnam’s three top leaders does represent a fundamental break with the past. Although they are to be retained as advisers to the Central Committee, they have no formal position now on either of the party’s senior decision-making bodies. Nevertheless, subse­ quent clarification of their role indicates they will still exert a powerful influence over the leadership. An illustration of this was given during the visit in March 1987 of the Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, when all three men were involved in the bilateral discussions that took place. Moreover, while the resigning party leaders, and the party itself, in the unprecedented internal debates it has held in recent months, have openly admitted that their policies have led the country to virtual national bankruptcy, this does not mean that there is a generation of more technocratically-oriented younger leaders waiting in the wings to take over. On the contrary, most of the men now tipped to take over from the resigning leaders are themselves in their early seventies and veterans of the party’s long years of war and revolution. The new Politburo elected at the sixth congress confirmed a definite bias towards economic reformers within the new leadership, and towards men who are either southerners or have experience of administration in the south. The new party leader is, as expected, Nguyen Van Linh. At 73, he is only six years younger than his predecessor Truong Chinh, but is closely identified with attempts at economic reform in the south. He was formerly party secretary in City (Saigon) and was dropped from the Politburo at the last congress in 1982, after opposition to reforms he had pioneered; he was reinstated in 1985. Two other men closely linked with the new reforms were promoted in the Politburo: Vo Chi Cong moved to become number three, while Vo Van Kiet moved from tenth to fifth position. However, the reformers do not appear to have things all their own way. The second man in the Politburo is Pham Hung, until recently the country’s Interior Minister, regarded as a hardliner. Despite the continued presence of other members of the old guard, the upheaval in the leadership left the way clear for a renewed reform programme; this is likely to include measures aimed at encouraging the private sector, reviving stagnant export industries and decentralizing the rigid bureaucracy. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 In the economic report to the congress, Vo Van Kiet, Chairman of the State Planning Commission, noted that ‘the economic situation in our country is still rife with difficulties such as unemployment, waste of materials, shortages of new materials and serious economic phenomena’.9 Truong Chinh, in his political report to the congress, fully accepted the Politburo’s responsibility for the economic situation, admitting ‘serious and longstanding shortcomings and mistakes as concerns major view­ points and policies, strategic guidance and the organization of work’.10 In a departure from past practice, however, no report on party-building was presented, again an indication of deep-seated malaise within the party. VIETNAM: THE SLOW ROAD TO REFORM 109 As well as the three senior leaders who submitted their resignations, three other Politburo members lost their seats. These were the Defence Minister, Van Tien Dung, General Chu Huy Man and former Vice- Premier To Huu. The dropping of two senior military figures from the Politburo has led some diplomatic observers to believe that there is unease within the armed forces at the present leadership. Both Van Tien Dung, who led the final offensive against Saigon in 1975, and Chu Huy Man, head of the army’s political department, were reported to have been sharply criticized for their autocratic style at the army congress in October 1986. Initially neither Dung nor Man was elected to represent the army at the party congress, although that was subsequently reversed. To Huu, formerly the deputy minister in charge of the economy, was dismissed from his governmental post in June 1986, so his ouster from the Politburo was no surprise. He is believed to have been held responsible for a disastrous currency change in September 1985, which prompted rampant inflation. Like Chu Huy Man, To Huu also lost his position on the Central Committee. Five new members were elected to the 13-man Politburo, and one candidate member, Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, moved up to the eighth position. The new members were Tran Xuan Bach, formerly on the Central Committee Secretariat; Nguyen Thanh Binh, secretary of the Hanoi party committee; General Doan Khue, deputy defence minister; and Mai Chi Tho, a former mayor of Ho Chi Minh City and younger brother of Le Due Tho. The new candidate member of the Politburo is Dao Duy Trung, chairman of the party’s propaganda department and editor of the party’s theoretical journal. Drastic changes in the Central Committee were also announced at the congress. One-third of the Central Committee elected at the previous congress, some 54 members, were ousted. Nearly half of those removed had been, and in some cases still are, ministers or deputy ministers dealing with the economy. Eighty-four new members were elected to the 173- member Central Committee. There appears to be little doubt that the congress strengthened the trend of economic reform and liberalization within Vietnam, although there was little indication of a softening of foreign policy, particularly with regard to Kampuchea. While the congress is important in charting the course of domestic policy, it provides only the broadest outlines of foreign Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 policy. Nevertheless, the political report adopted at the congress made clear that Vietnam’s priority task in external affairs was the maintenance of its pre-eminent position in Indo-China. At the same time, the strength­ ening of Vietnam’s friendship and co-operation with the Soviet Union was said to be the ‘cornerstone’ of Vietnamese foreign policy. Although the party report committed Vietnam to withdrawing its forces from Kampuchea, no specific mention was made of the previously announced pull-out date of 1990. The avoidance of mentioning a time­ table for withdrawal may be a reflection of the continuing difficulties faced 110 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA by the Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh in building up its own forces and administration. A striking illustration of the increasing isolation of the Vietnamese Communist Party within the world communist movement was the poor and low-level attendance by foreign communist parties. Apart from the Laotian leader Kaysone Phomvihan and the Kampuchean party chief Heng Samrin, the only other senior party leader to attend was the Portuguese communist party General Secretary, Alvar Cunhal. The Soviet communist party, unlike other East European parties, was however represented by a senior Politburo member, Yegor Ligachev. In an address to the congress, Ligachev urged Vietnam to improve relations with China, while at the same time expressing Soviet support for the solidarity of Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos. But Ligachev’s endorsement was not as strong as the Vietnamese assertion about Indo-Chinese unity being a ‘law of survival’. Nevertheless, the presence of Ligachev at the congress and his assurances that the Soviet Union would neither sacrifice Vietnam’s interests nor mediate in relations with China was welcome news in Hanoi. Indeed, at a press conference in Hanoi after the congress, Ligachev went out of his way to make supportive gestures to Vietnam, and he announced a significant increase in Soviet aid.

The Slow Road to Reform For the current five-year plan, 1986-90, Ligachev in his address to the sixth party congress disclosed that between eight and nine million roubles would be disbursed to Vietnam, amounting to approximately US $2,500 million a year. This commitment is equal to the total for all Soviet aid over the previous 30 years. Despite the Soviet Union’s past complaints about mismanagement of its aid, now freely admitted in Hanoi, the role of the USSR in the Vietnamese economy seems set to increase. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that Vietnam will in the foreseeable future be able to reduce its dependence on the Soviet Union, so long as Moscow remains its sole source of external aid and credit. Any doubts on that score were dispelled by the visit of the Vietnamese party leader, Nguyen Van Linh, to Moscow in May 1987. In talks said to have been conducted with ‘frankness’, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Gorbachev, lamented ‘the weaker aspects of economic bonds’ between the two countries. In return for its substantial aid, the Soviet Union made clear the need for major reforms of the Vietnamese economy within the context of a reinforced ‘socialist integration’. The winter session of Vietnam’s National Assembly met only a few days after the close of the sixth congress of the communist party. The expecta­ tion was therefore that Truong Chinh and Pham Van Dong would resign their government positions at the session. Under Vietnam’s constitution, it is the National Assembly that names the president of the State Council VIETNAM: THE SLOW ROAD TO REFORM 111 and the prime minister. Other government changes were expected to be announced, but came only much later, in February 1987. Both Pham Van Dong and Truong Chinh attended the session of the National Assembly, with official media listing them with their present titles as prime minister and president respectively. In many ways die session of the National Assembly was an echo of the party congress, with economic mismanagement, corruption, wastage and excessive bureaucracy coming under strong attack. But the failure to carry out changes in government widely expected after the recent party congress inevitably raised questions as to how firm the reformists’ control of the party really is. Without the reformists also holding the key positions in government, it is difficult to see how a programme of thoroughgoing economic reform involving a decentralization of decision-making, encouragement to the private sector and a reduction of the country’s excessive bureaucracy can actually be implemented. Certainly, the failure to make the necessary changes in government gave the hardliners in the party the opportunity to obstruct reforms; It may well be that the expected shake-up in the government had in fact to be postponed precisely because of opposition from the conservatives in the party, upset at the seeming dominance of the reformists at the party congress. In this respect, it is interesting to note that in the new party Secretariat there is only one prominent advocate of reform among its members - Nguyen Van Linh. By contrast, Gorbachev’s most sweeping changes have been in the CPSU Secretariat. A clear indication that reformists did not have a commanding position within the party leadership was given by the extraordinary delay in replacing Pham Van Dong and Truong Chinh respectively as prime minister and president. Thus for six months after the sixth party congress Vietnam was in the highly anomalous position for a communist country that its head of government and head of state no longer held senior party positions. This anomaly was finally resolved only in June when the National Assembly, meeting for the first time since elections in April, announced the appointment of Pham Hung as prime minister and Vo Chi Cong as president. The two men were respectively ranked second and third in the new Politburo elected at the sixth party congress.11 These appointments show only too well that Vietnam’s ‘road to reform’

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 will remain a painfully slow one. The top three leaders, all in their mid­ seventies, are on average only five years younger than those they have replaced. Moreover, while the new party leader, Nguyen Van Linh, has impeccable reformist credentials, the election as prime minister of Pham Hung, the party’s leading conservative figure, underlines the delicate balance within the leadership. Indeed, as head of government, charged with the actual implementation of any reform programme, Pham Hung is hardly the most inspired choice. True, those ministers who have in the past been identified with economic reforms remain in the cabinet, whose composition was reaffirmed by the National Assembly in June 1987. But for months much speculation had centred on the figure of Vo Van Kiet, 112 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA the chairman of the state planning commission, as a strong contender for the post of prime minister. Kiet had been, together with Nguyen Van Linh, the architect of economic reforms in the south and, at 65, would have been by Vietnamese standards a young man for the job. In stark contrast to many commentaries in the press that have under­ lined the need for an economic specialist as prime minister, it is more than 20 years since Pham Hung held any economic office. Moreover, as interior minister, from 1980 to 1987, the new prime minister had the reputation of being a hardliner. It remains to be seen whether Pham Hung and Nguyen Van Linh will be able to work closely together in implementing any programme of meaningful economic reform. Indeed, all the indications are that Vietnam’s new leadership represents a careful balance of communist veterans who are still uncertain how far they dare to venture in extricating the country from its current economic plight and the Kampuchean imbroglio. The danger is real that the drive and momentum for reform generated by the sixth party congress will be lost.

NOTES

Michael Williams is Senior Commentator with the BBC Far Eastern Service. He was formerly Lecturer in Politics at the University of East Anglia, and he has written extensively on South-east Asian politics. His doctoral dissertation is a study of the Indonesian Communist Party in the 1920s.

1. Le Due Tho, ‘Pressing Tasks in Party-Building Work’, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts {SWB\ FE/8257/B7f, 13 May 1986. 2. See Wall Street Journal, 9 June 1987. Vietnam has received no funds from the IMF since 1978. Its membership of the organization was formally suspended in January 1985 for failing to meet deadlines for loan repayments. 3. Mikhail Gorbachev, ‘Speech on Development of Soviet Far East and Asia-Pacific Affairs’, BBC SWB, SU/8324/C/1-18, 30 July 1986. 4. See Le Due Tho, op. cit. 5. Ibid., B/6. 6. On the June Plenum, see ‘Tenth Plenum of CPV Central Committee’, BBC SWB, Part 3, FE/8282/B/5, 11 June 1986. 7. See William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1981), pp.182-3. 8. Truong Chinh, ‘Political Report to the CPV Congress’, BBC SWB, FE/8447/C1/1, 20 Dec. 1986. 9. Vo Van Kiet, ‘Economic Report to the CPV Congress’, BBC SWB, FE/8449/C1/1, 23 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Dec. 1986. 10. Truong Chinh, op. cit. 11. See ‘Session of Vietnamese National Assembly’, BBC SWB, FE/8598/C1/1-5, 19 June 1987. The Mongolian People’s Republic in the 1980s: Continuity and Change

Judith Nordby

Since the Second World War the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) has developed from a nomadic herding society to an industrial-agricultural one by relying extensively on CMEA aid and assistance. The speed and breadth of development in a thinly populated state has resulted in uneven absorption of aid and inefficient production. The leadership has tried to resolve this by encouraging more labour discipline. A spate of lost jobs among high-ranking officials suggests some opposition to existing economic policies. In 1984 the party leader Tsedenbal retired and was replaced by Batmonkh. Recent proposed changes in the Soviet economic system and Soviet foreign policies will affect the further development of the MPR. There are indications of closer contacts with China and further relations with the capitalist world. However, the framework of the Mongol-Soviet relationship, which comprises large amounts of aid, economic integration, ‘learning from the USSR’ and loyalty to Soviet foreign policy, shows little sign of altering in the foreseeable future.

The Mongolian People’s Republic is a developing country in Central Asia whose close political and economic ties to the USSR date back to 1921. In that year the Mongols of the region formerly known as Outer Mongolia separated themselves permanently from China, later founding a republic in 1924. It was the world’s second socialist state and Asia’s first. The MPR was to remain underdeveloped, geographically isolated and largely ignored by all but its immediate neighbours until after the Second World War. Political and administrative structures based on Soviet models began to take shape in the 1920s, however. Political power was in the hands of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) which remained under the leadership of founder member Choibalsan from the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 1930s until his death in 1952. Great social changes were also taking place. By 1939 the old aristocracy and the Buddhist church were destroyed and a new group of leaders had emerged from the ranks of the common people. They were educated in new westem-style schools, instilled with Marxism- Leninism and loyalty to the Soviet Union, and the brightest were sent for training in the USSR. The economy developed more slowly. Even after the Second World War its base was still the traditional herding of livestock, and most animals were privately owned by small family units. Industry and crop-raising were minimal and the MPR had only one trading partner, the Soviet 114 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Union. Modernization really began only after the installation of the Chinese communist government in 1949 when for the first time the MPR was surrouned by friendly nations. In the 1950s the herding economy was collectivized, a virgin lands reclamation programme was initiated, and there was intense Sino-Soviet competition to provide aid and assistance for advanced industrial development. When die Sino-Soviet friendship fell apart in the early 1960s the MPR felt obliged to abandon one friend or the other. The party chose to go with the USSR. Any who favoured either China or neutrality were disgraced and dismissed on charges of gross error, nationalism (a crime against internationalism, the latter implying loyalty to the USSR), and favouring China. In die subsequent quarter-century the MPR has become (in 1962) a member of the CMEA (Comecon) and embarked on a course of planned development that has been rapid and diverse. The population has become setded in industrial townships or rural centres. The industrial sector has seen heavy investment, especially in mining, and mineral products account for a large share of the export market. The USSR has paid for most of this. Five-year economic plans are drawn up in permanent joint Mongolian-Soviet planning committees, and coordinated with the national plans of other CMEA countries. Soviet citizens, including servicemen, have carried out much of the construction work; Soviet experts put plants into production, and the Mongolian workers are trained by them or in the institutes and industries of the USSR. The general secretaries of the MPRP and the CPSU hold regular, twice-yearly meetings, and the Mongolian political and state offices all have direct links with their Soviet counterparts. The Mongolian economy is being integrated with that of the USSR, and Mongolian planners, managers and workers are continually urged to learn from the advanced experience of the Soviet Union. The presence of so many foreigners in the MPR and the need to put international before national considerations has occasionally proved irksome to some members of the leadership, as well as the ordinary citizen. At the same time, the Mongols are aware of the benefits that have accrued from the alliance with the USSR. They are aware that they enjoy a standard of living that would have been impossible without foreign aid. Health care and education are free to all citizens and there is a wide choice

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 of occupations. The Mongols have also received a great deal of military assistance for the defence of their vast country. This is of considerable importance to them. Independence is valued highly and fears of Chinese claims on their territory are never far from their minds. Loyalty to a benefactor and protector is a centuries-old tradition among the Mongols and they are proud of their relationship with the USSR, which they describe as akh duu (‘elder brother, younger brother’). This dependence on an advanced socialist state has enabled the Mongols, in Lenin’s words, to ‘bypass capitalism’, and they derive a certain status from setting an example to other underdeveloped states of how this is to be achieved. The Mongolian example of economic development has not been THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 115 without its problems, however. The speed of development has severely strained manpower resources in a population of 1,820,400 (1984) where, in addition, one in four is undergoing full-time education. It has also placed heavy psychological demands on a population that was, until recently, used to the tenor of a nomadic herding life-style. Despite central planning, co-ordination of internal development has not been even, and the results have been shortages of materials, delays in construction and problems in transport. These strains and shortcomings were increasingly apparent in the late 1970s, and they demanded solutions in the 1980s if the leadership’s credibility and the appropriateness of the model were not to be called into question. In the remainder of this article, I examine more closely the problems of internal and foreign policy in the 1980s and the way they have been handled between the eighteenth and nineteenth party congresses (1981-86). I then examine the economic plans for the years 1986-90 and the long-term plans up to the year 2000, and consider the effects in the MPR of recent trends in the USSR towards economic reform and increasing ddtente with the West and the current enthusiasm for glasnost' (‘openness’). I argue that present trends are not likely to lead to a break with past policies. The MPR is unlikely to become separated from the USSR in the foreseeable future, to assume neutrality or independence in political and economic affairs, or to engage in any significantly closer relationship with China.

