Waiting for October in China
HOPKINS, MARK
THE THIRTEENTH PARTY CONGRESS Wilting for October in China BY MARK HOPKINS Beijing The latest actions and utterances of China's leaders can only add to the deep current uncertainty...
...Peng has successfully blocked for the time being a proposed law that would, from the reformist viewpoint, codify the separation of local industrial management from Party committees...
...But that campaign, meant chiefly to re-establish the primacy of the Communist Party, has already spread through the ranks of the 3 million-man Chinese Army, a reservoir of conservative sentiment...
...Mark Hopkins, a specialist in Soviet and Eastern European affairs, has spent the last two years in China...
...A sadlooking Hu appeared at the opening session of the National People's Congress (only to disappear soon afterward), presumably to give foreign governments and the Chinese masses the impression of political stability...
...The government, he said, is still trying tocooldown an economy that overheated in 198586 because the country went on a spending spree during the first few months of an economic reform...
...Western diplomats who thought the reformists were firmly in command here began adjusting their analyses last January, when the ouster of Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang signaled a powerful conservative presence...
...along with his fellow octogenarians on the powerful Politburo Standing Committee, President Li Xiannian and Chen Yun, he must limit the time he can devote to running China...
...Party, government and industrial officials imported tens of thousands of Japanese cars, television sets and videocassette players, among other consumer goods...
...Zhao told China's workers and peasants that they are consuming too much, that greater productivity is essential, and that "getting rich" will no longer be in vogue...
...A mid all the power plays, the elderly Peng Zhen, chairman of the National People's Congress, has conspicuously emerged as the most vocal conservative...
...The authority of the 82-year-old Deng Xiaoping remains paramount, however...
...And their most visible representative, the urbane 69-year-old Prime Minister—who has been doubling as acting Party General Secretary—lacks the ability to convey enthusiasm...
...The looming fight will be over political positions...
...The government deficit of $1.9 billion last year is projected to rise to $2.2 billion this year—a trend that alarms fiscally conservative Chinese...
...Now the depleted foreign currency reserves are under tight control, and austerity is the word...
...In addition, they helped themselves to foreign trips, entertained lavishly, and put up buildings at a feverish pace...
...Nonetheless, with the crucial 13th Communist Party Congress next October approaching, reformists are doing their best to resist the encroachments of the campaign against "bourgeois liberalism" set in motion after the December student demonstrations and the dismissal of Hu...
...One piece of evidence is his planned June tour of Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria in the capacity of Party leader as well as Prime Minister...
...After a silent spell following the demotion of Hu, his one-time protégé, Deng spoke out favorably about continuing reform—the hallmark, after all, of his leadership since 1979...
...Agriculture faces numerous problems, too...
...Deng's aging is, nevertheless, a very real problem...
...The need to boost grain output has been a political issue ever since the aging conservative economic czar, Chen Yun, raised it in late 1985...
...The open question is who will take over the position of Prime Minister, which Zhao is expected to vacate...
...Despite stringent efforts to limit family size, the population is expanding faster than the production of wheat, rice and corn—staples in the Chinese diet...
...Although it is hardly a genuine democratic arena, Peng can also use the Congress to modify, if not obstruct, some of the more daring reformist schemes requiring the legislative body's approval...
...Conservatives have similarly pretty much taken hold of the propaganda apparatus and security forces...
...Chinese officials would not have confirmed that to Eastern European embassies here if Zhao's future in the Party job were in doubt...
...Open complaints were heard last year that functionaries were clinging to their factory posts and interfering with the production decisions of reform-minded directors...
...Unfortunately for the reformists, at this point they have little to offer beyond a sense of determination...
...Yet the underlying causes of China's factional struggle persist, fueling an abiding uncertainty about the future balance of power in the world's most populous country...
...With official encouragement they also set up small rural industries, thereby occupying more fields and increasing demands for energy and raw materials...
...Ideological considerations aside, though, it is apparent that bigger grain harvests are essential...
...Among these are the institution of free prices, stock exchanges, a supplyand-demand market, and measures to promote widespread private ownership of commercial enterprises...
...An internal Party document leaked to three Western news organizations has Deng praising General Wojciech Jaruzelski's imposition of martial law in Poland as the proper way to handle internal dissent...
...A leading candidate is the 58-yearold Vice Prime Minister, Li Peng, who recently noted at a news conference for foreign journalists that China is not entirely abandoning central economic planning—a concept dear to the old guard...
...He is losing strength each passing year...
...Somewhat ironically, in its very attempt to be evenhanded Zhao's litany of the nation's troubles played into the hands of conservatives...
...China's peasants did not compensate by investing a portion of their new wealth in longterm farming improvements...
...At 85 Peng is too old to entertain personal political ambitions, but that does not stop him from using the National People's Congress as a base for promoting the conservative cause...
...Even when Zhao talks of introducing a system of rational prices, a key element in the envisioned Socialist supply-and-demand economy, he soberly cautions that the Chinese are psychologically unprepared for the price gyrations that would ensue once State controls were lifted...
...For what Zhao delivered was transparently a committee document designed to satisfy both reformist desires to move ahead with decentralization of the economy and conservative yearnings to return to the Maoist values of hard work, low consumption and high productivity...
...Those complaints are no longer being publicized...
...Deng likes to joke with foreign dignitaries about his age and his deafness in one ear, and to suggest that he wants to retire...
...By the quirks of Chinese politics, for the moment Zhao is first in line to succeed Deng—a state of affairs never intended...
...It is reasonably certain that Zhao will be formally approved this fall as General Secretary of the Communist Party...
...Zhao has always been cast as a government administrator, not as a political leader...
...Then he backs off by adding that the "comrades" demand that he stay in power...
...they built houses instead, on valuable arable land...
...The contesting conservatives and reformists have managed to paper over some of their public differences...
...These were detailed recently in a candid survey published by the Communist Party newspaper, People's Daily...
...But in a series of pointed press commentaries and a hastily published collection of some past speeches, he has been presented as a political conservative who has long warned of the sapping of the Communist ideology...
...In fact, he has been asserting the institutional power of the Congress and of local People's Assemblies: In his speech he declared it a "very good kind of supervision of the government's work...
...Another Hu supporter, Minister of Public Security Ruan Chongwu, was axed for letting the student riots get out of hand...
...Zhu Houze, a Hu ally who served as the Party's propaganda chief, was demoted after being blamed for failing to staunch bourgeois liberalization and anti-Party feeling...
...Conservatives want someone of their bent capable of reining in exuberant reformers...
...It found that the dismantling of collective farms in favor of small family plots, started in 1979—and once the pride of Deng Xiaoping's leadership— has resulted in peasants turning from grain to more profitable cash crops...
...As he again demonstrated in a speech before the Congress, he champions cautious economic growth combined with an emphasis on high production, low consumption and Marxist ideology...
...The rift between the two camps was further reflected in Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang's report to the nation March 25 opening the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's unicameral legislature...
...State expenditures for agriculture, meanwhile, were sharply reduced until this year, leading to major soil erosion and large losses of irrigated acreage...
...THE THIRTEENTH PARTY CONGRESS Wilting for October in China BY MARK HOPKINS Beijing The latest actions and utterances of China's leaders can only add to the deep current uncertainty elsewhere in the world about this country's future course...
...Investments, he noted, have exceeded planned figures: The State has earned only $21.6 billion so far on domestic outlays of $81 billion, contributing to a persistent budget imbalance...
Vol. 70 • April 1987 • No. 5
