The Myth of the China Spring – Fact or Fantasy

 First published 24 December 2012

Samuel Johnson once described a second marriage after the failure of the first as the triumph of hope over experience. This philosophy can just as easily be ascribed to the hopes of the western world about the future of China’s economy.

Described as the “China Decade” the next ten years signifies the latest revolutionary era for this remaining relic of international communism. Red China has had many revolutions since 1949; sadly each one of them has been categorised by failure, significant loss of life and liberty and a subsequent realigning of party ideals to preserve and strengthen the status quo.

The Hundred Flowers Campaign in the first decade after Mao Zedong came to power encouraged China’s citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime. OK, so that might have been a bit naïve, not just by the party but more so by those who were foolish enough to take up the invitation, most of whom disappeared forever.

Close on the heels of the Hundred Flowers came the Great Leap forward. This was the era when China sought to raise its manufacturing and rural industries to the levels of the United States. It was based on the self-deception that it was possible and ended when evidence of the deception became overwhelming. Somewhere between 20 million and 40 million Chinese perished by starvation or illnesses associated with starvation. Significantly almost all of those were rural dwellers.

The Great Leap “Backwards” was followed by the Cultural Revolution; the misnomer of which is palpable. Anyone who had dared to seek an education was considered an elitist. Retribution was forthcoming in the form of torture, arbitrary imprisonment and the seizure of property. In the interests of Culture, thousands of ancient and historic artifacts were destroyed. Urban youth was forcibly relocated to rural areas and vice versa and another several million starved to death for no other reason but that urban youth with so few experienced farmers left to coach them, were not suited to a life of farming and production dropped markedly. Who would have thought it?

Since the debacle of the Cultural Revolution and following Mao’s death in 1976, China’s leaders have moved closer to a free state of commerce. Examples of their development and apparent massive wealth are on display in every Chinese city. Further afield however the picture is different. Poverty abounds in the rural areas and the peasants are not happy and more significantly their offspring are restless.

In 1975 I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel through parts of the Soviet Union. It opened my eyes forever. Examples of the so-called success of communism were everywhere. Massive rail systems, huge electrical power plants, long distance views of well guarded military establishments and fields of green and yellow being cultivated by farmers riding on twelve head harvesters were impressive to this country boy. I was a socialist in 1975.

What truly impressed me however was not anything that my in-tourist guide had been permitted to show me or even those things that clearly she was not authorised to bring to my attention. No, what simultaneously impressed and troubled me was the level of seditious discussion I was able to elicit from the most innocuous of people.

Sitting in a Russian café was an experience as group after group of university students sought to practice their fractured English by having a few words with the “Australian man”. It didn’t take much effort to direct the conversation towards politics and yet I was the only one of us continually looking over his shoulder.

The one constant was the desire by all of them to have a say in how they were governed and by whom. In 1975 it was obvious to me that communism was dying in Russia and in their satellite unions. Back then I boldly predicted it had a future life of ten years. I was wrong. It lasted fifteen.

Despite having failed comprehensively elsewhere in the world, communism in China flourishes, apparently. Or does it? The Tiananmen Square massacre took place a mere twenty-three years ago in 1989 only two years before the Soviets voted communism down in Marx’s holy land. As the BBC reported at the time, the demonstrations were called to coincide with a visit to Beijing from the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, by students seeking democratic reform. Over the days leading up to the massacre the students were joined by millions of people from all walks of life angered by widespread corruption and calling for democracy. The government reacted and hundreds or perhaps thousands died in the Red Army’s unprovoked and frightening response.

What did the Chinese leaders learn from Tiananmen Square? Not much if you gauge the level of corruption that still exists in China today.

A good and decent Chinese Australian, Dr Du Zuying, is in prison today, another victim of a corrupt system that answers to no-one including, and it seems particularly, the entreaties of foreign governments. Dr Zuying’s Chinese lawyer, appalled at the treatment of his client says this about his own government, “This is China’s reality. Show me an official and I’ll show you a bribe taker.” Sadly Dr Zuying takes his place behind a range of other foreigners often of Chinese origin who currently languish in Chinese prisons guilty of nothing more than trying to operate effectively in a corrupt system. Encouraged by our Federal Governments to make much of the China expansion they fall victim to the realities of corruption. Are they themselves corrupt? No, not in the true sense. In Asia and most definitely in China paying bribes to officials is not just the smart way to do business it is the only way you can do business. But get on the wrong side of some officials and they will use their own corruption against you.

What have successive Australian Federal Governments done? Sadly nothing.

The blog site, All About Philosophy, states, “An oppressed people will always yearn to breathe”. And so it must be. Sooner or later the passion of Tiananmen Square will again raise its head and if the Chinese Government reacts in a similar fashion to 1989, they can expect a revolution of ideas to drown them in protests and demonstrations that will show little regard to the status quo. Will that signal the end of communism in China? I believe it has the potential. The future of the Chinese political system is on a knife-edge yet the Chinese government keeps its head in the sand believing that any uprising can be met with similar force and oppression that has suited them in the past. China cannot afford another Tiananmen Square put down. The world at large will not allow them to retreat within themselves again. Certainly governments of the western world will once again become apologists, their own vested interests being of greater importance to them than a few dead Chinese revolutionaries, but there are humanists around the globe who will not be quieted again. Support for change from outside China may well be the catalyst for change from within.

When this occurs and it surely will, no amount of gentle persuasion or bloody force will assuage the hunger of the millions of Chinese who for so many generations have yearned for the taste of self-determination. China will have two choices; passive acceptance or violent implosion. My money will be on the latter. It will be anybody’s guess then what will become of the Chinese economy.

J Raymond Long