Between Reform and Revolution: Zhao Ziyang and China's Forgotten Future

Zhao Ziyang is an almost forgotten relic of China’s brief liberalising past. But his story shows us exactly why democracy could never win over the CCP’s reliance on authoritarianism.

This is a reimagined, rearranged and heavily rewritten essay based on a podcast I did covering Zhao’s life and political career. For more details, check it out:

Spotify: Sinobabble Podcast

YouTube: Zhao Ziyang

When I was in the last year of my undergraduate degree I thought Zhao Ziyang was fascinating. We had to read his memoir, Prisoner of the State, for our Politics and Governance module, and I thought it was the first truly, engaging writing we had been assigned in the entire course. Not that Tony Saich’s economics textbook or translating the story of Du Shiniang over the course of 10 weeks wasn’t its own kind of fun, but it turns out I was more inclined to the politically racy material than the intricacies of classical literature.

Zhao Ziyang was one of the foremost leaders of 1980s Chinese politics, serving first as Premier and later as General Secretary of the Party. He was an economic reformer, his most ambitious ideas being the coastal development strategy, which later went on to inspire the Special Economic Zone policy that would change the course of global history. He also embraced foreign ideas and western influence, being one of the first Chinese politicians to visit the US and the UK after the Cultural Revolution. He was thoughtful and realistic, but he also dreamt of a different, more open, more prosperous China. Probably the most fascinating thing about Zhao is that almost no one knows who he is.

To say we’ve forgotten Zhao is a misnomer. Zhao’s memory has been systematically erased by the CCP, and luckily for them he existed pre-digitisation, so it probably wasn’t as hard as it sounds. After all, they’ve managed to keep a tight lid on Tiananmen, despite many activists’ attempts to use the fact the regime shot and killed its own people in living memory as a means to topple the regime. We might need to give it another 40 years.

It’s interesting that despite his crimes (which we’ll come to), Zhao was never fully imprisoned – he was often allowed out to play pool or golf, though not to attend the funeral of some of his greatest friends and mentors, including Deng Xiaoping. This lax approach to his detention ultimately led to the tapes containing his memoir to be smuggled out and published with annotations by Roderick MacFarquar. Perhaps this was a testament to just how important he really was to China’s development in the 1980s – we can’t embrace you, but that doesn’t mean we don’t respect you.

Perhaps holding him in as high regard as I do is unwise. It’s clear from reading his memoir that many of his more radical ideas – the need for China to democratise and develop a western-style parliamentary democracy – only emerged during his confinement, and possibly only as a result of said confinement.

However, Zhao’s life and legacy still has much to teach us. How does someone with no political clout or guanxi reach the zenith of Chinese politics and operate successfully? Is it possible for someone in this position to really have any influence, let alone be a herald of reform? Had he managed to hold on and weather the storms, how much could he really have changed China?

Zhao’s background and arrival in Beijing

Zhao’s personal story is one that traces the second half of 20th century Chinese history almost beat for beat. He was born to a landlord family in 1919, and his father was apparently killed during land reform in the 1940s. Zhao probably wasn’t around to witness this however, as he had joined the party in 1938 and, though he was too late to join the Long March, still served as a member of the PLA. After 1949, he served in Guangdong province until the Cultural Revolution, when he was purged because that was what was trending at the time.

Like many mid-level officials, he’s rehabilitated in 1971, and moved around from Inner Mongolia to Sichuan province, where he began to show his flair as an economic reformist. It’s clear that by the late 70s, his main goal was to transform Sichuan into an economic powerhouse that also empowered ordinary people to take control of their own financial future. He wanted peasant incomes up, grain acquisitions down, and “one Daqing-type oilfield, one Anshan-type iron and steel complex, and two Kailuan-type coal mines.” (“Differing Visions of China's Post-Mao Economy,” David Bachman).

It was during this period that he became a staunch supporter of Deng’s “seeking truth from facts” political theory – something that’s way too long and boring for us to get into right now, but can be summarised as you shouldn’t just blindly follow whatever ideological line that some people came up with, but instead let practical implementation be the true test of any policy decision. It sounds like I’m joking, but this was truly revolutionary stuff in Chinese politics at the time.

