China's Post-Thaw Blues

...The foreigner with a vital interest in the immediate future of China would do well to share, in his own fashion, the "lack of a sense of security" experienced by many Chinese...

...In any case, the Chinese leaders clearly think so...

...The topic of humanism-humanitarianism could not even be mentioned...

...In a speech before a "creative workers" conference at the end of 1979-a speech that became a sensation in China at the time-the famous journalist Liu Binyan spoke of the ancient Greek view of man and the long Western tradition of humanism, rejecting its false association in recent years with capitalism and the "bourgeois class...

...And it was during this time that President Nixon raised his wine glass in Peking and many foreign scholars chose to assert the New China's tranquility and achievements...

...The editor of China Youth does not prophesy, suggesting instead parallels with portentous transitional times past- the European Renaissance, the eve of the Russian Revolution, the period of mounting intellectual ferment in China before the May 4th movement of 1919- But the sagacious editor of China News Analysis-a publication that has existed almost as long as the Chinese People's Republic itself-is reminded of still another parallel, indeed, professes a strange feeling oideja vu...

...For how much of what we know about China is based on analysis that sounds logical at a distance but which might crumble upon contact with the shifting intangibles of Chinese reality...

...Young people in China, notes China News Analysis (Hong Kong),$ "do not take this whole business very seriously...

...The Deng faction in Peking may issue directives and exhort, but the bureaucratic legions throughout China, the middle- and lower-level cadres who generally owe their position not to any personal ability but to past Maoist allegiances, are in no haste to implement policies that will rob them of their single inimitable asset-power...

...Although we have not been under the rule of religion, we have been under the rule of modern superstition [the secular cult of Maoism] which is as devastating as religion...

...The latest attempt to ascribe this bankruptcy to the "sham Marxism" promoted under the "Gang of Four,"f as opposed to the "genuine" Marxism that allegedly will prevail in the long run like "Copernicus' theory of the solar system" (People'sDaily, November 11, 1980), only exposes official helplessness before the crises of faith...

...It has been admitted by Deng Xiaoping and deplored in a published speech by Hu Qiaomu, member of the Party Central Committee Secretariat, who warned that such people "were creating important ideological trends that menace stability and unity...

...The fact is that] we of the proletarian class reject human nature, we don't want to talk about the humanitarian way, we want only hatred, we advocate or promote distrust, we promote trampling upon and injuring others...

...The problem of rekindling faith is complicated by the fact that the Party is unable to say at the moment just what "genuine," or "scientific," Marxism is, insisting only that it "must have a new development in China...

...Despite his popularity, Deng Xiaoping to date has not succeeded in allaying fear of political instability, the "lack of a sense of security" alluded to by many, including Hu Yaobang...

...Humanism is also present in Islam...

...For example, certain agricultural policies conducive to peasant morale have-by undermining the privileged status of soldiers' families under the Maoist system-adversely affected morale within the armed forces, which are already unhappy with the sharp reversal of ideological positions and the low priority of the military in the Four Modernizations...

...Did we not carry out a "deification movement" as well as some fascist savage acts...

...Chinese intellectuals, particularly, not only do not wish the Cultural Revolution to be forgotten-they seem to regard it much as Jews do the Holocaust- but are anxious to eliminate the conditions of "feudal autocracy" that, in their view, made such a disaster possible...

...Given the developing mood of China, however, retreat can be as dangerous as advance and will no more assure stable continuity than the current floundering efforts to chart a new course.floundering efforts to chart a new course...

...Can this be part of the "prelude to the new development of Marxism," to use the People's Daily's phrase...

...In such statements, as well as in his semantic attempts to disengage Marxist humanitarianism from cruel "leftist" practice in the name of Marxist class concepts, Wang Ruoshui is, in fact, returning to the two invariable touchstones of Western humanism-reason and compassion-the twin casualties of the Maoist era...

...This is not a cerebral scholarly interest, but the fine-honed at-tentiveness of those to whom harsh experience has given fresh insight...

...This Chinese equivalent of a "threat to law and order" is now intoned at the palest hint of an independent "democratic movement...

...Hence the benefit of studying anew the antecedents of "bourgeois democracy...

