Student protests spark crisis in Chinese party

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"New contract labor law abolishes guaranteed lifetime job and fuels growing unemployment. This is a major attack on the gains of the 10 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1987 By ALAN BENJAMIN RALPH FORSYTH The late December and early January wave of student protests for democratic rights in as many as 11 Chinese cities has touched off a major political crisis in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CC).

In mid-January, in a dramatic leadership shake-up, Hu Yaobang was ousted from his post as general secretary of the CCP. He was replaced by Zhao Ziyang, prime minister of the Chinese government.

Hu, a close protégé of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, was accused of encour -aging the intellectuals, students, and party reformers who have demanded greater political freedoms. He was also accused of being too "lenient" in his handling of the student protests.

Last spring, the so-called reform faction in the CCP leadership launched a broad campaign of "political reform" that was aimed at mobilizing support from intellectuals and students for Deng's liberalization policies.

For many months, Chinese newspapers carried articles on the importance of the right to dissent and the need for a more democratic style of government. A cautious amount of open debate in limited channels was allowed.

Fang Lizhi, the vice president of the National Science and Technology University in Heifei, was praised for his criticisms of government bureaucracy in the December 1986 issue of Beijing Review, an official government-sponsored magazine.

In addition, a number of previously banned Marxist authors, including Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, were allowed to be published. [See Ernest Mandel's "Chinese Writers Partially Rehabilitate Trotsky" in the May 19, 1986, issue of International Viewpoint.] But when tens of thousands of students marched in the streets of China demanding an end to bureaucratic rule, they had crossed the line of what was permissible.

On Jan. 7, just one week after the student marches, the crackdown began. Fang, the once acclaimed intellectual, was now vehemently denounced for advocating "bourgeois liberalization." Soon after, he was expelled from the party.

A major campaign was underway to put an end to all forms of political dissent.

Not first time Since the revolution in 1949, popular unrest, mostly in the form of demon -strations and wall posters, has occurred periodically. But it has been quickly crushed.

In the late 1950s, after the failure of Mao Zedung's Great Leap Forward, the CCP instituted the slogans "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." This declaration produced an avalanche of criticisms, denun -ciation, and protest.

The CCP panicked at the outpouring of criticism, and the lid was hurriedly put back on. Mao ordered the arrest of 1000 protesting middle-school students. As one Chinese joke noted, the "hundred flowers" all turned out to be sunflowers and the "hundred schools" were all Maoist schools.

Another example of a rapidly sealed political opening was that of the "Democracy Wall" movement in the late 1970s. [See accompanying article by Li Si.] After Mao's death in 1976 Deng Xiaoping, whom Mao had deposed during the Cultural Revolution, consolidated control of the CCP leadership by arresting Mao's heirs-the "Gang of Four." Deng initially encouraged the 1978-79 "Demo -cracy Wall" campaign. But when it got out of hand, he brutally suppressed it.

Since March 1979, wall posters and demonstrations have been banned, the right to strike has been deleted from the constitution, and organizers of unofficial publications and organizations have been jailed.

Companion to economic reforms Deng and his faction in the CCP leadership promoted the tightly controlled political liberalization in the spring of 1986 as a companion to their program of economic liberalization. They believed that the country's economic reforms would not succeed unless they went hand in hand with some opening in the political field.

Wang Feixin, a director of the Research Institute for the Reform of the Economic Structure, explained that the economic reforms had led to periodic clashes over the control of offices and factories between the ruling party bureaucracy and the relatively independent new managerial class. "Politi -cally, you must have a means of expressing those conflicting interests," Wang said.

In addition, the modernization of the economy has required an increased emphasis on scientific education and skilled training for the working class. The emphasis on education has fostered demands for freer expression of ideas-which is what the student movement was fighting for.

But the reform faction was careful not to let popular aspirations rise too high. Like the so-called conservative faction of the CCP, the "reformers" feared the develop -ment of a social protest movement that would challenge the CCP's monopoly of "When necessary," Deng said in a Jan. 2, 1987, directive to suppress further student demonstrations, "we must deal severely with those who defy orders. We can afford to shed some blood."

In a reference to a militant from the Democracy Wall movement who was sentenced to jail in 1981, Deng said: "Look at Wei Jingsheng. We put him behind bars and the Democracy Movement died. We haven't released him, but that did not raise much of an international uproar."