Zhao was also a pioneer of the sort of long-term thinking that we associate with the CCP today. In the early 1980s, he was already advocating for farmers to be allowed to take up sideline businesses and sell excess produce on the market, to give more independence to industrial enterprises, and for Sichuan to be opened up to foreign trade. In 1986, David Bachman wrote that Zhao was attempting “to develop a system that allows for strict control over finances and investment and that stimulates enterprises to adopt new technology and improve productivity at the same time. His prospects for success in this mighty endeavor would not appear to be very great. If he can pull it off successfully, however, he will truly be one of the great reformers in Chinese history.”

Now we know that this aspect of Zhao's vision was, indeed, realised, but not by Zhao himself. By the time China did open its doors to foreign business, capitalism, privatisation, and profits, Zhao was already being erased from the Chinese political canon. Now he’s a ghost of a memory, an echo of an idea of what China may have been, and the moral of the lesson: ‘What happens when you try to push against conservatism, authoritarianism, and traditionalism in Chinese politics?’

Opposing forces – conservatism vs liberalism in 1980s Chinese politics

Zhao came to prominence in one of the most dynamic periods in recent Chinese political history.

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese people were eager to rebuild. The downfall of Hua Guofeng and, with him, Mao’s long shadow, emboldened many artists, thinkers, writers, and even politicians to push back against the status quo and begin to demand a refresh.

In the economic realm, things were changing fast. Privatisation in agriculture and industry meant ordinary people had excess income for the first time in almost 40 years. Zhao’s visit to the US signalled to the world that China was open for talks, if not fully open for business just yet. What had been the ‘Four Musts’ under Maoism (a bicycle, a radio, a watch, and a sewing machine) had been transformed into the ‘Eight Bigs’: a colour television, a fridge, a stereo, a camera, a motorcycle, a suite of furniture, a washing machine, and an electric fan.

In the social realm, people felt empowered to actually start complaining about issues that plagued their everyday lives. People railed against rampant corruption in SOEs and local government. Farmers who had done well under socialism complained bitterly about being left behind. Neoliberal sentiment blossomed, especially among youths who had been sent down to the countryside, who now marched defiantly back to Beijing, appealing directly to Deng Xiaoping to give them agency over their own lives.

Plays, songs, and stories criticising the CCP circulated, and calls for democracy were being made, especially by students who wanted greater participation in the fledgling local elections that had been set up but were still under the control of the central government.

But the entrenched forces of China’s political elite were not easily moved. The top ranks of the party were still staffed with Long Marchers or whatever the equivalent of Boomers were in 1980s Zhongnanhai. Figures like Li Xiannian and Chen Yun still loomed large, as did their conservative opinions on how China’s economy should be managed. (Li in particular hated Zhao, on one occasion grumbling “The economic successes are not all the result of reform. Weren’t there successes in the past too? Weren’t the foundations laid in the past?” Very bitter.) Arguably, Deng Xiaoping also belonged to this group, though he tried to position himself as the middle road between his old friends and his new, young allies.

Zhao had few allies, relying on the support of unofficial leader Deng and General Secretary Hu Yaobang for political protection and support for his bolder ideas. A lot of the reforms enacted in this period are attributed to Deng, but many of them were conceived by Zhao, and implemented by him and Hu. As Macfarquhar puts it:

“It was Zhao, too, who conceived of the hugely successful coastal development strategy. This was not the Special Economic Zone policy launched early in the reform era. Rather it was an effort to mobilize all the coastal provinces to develop an export-oriented economy, importing large quantities of raw materials, transforming them, and then exporting the results in equally large quantities. There were many different kinds of objections that Zhao overcame, but again, once he convinced Deng, it was relatively smooth sailing. Zhao devised the policy in 1987–88 and it outlasted his political demise”

The conservative's upper hand

Unfortunately, political demise was just around the corner. Two incidents took place in quick succession that ensured the conservatives were able to get their way, ridding themselves not just of Zhao, but also his reformist influence.