...The sense of "interior emptiness" among the youth, the loss of belief in the present leaders and their doctrines, the search for "new ideals and a new system," he notes, are most reminiscent of the last years of the Nationalist government, before the collapse that led to the triumph of Mao Zedong in 1949- Then, as now, the major discussion of fundamental issues took place underground, and students and intellectuals avidly sought enlightenment from the diapason of Western theories, one of which-Marxism-would eventually predominate...

...A later article in the Hong Kong Communist monthly, Cheng Ming, which speaks for the Deng faction with a boldness usually exceeding that of the internal press, went beyond Hu Yaobang to affirm and describe the three crises-namely, a crucial loss of faith in Marxism-Leninism, of trust in the leadership at all levels, and of confidence in the Four Modernizations policy...

...Indeed, the criteria of reason and compassion seem to guide much of the rethinking of philosophy in China today, including the new appreciation of Confucius, rejected as a spiritual shackle by intellectual youth early in this century and more recently vilified under Mao...

...The Party leaders seem especially worried about the young, not only the members of the "Red Guard generation" now entering their thirties-whose devise since the Cultural Revolution seems to be the ubiquitous phrase "we have seen through everything"-but their younger brothers and sisters born in the early sixties, who grew up in the storm's aftermath, a period of cultural obscurantism economic decline, incessant purges, factional strife, and fickle Party line, all dimly illuminated by Mao's senescence...

...Since power in China is exercised by the Party in symbiotic relationship with the military, the result of the original action is not yet in sight...

...It is astonishingly easy for the outsider to forget that change itself has lingering consequences for the insider and that the cumulative psychological effect of rapidly seesawing change within a brief three-dacade period may have as much import for the future direction and stability of China as does the current lineup in Peking...

...Quotations from Mao Zedong's works were studied as if they were the Bible...

...The writer, like many of his countrymen, is preoccupied with a question: How to prevent the recurrence in China of "overconcentration of state power in a single office, a few people, or only one man...

...The Communist Party still exerts sufficient control of the situation for the moment...

...The lessons of the past have been refreshed by the continuing power struggles-and not only at the top...

...In fact, modern superstition is a new religion in disguised form...

...Can there be such a communism...

...explain and expunge the Maoist holocaust also underlies a long article by Wang Ruoshui, a deputy editor-in-chief of the People's Daily, in the Shanghai Wen HuiBao (September 25, 1980...

...Theory can't be taken seriously (it can be changed to suit oneself...

...It may even come to pass, they are told, that the former "heresy, denounced as 'revisionism,'" is, in fact, this new Marxism about to emerge...

...Deng Xiaoping did not create these crises, he inherited them...

...A former major Red Guard leader, turned Christian, whom we recently interviewed, described this message as part of the irresistible "software" of Christianity, as opposed to the less readily acceptable "hardware" of its theological dogma...

...but, ironically, as often happens, they have been intensified by his very efforts since 1977 to eradicate their cause...

...for, as the writer of the article points out, in those countries "where bourgeois democracy is well developed, the bourgeois governments enjoy political stability for a long period of time and do not become autocratic...

...Thus, the China that opened its door to President Nixon and his entourage in 1972 was seen as peaceful and controlled, despite the extraordinary storm of the Cultural Revolution that had so recently torn the country asunder...

...A spate of hortatory directives is no substitute for integrated planning and follow-through...

...But what does it mean...

...The necessity to...

...This view- that Christianity historically was a progressive force-is oddly echoed in a Manifesto of the underground Thaw Society of Guizhou Province...

...Whoever mentioned it could be regarded as loving his enemy or unable to draw a clear class line...

...According to the New China News Agency, at a national symposium of leading Chinese philosophers on October 31, 1980 in Anhui Province, "some of the participants mentioned primitive Christianity" as "representing the emancipation of man's spirit and the demands of the lower strata of the Roman Empire against the ruling serf-owners...

...In recent years there has been a strange propensity among foreign analysts of China to equate each lull in the Party Central arena in Peking with overall political stability...

...As Western businessmen are discovering, the legacy of the Maoist era in the Chinese economy-including its elusive imprint on worker and managerial attitudes-can frequently scuttle what may seem to be hardheaded ventures in the China market...

...The purpose of the article is plain...