Anger over unemployment

Another reason for the political liberalization of last spring and summer was the concern by Deng and the CCP leadership that the economic reform policies instituted in China since 1979 were fueling growing popular discontent.

"A year ago," wrote Jim Mann in the Los Angeles Times (Jan. 5, 1987), "the reform group seemed on the defensive, largely because the lifting of some price controls had led to a serious bout of inflation. The reform group feared that price increases and new factory changes could cause urban workers to join the mounting unrest."

Indeed, as Mann points out, there has been a deepening concern among China's workers and youth about the rising cost of living, unemployment, and the growing disparities in wages. In September 1986, for example, 2000 youths spontaneously marched on the CCP headquarters in Nanjing to demand an end to inflation and unemployment.

In Beijing, according to official Chinese sources, the price of food alone increased by 50 percent during the first six months of 1986; far surpassing the minimal wage increases. It is estimated that 40 percent of a worker's wage goes for food. This comes after three decades of stability in prices.

The new economic measures have also created wage disparities unknown since 1949. Profits of the new Chinese businessmen approach 10 times the level of the average industrial worker's wage. "We must recognize that economic etticiency 1s often contradictory with social equality," said Su Shaozhi, director of the Marxist Leninist Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences.

A Wall Street Journal editorial (Aug. 1, 1986) explained the need for political liberalization this way: "Chinese reform officials are moving cautiously to allow some dissent because they say that the resulting joblessness from the [newly legalized] bankruptcies could 'risk social unrest." And the editorial continued, "Political instability is the last thing Beijing wants from its economic reform programs."

Gains under assault

The economic liberalization policies initiated by Deng have indeed represented a frontal assault on the gains of the Chinese Revolution.

Over the last few years, in an attempt to invigorate the slumping economy, the Chinese government has carried out the following measures:

• the dismantling of the agricultural communes and cooperatives;

• the introduction of material incentives for production ("To get rich is glorious," is the new party slogan);

• the abolition of a guaranteed lifetime job (ending China's "iron rice bowl" system);

• the introduction of contract labor which ties a worker's wage to his or her productivity and allows workers to be fired;

• a scaling back in the role of central state planning;

• the introduction of capitalist sweat-shop enclaves known as the Special Economic Zones;

• the introduction of private enterprise, capital markets, and stock exchanges.

Bankruptcies, which are commonplace under capitalism, are now being authorized in a number of China's state-owned factories in order to "increase efficiency and productivity." Bankruptcies mean layoffs, as numerous factories are allowed to go under.

Under new contract labor law, (continued on next page)

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(continued from previous page) managers now have the right to fire workers who do not respect discipline and work rules.

As of Oct. 1, 1986, a worker looking for a job will have to take an aptitude test, and then, after a three to six-month probation period, a contract with a determined lifespan can be negotiated. If the worker's work is not satisfactory, he or she can be fired.

"The disadvantages of the iron rice bowl system have become more and more evident," said Zhao Dongwan, China's minister of labor, who sees the introduction of capitalist management methods as the only way to remedy the distortions in the Chinese economy.

With the threat of dismissal hanging over the heads of 100 million wage earners, unemployment is becoming an explosive political issue.

Contradictions of CCP's policies The twists and turns in the policy of the CCP flow from the basic contradiction of trying to transform an entire society while excluding the mass of the population from the political process.

In China, the major decisions are all made at the highest levels of the state bureaucracy. The workers and the general population are precluded from making any decisions that affect government policy.

Chinese economic underdevelopment is the result of the isolation of the revolution. But instead of embarking on an inter -nationalist revolutionary course—a course seeking to advance the world revolution in order to integrate the Chinese economy into a more developed international socialist economy-China has turned to the capitalist world.

The capitalist world, of course, seeks to embroil China in precisely the same condition which gave rise to the revolution in the first place.

The Wall Street Journal, a mouthpiece for the capitalist class, has consistently applauded the economic reforms of the Chinese leadership. "China's announcement on Oct. 1 [1986], that it will begin to phase out its system of lifetime job tenure is another small and necessary step in the long trek toward...a flexible labor market as exists in Taiwan," the Journal states

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