The Economy During the 1970s the CMEA, chiefly the Soviet Union, put considerable effort into exploiting the mineral wealth of the MPR. A number of joint ventures were formed including Mongolsovsvetmet (the Mongolian- Soviet Non-ferrous Metals Economic Association) in 1973 and an Inter­ national Geological Expedition which the CMEA set up in 1975 to survey and exploit valuable mineral deposits. As a result several new industrial towns have been established, mainly in the central and northern regions. The showpiece is undoubtedly Erdenet, whose copper and molybdenum combine was put into production by Mongolsovsvetmet between 1978 and 1981. By 1980 the plant was producing a large portion of the state’s mining export products, which at the time constituted 26.4 per cent

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 of all Mongolian exports. When reaching full capacity the combine is expected to produce 16 million tons p.a.1 In 1984 the fluorspar plant at Bor Ondor went into production and is expected to be one of Asia’s largest when it reaches hill capacity. The new town of Khotol is a centre for cement production. Older centres like Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator), whose industrial estates are the largest in the country, Darkhan and Choibalsan have undergone considerable expansion. Essential to these industries is the production of electricity. A number of newly discovered coal mines, such as those at Sharyn Gol, Baganuur and the distant Tavan tolgoi in South Gobi aimag (province), are providing the fuel. At the same time, CMEA aid has helped to provide 116 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA housing programmes and services such as schools, hospitals and radio and television stations for workers in the new towns and in the countryside. Between 1961 and 1980 the Soviet Union alone rendered assistance for 400 projects while a further 280 were added in the period 1981-85. Projects undertaken by other CMEA countries include fruit-growing farms (Bulgaria), a footwear factory (Czechoslovakia), and silicon brickworks (Poland).2 Generous as these gifts are, close examination suggests that too much has been developed too quickly for local conditions to assimilate. Electricity production has not kept pace with demand. Power cuts affect the industrial and domestic consumer alike and electricity has had to be imported from the USSR to keep projects like Erdenet in operation. Industrial, public and domestic building programmes have also lagged behind. Materials have been in short supply and the quality of much construction work has been declared sub-standard. The large Soviet- aided projects are actually constructed by Soviet teams, including soldiers. Mongolian soldiers likewise have worked on building sites and Mongolian construction teams are said to be responsible for 40 per cent of the building work being undertaken in the mid-1980s. Inadequate transport also hampers industry. The MPR has only one main railway which crosses the country to link Beijing with the Trans- Siberian railway.3 It was constructed by the Chinese and the Russians in the 1950s to facilitate the movement of goods on the Sino-Soviet market, and when this trade ceased in the mid-1960s the line became something of a white elephant, expensive for the Mongols to maintain and of limited use. In the present decade, however, the northern parts have been extended with branch lines to serve the new industrial towns, to transport coal to the power stations and ore to processing plants, and to export mineral products to Siberia. In other areas, freight is transported in lorries, often on unmetalled roads. The Mongolian terrain and weather take a great toll of both road vehicles and railway stock. Neither have been well maintained, because of either carelessness, shortage of manpower or lack of parts. Poor schedule planning has resulted in vehicles undertaking many empty journeys. In the 1980s the Mongols have become increasingly aware that much of their industrial plant is outdated compared with that of capitalist countries. Most of the machinery and equipment - which accounts for 35 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 per cent of all imports - comes from the USSR whose own industry has similar technological problems. Unfortunately the MPR has few hard currency reserves because 97 per cent of its trade is with the CMEA (80 per cent with the USSR) and is therefore unlikely to be able to acquire much new technology from the capitalist West or Japan in the near future. Until the 1980s, livestock herding was expected to produce the surplus for exports to pay for some of the cost of development. High prices for exports and low prices for imported goods were fixed to assist this. However, while the collectivization of the 1950s was politically successful in that it created a socialist society, the economic benefits have not been so THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 117 readily forthcoming. There were 23 million head of livestock in 1960 and this figure has not been exceeded in the 1980s.4 Many collectives were in debt in the 1960s and the problem was still apparent in 1982. Large numbers of Mongolian livestock continue to die each year for the same reasons they have done for many centuries: the shortage of winter fodder and lack of protection from the harsh winter and spring storms. Every year many young stock die, especially in the exposed eastern provinces. The party regularly criticizes the collectives for paying insufficient attention to these matters but the fact remains that there has been little investment in herding compared with industry. There is little mechanization, and construction materials are not readily available, especially locally. The continuing failure to increase the size of the herds must be regarded as a very serious problem for the MPR, whose current rate of population growth is about 26.4 per thousand p.a.5 This situation indicates a steady increase in domestic consumption and a falling surplus for export. Agriculture (crop-raising) is faring better than herding in the 1980s. Grain and vegetables are grown mainly on state farms. In 1940 there were only ten of these, but with CMEA aid the number of farms has increased to 51. In 1970 four-fifths of the state farms were failing to fulfil their plans, and only 320,000 tonnes of grain were harvested, well below the target of 560,000 tonnes.6 Agriculture is, of course, prey to problems of the terrain and weather, just as herding is. Considerable energy and CMEA aid have gone into schemes for irrigation and the prevention of soil erosion, but these have not been enough to meet the need. In the present decade the Mongolian leadership has made use of a number of traditional mechanisms to improve economic performance. These include seeking additional foreign aid, mobilization techniques, sacking responsible officials in areas of low productivity, and political purges. As to the first of these, in fact CMEA aid to Mongolia in 1979 fell to below that given to Vietnam. In the following year, Mongolian-Chinese relations deteriorated drastically, and some believe that the Mongolian leadership manipulated the situation in order to extract more aid from the USSR.7 Whatever the truth of the matter, Soviet aid under the seventh five-year plan (1981-85) was double that of the sixth plan. After 1979 the general secretary of the MPRP, Yu. Tsedenbal, severely criticized those areas of the economy that were performing exceptionally

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 poorly, notably herding, agriculture and construction. The party launched a series of efficiency campaigns, together with other mobiliza­ tion techniques such as socialist emulation, slogans, pledges to fulfil agreed targets or take on special tasks, and unpaid workdays in honour of socialist anniversaries. In 1982 a number of high-ranking officials lost their jobs when Tsedenbal ordered a campaign to uproot so-called ‘weeds’. This was accompanied by considerable reorganization of a number of public offices. Kh. Banzragch, the minister for state farms, lost his job early in the year, and his office, founded only in 1980, was joined with the ministry of agriculture. Higher education also was held to be failing the needs of the 118 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA economy, so the state committee for higher and vocational education was brought under the ministry of education with a new minister, Ch. Sereeter,8 while the Mongolian State University was reorganized and its polytechnic and Russian language institutes became separate establish­ ments. In the middle of the year, just before the trade unions’ congress was to meet, the chairman Ochirbat also lost his job.9 Some of these policies undoubtedly bore fruit. The Youth League, for instance, adopted certain areas for immigration and development, such as the Eastern Provinces and the Gobi. The population of South Gobi province is at present increasing, and camel-herding is flourishing as a result.10 The most heartening improvement was the 1985 harvest, the largest ever achieved in the MPR, standing at 890,000 tonnes of grain or 450 kg. per capita. For the first time the MPR had enough to satisfy home consumption and some for export to the USSR. The supply of other food items was expanded by the introduction of subsidiary farming in public and industrial enterprises and even in family allotments. Despite all this, the food supply still barely kept up with the population increase. In 1985 the Central Committee adopted a ‘Target-Oriented Programme for the Development of Agriculture and Improvement of Food Supply to the Population of the MPR’ to allow for a daily intake of 3,000 calories per head by the year 2000, when the population is expected to reach three million. Yet in the first year, 1985, there was a fall in the potato harvest compared with 1984, and the protein and carbohydrate content of the diet was said to be below target. In 1984 J. Batmonkh replaced Yu. Tsedenbal as general secretary. He emphasized the importance of completing the current plan successfully, and there was the familiar last-minute rush to fulfil targets. Consequently capital investment achieved a growth of 45 per cent over the previous five- year period (target 23-26 per cent) and gross social product just reached its target of 41 per cent. Foreign trade overfulfilled its target of 50-55 per cent by growing by 100 per cent, mainly because of the new mining products. Other areas, notably the rural economy, were less successful. Criticisms at the end of the seventh plan were similar to those made at the end of the sixth. Poor discipline, laziness, carelessness and bad management were given as primary causes of failure, and the suitability of Soviet models to Mongolian conditions, or the possiblity that too much

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 was being attempted too rapidly, was not discussed publicly. The change of leadership brought no evident dramatic change in the party’s approach to economic affairs, and Batmonkh personally promised no changes in general policies.

Social Trends The study of population throws light on the performance of the Mongolian economy and explains why development truly cannot be hurried. In 1924, the MPR had a total population of 651,700, representing a density of 0.42 per sq.km. Life expectancy has since doubled, with improved health care THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 119 and the elimination of deadly infectious diseases, and the population in 1984 stood at 1,820,400, or 1.16 per sq.km. The most rapid rise has been in the past 15 years, and a quarter of the entire population is now in full-time education. The working population is still very small, however, and has difficulty in spreading itself through the ever-expanding economy. Workers often have to undertake additional tasks: for example, office employees and older schoolchildren help on farms in the sowing and harvesting seasons, and servicemen make up some of the construction teams. The high proportion of youth in the population has direct consequences in the workplace and in the provision of public services: for example, it places heavy demands on maternal and child health care, which are constantly being extended; free medicine for children has recently been introduced.14 Kindergarten places have lagged behind demand, although once a child is accepted in a workplace nursery or kindergarten it is not obliged to leave, even if the parent transfers to another place of work. There are heavy demands on the provision of trained teachers, from kindergarten to university level. Educational equipment and premises have been in short supply in recent years, and some schools have had to operate a shift system to cope with the number of children. Young people are being admitted into the work-force in increasing numbers, so there is an age imbalance in some enterprises: thus, in the new town of Erdenet, the average age of the entire population in 1982 was 24 years, with obvious implications for the demands on particular services and for the structure of the work-force, and perhaps for social relations. It means, of course, that the young work-force is not at present burdened with a large elderly population - even though workers are entitled to pensions, members of herding collectives being the most recent to join the state scheme. It is state policy that the population should rise to three million by the year 2000. Contraception is therefore disapproved of, although abortion is available. Mothers of five or more children are awarded the order of ‘Motherhood Glory’ and given cash bonuses and the chance of early retirement. Large families are more common in the countryside than in the town, however, and the intelligentsia is showing some preference for smaller families, since both parents commonly work full-time. A quarter of the entire population lives and works in Ulaanbaatar, and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the urban population has recently overtaken the rural, standing at 51.5 per cent in 1984.15 Ulaanbaatar is a city of civil servants, industrial workers and students, and there are also many illegal residents. This is a strain on housing and public services. The authorities also have to contend with the growing problem of urban crime such as vandalism and theft, much of it the result of alcohol abuse. As in the USSR there is currently an anti­ alcohol campaign. At the nineteenth party congress A. Jamsranjav, minister of internal security, even suggested a total ban on the production and use of alcohol, saying ‘We can do without alcoholic beverages in socialist construction’.16 Urbanization and sovietization have been parallel processes in the 120 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA MPR. The new towns and cities look very like the modem cities of the USSR with their blocks of flats and massive Romanesque public buildings. Soviet styles and methods pervade all apsects of life both public and private, from the organization of work teams to the writing of history. This is partly a political process fostered by the party’s constant encourage­ ment to learn from close contact between citizens of the two states and the steady stream of young people sent to study in the USSR. Sovietization has led the MPR to adopt, at times, extraordinary Soviet models, as, for example, the three-queue system in shops, which is extremely wasteful of both shop assistants’ and customers’ time. Taking on the trappings of Soviet society has not always caused the Mongols to behave as Soviet citizens, however, because Mongol tradi­ tions are totally different from those of Russia. For example, the MPR has not the variety of nationalities that the Soviet Union has. The only appreciable non-Mongol group is the Kazakhs, who comprise 5.3 per cent of the population. The majority is Khalkh Mongol (77.5 per cent) and the remainder are mainly Buriat and Oirat or Western Mongols.17 Mongols of the MPR are not given to defecting and there is no diaspora to speak of. Civil rights do not appear to be an issue, and Amnesty International has never adopted a citizen of the MPR as a prisoner of conscience. Labour camps do exist, although information on them is meagre; but in view of the small size of the population it would be highly uneconomic to keep able-bodied citizens in them for any length of time. Religion in the MPR is a far less contentious issue than it is in the USSR. In recent years the party has monitored the population for religious sentiments and urged that young people be brought up in the spirit of atheism. Organized religion is not seen as a threat, however. One working monastery, Gandan in Ulaanbaatar, exists for worship and the training of monks. Unlike the lamas of earlier times these men are permitted to marry and have families. The present religious institution finds a legitimate place in communist life because it is the headquarters of the Asian Buddhist Peace Conference. It provides the Mongolian state with an additional avenue for its peace activities, especially in those countries of Asia whose contacts with the MPR are otherwise minimal. Amongst the general population there are some signs of religious observance and interest in the traditions of Buddhism, but there is little evidence of the existence of any religious opposition to the ruling authority. Nor is there any real evidence Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 of that other phenomenon of opposition in the USSR, the samizdat, or underground press, although there is in existence a 1984 regulation that all typewriters and photocopiers be registered annually.18 Observers of Mongolian society have always watched carefully for any indication of anti-Sovietism. In the late 1970s, in the towns, there were signs of dissatisfaction with the large number of Soviet citizens who had access to special shops and housing and other privileges.19 No one has been able to estimate closely the actual number of foreigners working in the MPR but occasional figures for specific areas have been revealed. Of a total population of40,000 in Erdenet, for instance, 10,000 are known to be THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 121 Russians.20 A great deal of official effort goes into fostering Mongol- Soviet friendship, particularly through the Mongolian-Soviet Friendship Society. In recent years a whole month has been given over to celebrating this ‘inviolable’ friendship. An association of students who have studied in the USSR also puts considerable energies into this work. Soviet television is now received in many parts of the country and all children from kindergarten upwards leam the Russian language. On the whole there is little to suggest that Mongolian citizens have intense feelings against citizens of the USSR in the 1980s. The authorities do express periodic concern that Mongolian citizens should be on their guard against foreigners who might seek to undermine Mongolian-Soviet friendship and belittle non-capitalist development.21 However, such remarks do not suggest that Mongols are anti-Soviet but rather that they are becoming more cosmopolitan. More contact with the outside world for ordinary Mongols increases the likelihood of their examining their own state more critically. For the party this is unsettling, to say the least, and must affect the extent of openness it can permit without jeopardizing the legitimacy of its policies.

