Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (105 page)

Wang Zhen and Chen Yun also supported efforts to establish firmer control over the Propaganda Department. Chen Yun had claimed that the leadership of the party would not survive if it could not do two things well: economic work and propaganda work. Wang Zhen and Chen Yun regarded Wang Renzhong, head of the Propaganda Department after Hu Yaobang, as sufficiently conservative, but he did not prove to be an effective leader. On March 23, 1982, then, Deng Xiaoping appointed Deng Liqun to replace him.

Much as Mao in 1975 had supported the Gang of Four to keep strict ideological control while he allowed Deng to provide overall executive leadership, so in 1982 Deng assigned Deng Liqun to hold in check criticisms of the party, while allowing Hu Yaobang to continue directing party activities.
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Although
Deng Xiaoping was not concerned about maintaining ideological orthodoxy per se, he was determined to avoid having permissiveness lead to the publication of articles and stories that disparaged the role of the party.

Chen Yun's Criticism of Hu Yaobang

Another battleground was over the flexibility that Hu Yaobang was granting to local officials—a struggle that came to a head with Chen Yun's attack on Hu Yaobang on March 17, 1983. In January 1983, while Zhao Ziyang was on a month-long trip to eleven African countries, Hu Yaobang had assumed some of Zhao's responsibilities in supervising the government. Hu's style, however, was much more freewheeling than Zhao's. For instance, when Hu, aware of coal shortages, traveled to local areas that mined coal, he encouraged the people to do all they could to increase their production. He had not considered what would happen when people turned to strip mining, causing great environmental damage, nor did he anticipate that private mine owners would often fail to take elementary safety precautions, leading to many mining accidents. In the eyes of the cautious planners, Hu Yaobang was an undisciplined populist who did not adequately consider the broader consequences of his actions and did not take seriously the national economic plans that they had so carefully crafted.

When Chen Yun heard reports of Hu Yaobang's lack of regard for the economic plans, he was livid. On March 14, Chen reported his views to Deng.
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The very next day Deng called in Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Hu Qiaomu to complain of Hu Yaobang's lax leadership.
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And on March 17, 1983, during a joint meeting of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and the party Secretariat, Zhao Ziyang, without mentioning Hu Yaobang by name, criticized harshly Hu's activities, which he argued had interfered with disciplined control of the economy. Despite Zhao Ziyang's later protestations to the contrary, allies of Hu Yaobang were convinced that Zhao went far beyond what could be considered necessary criticism.
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At that same March 17 meeting, Chen Yun made ten points:

1. The readjustment policy had been very successful and without it the economy would be in serious trouble.

2. The years until 2000 should be divided into two ten-year periods, with the first dedicated to building a solid base, without which the economy would be in trouble.

3. It is possible to temporarily use bank loans or the sale of gold to make up for budget deficits, but such budget deficits cannot be allowed to continue.

4. One must take seriously the reports of the ministries and commissions that present an overview of the economy.

5. It is incorrect to say that 156 projects in the First Five-Year plan went astray.

6. Gold reserves purchased in 1973–1974 following consultation with Li Xiannian were not excessive. (The decision to purchase this gold, made by Chen Yun earlier that year, was later considered a very wise decision since gold greatly increased in value over the following decade.)

7. The Planning Commission must acquire capital from the various ministries and regions and invest it in high-priority projects.

8. The party Secretariat and the State Council must both supervise and discuss economic issues, but overall economic leadership should fall under the party's Central Finance and Economics Leadership Small Group.

9. The wild use of capital investment funds in too many projects must be curtailed.

10. The party Secretariat (then under Hu Yaobang) may carry on research, but it must change its methods and show regard for the overall situation.

As soon as Chen Yun concluded, Deng, visibly upset by Chen Yun's attack on Hu Yaobang, whom he then still supported, concluded the meeting, saying that from then on, the party's Central Finance and Economics Leadership Small Group, led by Zhao, would be in charge of all economic work. Others should not interfere.
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Although Chen Yun's ten points all concerned keeping the economy under control, the last several points constituted a powerful attack on Hu Yaobang,
and indirectly an attack on Deng's policies of trying to promote overly rapid growth. On the same day, Deng Liqun, without authorization, leaked the contents of Chen Yun's speech to the press. The next day, Deng Xiaoping called in Deng Liqun to criticize him for this violation of party discipline, but the damage had been done: Hu Yaobang's authority in the party had been weakened, to the extent that some officials wondered if Hu would remain in his post much longer.
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Other officials who worked with Hu Yaobang and shared his views about expanding freedom of expression were furious at Deng Liqun.

