China Under Deng Xiaoping

1. China Under Deng Xiaoping 1976 - 1989

2. Deng…in his own words: • “It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.” • “Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious.” • “Let some people get rich first.” • “Reform is China's second revolution.” • “When our thousands of Chinese students abroad return home, you will see how China will transform itself.” • “The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves.”

3. After Mao's death on September 9, 1976, Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, called Deng back from internal exile to help him restore order and oust the Gang of Four. • The Gang of Four was the name given to a leftist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials- including Jiang Qing- last wife of Mao. • After he outmaneuvered Hua for Party control in 1977, Deng launched the "Beijing Spring", which allowed open criticism of the excesses and suffering that had occurred during the period of The Cultural Revolution. Hua was allowed to retire from political life.

4. Due to the valuable contributions Deng had made during the revolutionary years, his political struggle against the Gang of Four, as well as the notable success in his efforts to restore social order, he had earned enormous prestige in the Party and among the people. With the strong backing of powerful political veterans and in accordance with the People's wishes, in July 1977, at the Third Plenary Session of the Tenth Central Committee, Deng was reinstated as: • Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee; Vice-Premier of the State Council; Vice-Chairman of the Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army. • In March 1978 he was elected Chairman of the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference

5. Economic Reforms:Overview • "Planning and market forces are not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity.“ -Deng Xiaoping • The Deng reforms decentralized the state economy by replacing central planning with market forces, breaking down the collective farms and getting rid of state-run enterprises. One of the most successful reforms—the "within" and "without” production plans—allowed businesses to pursue their own aims after the met their state-set quotas. Enterprises and factories were allowed to keep profits, use merit pay and offer bonuses and other incentives, which greatly boosted productivity. • In the Deng era there was a shift from central planning and reliance on heavy industry to consumer-oriented industries and reliance on foreign trade and investment.

6. Economic Reforms • In December 1978 Deng Xiaoping announced the official launch of the Four Modernizations, formally marking the beginning of the reform era. The Four Modernizations were in the fields of: • Agriculture • Industry • National Defense • Science and Technology

7. Economic Reforms • Deng wanted desperately to modernize China and dispense with obsolete Marxist ideology. He declared that the Four Modernizations would take precedence over class struggle. As part of the policy new universities were opened and students were sent abroad for technical training. • These reforms stressed economic self-reliance- and also increased foreign trade and investments by opening up China’s markets. Educated intellectuals were also welcomed back into government and industrial positions after long being considered enemies of the Revolution under Mao.

8. Economic Reforms • In 1979 Deng began dismantling the "rigidly" controlled agriculture collectives and encouraging farmers to raise crops in individual plots. According to rules that varied from province to province, farmers were allowed to hire a certain numbers of laborers, and sell their surplus. Peasants were not allowed to own land but they were given long term leases and rights to renew the leases so there was an incentive for them to take care of the land. • Deng also introduced incentive price bonuses for above-quota grain production and launched a "responsibility system" which allowed farmers to sell surplus crops on the open market after the met their government quotas. In 1984, in an effort to increase production, the quota was dropped completely for all crops expect cotton and grain. • Wheat production doubled between 1978 and 1985 from 41 million to 87 million tons. By 1987 the output of grains and tubers was three times that of India and almost equal to that of the U.S. and Soviet Union.

9. Economic Reforms • The heart of Deng's economic reforms was the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), in 1980, along China's southern coastline. Here Chinese businesses and foreign investors were lured with chances to make huge profits and incentives such as low taxes, cheap land, cheap labor and comparative economic freedom. • The Chinese government modernized the infrastructure, attracted Chinese entrepreneurs with tax exemptions for doing business with foreign companies, and lured foreign investors with tax holidays and a large bonded zone for duty-free imports of raw materials. By 1989 nearly 22,000 joint ventures had been launched, 952 with American firms. Chrysler and Coca-Cola were among the first American firms to launch joint ventures.

10. Economic Reforms • Some have called the “reform and opening” policy the greatest poverty-reducing program in history. It not only launched a period of economic prosperity in China it lifted around 300 million people out of poverty and another 100 million have moved into middle class. At the time the “reform and opening” policy was approved China was still suffering from famines and the per capital GDP of China was 381 yuan. In 2007 it reached 18,900 yuan ($2,760). • China has the fastest growing economy in the world for many years now. It has managed to maintain a 10 percent growth rate through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. China’s growth rate has been five and six times higher than the growth rate in the United States, Japan and the major countries in Europe. The only countries that have posted similar growths rates over extended periods of time in recent years have been Japan in the 1960s, 70 and 80s and South Korea in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

11. Savings increased 14,000 percent and exports went from $10 billion a year to almost $1 trillion. China rose from an economic backwater into the world's third largest economy. • The economic boom has mainly benefitted the 300- 400 million or so urban Chinese living in and around the coast. The 18 central and western provinces have mainly been left out of the economic boom and the majority of China's 900 million rural residents still live in feudal-like conditions as subsistence farmers. • Inflation in the 1980s sparked protests and was a contributing factor to the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. Inflation in the 1990s also sparked protests.

12. Political Ideology and Reforms • Deng was loyal to the Communist party and a firm believer in the "dictatorship of the proletariat." All major political decision had to be approved by Deng. He insisted that economic reforms could take palace without democracy, freedom, and political liberalizations and that power must remain firmly in the hands of the Communist Party. • Deng feared that democracy might lead to the chaos and instability he endured during the Cultural Revolution. In 1978, he said, "Democracy has to be institutionalized and written into law, so as to make sure that institutions and laws don't change whenever the leadership changes, or whenever the leaders change their views or shift their focus."