Political Trends Mongolian political life is directed by the Mongolian People’s Revolu­ tionary Party (MPRP). No other party exists or ever has existed. The MPRP is organized on the lines of other national communist parties, principally the CPSU. It has direct relations with the CPSU, and the respective party leaders meet at least twice a year to coordinate policies. In 1986, MPRP membership stood at 88,150, that is about four per cent of the total population, which makes it rather smaller than the parties of other socialist states.22 As in other communist parties, enrolment involves sponsorship by existing members and a candidate or probationary period, with training and examination in political theory. In recent years this has meant that rather more recruits are intellectuals than workers or herdsmen, and special procedures have been introduced to correct the balance. The party leadership has been relatively stable since the 1930s when Kh. Choibalsan came to power, with the exception of a turbulent interlude 30 years ago. After Choibalsan’s death in 1952, Kh. Choibalsan, in 1952, Yu. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Tsedenbal became first secretary, shortly to be replaced in turn by D. Damba. In 1958, Damba was disgraced, and Tsedenbal headed the party from then until his retirement in 1984. This stability among top personnel has led to an actuarial rift between the mass membership, a large propor­ tion of whom are under 35, and the leaders, who are mainly in their fifties and sixties. Prominent among these are Soviet-trained economists (like Tsedenbal himself), specialists in foreign affairs and military men.23 The party’s directing role is written into the constitution of I960,24 and it is evident in all areas of public and economic life. Only about 20 of the 370 delegates to the Great Khural (National Assembly) in 1981 were not party 122 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA or Youth League members. The party controls all organized groups within the state, from the smallest writers’ circle in the Gobi to the largest of all organizations, the Trade Union Confederation. The foremost aim of the MPRP is to create a socialist state, and much party work is aimed at promoting successful economic development. The party also claims to be internationalist and opposed to any nationalist tendencies and aspirations; moreover, the basis of internationalism for the MPR is loyalty to the Soviet Union. Officially, opposition does not exist, and the MPRP itself claims to be monolithic and united. However, there have been periods in its history when it was badly shaken by disputes and differences of opinion. Such matters have been discussed little in the mass media, and observers have been obliged to draw their own conclusions. The year 1958, when Damba was disgraced, and the early 1960s, when the MPR was affected by the Sino-Soviet rift, were clearly such periods. In the 1980s, too, there have been signs of discord arising from a conflict of opinons about how to improve economic performance, and perhaps even from disillusionment with Tsedenbal as leader. Throughout his political career Tsedenbal always displayed extreme loyalty to the USSR. In 1980, the Institute of Party History and the Higher Party School held a conference to mark the fortieth anniversary of the tenth party congress, which had launched the programme of building socialism. Tsedenbal maintained that this conference exaggerated his own political role both in 1940 and on subsequent occasions, and that his contributions to political theory were very small; he wrote several letters to the party newspaper, Unen, criticizing the attempt to turn him into a cult figure.25 That such a thing could have been attempted at all suggests two possibilities: that there was an underlying desire for a more independent Mongolian role in general policy; and that pro- and anti- Tsedenbal camps were forming in the upper echelons of the party. In 1982 and 1983 Tsedenbal pursued his campaign to root out ‘weeds’. In the case of some officials this seems to have gone beyond straight­ forward disciplining for incompetence, for in 1982 leading members of the Academy of Sciences were removed from their posts. They included Shirendev, the historian and head of the Academy, and two of his deputies: the physicist Chadraa, and Bira, another historian. They were

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 charged with negligence, inefficiency, and failing to put the work of the Academy at the disposal of the economy. Chadraa is said to have made extravagant claims for his projects; yet, out of 38 projects developed by the Academy for industry under the sixth five-year plan (1976-80), only 24 had been handed over, and 15 of those were subsequently abandoned. As head of the Academy, Shirendev was held personally responsible for its shoddy work, absenteeism and poor productivity; but the attack on him within the party was also extremely personal. He was accused of lack of principle, irresponsibility and ambition. More specific charges included ignoring the experience of the USSR and the advice of Soviet specialists, refusing to listen to the suggestions of younger colleagues, allowing his THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 123 head to be turned by honours from foreign institutions, and distorting historical truth in respect of Mongolian-Chinese relations. This last accusation is curious in the light of Shirendev’s fierce media campaign over the previous two or three years against what the Mongols regarded as Chinese militarism and hegemonism towards the MPR. Clearly his opponents sought to make use of almost any chance remark in order to unseat him. It also led some foreign observers to conclude that improve­ ments in Sino-Soviet relations could be expected in the near future, which Brezhnev’s speeches soon afterwards in Tashkent and Baku seemed to confirm. Shirendev was replaced as head of the Academy by Tseren, a nuclear physicist and a much younger man, while he himself went into an obscure retirement. After Tsedenbal’s retirement, however, Shirendev was permitted to resume his research activities at the Academy.26 Shirendev narrowly avoided expulsion from the party but Jalan-aajav, a member of the Politburo and Secretariat and vice-chairman of the Great Khural, was not so lucky. Over a period of six months from July 1983, he was stripped of all his posts and finally expelled from the party for ‘vile intrigues against party unity and breaking party rules’. He was accused of a twenty-year association with an anti-party group which aimed to make him first secretary of the MPRP and he was linked with men purged from the party in 1958 and the early 1960s.27 In August 1984, the 67-year-old Tsedenbal was himself obliged to retire, on a proposal by J. Batmonkh, chairman of the Council of Ministers, at a special meeting of the Central Committee at which Tsedenbal himself was not present The reason given for his enforced retirement was ill health, and the committee said that it had acted with his consent. He was praised and thanked for his years of service and dedica­ tion to the party and the people, and was replaced immediately by Batmonkh. Foreign observers were less convinced that illness was the chief cause, and speculated that Tsedenbal was removed because of his increasingly autocratic manner.28 He was seen shortly afterwards, holidaying on the Lenin Hills outside Moscow, in apparently rude health.29 Tsedenbal’s successor was then 58 years old, an economist by training, and a former rector of the Higher School of Economics and of the Mongolian State University. He had been chairman of the Council of Ministers since 1974, but gave up the post in December 1984 to take over

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the chairmanship of the presidium of the Great Khural (that is, President), which Tsedenbal had also vacated in August. Sodnom, newly elected to the Politburo, became chairman of the Council of Ministers. Further tributes to Tsedenbal’s work were made at this time, and then he slipped from public view. If Tsedenbal’s retirement was engineered by some of his colleagues or even pressure from the USSR, the reasons for it are not entirely clear. Batmonkh did not succeed him with any obvious change of domestic policy. He confirmed the MPR’s existing relationship with the USSR and showed no greater willingness than Tsedenbal had done for warmer relations with China. Like his predecessor he held that discussion of the 124 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA withdrawal of Soviet troops from the MPR, which was becoming an issue at this time, was interference in Mongolia’s internal affairs and of no concern to China. Batmonkh emphasized the importance of completing the seventh five-year plan successfully through good management and efficiency, and he made further appeals in the same vein as the nineteenth party congress of 1986 drew near.

The Eighth Five-Year Plan and Long-Term Economic Planning In March 1986 the draft plan for 1986-90 was published.30 It began with praise for the achievements of the past five years, and acknowledgement of the contributions of the USSR. There was no attempt, however, to gloss over the obvious shortcomings of a number of branches of the economy. Singled out for particular criticism were the poor completion rates of construction work; food production, which had not kept pace with the rate of population increase; inadequacies in labour organization; shortages of material supplies; and unacceptable waste in many branches of the economy. The proposals for growth in the years 1986-90 were modest by comparison with the previous five years, and a large part is caculated on increased labour productivity, together with savings on materials, electricity and other resources. Large sections of the draft are devoted to improved management techniques, discarding unnecessary personnel and procedures, expanding the use of modem technology in management and production, and training schoolchildren and workers to serve the current needs of the economy. Parallel proposals can be found in the Soviet plan for the same period, reflecting similar concerns to improve the quality and general productivity of existing enterprises. The guidelines give serious attention to. the development of economic regions and the general improvement of the rural economy. Light and food industries, factories for the production of construction materials based on local resources, hospitals, schools and leisure provision are planned to raise the economic status of rural communities, improve the quality of life, and so encourage sufficient young people to work in the collectives and farms. This, it is hoped, will result in greater rural productivity.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 The general intention of the eighth plan is not to set up large new projects but to consolidate and expand existing ones. It will be supported by an extended electricity programme, the introduction of technological improvements, and improved construction and transport services. The Ulaanbaatar Number Four Power Station is to increase its capacity and new stations will be constructed at Erdenet and Baganuur. More provincial centres are to be linked to the central grid, while Ulaangom in the west will be coupled to the Soviet grid. Ultimately the MPR is not only to be self-sufficient in electricity, but intends to export it to Siberia. The programme for technological improvement was adopted by the CMEA in 1985 and includes extended use of computers, automation, nuclear power THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 125 engineering and biotechnology. Bottlenecks in construction and trans­ port should be improved by the better availability of materials and spares and local provision of machinery servicing centres. The eighth five-year plan and the ‘Long-Term Programme for the Development of Economic, Scientific and Technical Co-operation’ aim to make the Mongolian economy more efficient. By reducing wastage of all kinds it is intended that all basic consumer needs will be produced within the country. The MPR also aims to produce a higher export surplus to pay for the goods, equipment and services it receives from the CMEA. That requirement will undoubtedly rise to meet some of the cost of new technology, especially if it has to be obtained, as it most certainly will, from outside the CMEA. The MPR is now in the second year of the eighth plan. Although it is far too early to assess whether economic development is being consolidated and the economy performing with great efficiency, certain trends may be noted in the domestic scene. The plan was received, as always, enthusiastically. After the nineteenth party congress various organiza­ tions and enterprises met to discuss the new plan and make their pledge. The Youth League, for instance, has undertaken to set up a trolley bus service in Ulaanbaatar, and a new state farm in Khalkhiin Gol in the east of the country. For their part, the trade unions promised to encourage better labour discipline. Changes in the education law were drawn up at the end of 1986. These will extend compulsory education from ten to eleven years from the school year 1988/89. The eleventh year is to be devoted to training in skills appropriate for entry into the work-force. There have been recent wage increases, accompanied by incentives for quality work and some reductions in the price of consumer goods. Moreover, openness has hit the party newspaper, Unen: criticism once restricted to the inner pages can now be found on the front page, and letters from readers are a regular feature. However, the statistics for the first year and a quarter of the present plan do not suggest any great immediate change. Construction is still behind target and there has been no significant increase in livestock. Once again in 1987 large numbers of young animals have perished in fierce storms in Domod province, in the east. The trade balance with the USSR for 1986 still shows a massive difference of 700,000 million roubles between imports and exports. Those improvements that depend on the intro­ Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 duction of new technology are in any case unlikely to occur overnight and may well depend on considerable changes in the MPR’s approach to international affairs.