...That a parallel wisdom ought to be applied to political and military involvement with the Chinese People's Republic would seem obvious...

...Such statements, of course, are concerned with the contribution of Christianity to Western civilization, not with its theological content...

...Must the proletarian class prohibit such a thing...

...When the head of the Youth Corps in a Tianjin factory explained that 'socialism is excellent,' young Chinese Komsomol members asked him: 'Do you really believe that?'" The Peking newspaper Guangming Ribao (November 3, 1980) has confirmed widespread lack of interest in Marxist theoretical study among university-level students and reported some of their cynical attitudes: "Theory is without basis (whoever is in power is always right...

...no "well-organized and armed force" stands at the gates of Peking...

...We have briefly followed the surface meanderings of a single trend in China...

...No intelligent Chinese, however unburdened of illusions, could fail to be shocked, for example, by Deng's disclosure of the true dimensions of the economic disaster bequeathed by Mao-a disclosure necessary to justify drastic policy correctives-or by the spectacle of a weak and backward China turning to the West-not for the first time in this century -in desperate quest of modernization...

...The psychological capital of hope and belief that buoyed the insurgent Communism of the fifties is spent...

...It should not be assumed, however, that Wang Ruoshui's anti-religious emphasis characterizes the present humanistic leanings of Chinese intellectuals generally...

...it has been replaced by fundamental doubt and ferment-a great "debate on the concept of life," as the editor of the official organ of the Communist Youth League China Youth recently put it, which historically takes place "on the threshold of every new period...

...The last question is raised by China News Analysis, which promptly answers it in the negative-for the present...

...no longer does one have to be scholar-turned-detective to fathom the nature of ideological unrest in China...

...In the course of what seems to be hit-or-miss decentralization, Deng has thus discovered repeatedly that many positive measures have destabilizing side effects...

...Now, however, the Party itself seems to stand divided and uncertain around a moribund Marxism: Will the new attempts at revival work or will one have to pull the plug and bury the corpse anonymously...

...It's hopeless" is a phrase frequently heard even from Chinese who are pleased and optimistic about Deng's increasing control of the political power center...

...Did these phenomena not occur during the ten disastrous years...

...With a recalcitrance that amounts to sabotage, many of them continue to exert arbitrary authority, assuming like mandarins of a more distant time that "heaven is high above and the emperor far away...

...but the humanistic component of compassion-the novel message of universal love after the unrelenting appeal to class hatred-is an added attraction to those young Chinese who currently incline toward Christianity in search of the "meaning of life...

...This inertia is a further depressant-on Chinese intellectuals and youth, many of whom have begun to despair of any solution to China's massive, interlocking problems, which in the November 1, 1980 issue of Red Flag, the theoretical organ of the Party Central Committee, were likened to a "basket of crabs, each grabbing hold of and affecting the other...

...One revealing trend is undoubtedly a consequence of the intensive reading of privately stored books during the recent years of cultural famine when the outside world imagined that all Chinese minds were obsessed only with the Thought of Mao-namely, a new interest in Western humanism and the philosophers of the Enlightenment...

...Or does such ideological divergence and its far stronger reverberations underground mean that the Chinese leaders "may be walking on a volcano" about to erupt...

...And yet in the past ten years and more the actual practice of the Gang of Four was exactly like that...

...In a February 1980 speech at a writers' forum, Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and de facto successor to Chairman Hua Guofeng, acknowledged rumor in the country of "three crises"-of "faith, confidence and trust...

...Unfortunately, his political skill and courage appear counterpointed by a pathetic naivete about the basics of twentieth-century modernization...

...The increasing incohesion of Chinese society disturbs in turn the very unity of Deng's power network by alarming the "old guard" who are ever ready for a pullback to the illusory security of more orthodox positions...

...For most of the West, which believes only what it sees, the tip of subterranean Chinese dissent was first disclosed at Democracy Wall during the brief period of 1978-79 known as the Peking Spring...

...but can one speak of the future...

...This situation evidently unsettles many Party, administrative, and military cadres, who are not known for any inclination to ideological adventure, particularly in the once deadly direction of "revisionism...

...The "intangible" that really bears watching in China now is something called the popular mood...

