China's 'Noodle Communism'
ROBERTS, STEVEN V.
GAMBLING ON THE STOMACH China's 'Noodle Communism' By Steven V. Roberts Beijing The official view of Eastern Europe here is clear: We don't want to talk about it. Party functionaries...
...He doesn't listen to the young people...
...The Chinese rulers would like nothing more than to wipe out this aspect of the relationship, which they refer to as "spiritual pollution...
...During a meeting at the end of February with a group of Americans, including this correspondent, Prime Minister Li Peng twice accused his visitors of "gloating" over the ruins of socialism...
...A recent article by Xinhua, the of ficai news agency, described in great detail the good life enjoyed by Zhang Xiumei, a 45-year-old factory worker in the city of Shenyang...
...One American consultant here saidhewould advise clients to stay away from China, and another discerns a sharp drop-off in new ventures...
...One Western diplomat, speaking about the impact of the events in Eastern Europe, explained: "It's a blow to the ideology that has bound this generation of leaders together...
...The official propaganda machine also devotes considerable energy to attacks on corruption, a leading target of last spring's protesters...
...Other officials complain angrily that the West is engaged in an ideological crusade, trying to exploit the "mistakes and failures" of state-controlled systems...
...The Chinese press is full of attempts to convince citizens they are, indeed, happy—with their lot, and with their leaders...
...Eventually, China will have to adapt to the modern world...
...The reality is that most Americans do not follow the nuances of international relations very closely...
...I talked to one economist who visits here regularly on assignment for a large international agency...
...The leadership has reacted, however, by tightening, notloosening, the reigns...
...China has no tradition of individual rights or government by consent...
...Today the Forbidden City is a tourist attraction, and China's leaders appear on TV...
...Foreign investment will inevitably bring with it foreign ideas...
...It does not want to look, yet it cannot help sneakingapeek...
...During past trips, she said, Chinese co-workers eagerly accepted gifts of foreign language books and newspapers...
...But repeated attempts to "re-educate" this youth in the error of his ways have clearly failed...
...Their fervent faith in the inevitable triumph of Leninism has been badly shaken...
...What is published and broadcast stresses the dangers of disorder, and the economic problems plaguing countries like Poland that have diminished the role of central planning...
...In fact, Li told our delegation, the brutal suppression of dissent last June had an economic motive, and was "aimed at ensuring a stable environment for investment from abroad...
...The problem is that Bush handled the whole situation so badly...
...They do not want to be abandoned...
...This is a country, after all, where the traditional seat of government is called the Forbidden City, and where, for centuries, people averted their eyes when the leader passed...
...For the time being, therefore, the sensible course for the United States is to keep thechannels to China open: through trade, through educational exchanges, through diplomacy...
...side...
...No amount of pressure is going to make China simply abandon its policies...
...The government is heavily subsidizing exports, too, in a desperate bid to earn the foreign exchange needed to purchase advanced technology and consumer goods abroad, and pay off China's huge foreign debt...
...China has serious economic problems...
...Will the Chinese strategy pay off...
...Following a decade of startling growth, inflation raced out of control in late 1988, causing the regime to slash the money supply and shock the economy into recession...
...They've lost all hope," she said...
...In his meeting with the Americans, Li insisted that the vast mass of workers and peasants equates the upheavals in Eastern Europe with the Cultural Revolution that ripped China apart in the late '60s and early '70s...
...It has reasserted the total power of the Party at the very moment other Communist countries, among them the Soviet Union, are opening up their systems...
...The main lesson of Eastern Europe for the present regime, a Chinese politician declared, is the importance of developing an economic program "that makes the people happy...
...But the young man in the shop, and others I spoke with, want the United States to maintain its presence in China...
...When I complained of the last to a senior government official on behalf of my colleagues, the protest was dismissed as "impertinent.' On the surface, at least, this thick cloud of intimidation has choked back almost every trace of dissent...
...In particular, added a well-informed analyst, the quick firing-squad execution of Romanian strongman Nicolai Ceausescu, a close Beijing ally, has left Chinese Party stalwarts worrying whether they might be next "to swing from a lamppost...
...Nevertheless there are signs of dissent beneath the surface, and in the long run true stability might only come from satisfying the growing demands for individual freedom...
...Most students seeking to go abroad will have to waitlonger,andfacestemertests of their "ideological maturity...
...Any American parent of a college student knows that is impossible...
...Of course, China retains enormous advantages, from low cost labor to an incomparable domestic market...
...Do the Chinese leaders honestly think they can let bright young people go to Berkeley or Yale, and limit their education to computer science and business management...
...First, they must suffocate the demands for greater political freedom that led to the protests in Tiananmen Square last spring...
...Businessmen are worried that the restored calm is superficial, masking a power struggle within the leadership that could erupt with the death of Deng or an outbreak of civil unrest...
...About the same time, Xinhua distributed a photo of a ground-breaking ceremony for a new golf course in the region financed by Taiwan money...
...Government loyalists do admit, if often grudgingly, that they feel increasingly isolated by the world-wide rising tide of democracy...
...The phone doesn't ring as often anymore, " said the second consultant, who has been on the scene since the '70s...
...He was staring at the steps leading up to the Martyrs Monument, the obelisk in the center of the huge plaza that served as headquarters for the pro-democracy movement...
...The Voice of America is regularly jammed, and its credibility is attacked as officials incessantly accuse it of inflaming and distorting the troubles in Tiananmen...
...Accordingly, investment opportunities in places like Prague and Budapest now seem more attractive...
...In local stores, the article went on, "salesof eyebrow pencil, lipstick, rouge, and eye tints have increased sharply...
...Ceausescu's biggest mistake was not tyranny or oppression, many government supporters maintain, it was appointing too many relatives to cushy jobs and opening himself to charges of nepotism...