International Affairs The MPR’s foreign policy since the 1960s can be characterized as pro- Soviet; active in support of world peace and security; and suspicious of China. The MPR’s closest allies are the USSR and the other CMEA 126 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA countries. Diplomatic relations exist with about 100 states, the most recent being the United States (see below). The MPR is especially vociferous in the search for peace and elimina­ tion of nuclear weapons. In 1981 the government proposed a mutual non­ aggression convention for countries of Asia and the Pacific.31 This was intended to promote peace and outlaw the use of force in settling disputes and was also intended as a focus of unity for the dynamic but diverse societies in the region. A number of states expressed interest, including Laos, Kampuchea and Vietnam, but ASEAN showed less enthusiasm. A conference is expected to meet in the near future to discuss the conven­ tion. Another Mongolian peace initiative was the ‘Declaration of The Right of Peoples to Peace’ which the United Nations adopted in November 1984. A major aspect of the Mongolian government’s peace work is the support of all Soviet peace proposals, especially the attempts at arms reduction agreements with the USA. The MPR’s role as ambassador for peace on behalf of the Soviet Union may be regarded as predictable but there seems little doubt that these issues are of great personal concern to the Mongols. The MPR’s stand on other international issues is equally predictable. It includes opposition to the actions of the United States government in Central America, suspicion of friendly relations between China and the US, support for the peaceful reunification of Korea, sympathy for the principles of the Non-aligned Movement and the Delhi Declaration of 1985, support for Soviet activity in Afghanistan and opposition to US support of the Afghan guerrillas.32 Only the MPR’s attitude to China suggests anything like an independent approach to a foreign policy issue.33 It is based on a deep, traditional suspicion of the Chinese, and feelings ran especially high at the beginning of the 1980s. In this period a Chinese diplomat was accused of spying and expelled, some 6,000 Chinese labourers were deported, and a fierce press campaign accused China of every kind of evil intent, including infecting the Gobi herds, smuggling weevil-infested soya beans and contraceptives, attempting to wipe out the Inner Mongols, and laying claim to the territory of the MPR. In 1982 Soviet troops in the MPR were reinforced, so that an estimated 65,000 men were ranged along the southern and eastern border with China. Since 1982, however, the USSR has made determined efforts to patch up old quarrels with China. Both Tsedenbal and Batmonkh declared themselves Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 in favour, in principle, but they expressed no confidence in any real change of heart on the part of the Chinese. They continued to attack China in the press, criticizing its policies in Southeast Asia and the growing contacts with the USA. The Mongols particularly objected to any attempt by the Chinese to demand the removal of Soviet troops from the MPR. Nevertheless, Sino-Mongolian contacts have increased since 1983. By 1986 Mongolian criticism of China had abated considerably and at the nineteenth MPRP congress Batmonkh declared a ‘scrupulous policy of normalized relations’. In the spring of 1986 the two countries signed a new trade agreement allowing for die exchange of a much wider range of goods THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 127 than hitherto. In August the Chinese foreign minister Liu Shuiqing visited Ulaanbaatar and signed a consular agreement. Other notable events have been a new cultural agreement, the first joint railway conference in 20 years and the proposed resumption of air services between Ulaanbaatar and Beijing. Joint co-operation in the preservation of the Gobi is planned, and in March 1987 a Chinese women’s delegation celebrated International Women’s Day in the Inner Mongolian city of Erenkhot. Even more significant is the removal of 20 per cent of Soviet troops stationed in the MPR with the full agreement of the Mongolian govern­ ment. It must be pointed out, however, that this still leaves some 52-55,000 remaining. The improved Sino-Mongolian relationship has to be seen in the light of the Soviet Union’s changing relationship with Asia as a whole and not just with China. Brezhnev’s policy towards Asia was one of large-scale militarization until 1982 when the thaw with China began. The most dramatic alterations in the Soviet Union’s present approach to Asia and the Pacific region occurred in 1986. The new Soviet minister for foreign affairs, Eduard Shevardnadze, paid a visit to a number of countries in the region, including the MPR and Japan, in January of that year. This heralded a new spirit of detente towards countries of different ideological systems. It was reinforced when Gorbachev went to the Soviet Far East in July. In his speech at Vladivostok he outlined a policy of far greater Soviet involvement and interest in Asia and the Pacific, not merely from a strategic and defence point of view but also as a bona fide Asian state with legitimate economic and political interests in the area. He expressed intentions of extensive economic development of the Far Eastern province, with Vladivostok becoming an important administrative, economic and cultural centre for that area and for the north Pacific region generally. In this context he looked for joint ventures with countries bordering on the Far Eastern province and with Japan.34 A recent reorganization of the Asian department of the foreign affairs ministry, with extensive changes of personnel, suggests that Gorbachev is serious about his new policy. An active Mongolian economy with increased amounts of goods for exports could have much to offer an Asian regional development and give the MPR a fuller and more satisfying role as an Asian country. The most immediate results of Gorbachev’s new approach to Asia have been Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 increased Mongolian links with China and North Korea. Friendly relations have existed with North Korea since 1948 and both countries maintain embassies. The MPR makes regular statements in support of the peaceful reunification of Korea and against the annual military exercises in South Korea, code-named Team Spirit’. Peace and friendship societies exist in both countries and North Korean films are popular, especially among older Mongolian citizens, although trade and other contacts do not appear to have been extensive. A number of delegations were exchanged in 1986, however. A trade agreement was signed for the period 1986-90 and there was an exhibition of North Korean goods and technical equip­ 128 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA ment in Ulaanbaatar. Batmonkh himself paid a visit to Pyongyang in November, at the same time making international news when he was greeted at the airport by the supposedly assassinated Kim II Sung. The present pragmatic approach adopted by the Soviet leader to international problems East and West has made possible more wide- reaching foreign relations than ever before for the MPR. In January 1987 diplomatic relations were opened with United States. Discussions had been held sporadically over the previous 20 years, but without success. Now, however, since the United States is one of the largest states bordering on the Pacific, it would make nonsense of Mongolia’s claim to desire peace and dialogue as the basis of relations in the region if diplomatic relations did not exist with so large a neighbour. Just how important the agreement is to the Americans is not clear. The announce­ ment was relegated to the inner pages of the New York Times and treated in terms of the suitability of the MPR as a listening post for China- watchers.35 The Mongols, on the other hand, could reap a number of benefits. First, the agreement must enhance the MPR’s independent nation status in the eyes of the world, and of China in particular. Second, the agreement serves as an example of principled behaviour towards a state whose politics the MPR would, ideally, hope to change, and is important for the credibility of the MPR’s initiatives for peace and disarmament. Representation can now be made directly to the USA on issues of joint interest or criticism, whereas in the past this was possible only through the mass media. A third benefit for the MPR might be future access to certain items of technology and other trade goods that would be valuable to the drive for economic efficiency. Mongolian-American relations are in fact just one aspect of the MPR’s increasing contacts with Western countries. In the past, these have been limited to the exercise of cultural agreements and a little trade. Now there are signs that Mongolia would like to extend her associations with the West. As the USSR adopts a more flexible attitude to her own dealings with the countries of die capitalist world, Mongolia’s opportunities become wider. The MPR has responded to the recent British proposal for an Anglo-Mongolian Round Table, and the inaugural meeting is expected to take place in the autumn of 1987 in Ulaanbaatar. The Mongolian government seems particularly interested in extending cultural relations and expanding trade, and the recent visit to Britain of a member of the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 State Scientific and Technical Commission raises speculation that Britain might be a source of the much-needed scientific and technological apparatus. Trade between the two countries was absolutely minimal until the mid-1970s but has since grown to an annual figure of £2-4.5 million in exports to Britain. The import figures are considerably lower and fluctuate from year to year. In 1986 the Mongols exported £4,750,000 worth of textile fibres; they imported British goods of various kinds to the value of £1,031,000, mosdy in the category of dairy produce and birds’ eggs; other goods included chemicals, pharmaceuticals, road vehicles, photographic materials and some electrical equipment.36 THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 129 Conclusion In the next 15 years we might expect to see a number of changes in all aspects of Mongolian life. The standard of living will continue to rise and if there are improvements in the co-ordination of economic activities, there should be growth in productivity. However, there is little concrete evidence to suggest that future general policies, internal and external, will by anything other than continuous with those of the past 25 years. The present concern for openness, a word that has no fixed translation in Mongolian, has resulted in a great deal of criticism and discussion but little action. The limits of creativity and initiative are still quite firmly drawn, with all planning done centrally under Soviet guidance. The Soviet example is still paramount, and until the Mongols permit themselves to question it occasionally the opportunities for creative activity will continue to be circumscribed. Questioning Soviet solutions for Mongolian situations need not imply disloyalty but it will require great boldness and new ways of thinking. This is surely not easy for the present leadership, which is largely composed of men who studied first in the monastic schools and who remember life in the turbulent 1930s and 1940s. Glasnost’ in the USSR is being watched not only with interest but also with some wariness by the Mongolian leadership. Unen, the party newspaper, has recently printed a series of front-page articles about the present changes in Soviet life, including the development of small private enterprises. For a nation taught to venerate the bypassing of capitalism this must be exceedingly puzzling, even though for practical purposes it would seem unlikely that the MPR could afford to commit manpower resources to this particular advanced experience. Whatever changes are eventually made in the economic structures of the MPR they are unlikely to be put into practice without the approval of the USSR. For the present, a number of joint ventures with the CMEA exist, and considerable aid and assistance is already earmarked for the period of the present plan and until the end of the century. The USSR is anxious to receive as much of the mineral and livestock surplus as the MPR can ship across the border. This would have particular importance for the proposed development of the Soviet Union’s Far Eastern province, nebulous as that prospect is at the present time. In such a context the MPR could be an increasingly valuable asset within the CMEA.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Developments in international relations bom of greater detente likewise suggest continuity rather than change. The MPR’s geographical situation is a constant and imposes practical limits on trade and tourism. The present growth of trade with North Korea and China is certainly to the benefit of each partner, however, even that must have limits, since the bulk of Mongolian surplus will continue to go to CMEA members as long as those countries are supplying development aid. China cannot be considered as a serious contender for the provision of development aid and protection. Before the MPR could accept China as an alternative ally to the USSR, the Chinese would have to demonstrate categorically that 130 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA they have no claims on Mongolian territory. The USSR has not violated the Mongols’ independence in their eyes, nor colonized their country. Furthermore, the Soviet Union is no more likely than the MPR to put full trust in a friendly China for some time to come. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from the MPR is a gesture of goodwill towards China, but many more troops still remain. The foreseeable future is likely to see the continuation of the present close relationship between the MPR and the USSR simply because it serves the interests of both sides so well.

NOTES

Judith Nordby is working on a Ph.D. thesis on Mongolian history in the 1920s in the Department of Chinese Studies, University of Leeds.

1. See Alan Sanders, ‘Enter the Future with a Deafening Roar’, Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), 19 Nov. 1982, pp.43-4. 2. For detailed information on CMEA aid see ‘Peljee Report at Meeting Devoted to the 30th Anniversary of CEMA’, Mongolia Report No.316, JPRS 73963, 6 Aug. 1979, pp.l-15. 3. There is also a branch line between Choibalsan and the Trans-Siberian, built during the Second World War. 4. Narodnoe khozyaistvo MNR za 60 let (1924-1984) (Ulan Bator: Central Statistical Board, 1984), p.87. 5. Ibid., p.23. 6. Alan Sanders, ‘A Dose of Self-Criticism’, FEER, 11 April 1980, pp.56-7. 7. Alan Sanders, ‘A Diplomatic Lesson for China’, FEER, 11 July 1980, pp.34-5. 8. Alan Sanders, ‘Rooting out the Weeds’, FEER, 12 April 1982, p.35. 9. Alan Sanders, ‘Follow the Leader*, FEER, 28 May 1982, pp.36-7. 10. For 1979 figure see Narodnoe khozyaistvo MNR, p.22; 1985 figure supplied by party official, South Gobi province. 11. ‘Target-Oriented Programme - A New Stage in the Development of Agriculture’, News from Mongolia, Aug. 1986, pp. 1-2. 12. Alan Sanders, ‘Mongolia’s Modernizations’, FEER, 29 May 1986, p.109. 13. Narodnoe khozyaistvo MNR, pp. 19, 23, 229. 14. A number of medicines for common conditions are in short supply in the MPR. 15. Narodnoe khozyaistvo MNR, p.21. 16. ‘Mongolian Party Congress: Public Security Minister’s Report: Anti-Sovietism and Drunkenness’, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), Part 3, The Far East, FE/827/C1/1, 5 June 1986. 17. Narodnoe khozyaistvo MNR, p.25. 18. Alan Sanders, ‘Lock up your Typewriters’, FEER, 2 Aug. 1983, p.30.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 19. T.E. Ewing, ‘Letter from Ulan Bator*, FEER, 14 Sep. 1979, p.88. 20. Alan Sanders, ‘Enter the Future ...’, p.43. 21. ‘Mongolian Party Congress: Public Security Minister’s Report*. 22. The Far East and Australasia 1987 (London: Europa, 1986), p.670. 23. For a description of the MPRP at the present time see ‘The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party at its Present-Day Stage*, Far Eastern Affairs, 1983, No.4, pp. 144-6. 24. For a text of the constitution with amendments to 1973 see Mongolian Report, No.319, JPRS 74814, 26 Dec. 1979. 25. Alan Sanders, ‘Undermining the Myths’, FEER, 9 May 1980, pp.35, 37. 26. On the Academy of Sciences affair see O Sostoyanii i Merakh po Uluchsheniyu NauchnoissledovateVskikh Pravot v Strane: Postanovleniya Tsk MNRP 1980-1981 THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC IN THE 1980s 131

Godty (Ulan Bator, 1982). 27. ‘S. Jalan-aajavyn namyn esreg ajil yavuulyn tukhai*, Namyn Am’dral, 1984, No.2, pp.12-16. 28. Alan Sanders, ‘Revenge of the Weeds’, FEER, 6 Sept. 1984, pp.16-17. 29. Richard Owen, ‘After the Medals, a Golden Handshake for Chernenko?*, The Times, 9 Oct. 1984, p. 16. 30. For an English text of the draft guidelines sec, Mongolian Report, JPRS-MON-86-003, 18 June 1986. Mongolian text in Unen, 20 March 1986, pp.1-4. 31. Jargalsaikhany Enkhsaikhan, ‘Ensuring Peace in Asia and the Pacific: The Mongolian Initiative’, Asian Survey, Vol. 25 (1985), pp. 1031-8. 32. For a general statement of the MPR’s stand on international affairs see Embassy of the Mongolian People’s Republic Press Release, Oct. 1985. 33. Elizabeth Green, ‘China and Mongolia: Recurring Trends and Prospects for Change’, Asian Survey, Vol.26 (1986), pp. 1337-63. 34. Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 27 Aug. 1986. 35. Richard Halloran, ‘U.S. and Mongolia in Ceremony Establishing Diplomatic Relations’, New York Times, 28 June 1987, p.42. 36. Department of Trade and Industry, Overseas Trade Statistics of the United Kingdom, 1985 (London: HMSO, 1986); ibid., Dec. 1986. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 The Soviet Union and the Pacific Century

Gerald Segal

As a country that embraces much territory in Asia, Russia’s interest in the Pacific goes a long way back into history, and it has recently been revived under Gorbachev. Yet a number of obstacles threaten to prevent the Soviet Union from playing its potential role, concerning the country’s relationships with and attitudes towards other states in the region: the United States, a rival power in the Pacific as well as in Europe, whose evident attempts to establish military treaties in the Pacific cause concern in Moscow; China, whose reforms threaten to challenge the USSR as a socialist model; Japan, now a highly influential economic superpower in the Pacific; and the smaller states, including the USSR’s allies in Indo-China and the far east. Given the complexities of the various bilateral relationships, the Soviet Union cannot easily match its actions and policies to its aspirations to perform as a Pacific great power.

‘The idea of the Pacific Ocean economic co-operation is under discussion. We have approached it with an unprejudiced attitude and we are willing to join in deliberations about the possible foundations for such co­ operation ... V With those words Mikhail Gorbachev announced in Vladivostok, on 28 July 1986, that the Soviet Union is willing to enter the ‘Pacific Age’. For a country that has the longest Pacific coastline and was the first Pacific power to try to build bridges across its waters, this late entrance is long overdue. Yet there remain serious doubts about how the Soviet Union can take part in the ‘Pacific Century’, and indeed whether its concept of Pacific co-operation can be reconciled with that of other more dynamic states around the basin.