The first was a set of demonstrations that took place in 1986. At least 30,000 students and 40,000 locals marched in downtown Shanghai holding aloft banners that read "Long Live Freedom" and "Give Us Democracy,” scenes that would have been unthinkable just 10 years before. According to Jonathan Spence: Other protests were reported at Kunming, Chongqing, and the Shenzhen economic zone. Some students in Shanghai had prepared a brief manifesto, recalling in tone and content the one put forward by the May Fourth demonstrators so long before, which the students now printed on 3" X 5" slips of paper and handed out to the crowd.

While liberal reformist types like Zhao were happy to let bygones be bygones, the conservative faction had no intention of being so lenient. Under their aegis, many high profile intellectuals were stripped of their party credentials and even fired, but they still needed a scapegoat to pin the whole thing on. And they found the perfect victim in sitting General Secretary Hu Yaobang.

Hu wasn’t just a scapegoat for this particular democracy crisis. According to Zhao’s biography, Hu and Deng had been disagreeing over the liberalising trend among intellectuals since 1980. Hu had even opposed Deng’s precious ‘anti-spiritual pollution campaign’ in 1983, an anti-western campaign by conservatives to curb bourgeois excesses,. One politburo member revealed later that in 1984, Deng had told him that he felt that "weakness against liberalization is a fundamental short-coming in a General Secretary.”

Zhao speculates that Deng had already planned to remove Hu before 1987, especially after Hu gave an interview where he basically called Deng old, and suggested that he was just letting him hold on to the top military position and that he and Zhao were doing all the real work:

“[Zhao] Ziyang and I are busy with economic and Party affairs. The army is a place for the observance of seniority, so right now with no war to fight, let Xiaoping have this position. That way, Ziyang and I can concentrate on managing the economic and Party affairs.”

Yikes.

It took no time at all for Deng to dismiss Hu, who was summarily replaced as General Secretary by Zhao Ziyang. This was bad for two reasons. One, Zhao was, in his heart of hearts, an economist, not a political mover and shaker. He had little interest in ideological debates or policy making, and he kind of thought protesters were cool. Also, as mentioned, he had very few allies. In fact, his only ally apart from Deng was Hu and you literally just read what happened to him. In his new position, Zhao was left fully exposed to his enemies’ attacks, which began pelting him immediately.

The second incident spelled the beginning of the end for Zhao. In the late 1980s, inflation began to rise sharply, caused by a mix of a rapid rise in wages, increased bank note printing, and a rise in loans to factories to become independent enterprises.

A poorly timed decision to remove central price controls over commodities meant prices went skyrocketing and, according to Spence:

inflation, which had been around 20 percent earlier in 1988, [was] up to 26 percent or more in urban areas by year's end. Living standards fell for many in the cities, and retrenchments in capital projects ordered by the government threw many out of work. Panic buying and hoarding affected a wide range of products, from grain and edible oils to toothpaste and soap.

In his autobiography, Zhao explains that the failed attempt at pricing reform gave conservatives within the party-state the opportunity to reverse some of the reform measures, including creating a new Special Economic Zone in Hainan. Smelling blood in the water, his enemies began to circle like sharks:

After the 13th Party Congress [in 1987], Li Xiannian openly denounced me in Shanghai and Hubei in front of local officials. He accused me of not carrying out socialism and of having learned too much foreign stuff. He said that I had no understanding of economics and had brought chaos to the economy. Comrade Chen Yun was more discreet and made reasoned arguments. They later came to the conclusion that I was “more Hu Yaobang than Hu Yaobang.”

In a letter to Deng Xiaoping in 1988, several unnamed people wrote that Zhao should be dismissed, but Deng stood by him. That was until the incident of June 4th 1989 changed everything.

Tiananmen as the end

OK so things were on the decline for Zhao before June 4th, but Tiananmen was really the final blow.

Zhao pins the outbreak of protests on the dismissal and subsequent death of Hu Yaobang.

He was, according to Zhao, a symbol of incorruptible power and a bulwark against the anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign, and since his dismissal political reforms had stalled and many economic reforms had been stopped or reversed. Many people used his death as a rallying cry to demand change – it was now or never.