...Consequently, indoctrination classes have been increased...
...Who will succeed them remains highly uncertain, but the forces of modernization have not been eradicated, they are merely submerged, and could arise again...
...Deng Xiaoping and his closest confidants are all in their 80s, and cannot last forever...
...Asaresult.Beijing'strade advantage over the United States threatens to reach $10 billion this year...
...Will "noodle Communism" be enough to stave off demands for political rights...
...I doubt that it will ever be a Westernstyle democracy, but it will have to make room for young people like the student I met one dayin Tiananmen Square...
...Steven V. Roberts, a senior writer at U.S...
...But China is like a driver passing the scene of a bad wreck...
...The days when he had to attend two banquets a night, just to be courteous to visiting clients, are gone...
...Deng, he added, "is an old man who only listens to people who kiss his ass...
...They know very well what chaotic situations bring about," the Prime Minister said...
...The second basic conclusion of the leadership is that it can get away with the repression of political rights because the overwhelming majority of the population is more interested in full stomachs than in free speech...
...As the leaders I talked to stressed repeatedly, though, Beijing is not about to reverse the decision Deng made that has opened the country to a wide range of progressive influences...
...From a political standpoint, China's leaders are at least partly correct when they assert that their country is not Czechoslovakia, or even the Soviet Union...
...The pro-democracy movement that flowered in Tiananmen Square was fed and fostered by China's expanding ties to the West—diplomatic, economic, cultural, educational...
...It was those two images juxtaposed in the public's mind—the tanks and the toasts— that undermined the Bush policy...
...So long as China courts foreign investment and technology, it cannot prevent change from within...
...The real sanctions have come from the international marketplace...
...Sounding more like the winner of a TV game show than a loyal student of Chairman Mao, the woman said her family had lately acquired a refrigerator, a color television set, an automatic hot waterheater and a vacuum cleaner...
...The whole notion that in an age of satellite links and fax machines a government can control the information reaching its people is irrational...
...But China is definitely paying a price for the Tiananmen massacre, a big price...
...Conversations like that one reinforce my feeling that President Bush made the right judgment in trying to keep the lines open between Beijing and Washington after the bloody June events...
...A lot of people feel the way I do but are afraid to say so...
...The leadership is acting almost xenophobic these day s, and certainly agrees with Li, who told us: "China does not owe a debt to the U.S...
...And despite a valiant attempt at indifference, the crumbling of the Soviet bloc has sent a shudder of fear through the ruling elite...
...Moreover, when that government sends 50,000 students abroad, it guarantees a major upheaval in its own society...
...Then, when those aides appeared on TV with the Chinese leadership, clinking glasses and smiling in friendship, the Administration managed to place itself on the side of the oppressors, instead of the oppressed...
...What does encourage many Chinese is the calendar...
...Since June, she noted, they accept such gifts only if they are hidden in folders or paper bags, and sometimes not at all...
...An American businessman may have summed up the current political attitude of the dissidents in Beijing best...
...In other words, not "goulash Communism" but "noodle Communism...
...Its leaders have always been war lords, whether they are officially called emperor or chairman...
...Businessmen who flocked here in the '80s to take advantage of market-oriented reforms are concerned that the leaders are reinstituting state control over key economic decisions, and thus making the investment climate much less attractive...
...Party functionaries endlessly repeat the same defensive phrase, "internal affair," when asked to comment on the continuing collapse of Communist regimes elsewhere...
...Last June when they tuned in to China, tanks were rolling through Tiananmen Square...
...Inasmall shop near thediplomats' quarter a young man approached me to comment on the recent State Department report condemning China's human rights record...
...Everyone," he observed, "is waiting for people to die...
...Asianbased capital from Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan will continue to look here first, and American entrepreneurs as well are not going to get too fussy about human rights if the profit is right...
...It would be unrealistic, if not fanciful, to expect the most rudimentary democracy in China any time soon...
...American sanctions against China, imposed by Congress after the Tiananmen tragedy, have been of minor significance...
...Beijing may think the tanks of June created a stable environment, but the confrontation had the opposite impact on many potential investors...
...If I were in the street," he laughed, "I'd say, Deng is good...
...The report is accurate," he said, "China is not free...
...China must further compete with these emerging democracies for low cost loans, technological advice, foundation support, and educational exchanges...
...They tried to tell us we made a mistake," he said, "but we know we were right...
...six months later, when they tuned in again, there were Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, happily dining with the men who ordered the tanks to roll...
...To keep those vacuum cleaners and eyebrow pencils flowing, the leadership is straining to persuade foreigners that the door to outside investment remains open...
...Just to make sure people get the message, the state-controlled media have carried little positive news from the Soviet bloc...
...News & World Report, has just returned from a visit to China with a delegation organized by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations...
...It is gambling that most Chinese, outside a small circle of discontented students and intellectuals, are petrified of turmoil and yearning for stability, even if that stability comes from the barrel of a gun...
...Would he make those comments in public, I asked...
...At a gathering in a private apartment, an elderly teacher dropped her voice to a whisper and shielded hermouthasshe described the demoralizing effect of strict new rules for foreign study on her brightest students...
...The stone still bore the scars of advancing tanks...
...After assessing the upheaval in Eastern Europe, China's leaders have apparently reached two basic conclusions...
...He was there last June, he said, and spent two months in jail afterward...
...Li made a well-publicized tour of South China not long ago, designed to encourage greater confidence in the economy...
...Foreign journalists are isolated and harassed...
...By sending his aides on two secret missions to Beijing, he gave the impression of furtiveness— as if he were ashamed of what he was doing...
...Yet the ancient idea that they enjoy the "mandate of heaven," rather than the mandate of the people, still possesses considerable power...
Vol. 73 • March 1990 • No. 4