Russia in Pacific Waters Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 It is a truism that the Soviet Union is a power in East Asia, but not a natural East Asian power.2 With one-third of its vast territory lying east of Irkutsk, the Soviet Union is the second largest Asian power. But with only five per cent of its population in that territory, it is not surprising that local East Asians regard the Soviet Union as an outsider and a newcomer. But there is an important distinction between what is East Asian and what is Pacific. By the criteria of population and time of arrival, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand share the Soviet position as non- Asians and late arrivals. Indeed, it is one of the difficulties of building Pacific-wide co-operation that it needs to span vast distances and different THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 133 types of ethnic groups. Nevertheless, if Russia is to be judged in terms of its ‘Pacific consciousness it must be counted as one of the first believers in the idea. As early as 1639, the great explorer Ivan Moskvitin extended Tsarist rule to the Pacific. Russia’s first Pacific port, Okhotsk, was founded in 1647, and a Cossack traveller, Semyon, reached the north-east tip of Siberia a year later. Under Peter the Great, Russia became increasingly interested in establishing a naval presence in the Pacific.3 Russia’s expan­ sion was remarkably swift, taking advantage of rivers and open country to reach the Pacific 250 years before Russia explored Central Asia. While Russians gazed out over Pacific waters, British settlers in North America were still struggling to cross the Allegheny mountains. France founded Montreal only in the decade that Russia founded Okhotsk. In 1651 Khabarov established his first port on the Amur river and China suddenly found itself with a rival in the Pacific that was large, land-based, confident, and likely to stay. Under Peter and Catherine, Russia extended its Pacific presence in search of the ‘soft gold’ of sea otter fur.4 In 1799 a charter was granted to the Russian-American Corporation to hunt for pelts far down the American coast into Spanish territory. While China and Japan disdained cross-Pacific contacts, Russia was the first Pacific power to try to link both sides of the newly discovered Ocean. Forts were established in what is now California (Fort Ross was founded in 1811), although the Russians failed to build a supporting fleet. Missions were sent to Polynesia in 1804 and Hawaii in 1809. With the decay of the Tsarist empire, Russia retreated from its Pacific adventure as the United States surged across. In 1867, Alaska was sold to the United States for $7.2 million and instead Russia tried to consolidate its position in East Asia against the awakening Japan and the ‘sick man of Asia’, China. Vladivostok was established in 1860 but by 1904-5 Russia found itself falling victim to a modernizing Japan. Russia was in the thick of the Pacific’s international politics from the earliest days of the concep­ tion of a Pacific basin. Russia was not a natural East Asian power, but it did have a strong claim to be a natural Pacific power. Although Russia was able to pick the bones of the decaying Chinese empire, and a China riven by warlord politics in the early twentieth century, Moscow’s priorities were consolidating a revolution at home, and averting the threat of war in Europe. To be sure, the Comintern was Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 active in East Asia, but the area was only rarely a Soviet priority. It was not until the final days of the Second World War that Russia turned its attention once again to the Pacific. At Yalta, Russia was encouraged to attack Japan and re-establish its Pacific presence. Yet the return of Russia to Pacific waters was not simply a matter of picking up where the Tsars left off. Three major conditions had changed. First, the United States had obtained bases and territory well out across the Pacific up to East Asia itself. Some Americans claimed to see the Pacific as an ‘American lake’, especially after the defeat of Japan when American troops slogged from island to island to the door of Japan. 134 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Second, Japan, although humbled in war, was put back on its feet by the United States. Its impressive industrial base was rebuilt and the Japanese people worked their country back to at least economic great power status. Japan was the only major non-westem power successfully to transform itself from underdevelopment to become a modem, wealthy state. Third, other great powers from Europe, most notably Britain, France and Holland, retreated from the Pacific. Decolonization was relatively swift in most of East Asia, although not in the Pacific islands. The retreat of colonialism left three types of states. The success stories of white colonists such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand were some of the most prosperous parts of the Pacific. The states of South-east Asia were often typical developing states, sometimes embroiled in nasty wars as in Indo-China. A third category was another type of success story, the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) of Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. This peculiar collection was not bound by any shared colonial experience, but rather by the success of their rapid industrialization. The challenge to Mosco w was different from each of these three areas. The United States’ influence was dominant in the Pacific, despite the humiliation of the Vietnam experience. Japan was an American ally hostile to the Soviet Union for ideological, economic and national reasons. The majority of decolonized states did not look to Moscow for revolutionary guidance. What is worse, the NICs demonstrated that North-South relations need not always be hostile and that co-operation that excluded the communist states could be fruitful. The NICs offered a model for development that excluded and challenged the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had few assets in the Pacific. Its once great ally, China, had clearly been ‘lost’. Moscow was left with allies among the poorest states of the region: Laos, Kampuchea and Vietnam, and one of the most hermit-like, North Korea. But so long as the Soviet Union remained conservative and cautious, it was unlikely to be very interested in the novel ideas of development being advanced in the Pacific. The challenge was best ignored. The new administration under Gorbachev is a far from wholehearted adherent of reform, but it does appear to be intrigued by the possibilities for change in domestic and foreign policy. The need for reform in the Soviet position in the Pacific is plain to see. Yet the possibilities and probabilities of a greater Soviet involvement in the region depend on a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 number of domestic and foreign policy considerations.

The Domestic Dimension In his trip to the Soviet far east in July 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev waxed lyrical about the ‘immense challenge’ and opportunity for the Soviet Union in the Pacific. Other Soviet writers are equally capable of matching the recent Western hyperbole about the Pacific’s future.5 Yet Gorbachev was blunt about the need for a new strategy in this region because the Soviet far east is growing more slowly than the rest of an already stagnant THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 135 economy. In this resource-rich territory, even fuel has to be imported from European Russia. Of course, there are huge problems if Siberia and the far east are to be transformed into more than just a dumping ground for dissidents. The unforgiving climate is harsh even by Soviet standards. Hard permafrost makes agriculture difficult and industrial and natural resource develop­ ment more complex. There are undoubtedly massive natural resources to be exploited, but the problem is how to overcome natural hardships, and how to attract people and capital to the region.6 In the decade of detente, the 1970s, Japan was seen as the possible provider of capital and technology that would overcome the hardships and attract the people. But Japan saw the economic problems and the Soviet Union was unwilling to provide acceptable terms.7 In the 1980s, Gorbachev sees the necessity for thorough reforms before any foreign investment can be expected. But he also holds out the prospect of ‘export- oriented development’, ‘progressive forms of economic links with foreign countries including production co-operation and joint enterprises’, and a Chinese-style ‘specialized export base’. Industrial co-operation with Japan and agricultural co-operation with China are seen as two main avenues, even if both would require a modicum of flexibility and ideological reform on the part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is in no doubt that the guiding principle of its development must remain ‘ socialism ’, but like China it seems to be increasingly flexible about the meaning of the term. The Soviet Union now views its Pacific territory with optimism, albeit tempered with realism. It recognizes the Soviet far east as an area for the future, and the Pacific rim as an arena for the twenty-first century.8 At least under Gorbachev the Soviet Union no longer pretends that the challenge and opportunity for devleopment no longer exists. But the problems remain nearly as acute as they were under Brezhnev. What are the opportunities for development in a region where the configuration of power and influence seems to be so strongly inimical to Soviet interests? The key to Soviet problems is seen in the form of the United States.

The United States and the Pacific The enduring priority for Soviet foreign policy remains the United States. By virtue of the superpower predominance in nuclear weapons, both Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 perceive themselves as having a special responsibility to ‘manage’ the future of international relations. In the Soviet perspective, the Pacific is not the primary theatre of this confrontation, even though it has been the site of more bloody wars than any other region since 1945. Wars in Korea and Vietnam were waged in part because the superpowers had unclear, distorted images of where the cold war lines were best drawn. Unlike Europe, strategies of ‘’ or calculations of the ‘correlation of forces’ could not be made with any precision because of the complex local conflicts and the existence of several local balances of power. As a result, and despite the active conflicts in the developing world, the 136 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Pacific remains less militarized than the Atlantic front. Thus it is a primary concern of the Soviet view of the Pacific century that no artificial set of neat alliances like NATO and the should be imposed in the Pacific. Despite the existence of ANZUS and the FPDA, both of which Moscow sees as marginal, the demise of SEATO is seen as a positive trend. The Soviet Union fears the United States’ superior military forces in the Pacific and their ability to operate right up to Russia’s Pacific waters. The Sea of Okhotsk may serve as a ‘sea bastion’ for the Soviet submarine- launched ballistic missile fleet, and the may have become Moscow’s largest, yet the Russians remain at a clear military disadvantage in the Pacific. The development of a separate Far Eastern Military theatre in 1978, and a forward theatre military command centre on the Pacific in 1986, suggests that the Soviet Union is serious about defending its Pacific interests and primarily against a United States threat.9 The very concept of a Pacific community is something that, until Gorbachev adopted it, the Soviet Union had seen as American-inspired.10 It was perceived as a way to organize American strategic interests in lieu of an equivalent to NATO, and to cope with the Japanese political and economic challenge to American hegemony. As the United States became fed up with bickering European allies, it turned to the more politely pliant Japan. It was also, so the argument went, a way to shore up declining American economic interests and a faltering capitalist system generally. One Soviet observer saw the shift in the United States to the Pacific as a result of President Reagan’s dependence on military-industrial supporters in California and the West in general.11 TTie link to military affairs features strongly in Soviet analyses of a Pacific community. It is seen as a way of tying up a US-Japan-South Korea (and sometimes Taiwan) alliance and sharing the defence burden. By and large the United States is seen as the leading voice in the chorus. Soviet opposition is also related to the notion that such a community would be based on a ‘capitalist mode of production’ and would not co­ operate with the countries of socialism. Gorbachev’s vision is somewhat less ideologically rigid on these issues. The speech of July 1986 was notable for its inclusion of the United States as a ‘great Pacific Ocean power’. This is part of a change of emphasis that no longer rejects the notion of a Pacific community out of hand. It holds out the possibility of co-operation if it is Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 genuinely on a basis of equality for all Pacific basin states. The new Soviet view also argues that such a community would require a peaceful environment, and that in turn would require the United States to cease its efforts to build anti-Soviet alliances. Thus the thrust of the Soviet Pacific initiative is to propose a Pacific version of a Helsinki-like agreement. The principle is that European stability has been assisted by the Helsinki process, and the Pacific, despite its greater complexity, could similarly benefit. The Soviet Union has made clear that this is not a proposal for immediate consideration. Nor does the Soviet Union hold out much prospect for an agreement of this THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 137 sort. But it is notable as a more constructive approach to Pacific problems and one that suggests a willingness to take part in future planning for the area. The moderation of the conservative ideological line also suggests a greater willingness to consider co-operation with states with different social systems, a crucial step that China understood was the basis for its opening to outside-assisted economic development. The new, more moderate Soviet line towards a Pacific community, and in part towards the United States in the region, is clearly a more sophisti­ cated postion. It is also apparently a position that has yet to be fully developed. So much remains unexplored, especially in the Soviet Union’s own domestic reforms, that it is unrealistic to expect a more polished Soviet vision of the Pacific future. But an area that has seen more coherent, and immediate, change is the Soviet Union’s relations with China.

China and the Pacific The challenge of China to the Soviet Union derives from both its size and its more or less shared ideology. As the first - and long predominant - Pacific power, China has now fallen to the rank of a mere ‘great power’. But any Soviet calculation about the future trend of politics in the Pacific quickly moves on from a consideration of the United States’ power to a fear of the potential of China. The course of the Sino-Soviet honeymoon, divorce, and most recently dance of detente, is surveyed elsewhere.12 Suffice it to say that much of the cause and course of the past 30 years of the relationship can be accounted for by the shifts in Chinese policy. In the 1980s the Soviet Union found that its reasonably consistent policy of mild overtures to China was finally reciprocated by a more moderate China. Since 1982 when China moved more emphatically to a policy of greater independence of both superpowers, there has been a definite warming of Sino-Soviet relations. Troops and tensions along the frontier have been reduced, political relations have been regularly raised to higher levels, and trade has been booming. By 1985 China became the second biggest exporter to the Soviet Union (after Japan) among the Pacific basin states. In the same year China’s total trade with the Soviet Union made it Moscow’s second biggest trading partner in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the region, passing Vietnam, although Sino-Soviet trade still ranks at half the Soviet-Japanese total. By 1985 China took 17.8 per cent of total Soviet trade in the region, up from five per cent in 1980. Agreements on future trade make it plain that China will expand its lead over Vietnam and North Korea as the main socialist trading partner of the Soviet Union in the region. China serves as both a market for Soviet industrial goods and a source of light industrial and consumer items, and of course agricultural produce. In fact it is precisely these Chinese exports that hold the key to raising the standard of living for the inhabitants of the Soviet far east and making further development of the region possible. The Soviet Union and China are also competitors in many economic 138 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA spheres, especially in seeking Western technology and finance to develop natural resources. The two communist powers were, and to some extent still are, also competitors in ideological terms. It was this last realm of competition that added to the fierceness of the original split and made the recent ddtente so difficult to begin. By 1986 it became very difficult to disentangle the Soviet and Chinese comments on the simultaneous, but different reform processes now under way in these two giant communist states. For several years both states have refrained from sharp criticisms of each other’s domestic reforms. China was the first to begin major economic reforms and it was difficult for the Russians, for ideological and nationalistic reasons, to accept that China might be doing something innovative and worth emulating. However, once Brezhnev declared that China was a socialist state, in 1982, the way was open for a stagnant Soviet Union to explore the implications of Chinese reforms. Socialist China had opened its doors to joint ventures and special export zones. In 1985 the Soviet Union sent officials to study the programmes, and in 1986 Gorbachev began to take the Soviet Union down its own, often parallel, road to reform. The restoration of party-to-party ties between the states of Eastern Europe and China, with the Kremlin’s benediction, suggests just how far the Soviet Union is willing to treat China as a genuinely socialist state. Although the Soviet reform process is only beginning and China’s is under constant review, it is increasingly clear that the outcome of these twin reforms is crucial to the Soviet view of the Pacific century. While the Soviet Union is intrigued by reforms and new models in the NICs, these offer no socialist model. The problem for the Soviet Union has been in the past that it is precisely the socialist states that were the laggards. China is now enjoying its fastest, most prolonged period of growth since 1949, a fact that impresses its neighbours, not to mention China’s quarter of mankind. Although the dislocation in the Chinese reform caused by the purge of Hu Yaobang in January 1987 upset many Western observers of China, the Soviet Union apparently viewed the changes in a positive light, referring to the concern for safe and careful reform of socialism. Precisely because Chinese reforms have gone so far and still remained socialist, they are both attractive and a challenge to the Soviet Union.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Moscow’s preferred vision of the Pacific century is more likely to be a string of friendly, socialist economies that are booming. China and, it is hoped, a similarly reforming Soviet Union could offer positive examples of a socialist model to the Pacific. If both the Soviet Union and China are successful economically, they may come to be seen by their Pacific neighbours as less of a threat because they are engrossed in economic modernization. They could also serve as models to be emulated in other developing economies. The challenge in this reform is that if China is successful, its reforms may be seen as the most suitable model for other developing economies, rather than the Soviet model of reform in a developed economy. Although the THE SO VET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 139 Soviet far east is more comparable in standard of development to the rest of the Pacific region, the Soviet Union as a whole is still perceived as a developed superpower. Thus if China gains the kudos from the reform of socialism, the Soviet Union might find itself with a greater problem in the Pacific than it did when China was pursuing more radical and obscurantist policies.

Japan and the Pacific The Soviet Union is clearly impressed with Japan. Mikhail Gorbachev said it ‘has turned into a power of front-rank significance’ and has ‘displayed striking accomplishments in industry and trade’.14 Although it is not quite the language of ‘Japan as Number One’ or the ‘Japanese Miracle’, it is a remarkable statement of approval. By some estimates, 1990 will see the Japanese surpass the Soviet Union in total GDP: an economic superpower indeed. The Soviet Union has also seen Japan serve as an engine for change in the Pacific, fuelling the NICs’ expansion and transforming regional trade relationships. Soviet analysts explain this process as part of a capitalist international system where Japan has joined the exploiters of Third World resources and labour. In Soviet discussions of a possible Pacific community they recognize that Japan has often led the movement. The ASEAN states are seen as subject to Japanese manipulation and even the United States is seen as taking a back seat to Japan in recent years.15 Japan’s dependence on Third World resources leads Tokyo to pretend to be generous in foreign aid so as to guarantee its markets and sources of raw materials. This ‘neo-colonialist policy of plunder’ under the guise of ‘learning from Japan’ is said to be a key Japanese characteristic in the new Pacific community.16 The Soviet Union clearly sees a close connection between Japan’s economic policies and the United States’ military strategy. As the Asian ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ for the United States, Japan is said to have a ‘special relationship’ with the United States that makes it a special case in the Pacific. It is thus not a country that can be emulated. In economic terms as well, emulation is not suggested. Gorbachev noted the ‘meticulousness, self-discipline and energy’ of the Japanese, but other Soviet analysts have noted the ‘illusion’ of social harmony. Such Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 orthodox analyses suggest that Japan exploits its workers ‘in a more sophisticated way’, making use of weak trade unions, legions of part-time workers and a strong fear of unemployment. Small firms are the ‘buffer’ for hard times, often going bankrupt so that the larger firms can keep going. These same analysts praise Japan’s hard work, innovation in production, instant use of scientific and technological achievement, the elimination of intermediate stages in management and the utmost participation of the workers in drives for quality.17 Clearly there is something for the Soviet Union to leam; but the Japanese system is seen as too different to be emulated except in isolated cases. 140 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA Nevertheless, Japan remains the key to Soviet economic relations in the area. Japan is by far the largest Soviet trading partner in the region. In 1985 it accounted for twice as much trade as its nearest rival, China, and was the region’s leading exporter to the Soviet Union. In 1985 Soviet exports to Japan were 25 per cent of total Soviet exports in the region, although down from 52 per cent in 1980. Japan accounted for 46 per cent of Soviet imports from the region, a figure that has remained more constant in the past five years.18 Yet even this trade pattern is linked to the United States factor. The decline in Japanese trade with the Soviet Union can be largely attributed to the sanctions imposed after the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and martial law in Poland in 1981. Soviet and Japanese dreams from the 1970s of closer co-operation have long been buried by a wave of economic caution and political distrust.19 In the 1980s the Soviet Union still sees Japan as the main potential economic link in the basin, but the Russians have scaled down their expectations.20 The Soviet Union would still like to see increased Japanese investment in Siberia and the Soviet far east. Japan hopes for new markets after the collapse of heavy industrial markets in the Middle East. The coincidence of interests is not huge, but it is stronger than at any time in the past five years. Japanese remark that the ‘smiling offensive’ of Gorbachev offers little that is new, especially on the sensitive issue of the northern territories. The Soviet calculation is presumably that only a cosmetic change in Soviet policy is required to ensure that the territorial issue will be placed to one side. The real stumbling block to greater Japanese investment in Siberia or the Soviet far east is an economic one. A more energy-conscious Japan is now less paranoid about energy sources than in the 1970s and therefore less inclined to sink large sums of money into securing new sources of supply. One of Gorbachev’s first foreign policy initiatives was to send Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to Japan with warm words and, of course, many smiles. The Soviet Union has also sought to join the Pacific Economic Co­ operation Conference and has requested Japanese approval (it attended the November 1986 Vancouver meeting only as an observer). There are signs of new ideas in Soviet policy in its greater interest in Pacific economic co-operation, its warmer attitude towards Japan and its more generally open mind. But compared to the real concessions the Soviet Union has Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 made to China, Gorbachev has yet to show any real inititatives towards Tokyo. If the Soviet Union is serious about taking an active part in Pacific economic co-operation, it will have to be bolder and more encouraging to Japan.

