This book derives from a conference held at Harvard
University in 1996 entitled "The Unintended Consequences of Post-Mao
Reforms", examining the impact of China's economic reforms on Chinese
politics, culture, and society.
Post-Mao reforms in fact means Deng Xiaoping's reforms. For
two decades since December 1978, Deng's reform program made China's GNP grow
on an average rate of 9% per year, as the editors Goldman and MacFarquhar
write in their 27-page introduction. Another question is the accuracy of
China's growth data. Still, China's GNP per capita was at $750 a year
in 1996 (according to the Worldbank's 1998-atlas). Even if today's average
monthly income should be $200, China is far from South Korea or Taiwan.
Western political and business leader's do not always seem to think about
these facts. One remembers their complete misunderstanding of the Russian
But Goldman and MacFarquhar are of course right in the sens that
Deng's reforms are the key to China's relative success: "After the Third
Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978, most of the elders
rejected not only Mao's utopian visions of the egalitarian society of the
Great Leap Forward and the unending class struggle of the Cultural Revolution
but also the Stalinist model of state control of the economy, collectivization
of agriculture, and emphasis on heavy industry that China had followed since
the 1950s." Deng believed that the Communist Party had to improve the
standard of living for the majority of the population to hold on to its power
The editors describe the power struggle within the CCP: "The
more conservative elders wanted a controlled gradual reform, restricted to the
economy; another group led by Deng Xiaoping and his reformist disciples, Hu
Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, as well as a few of the elders, moved beyond economic
reforms to implement several limited political reforms."
Goldman and MacFarquhar note that "After the June 4, 1989,
crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square when the conservative elders
and remnent Maoists reasserted their authority, the economic reforms virtually
stopped." Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Deng made
a comeback in favour of reform in 1992.
Despite the political reforms, the CCP continued campaigns
against political dissidents in the years of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin.
Even two party general secretaries were victims of purges, Hu Yaobang in 1987
and Zhao Ziyang in 1989. Although these crackdowns cannot be compared to those
of the Mao-years, most dissidents were either in exile or silenced by the
"Jiang [Zemin] and his colleagues are technocrats who
have made their way up the political ladder via state industry or the
bureaucracy. Their right to rule comes primarily from Deng's blessing."
They are afraid that "too rapid political change could may produce chaos,
such as that in the former Soviet Union, and thus jeopardize the gains in the
standard of living of the post-Mao era."
There is an opening gap between the poor and the rich in
China. Elizabeth Perry reveals "an explosion of collective resistance in
the form of tax riots, industrial strikes, and street demonstrations. In the
rural areas, an increasing gap is found between the prospering managers and
workers in rural industries and farmers who work in the fields. In addition,
there have been growing economic and social disparities between urban and
rural areas [...]", and between the coastal areas and the inland
As a result of the lack of the social security safety net of
the Mao era for people in the unemployed and nonstate sector, women and the
elderly in the countryside suffer most. The anthropologist Arthur Kleinmann
estimates that China has the highest per capita rate of suicide among women in
"Because of Mao's ideological distortions and the fall
of the former Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism in China is bankrupt."
Therefore China's leaders appeal to nationalism. Lucian Pye points out that
this form of nationalism "has little meaning to a population that has
virtually no knowledge of its own history and traditional culture." But a
nationalism without substance cannot be a unifying force, according to Pye.
Ordinary Chinese, unable to act as citizens, are absorbed in the pursuit of
consumerism (Geremie Parmé).
The economic reforms and open-door policies weaken the party-state. A more
prosperous Chinese population could well start questioning the CCP's
legitimity and demand greater rights (Goldman and MacFarquhar).