...Today, Party Vice-Chairman Deng Xiao-ping's steady, apparently successful consolidation of his regime since 1977 is again interpreted as promising continuity, although his policies have introduced jarring change, virtually setting the China of 1972 in reverse gear...

...In the course of arguing a "return to Marxism" in its allegedly original form as a humanistic-humanitarian* * philosophy, Wang Ruoshui draws a parallel between the so-called black decade of 1966-76 and dark ages past...

...Despite striking similarities, the situation is not really the same as in the last days of the Nationalist government...

...It is no small matter to write off 30 years of turmoil and sacrifice under the Marxist banner...

...Destabilizing side effects can amplify even more unpredictably in a sea of ferment...

...While many countries have made great strides during those sixty years-while der feated countries have risen from ruin and colonies have become civilized states- China still has to start from A, B, C in democracy and science...

...In a country factionalized and exhibiting disin-tegrative potential at every level, Deng has dared attempt to introduce drastic and lasting change...

...The existence of a Chinese intellectual underground-ranging from small informal philosophical discussion groups to truly knit conspiratorial organizations- needs no longer to be proved...

...Various essays in search of new directions turn up in the official press and frequently parallel trends of thought below...

...Indeed, there is something of the critical spirit of the Enlightenment in his words: [Marxist] humanism opposes two things- "theologism" and "brutism...

...The conspiratorial underground organizations-which Hu Qiaomu described as aiming to change not only the leadership, but "the whole system"-are still splinter groups without military backing, although they have certain supporters and sympathizers among the cadres...

...Thus, the People's Daily (October 7, 1980) published a sympathetic disquisition on Montesquieu's theory of the division and balance of power and Jefferson's further development of it on the American continent...

...Humanism is present in Christianity and Christianity is not the product of capitalism...

...Today, the highest leaders are proclaiming that they are in search of what a socialist economic system should be," observes China News Analysis, adding, however, "the underground organizations also are, in their own way, in search of a new future...

...As a bitter little paragraph in the October 1980 issue of Cheng Ming noted: Since the time of the May 4th movement of 1919,* when students put forth slogans demanding democracy and science, progress toward those goals "has remained nil: Everything is back to square one...

...Two writers of an article in the September 23, 1980 issue of the Shanghai Wen Hui Boo-the most candid official newspaper in China-go somewhat further in the name of the "great development of Marxism": "We say that many of Marx's views are not applicable to present circumstances...

...It is "an objective fact in the social life of our country," the People's Daily admits, that "some people . . . have doubts about Marxism" and "think that Marxism no longer works...

...For example, the ritual of [bowing to Mao's portrait and] "asking for instruction in the morning" and "making reports [on one's.work and conduct to the portrait] in the evening" once prevailed in our country...

...Not everything, however, is concealed underground...

...A later article in the People's Daily (October 28, 1980) is even more direct: In the context of advocating abolition of life tenure for leadership posts and the creation of a democratic system "more sublime and realistic" than that in the West, the People's Daily "Commentator" quotes Montesquieu on the danger of kings and alludes to the "advocates of the Enlightenment," who "severely criticized feudal despotism" and, "on the basis of the principle of natural rights, held that if the government could not protect the people's interests but even encroached upon them, the people should oppose and replace it...

...For all the words written about limited tenure in leadership and all the ceremonious switching of chairs in Peking, the precarious balance called "stability" still depends on one man, the doughty Deng Xiaoping, whose power-like all real power in China-is based on a network of old loyalties and military support dating back to the time of the Communist Field Armies during the Civil War...

...This does not mean that Westerners should stop doing business with China, but merely that they can cut risks by investigating more deeply what they are getting into...

...One article of the manifesto, published in the Hong Kong journal Yellow River (April 1979), proclaims: "Promote the study of the civilization and culture derived from the spirit of Christianity, in order to emulate the democratic political system, established under its [Christianity's] teaching of peace, magnanimity, understanding and universal love...

...A student from a famous university in China recently regaled us with stories about his political studies class, whose instructor was scarcely a match for the students...

...On the contrary...

...China seems, indeed, to be on a threshold-but of what...

...There's no point studying what the line is now," one student told the teacher, "because next year you will be teaching us a new line...

...Can there be such a proletarian class...

...Not only are horses about to be changed in midstream-the new horse is not yet there...