From Kiribati to Korea The Soviet Union is critical of the concept of a Pacific community because it has little to offer, but also because Moscow sees the region as too diverse to be sensibly organized. Apart from the diverging interests of the great THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 141 powers, this diversity is also apparent in the range of policies of the other 25-odd states of the region. In the Soviet view, there are five main types of states, all with different potentials and problems. In July 1986, as part of the change taking place in the Soviet view of the Pacific basin, Gorbachev reorganized the departments of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Three revamped and upgraded directorates were created. The South-east Asian directorate covers the five South-east Asian non-communist states with which the Soviet Union has diplomatic relations, plus Brunei. A second ‘Directorate for Pacific Co-operation’ groups Japan with Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. The third directorate deals with socialist Pacific states, including China, North Korea, and the states of Indo-China.21 In reality the Soviet Union is even more discriminating. The first category of states covers the white, former British colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Canada is usually assessed in the North American and European context. But Australia is the Soviet Union’s fifth largest trading partner in the region and second among non­ communist states. Overall it is the third largest exporter to the Soviet Union. Yet it is debatable whether the Soviet Union is actually terribly concerned about the events in these distant countries, since they are so obviously close partners in the Western system. The Soviet Union sees Australia as ‘an agrarian, raw material appendage’ of the Japanese economy.22 It is an evocative image for the Soviet Union that fears if it entered a Pacific community on Western terms, it too would be relegated to ‘hewing wood’ for the developed, capitalist world. The recent disputes between New Zealand and its ANZUS colleagues have, of course, been of interest and satisfaction to the Soviet Union.2 But such problems are not seen as offering any major opportunity for Moscow, which in any case is more concerned with military than economic relations. New Zealand figures only on the margin of Soviet Pacific trade. These three states as a whole are thus marginal to the Soviet conception of Pacific co-operation. The second group, the Pacific island states, can be seen as a sub-group of the first, although they are much poorer and have only recently begun to achieve independence and establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (for example, Vanuatu in June 1986). Until recently the Soviet Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Union paid scant attention to these territories, a tacit recognition of the United States’ intention to retain its influence across these islands up to the rim of East Asia. Yet in recent years the Reagan administration’s miserly attitude towards some Pacific island states’ demands for a better deal on fishing rights gave the Soviet Union an opening to exploit. Kiribati signed a fishing pact with the Soviet Union in the spring of 1986, not out of any love for communism, but more to force the United States to open its purse strings.24 This Soviet fishing in troubled waters may yet bring in a profit, 142 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA but as yet is remains a sideshow to more important events in the Pacific basin. The third group of states, ASEAN, has never been a priority of Soviet foreign policy. Their total trade with the Soviet Union roughly equals that of Australia, with a heavy deficit in the ASEAN states’ favour. As developing states, mostly in the Western camp, the ASEAN countries have given the Soviet Union little reason for optimism about prospects for co-operation. Some, like the Philippines, are politically unstable and offer some prospect for gain. But Moscow was one of the last international supporters of the Marcos regime, hardly an auspicious way to begin wooing the Aquino government. Thailand is firmly tied to the United States. The Soviet Union blames the country’s economic problems on Japanese and American capitalist habits, protectionism and high interest rates.25 Similar explanations are given for the failure of ASEAN to become more effective. The two capitalist superpowers are said to want to keep these developing states docile as useful markets. They also fit into regional military schemes like the FPDA and support the Western position over the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea. Only Indonesia and Malaysia are seen in a more favourable light as states fighting for a more moderate position on Kampuchea. Clearly an amelioration in the position in Kampuchea would improve Moscow’s standing in ASEAN, but it would hardly transform the region into a major Soviet trading partner. The Soviet interest in this area is political and military rather than economic. The fourth group of states is the unlikely quartet of NICs: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. None of these states offer any significant prospects for co-operation, albeit for a variety of reasons. The NICs’ economic success is seen as being due to particular circumstances that pose no real challenge to Moscow because the circumstances cannot be repeated or emulated. Only Singapore has any significant trade with the Soviet Union, involving some $265 million in exports to the Soviet Union in 1985. But both Singapore and Hong Kong are ‘island states’ with economies geared heavily to exports to the capitalist world. Their labour practices are distinctly unsavoury to the Soviet Union. Taiwan has always been out of bounds to the Soviet Union, largely Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 because of Moscow’s ‘one China’ policy. In its current phase of wooing Beijing, it would be unthinkable for the Soviet Union to risk China’s ire by courting an anti-communist Taiwan that in any case is not interested in economic relations with the Soviet Union. South Korea is perhaps the most interesting challenge to the Soviet Union. As an enemy of a Soviet ally in North Korea, it is not accessible for extensive trade (not that China has been similarly deterred). Seoul is seen as closely tied economically and militarily to the United States. It is also seen as a restrictive regime rendered unstable by widespread opposition THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 143 from students. South Korea’s economic policy has resulted in high debts, slums and large wage differentials, and the economic boom is seen as artificially maintained by Japan and the United States.27 Yet the Soviet Union is not oblivious to the ‘relatively rapid industrial growth’ in South Korea (and indeed the other NICs) and their growing impact on international trade. The ‘multinational corporations’ of the NICs have appeared where ‘traditional imperialism’ has been discouraged by some developing states. Soviet and Marxist theoreticians have obviously been debating the meaning of the new East Asian forms of capitalism. They console themselves with the belief that even more intense competition in the capitalist world is creating greater contradic­ tions. But Moscow is also aware that these countries are going ‘from strength to strength’ and their ‘dynamic expansion’ is irrefutable.28 Despite the proud propaganda, the challenge to the Soviet world view is clear. South Korean (and indeed Taiwanese) support for a Pacific community is explained by the phrase ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’.29 The real Soviet interest is therefore the impact that South Korea has on the prospects for stability in the region. The growing gap between the standards of living in the two Koreas and the imminent succession in North Korea has made Moscow worry about the future. Like China, it would prefer to see a peaceful environment on the Korean peninsula. Thus both Moscow and Beijing have stepped up the pressure on Pyongyang to reform its economy, but both are loath to push too far for fear of an irrational response. The real Soviet interest in this area is therefore concentrated on the socialist states. North Korea and the Indo-Chinese states account for two- thirds of Soviet exports to the socialist states in the region and about one- quarter of total Soviet trade in that area. The Soviet Union imports only 20 per cent of its goods in the region from these states. The vast majority of this trade is accounted for by Vietnam and North Korea. Vietnam became the leading Soviet export market in the region in 1984 and Moscow managed to export three times as much as its imports from these communist states as a whole. But by 1985 Vietnam slipped to third among Soviet trade partners in the region as China regained its place as Moscow’s main socialist trading partner in the Pacific basin. The pressure is on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Vietnam, especially as the Indo-Chinese states (and Vietnam in particular) take huge amounts of Soviet aid and are drains on Soviet and Comecon resources. An unprecedented CPSU Central Committee conference on Vietnam was held in January 1987, suggesting that Soviet pressure on Vietnam to reform may be softened by promises of new economic aid.30 Interestingly enough, the Soviet Union does distinguish between the different types of regimes. North Korea is the longest established, but is given somewhat less importance than Vietnam because of its smaller population and its close relations with China. Vietnam is seen as the most important, but still a ‘backward economy’ with small-scale production and a low technological level. But in view of its population, provision of 144 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA bases, and perhaps also its serious economic problems, it has been made a Comecon member, albeit a second-class one. Laos is seen as having similar characteristics to Vietnam, but is far less important in strategic terms. Kampuchea is still said to be in the process of ‘rebirth’ and, because of the continuing war on its soil, is seen as less firmly established.31 As a result, the Soviet Union does not seem to be even hinting at the idea of establishing an East Asian version of Comecon. The notion of the diversity of the Pacific is clearly extended to the socialist sub-section as well. In political terms, these states are an even greater burden to the Soviet Union. North Korea helps create instability in an area where Moscow wants more peace and quiet to facilitate contacts with Japan and China. Vietnam offers Moscow military bases but sullies the Soviet name by its expansionist policies. All these states are to varying degrees in economic difficulties, and therefore a poor advertisement for the Soviet model. Of course, the Soviet Union sees the United States and to some extent China as responsible for this poor state of affairs. In reality, the problem has far more to do with the specific policies of the small states concerned. In the midst of the Gorbachev reforms, this last point is increasingly acknowledged in Moscow. North Korea is being encouraged to experiment with joint ventures and export zones. Vietnam is being pushed to moderate its hard line against economic and social reform. The prospects for building a dynamic socialist bloc in the Pacific are not encouraging. To some extent they depend on the course of reforms in China and the Soviet Union. They also hinge on the changes in leadership in Vietnam and the expected ones in North Korea. Just as the Pacific as a whole is dealt with primarily on a bilateral basis, so it seems the socialist states need to be treated individually. In such an environment it is understandable, not to mention sensible, that the Soviet Union should be sceptical of grandiose theorizing about a Pacific community.

Soviet Strategy and the Pacific Century The Soviet Union has natural Pacific horizons, but few realistic means to travel the distance. Until the Gorbachev era, the Soviet Union responded to its limited options with sullenness, a large fleet and an offhand dismissal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 of the possibility of Pacific-wide co-operation. Most Soviet discussion of the Pacific was set in military-strategic terms. For an area most notable for its economic dynamism, this attitude helped ensure that the Soviet Union made little progress. Gorbachev’s change has been to adopt a more positive attitude to the region as a whole, and in particular to the possibilities of economic reform and international co-operation. It is clear that this change is still in its infancy, and subject to significant ‘back-chat’ in the Kremlin.32 As Gorbachev himself has noted, the Pacific basin itself is ‘in great motion’ and very ‘diverse’, thus providing plenty of ammunition to those who wish to draw contrary conclusions about the implications of specific trends. THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 145 Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a number of more or less clear trends in Soviet strategy towards Pacific co-operation. First, the Soviet Union is determined to be more positive about the possibilities for Pacific-wide co-operation. At a minimum, such an attitude will make life more difficult for the United States and Japan, which might hope to weld an association of capitalist economies in the region. A more positive Soviet attitude might also help bring together its own socialist allies, albeit not into as coherent a bloc as the Soviet Union maintains in Europe. Second, the Soviet Union is likely to remain deeply sceptical about the broad practical possibilities of co-operation in the Pacific. Even Soviet officials appreciate that the idea of a Pacific-wide version of the Helsinki conference is not a major proposal or one that stands even the remotest chance of being implemented quickly. Soviet-style co-operation is likely to be bilateral, and possibly multilateral, on a limited scale among the socialist states. Both Japan and China are the main objects of Soviet courtship, although for different reasons. Third, the Soviet Union is likely to push its socialist allies harder than it has in the past. North Korea and Vietnam are already feeling the pressure. The other two allies are far less important in economic terms, and Kampuchea is certainly hampered by its special circumstances as a state in civil war. But even a marginally more successful and peaceful Vietnam and North Korea will have a major impact on the Soviet image in the region, its economic burden, and its possibilities for wider influence in the Pacific. In the five years since 1980, Soviet trade with socialist East Asian states has nearly doubled from 27 to 49 per cent of total Soviet trade with the region. Between 1980 and 1985 Soviet exports to the socialist states had risen from 42 to 71 per cent of total Soviet exports to the region. There is clearly great scope for a more vibrant socialist trading ‘community’ even if Moscow cannot break into the capitalist community. The Soviet key is expanding relations with China and reform in other parts of the socialist world. Fourth, the byword for Soviet foreign and domestic policy is likely to be reform. The question of how far and how fast the Soviet Union moves is tied up with complex questions of Soviet ideology, bureaucratic politics and economics. But Gorbachev is certainly clear in his appreciation that

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 reform is needed in the Soviet far east, and in the region’s relations with other states nearby. The problems facing the Soviet Union are immense. If these changes are to be anything more than fleeting or simply rhetorical, Moscow will have to be serious in implementing reform, in adopting more flexible policies towards China and Japan, and in pushing its allies to similar flexibility and reform. The great risk is that Moscow will continue to perceive the region primarily in military terms. It is true that it still accounts for only some six per cent of total Soviet trade, and economic policy is not an area where the Soviet Union has obvious attractions to 146 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA other states. But if reform and a more economic-oriented foreign policy are not adopted, then the Soviet Union is sure to remain peripheral to the dynamism that is the Pacific.

NOTES

Gerald Segal is the editor of the new quarterly journal, The Pacific Review, and is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol. His recent publications include Defending China (1985), Sino-Soviet Relations After Mao (1985), and The Guide to the World Today (1987); he is also editor of The Soviet Union in East Asia (1984) and Arms Control in Asia (1987).

1. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), SU/8324/C/15. 2. Malcolm Mckintosh, ‘Soviet Attitudes Towards East Asia*, in Gerald Segal (ed.), The Soviet Union in East Asia (London: Heinemann, 1983). 3. B.N. Slavinski, ‘Russia and the Pacific to 1917’, in John Stephan and V.P. Chichkanov (eds.), Soviet—American Horizons on the Pacific (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1986). 4. Glynn Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, 1715-1825 (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 1981). 5. See note 1, and Moscow TV, 2 Aug. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-86-150. 6. Allen Whiting, Siberian Development and East Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1981). The use of the term ‘far east’ follows Whiting’s usage: it refers only to that portion of the USSR that is east of the Urals, and thus is larger than simply the specific administrative region of the Soviet Far East. 7. Kazuyuki Kinbara, ‘The Economic Dimension of Soviet Policy*, in Segal, op. cit. 8. I. G^vrichev, ‘The Asian Pacific Region’, International Affairs (Moscow), 1986, No.7; Aleksandr Bogomolov, ‘Problems of Cooperation in the Pacific Region’, International Affairs (Moscow), 1987, No.l; and ‘Evolution of Pacific Cooperation Ideas’, Far Eastern Affairs (Moscow), 1987, No.l. 9. The question of the military balance is hotly debated: see various discussions in Segal, op. cit., and in Donald Zagoria (ed.), Soviet Policy in East Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983). 10. See note 8, and S. Bilveer, ‘The Pacific Community Concept: The View from Moscow’, The World Today, Jan. 1985. 11. For examples of Soviet commentary, see N. Tripolsky, ‘Plans to Set Up a Pacific Community: A Fresh Threat to Peace*, Far Eastern Affairs, 1985, No.2; , 3 Sept. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-86-172; International Observers Round Table, on Moscow Domestic Service, 3 Aug. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-1986-150; A. Bovin in Izvestiya, 14 July 1986, in FBIS-SOV-1986-146. 12. Gerald Segal, Sino-Soviet Relations After Mao, Adelphi Paper No.202 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1985); and most recently ‘Sino-Soviet Detente: How Far, How Fast?’, The World Today, May 1987. 13. Figures are from IMF, Directions of Trade, 1986, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Foreign Trade News (Moscow), 1985, No.4, in JPRS-SEA-85-107; and Vientiane Pasason, 27 Nov. 1985, in JPRS-SEA-86-025. 14. BBC SWB, SU/8324/C/11. 15. FBIS-SOV-86-177. 16. O. Vasiliev, ‘Japan: Behind the Screen of Economic Aid*, Far Eastern Affairs, 1985, No.4. 17. V. Solntsev, ‘The Other Side of the Japanese Miracle*, International Affairs, 1986, No.8. 18. See note 12. 19. Wolf Mendl, ‘The Soviet Union and Japan’, in Segal, op. cit.; Hiroshi Kimura, ‘Soviet Policies in the Asian Pacific Region’, Asian Affairs, Vol.I 1, No.4 (Winter 1985). 20. Literatumaya Gazeta, 6 Aug. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-86-151; Pravda, 31 July 1986, in THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PACIFIC CENTURY 147

FBIS-SOV-86-148. 21. Far Eastern Economic Review, 14 Aug. 1986. 22. Tripolsky, ‘Pacific Community*, p. 119. 23. Kapitsa in New Zealand, in Wellington Evening Post, 27 Aug. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-86- 169; Izvestiya, 13 Aug. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-1986-160. 24. Pravda, 19 Aug. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-86-160; Pravda, 2 Sep. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-86- 175. 25. Moscow Radio in Thai, 14 Sept. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-86-180. 26. V. Andreyev and V. Semenov, ‘Prospects and Opponents of Dialogue in Southeast Asia*, International Affairs, 1986, No.2; Izvestiya, 8 Sept. 1986, in FBIS-SOV-87-177. 27. D. Kapustin, ‘South Korea: Mounting Resistance to the Anti-Popular Regime’, Far Eastern Affairs, 1986, No.8; A. Berenzov, ‘Multinational Companies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea’, ibid., 1983, No.l; Peter Berton, ‘The Soviet Union and Korea: Perceptions, Scholarship, Propaganda*, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, Vol.5, No.l (Spring 1986). 28. Berenzov, ‘Multinational Companies’. 29. Tripolsky, ‘Pacific Community*, p. 120. 30. Moscow Domestic Service, 5 Jan. 1987, in BBC SWB, SU/8459/A3/1. 31. M. Isayev and I. Ognetov, ‘Development of Cooperation Among the Countries of Indochina’, Far Eastern Affairs, 1984, No.4; also M. Ukraintsev, ‘The Soviet Union’s Growing Cooperation with Asian Socialist Nations and Kampuchea’, ibid., 1986, No.l. 32. Far Eastern Economic Review, 14 Aug. 1986. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 China and the Asia-Pacific Region

Michael B. Yahuda

In the 1980s the People’s Republic of China has sought, and to some extent gained, greater interdependence within the Asia-Pacific region. It has, for example, become a member of the Pacific Economic Co-operation Conference (PECC), a semi-official body that is more a ‘talking-shop’ than an inter-govemmental agency, of which it is the only socialist member. However, China’s involvement in the PECC and its greater interaction with the Asia—Pacific region are not without their problems. China seeks an independent foreign policy, but the maintenance of its strategic outlook depends on the continuity of a stable international environment, which China can influence but not determine. There appears to be room for conflict between the desire for interdependence and China’s search for its own ‘path to socialism’. Moreover, within the Asia—Pacific region other countries have ambivalent attitudes towards closer co-operation with China.

In November 1986 the People’s Republic of China (PRC) participated for the first time in an international organization aimed exclusively at the promotion of co-operation between the countries of the Pacific Basin. The PRC’s participation in the Pacific Economic Co-operation Con­ ference (PECC)1 in Vancouver formalized not only its interest in the Pacific Basin, but also its acceptance by all the other participants as the organization’s only socialist member. The PECC is in many respects well suited to accommodate the PRC. Chinese observers attended the 1979 conference in Canberra that led to the first formal session of the PECC the following year in Bangkok. Begun as the result mainly of Japanese initiatives, the PECC is a semi-official body made up of academics, businessmen and officials representing their respective states, with various international bodies attending as observers. It does not commit governments and the officials claim to speak in a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 personal capacity. Operating by consensus it avoids voting and majority decisions. The PECC meets every 18 months and the Vancouver meeting was its fifth. Despite its loose structure and non-governmental character the PECC was able to agree at its meeting in Bangkok to set up four working groups or ‘task forces’ on regional trade, on agriculture and raw materials, on foreign investments, and on the transfer of technology. The focus on the more technical aspects of economic exchanges and the avowedly non­ political character of the PECC as opposed to earlier ideas of a Pan-Pacific community all mean that the PRC stands to gain by membership without fear of being committed to positions with which it disagrees. The PRC’s foreign economic relations are heavily weighted towards the CHINA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION 149 Pacific Basin countries and it has a manifest interest in not being excluded from the deliberations that will facilitate still more extensive economic transactions in the area. Thus, since the 1970s China’s trade with the PECC countries plus Hong Kong has accounted for between 60 and 67 per cent of the value of its total world trade. This proportion has held good as the value of the PRC’s international trade has grown from US$11.93 billion ($1,193 million) in 1974 to US$69,863 billion in 19852 and to US$73.8 billion in 1986.3 Not only has the significance of this trade grown in the development of the Chinese domestic economy and in the efforts at modernization, but it has also increased China’s weight in the trade of the Pacific Basin itself. For example, in the admittedly exceptional year of 1985 China ranked as Japan’s second-most important trading partner with two- way trade valued at more than US$22 billion. But the PRC’s incorporation into the PECC specifically, and the Pacific Basin more broadly, is not without serious problems both as perceived from with China and as seen by several other member countries. These problems may be examined within the framework of three broad clusters of concerns about the adaptability of the PRC in moving towards ever greater interdependence in the Pacific area. First, China’s geopolitical interests and the strategic outlook of its leaders; second, the adaptablity of its political and economic systems to ever deepening interdependent relationships; and third, the receptivity of other countries in the Pacific rim to a regionalized long-term partnership with the PRC.

China’s Geopolitical Position and Strategic Outlook The proclaimed foreign policy of independence enunciated since 1982 has brought China into a more balanced relationship with the United States and the Soviet Union. It has provided a framework on the Chinese side for a considerable improvement in Sino-Soviet relations.4 But Zhao Ziyang’s observation in 1984 that China was ‘independent but not equidistant’ between the two superpowers is still relevant. Similarly Deng Xiaoping’s remark to in the course of his visit to China in April of that year also continues to apply. He stated to the American President: ‘We agree with what you are doing in the Pacific’.5 Not only have the Chinese not protested against American bases in Japan and the Philippines but they tacitly co-operate with the Americans on the Afghan and Indo- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 Chinese issues. Both are in effect separate allies of Pakistan and Thailand and they supply different kinds of aid to the resistance forces in Afghanistan and Kampuchea. From their different perspectives they also share concern about increasing Soviet military influence over North Korea, and there is evidence of a degree of Sino-American diplomatic co-operation about some Korean issues.6 PRC leaders have repeatedly stated that their country ‘will never attach itself to any other state or bloc of states’. Nevertheless the tacit tilt towards the United States is evident from the asymmetric character of the PRC’s relations with the two superpowers. Although the immediacy of the Soviet threat may have diminished in 150 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA recent years, the Soviet Union still remains the most direct security threat to China. Its facilities for imposing a military encirclement around China are still in place. And despite different views as to how to handle the Soviet Union and to manage relations with the two superpowers, Deng Xiaoping’s public position that significant Soviet concessions on Vietnam are the preconditions for a meeting between him and Gorbachev appears to be definitive.7 The threat from the United States is perceived as latent and long term apart from the problem of Taiwan. Meanwhile the improvement in Sino-Soviet relations which has led to various agreements on economic, scientific and cultural exchanges and included various institutionalized meetings at the levels of Vice-Foreign Ministers and occasionally Vice-Premier levels does still not compare in either quantity or quality with those of Sino-American relations.8 To take but one example, the value of Sino-Soviet trade has leaped from US $363 million in 1982 to US$3.61 billion in 1986, but that of Sino-American trade in 1986 was US$7.34 billion (that is, more than double).9 Chinese strategic perspectives in the 1980s involve a greater orientation to the Pacific or what they call the ‘Asia-Pacific region’. This is perceived as a region in which Soviet-American rivalry is increasing. Indeed Chinese scholars debate the significance of the economic dynamism of the region. Some argue that as ‘the centre of the world economy has shifted to the Pacific, ... the focus of the rivalry of the two hegemonists will also switch from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region’. Others argue, however, that they expect ‘the focus of rivalry [to] remain in Europe for the next 15 years’. Interestingly, PRC leaders and scholars are prepared to assert in public that China plays an active part in shaping the balance of forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Chinese scholars differ in the significance they attach to what they perceive as growing multi-polarity in world affairs; but whether or not they hold the view that two superpowers are still dominant, they all concur in the rising influence of China.12 China’s role is rarely outlined in detail except to suggest that, alongside other centres such as Japan, Western Europe and the Third World, China too acts as a constraint upon the hegemonic behaviour of the two superpowers. More specifically in the Asia-Pacific region China claims to be contributing to the emergence of a more peaceful and stable structure of relations. Several practical measures have been identified beyond the propa­

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 gandists: effective opposition to the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea and to that of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; the establish­ ing of an ever-widening network of economic relations with all the countries of the Pacific rim, including the Soviet Union and the ASEAN countries as well as the main industrialized countries; the establishing of long-term agreements for regaining effective sovereignty over Hong Kong and Macao on the basis of ‘one country, two systems’, which, it is claimed, will have far-reaching effects in further stabilizing the region as a whole, in addition to paving the way for a peaceful reunification with Taiwan. However, as we have seen, China still tilts towards the United States on CHINA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION 151 fundamental security questions in the region. That tilt is nevertheless qualified. Apart from the problem of Taiwan, there is no doubt that in the long run the leaders of the PRC aspire to a genuinely independent and equidistant relationship between the two superpowers and that their current foreign policy is designed to gain time while domestically the country focuses upon modernization and building up its economic and military strength. As a result China’s immediate policies towards the Soviet Union are to await further significant evidence of the scaling down of the Soviet threat to China.13 Meanwhile, the Chinese have made clear their unwillingness to join a Pacific movement that could become ‘a cover for the Americans to mobilize other countries against the Soviet Union’; and part of the PECC’s appeal to them is that it excludes political and strategic matters from its considerations. In a similar vein the Chinese have indicated that they would not even consider joining the ASEAN post-ministerial dialogue.14 Despite China’s growing orientation towards the Pacific, a glance at the map will show that China does not share a land border with a single one of its fellow PECC members. Even as its broad economic and technological interests combine with China’s long coastline and maritime interests to push it towards ever-closer engagement with the Pacific, China’s leaders must be mindful of its national security interests in Inner Asia. The latter involve not only the 4,500-mile border within the Soviet Union (and Mongolia), but also relations with bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Although China is not in the position of the United States and the Soviet Union, both of which have stronger orientations towards the Atlantic and Europe, the PRC too cannot be considered to be wholly a Pacific power. The PRC is still engaged in conflict over territories and borders with India and the Soviet Union (notwithstanding the latter’s recent conces­ sion on the river borders), and there are still outstanding minor land border disputes with Vietnam and North Korea. The PRC has also territorial claims to islands and shoals, sea-bed and maritime zones that have led to actual or incipient disputes with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. From a general strategic and geopolitical perspective the PRC is faced with complex problems of transition as its leaders and foreign affairs specialists struggle with the implications of becoming economically and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 politically ever more engaged in the Pacific. At present they recognize that their current interests are best served by American predominance in the Pacific, but they have no wish to become locked into an unequal partnership. In any case the Asia-Pacific region is regarded as an area of increasing Soviet-American rivalry and there is uncertainty as to how it may develop.15 Much depends, in the Chinese view, on whether the Soviet Union under Gorbachev will respond positively to Chinese fears of encirclement. In addition to the much-noted ‘Three Obstacles’ (the military deployments in the north, Afghanistan and Indo-China), the Chinese will also follow closely Soviet behaviour in Korea. It remains to 152 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA be seen whether the Soviet Union will seek to obstruct attempts to moderate the North-South . In other words, from a Chinese perspective it is still not clear whether the Soviet Union will accept that it cannot consolidate its own security at the cost of Chinese insecurity and still expect the Chinese to distance themselves from the United States. In the context of China’s military weakness relative to the two super­ powers (which is expected to continue into the next century), China’s leaders are acutely aware of the constraints imposed on their indepen­ dence by the character of the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, both globally and regionally. The assertion of the inde­ pendent foreign policy in 1982 was predicated on a change in that relationship towards a more even balance.16 Even though the Chinese leaders expect this to continue at least for the duration of China’s current five-year plan (until 1990), they recognize a volatility in that balance, and opinions differ among Chinese scholars about long-term trends.17 Ultimately, then, the continuity of China’s independent foreign policy (and perhaps also of the domestic programme of modernization) is dependent upon the continuity of a secure international environment which the Chinese recognize that they can influence, but not control. But China’s current policy of independence is fundamentally different from the of the late 1960s. Not only is China more deeply engaged and enmeshed in a variety of international relationships, but within the Asia-Pacific region China has developed complex networks of relations with specific countries and sub-regions that are no longer directly linked to its relations with the two superpowers. Until the 1980s it was possible to argue that China’s relations with the countries within its region were a function of its relations with the two superpowers, and as a result it has been suggested that China did not have a regional policy.18 It remains to be seen whether the more variegated patterns of relations established with, say, Japan, ASEAN and Australasia would survive a major realignment in China’s relations with the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Adaptability of China’s Political and Economic Systems China is the only socialist member of the PECC. The loose structure of the organization ensures that it can absorb the PRC and that the PRC’s Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 domestic arrangements are not challenged by having become a member. Nevertheless the ethos of the other members is oriented in favour of economic interdependence. Interdependence, or mutual dependence, however, does pose problems for the PRC since it would necessarily compromise the ideal of independence and the search for an authentically Chinese form of socialism. How to balance independence and depend­ ence may be seen as one of the major dilemmas posed by China’s modem historical experience to successive generations of Chinese leaders and intellectuals. Since the unification of the Chinese state in 1949 the issue may be conceived of as a choice between two extremes. At one pole is an CHINA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION 153 isolationist stance, according to which within its borders the PRC may develop an ideologically pure native form of socialism based on economic autarky. At the other pole is an independent state devoid of ideological unity and Chinese socialist identity. Both extremes pose dangers of national humiliation and disintegration: the first through increasing technological backwardness that in time would threaten foreign aggres­ sion by technologically superior adversaries, as in the nineteenth century; and the second through the collapse of national cohesion. It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the impact of this dilemma upon the reform process as it has unfolded since 1978. It is sufficient to point out that reform and the policies of the ‘open door’ have involved a process of adaptation to hitherto alien economic and cultural influences. That process not only raised questions about the threat of a capitalist erosion of Chinese socialist values and institutions, but it also raised issues as to whether those values and institutions themselves were truly socialist, since they were said to be too imbued with vestiges of traditional Chinese ‘feudalism’.19 The fact that the latter view has been submerged (perhaps only temporarily) by the current that opposes ‘bourgeois liberalization’ does not mean that the problem is less real. Moreover, as Deng Xiaoping has stated publicly, political reform - which can only mean the diminution of the powers currently exercised by the communist party - is still on the agenda for the thirteenth party congress, due to be held in October 1987. Since these ideological and political struggles are taking place against the background of an impending issue of succession that is at once personal and generational, profound questions remain about the adaptability of China’s political structures to meet the challenges of Pacific inter­ dependence. Meanwhile, the PRC has committed itself to making various domestic economic changes to meet the entry requirements of certain international economic organizations. The fact that not all of these have been openly revealed in Chinese publications is highly suggestive of the sensitivity raised by the issues. For example, after the country joined the World Bank and the IMF, Chinese researchers in economic institutes of the Academy of Social Science were surprised to discover that foreign experts of these organizations were given access to Chinese economic statistics that they themselves had never seen before.20 Similarly, the PRC has yet to reveal to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 its domestic public that as part of its application to join the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), it undertook, in a submission made in February 1987, to continue the process of price reform so as to bring the prices of its commodities in line with true production costs. The issue of price reform in China is extraordinarily sensitive, as it is for other communist countries. The inflationary and destabilizing effects of price reform for China’s urban population were such that in November 1986 Prime Minister Zhao promised to maintain the existing price structure for the whole of 1987. At a deeper level, price reform is at the heart of the difference between the centralist and reformist tendencies in China. The 154 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA kind of price reform that the PRC has undertaken to carry out in order to meet the GATT criteria would entail far greater structural reforms of the Chinese economy than currently envisaged in any of the published economic programmes. The economic, administrative and political problems that would surely arise from any attempt to carry out these undertakings are so great as to cast doubt on the PRC’s capacity to do so. Any attempt to carry out such a fundamental price reform on the grounds of the need to meet international obligations might risk a nationalist backlash against the apparent loss of economic independence. But if the PRC were to continue to insulate its domestic economy and its price structures from the international (capitalist) economy it would limit its access to the international market where the benefits of its comparative advantage and those of freer trade would boost its own economy. On the other hand there is no sign that the PRC is in a position to burst the ‘bubble’ through which the transactions between the domestic and international economy are currently managed.21 These considerations will necessarily limit the degree of the PRC’s engagement in the economy of the Pacific region.