Zhao felt that many of the protesters had a point, and even went as far as to state that only those that caused damage or harm should be arrested. In April 1989, as he was leaving for a trip to North Korea, he urged his colleagues to avoid confronting the protesters for fear of bloodshed. While they agreed to his face, a number of them went behind his back and, in his absence, presented Deng Xiaoping with a laundry list of negative comments protesters had made about him in order to change his mind:

“...selectively gathering all the personal criticisms and reading them aloud to Deng made for a tremendous insult to the old man. These people selected sporadic extreme opinions of a tiny minority of students and represented them as the major trend of the movement, which they claimed was directed specifically against Deng Xiaoping himself. Deng tended to think in a certain way that was formed during the years when class struggle was the primary objective, so as soon as he heard Li Peng’s report, he reacted accordingly.”

(Struggling to think what would happen if Xi left for a trip for a week and came back to find his entire strategy for social stability overturned, but I digress.)

In an all too familiar story Zhao was eventually blamed when things got out of hand and the party decided to act with force. Zhao notes that he had decided to step away from the action in the days leading up to June 4th, knowing full well that it would likely be the end of his political career. His enemies took glee in his demise, holding a two day meeting in which criticism followed personal attack, during which Zhao was given only 10 minutes to respond before being dismissed from his role and from the party altogether.

No country for bold men

The Zhao era and his eventual downfall showed two things. First, there’s a big difference between being an economic reformer and a political reformer, and even then the line between them might be a bit blurrier than you think. Secondly, authoritarianism is a feature of China’s party-state system, not a bug.

To hear Zhao tell it, the party had been resisting using force against protesters, with Zhao as the only senior party member standing between the students in the square and the PLA. Deng thought it was normal to use force, like “using a sharp knife to cut through knotted hemp,” and this way of thinking has endured in the party’s DNA. As I discussed in The consistency of the Chinese party-state, every time the CCP experiments with liberalisation or political reform, it quickly retracts while saying “Oh no, whoopsie that was bad, never mind, we hate that, back to dictatorship of the proletariat now thanks!”

It wasn’t that the west and the rest of the world misread signs that China may liberalise and perhaps even democratise in the 80s and later the 00s. The trends were there, but they were just ripples from the party dipping its toes in the water. Liberalisation is messy, and the party’s comfy place is behind closed doors, with big decisions made among 5-7 people to be drip fed to everyone else through a weird stream of trickle-down politics:

The 10-year term limits in China were an aberration, they had only been in play for 20 years in total. To westerners they were a sign of changing times; in China they were a failed experiment. The results showed that dictatorship suited them better. China has many problems, which are oft repeated in the press. A slowing economy, an aging population, high youth unemployment, low fertility. It overconsumes and drives others to do so in order to meet its production capacity.

None of these issues are used as political fodder, to fuel the people and feed opposition. Instead, they’re taken as serious matters for discussion, problems to be solved. The best way to deal with these long-term issues is through long-term governance, not by playing power games.

Zhao was ahead of his time economically and completely out of place politically. He was also a man alone on an island, and not in a good way. He wasn’t untouchable like Xi is purported to be. He wasn’t surrounded by a bevy of loyal officials brought with him from the provinces and put in positions like Head of Ministry of Public Security or Zhejiang Party Secretary (it only occurred to people to start to do that after Zhao’s downfall). His story highlights all too well how much one man can truly achieve even in the highest office in the realm in China. As MacFarquhar writes:

The story of Zhao’s captivity prompts two reflections: If a patriotic official only came to the conclusion that democracy was needed for China after years of nothing to do but think, what chance is there for a busy official today to have the leisure or the security to think such thoughts while on the job? And if he did manage to come to such a conclusion, how would he implement these ideas in the teeth of Party opposition at all levels of society? It took a disaster of Cultural Revolution proportions to shake China out of the Stalinist economic model. China doesn’t need another Cultural Revolution, but the Party would have to be shaken to its roots for its leaders to contemplate following the final message of Zhao Ziyang’s testament.