14. Political Ideology and Reforms • Chinese foreign policy under Deng was shaped by the Deng dictum “hide your ambitions and disguise your claws” which was taken to mean that China should devote its energy to developing economically and not concern itself so much with international affairs. • The U.S. established relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979 when China was under the leadership of Deng. In 1979, Deng became the first Chinese leader to visit the United States.

15. Political Reforms • In 1983, Deng launched a "spiritual pollution" campaign in which petty criminals were taken off the streets and executed. During the "Democracy Wall" movement in Beijing, Deng ordered the posters and handbills torn down after critiques of the party were displayed. He also made it clear that allusions to a departure from the "socialist road" and use of the word "democracy" would be dealt with harshly. • Deng also improved relations with Russia, Japan and South Korea and England.

16. In 1984 Deng successfully negotiated an agreement with Margaret Thatcher and the British government to return Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997, the year Britain's 99-year lease on much of the territory was to expire. The Chinese government pledged to respect the economic system and civil liberties of the then British colony for fifty years after the return.

17. Tiananmen Square

18. Tiananmen Square • The pro-democracy demonstrations began in earnest as a display of public morning for Hu Yabong--a reformist Communist leader who was once chosen as Deng's successor but later was purged for advocating political reform--who died of cancer on April 15, 1989. Thousands left wreaths at Tiananmen Square to honor him. Although Hu was not a leader in a reformist movement he was a sympathizer to reformist causes and his death prompted students, teachers, intellectuals, workers, reformists and ordinary Chinese to gather at Tiananmen Square. • A week after Hu's death 150,000 students had assembled in Tiananmen Square. By the end of May there were nearly a million. Students from all over China, some of whom had been assisted by railway workers who let them ride free on the trains, came to Beijing for the protests. They were supported by millions of ordinary Chinese citizens, and at one point there was even some discussion that soldiers might defect to the side of demonstrators.

19. Tiananmen Square • On May 19, martial law was declared. Thousands of military vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, began moving into Beijing. • On May 29th, five days before the massacre, students from the Beijing Art Institute raised a 30-foot-high statue called the Goddess of Democracy, which was model after the Statue of Liberty, near the Monument of People's Heroes at the center of the square. By that time some 3,000 demonstrators staged a pro-democracy hunger strike. On June 2nd there was a rock concert and soldiers began moving in.

20. Tiananmen Square • At 2:00am on June 4th 1989, People's Liberation Army tanks and 300,000 soldiers moved into Tiananmen Square in Beijing to crush a large pro-democracy demonstration that had been going on for seven weeks. The tanks rolled over people that got in their way and soldiers opened fire on groups of protesters. • The Chinese government death figure is 300. Other estimates range from 2,700 to much higher. Never before had the People's Liberation Army turned its weapons on the Chinese people with the intention of murdering so many of them. Demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1976 and 1987 had been broken up with batons and tear gas not guns and tanks.

22. Survivors…In their own words: • The student activist Lu Jinghua later recalled, "The night the army came, I finally left the square at 2:30am and made my way out. It was terrible. They were shooting people, there was blood everywhere. I was mad, sad, scared—everything together. I just didn't want to die. I didn't know whether to walk or run.“ [Source: The Independent] • Victims were shot, run over with tanks, clubbed to death, caught in crossfire. Fang Zheng, a student at Tiananmen Square who is now China's disabled discus champion, had his legs crushed and later amputated after a Chinese army tank ran him down and dragged him for 30 feet. • Wu Pei, a school teacher, told Newsweek, "Around 4:00am, soldiers encircled our group. Several hundred in our group lined up and filed off peacefully. But when we got to Beijing Music Hall [west of Tiananmen Square], some students started screaming, 'Don't panic, nobody panic!' Everyone started to run. Suddenly gun shots crackled around me and the air filled with gas. Just then a tank rolled through the bike lane, crushing people behind me who couldn't get out of the way. I still can't endure that [memory]. I'll never forgive them for that."

23. Time correspondent Jaime FlorCruz recalled, "In front of my apartment, about 2 k east of the square, a convoy of army trucks stood bumper-to-bumper. Students had blocked their advance, chanting Xia lai! Xia lai! (Come down!). Amid the commotion, an armored personnel carrier plowed through the crowd, made a U-turn, then sped off, knocking over a truck loaded with students. In an instant one man lay on the ground, his head a mush of red and pink, on the gray concrete. 'They're killing us,' shrieked a woman. Civilians pushed towards the army vehicles, beseeching the military to go home."

24. "For the first time in my life I saw a man die," one student told National Geographic. "The left side of his face was blown away by a bullet." The same student found the soldier who shot the man and hit him over the head with a metal bar similar to "the sort a cook uses to stir or mix a large pot.“ [Source: Ross Terrill, National Geographic, July 1991] • There was a report of one tank crushing 11 civilians. Qi Zhiyong, a 33-year-old construction worker who lost his left leg from the knee down after he was shot by Chinese troops, told AP, “I saw people being run over. Blood sprayed everywhere. The tanks kept moving as if the people weren’t there. My hair stood on end. I was chilled to the bone.”