Attitudes to China as a Pacific Partner Chinese scholars and officials like to argue that economically China needs the Pacific and the Pacific needs China. This view is certainly shared in the United States. Indeed the United States was instrumental in assisting the entry of the PRC into the PECC.22 Successive American administrations have held that it is in the American interest for China to become a stable and prosperous country that is fully engaged in the Pacific basin. With the exception of the Taiwan issue Washington argues that there are no major conflicts of interest with China. The enthusiasm for partnership with China (in part to counter-balance the dependency on economic relations with Japan and the United States) is shared by Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The attitudes of China’s putative partners nearer at hand in East Asia are more complex and suspicious. At a general level there is concern about becoming entangled in China’s relations with the superpowers and fear of the instability of Chinese politics. Because of the asymmetries in size and potential there is also long-term concern as to what a more powerful and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 modernized China might portend for its neighbours, especially in view of the historical legacy of China’s ‘weight’ before the advent of the West. Moreover, unlike its smaller neighbours, the PRC is directly engaged in all the major international security problems of East Asia, including the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and Indo-China. These countries have been anxious not to become engaged in conflicts outside their own immediate sub-region. Even within their own sub-regions there is no sign of the emergence of an approach to regional order that would or could accommodate the PRC.23 Japan, which might have been thought to be at the forefront of those CHINA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION 155 with an interest in drawing China into an association of Pacific countries, has in fact been rather cautious. It is true that in 1978 Japan signed a treaty of peace and friendship with China that was perceived in both Moscow and Beijing as helpful to China in its then growing conflict with the Soviet Union; it is also true that the Japanese premier, Nakasone, and the general secretary of the CCP, Hu Yaobang, in 1982 signed an agreement that set up a Sino-Japanese Committee for the twenty-first century. But the Japanese have not responded positively to Deng Xiaoping’s sugges­ tions to establish mutually dependent relations that have been made at various times between 1979 and 1986.24 Japan’s reluctance to institu­ tionalize relations with China still further despite their closeness can be ascribed to several factors.25 First, Japan ultimately seeks relatively equidistant relations with China, the Soviet Union and the United States. For example, in 1978 it explicitly sought to reassure the Soviet Union that its treaty with China was not directed against third countries. Second, Japan is sensitive to residual hostility towards it in China and it is suspicious of China’s tendency to make rapid changes of course in both economic and political matters. Third, it fears possible Chinese economic rivalry, it withholds transfers of the most advanced technologies, and, in comparison with the United States, it is a reluctant investor in China. Finally, Japan is sensitive to ASEAN countries’ complaints that China is favoured against their economic interests. Beyond these considerations there are still influential right-wingers in the Liberal-Democratic Party who lean towards Taiwan, and other Japanese are concerned lest the PRC might involve them in its attempts to reunify with the island. South Korean attitudes towards the PRC are necessarily shaped by the deeper problems of the Korean peninsula. Since the South Korean government and its American ally seek recognition of both North and South Korea by the great powers of the region, it has drawn satisfaction from the PRC’s accession to the PECC, of which it too is a member. By the same token, however, the other smaller states of East Asia have sought to avoid being drawn into the conflicts of the Korean peninsula. For example, the 1981 proposal by the South Korean president, Chun Dooh Hwan, that there should be a meeting of heads of state of the PECC fell on deaf ears. The countries of ASEAN are suspicious of China in the long run. Malaysian and Indonesian leaders have often made it clear that they fear Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 China in the long term, and that they would prefer to think of Vietnam as a kind of buffer between them and China. Meanwhile the ASEAN countries continue to oppose Vietnam’s forcible imposition of a govern­ ment of its choosing on Kampuchea. As long as Thailand, the front-line state, continues to regard Vietnam’s military pressure as a threat to its national security, the other ASEAN states have no alternative but to support it and its quasi-alliance with China. However, should a break in the Indo-Chinese stalemate occur and a settlement become possible, the underlying different regional objectives between China and the ASEAN countries would emerge more clearly.26 156 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA In addition, the ASEAN countries fear China as an emerging economic rival in world markets and they have already protested to Japan and the United States about their relative neglect in favour of China. Interest­ ingly, in the 1980s economic relations between China and the ASEAN countries have expanded - largely, but not wholly, through the com­ mercial activities of the overseas Chinese. The PRC has also sought to persuade ASEAN countries that in many respects their economies are complementary and that they can profitably expand what Beijing calls ‘South-South’ trade.27 Scholars from their respective governmental think-tanks regularly hold conferences, and the earlier void in com­ munications between the two sides is being filled to a certain degree. However, the suspicions of the PRC over the long term are reinforced by concerns about its continued party relations with local communist parties, about its relations with the ethnic Chinese in South-east Asia, and about its maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea.28

Conclusion The incorporation of the PRC into the various economic networks that characterize Pacific relations has been gathering pace in the 1980s. This is above all symbolized by the PRC’s accession to the PECC. However, as analysed above, there are deep-seated problems stemming from the PRC’s special strategic interests, the character of its political and economic system, and the approaches of its East Asian neighbours, all of which stand in the way of a deeper engagement by the PRC in the Pacific Basin. By setting aside the previous ideals of a trans-Pacific community in favour of the more modest forum of the PECC and its various task forces that focus on the technicalities of economic relations, the advanced industrialized countries of the area have made China’s participation possible. But by the same token, the PRC’s membership of the PECC will ensure that the potentialities for the growth of regionalism in the area will remain distinctly modest for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the implications for the PRC of becoming more deeply engaged even in these ‘modest’ regional arrangements are very great. Much will depend on whether the process of reform in China will continue or be arrested. A deepening Chinese linkage with the other countries of the Pacific rim Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 could contribute to greater stability and pave the way for the amelioration of the many actual and incipient disputes involving China. Finally, it should be noted that China’s deeper engagement with the Asia-Pacific region is paralleled by growing ties with the Soviet Union and the East European countries. The two developments supplement each other, but they also indicate that China’s open door is open in several directions simultaneously. Clearly China’s leaders seek to develop foreign economic relations of an omni-directional kind that will underpin the assertion of an independent foreign policy. While this may pave the way for closer relations with other socialist countries as well as with the CHINA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION 157 countries of the Asia-Pacific region, the extent to which China is success­ ful with both will set limits to its integration with either.

NOTES

Michael Yahuda is Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of China's Role in World Affairs (1978) and China's Foreign Policy after Mao (1983); he recently edited New Directions in the Social Sciences and Humanities in China (1987).

1. Members of the PECC include Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United States, South Korea, the original five (now six) members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Brunei), and the South Pacific islands represented jointly. The Soviet Union attended with observer status, a position normally taken up by other international organizations such as the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC), the Pacific Trade and Development Conference (PAFT&D), and the Asia Development Bank (ADB). 2. Drawn from IMF, Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook (Washington, IX!: IMF), 1981, pp.121-3, and 1986, pp.137-9. 3. Communique of the State Statistics Bureau, 20 Feb. 1987, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), FE/8500/C1/7. 4. For details see Gerald Segal, Sino-Soviet Relations after Mao, Adelphi Paper 202 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1985); see also the same author’s ‘Sino-Soviet Relations: Progress and Problems’, in Douglas T. Stuart (ed.), Security Within the Pacific Rim (London: Gower, 1987), pp.8-96. 5. See Jonathan Mirsky, ‘The United States in East Asia: China’s Response’, in Michael Leifer (ed.), The Balance of Power in East Asia (London: Macmillan, 1986), p.28. 6. Nayan Chanda, ‘The China Connection: The US Proposes Better Ties with Pyongyang via Peking’, Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), 23 April 1987, pp.30-31. 7. For details of different Chinese views see Gilbert Roznan, ‘China’s Soviet Watchers in the 1980s: A New Era in Scholarship’, World Politics, Vol.37, No.4 (1985), pp.435-74. For Deng’s statement on this see his interview with CBS on 2 September 1986 in Beijing Review, 1986, No. 38, p.4. 8. For further elaboration see Jonathan D. Pollack, ‘China’s Changing Perceptions of East Asian Security and Development*, in Stuart, op. cit., pp.54—79. See also Michael B. Yahuda, ‘Foreign Relations’, in John S. Major (ed.), China Briefing, 1985 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986), pp. 19-37. 9. In FEER, 19 March 1987, p.86, citing Chinese Customs statistics. 10. For a recent Chinese account see Xie Wenzhuang, ‘Soviet and American Military Strategies in the Asia-Pacific Region*, International Studies (Guoji Wenti Yanjiu) (Beijing), 1985, No.4. 11. See the contribution of Cheng Ruisheng, of the Foreign Affairs Study Association, to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016 the seminar on ‘national defence strategy for the year 2000’ as excerpted from Liaowang, 21 July 1986, in BBC SWB FE/8318 B ll/2. 12. For a view that China will break through the bi-polar mould to form a ‘tripod’ see Wang Shuzhong of the World Economic and Political Research Centre in ibid. For views of China’s role in a more multi-polar structure see Pei Monong, ‘China’s Position and Role within the Economy in the Asia-Pacific Region’, International Studies, 1986, No.l, and the same author’s ‘The Situation and Problems of the Asia-Pacific Region’, ibid., 1985, No.4. 13. There are signs that the Chinese believe that the Russians may well withdraw from Afghanistan. For example, the premier journal for foreigners, Beijing Review, 10 November 1986, carried an article on ‘Regional Conflicts Between the Two Super­ powers* by Wang Hexing, which concluded that an agreement on Afghanistan was 158 COMMUNISM AND REFORM IN EAST ASIA

possible. Chinese officials privately suggest that reductions in Soviet troop deploy­ ments in the north are less significant since they could be redeployed very rapidly. Hence Indo-China is regarded as the crucial test. 14. Dick Wilson, ‘The Pacific Basin is Coming Together*, Asia Pacific Community, No.30 (1985), pp.1-12. 15. See, for example, Huan Xiang, ‘Some Views on the International Situation’, Contemporary International Relations (Xian-dai Guo-ji Guan-xi), 1986, No.l, pp. 1-4, for an account of uncertainty in international politics and economics. 16. For an account of Chinese deliberations, see Carol Lee Hamrin, ‘China Reassesses the Superpowers’, Pacific Affairs, (1985), pp.209-31. 17. See Huan Xiang, op. cit., who argues that despite the uncertainty China’s international environment would still be sufficiently tranquil. 18. See, for example, Steven I. Levine, ‘China in Asia: The PRC as a Regional Power’, in Harry Harding (ed.), China's Foreign Relations in the 1980s (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 107. 19. For more detailed analysis see Michael B. Yahuda, ‘Contemporary Chinese Concepts of Self-Reliance, Independence and Alignment’, paper prepared for Conference on Patterns of Co-operation in the Foreign Relations of Modem China, August 1987. 20. Guocang Huan, who was then a graduate student at CASS, was ‘shocked’ to see the statistical data compiled in the 1982 World Bank country report on China: ‘I had never seen such complete data compiled in China’. See his ‘China’s Open Door Policy, 1978-84’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol.39, No.2 (1986), p.7. 21. ‘Bubble’ is the term used in the 1982 World Bank report. 22. Dick Wilson, op. cit., records Chinese satisfaction with American help in giving membership of die PECC. 23. For a discussion of the problems of regional order see Michael Leifer, ‘The Balance of Power and Regional Order’, in Leifer, The Balance of Power, pp. 143-54. 24. On 12 December 1979 Deng Xiaoping stated, ‘If Japan and China co-operate, they can support half of Heaven’: BBC SWB FE/6905. Nearly seven years later, on 27 September 1986, he repeated the point in greater detail to visiting Japanese economists: BBC SWB FE/8376. 25. Reinhard Drifte, ‘Japan’s Relations with East-Asia-Pacific Region’, in Stuart, op. cit., pp.22-34. 26. See Michael Leifer, ‘Obstacles to a Political Settlement in Indo-China*, Pacific Affairs, Vol.58, No.4 (1985-86), pp.626-36. 27. See Cheng Bifan and Zhang Nansheng, ‘Institutional Factors in China-ASEAN Countries Economic Relations’ (unpublished paper). 28. For details see Yahuda, The China Threat (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Strategic and International Studies, 1986). Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:30 19 May 2016