Hu Yaobang was in a difficult position. The presence of more than one “popo” (“mother-in-law,” the senior woman running the household) in Beijing made it difficult for Hu Yaobang to have real control over party organs. Hu had formal power and, with Deng's support, he still presided over meetings and gave directions on daily work. But he chose to spend much of his time away from Beijing, traveling around the country to encourage local officials and trying to clear up obstacles to modernization. During his years in office, Hu visited a total of 1,703 counties, more than 80 percent of all counties in the country, and 173 of the nation's 183 prefectures. His plan to visit the remaining ten prefectures was aborted only when he was removed from office in January 1987.
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Meanwhile, it was impossible to keep the heated differences between Chen Yun and Deng from key members of their staffs, and rumors of dissonance spread to the Hong Kong press. Deng could not have been pleased to have his chief assistant attacked in such a devastating way that his authority for carrying out his work was weakened.
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And Chen Yun, who had supported Hu Yaobang's appointment as general secretary, could not have been pleased by Hu Yaobang's greater responsiveness to Deng and Deng's policies than to his own. But both party leaders knew that an open break would unleash powerful attacks from others, which would be devastating to the party, so they refrained from going public with their feud.

The Attack on Spiritual Pollution and the Reaction

In early 1983 outspoken liberal theorists were again promoting philosophical perspectives to expand the range of intellectual freedom, causing conservatives to worry that the authority of the Communist Party itself was being challenged by those who believed in principles higher than loyalty to the party. In January 1983, Wang Ruoshui, deputy editor of the
People's Daily
, wrote, “Socialist humanism . . . means resolutely discarding the ‘all-round dictatorship’ and cruel struggle in the ten-year period of internal disorder . . . doing away with the cult of the personality which deifies an individual and belittles the people, and upholding the principle that all men are equal before the truth and the law and that a citizen's personal freedom and dignity are inviolable.”
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Soon thereafter, at the Central Party School's celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Karl Marx's death on March 7, Zhou Yang
added his voice, arguing that alienation can exist not only in capitalist society but even in socialist society, when officials abuse their power and there is a lack of democracy and rule of law. Both Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun tried unsuccessfully to block Zhou Yang's speech from publication, but it was printed in the
People's Daily
on March 16 and had an enormous impact.
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The idea that humanism and alienation were universal principles represented to Deng and other Chinese leaders a fundamental challenge to the ultimate authority of the party. Western notions of a transcendental God that could criticize the earthly rulers were not part of Chinese tradition.

Deng Xiaoping did not rush to stop all discussions of humanism and alienation, but by September 1983 he had concluded that the loose atmosphere had to be tightened. He asked Hu Qiaomu to prepare a speech taking a tougher line against those views that he labeled “spiritual pollution.”
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Deng acknowledged that problems do exist in socialist society but he declared that according to Marxism, “alienation” refers to the feelings of workers when their labor is exploited for the benefit of capitalists, so such a problem did not exist in socialist society. Deng's main targets were those who were attacking the authority of the Communist Party.
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Deng Liqun had criticized Hu Yaobang for putting patriotism before the Communist Party, but Deng Xiaoping personally did not choose between the two. Had Deng expressed his own personal assessment, he might have said that over the span of centuries, patriotism will be longer-lasting but that at least for many decades nothing could replace the party; it was absolutely essential to give full support to the party. Some young intellectuals who had suffered from the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping said, were now hiding out, engaging in clandestine activities and trying to settle accounts. Some who were filled with unscrupulous ambition would have to be removed from their positions and expelled from the party. The underlying problem? “Party discipline has been lax so that some bad people have been shielded.” Deng's solution was that ideological workers should help educate people to “assess the past correctly, to understand the present, and to have firm faith in socialism and the leadership by the Party.”
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Officials in Beijing were aware that Deng's comments, like those of Chen Yun in March, contained implicit criticism of Hu Yaobang, who had been pushing to expand the range of freedom for intellectuals.

On October 12, 1983, at the Second Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping expanded the criticism into a nationwide political campaign against spiritual pollution. As much as Deng felt reluctant to resort
to political campaigns, which could upset the pace of work and antagonize all those threatened with criticism, he still found it difficult to curb “spiritual pollution” without a political campaign. This was the first political campaign to be launched since Deng had mounted the political stage in 1978. Still, to avoid the extremes of the earlier political campaigns, he began by warning: “The ruthless methods used in the past—the over-simplified, one-sided, crude, excessive criticism and merciless attacks—must never be repeated.”
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Despite his warnings, some officials assigned to carry out the campaign inevitably resorted to the intimidating attacks with which they were familiar. But some sympathetic officials tried to soften the criticisms. When a group of bureau chiefs met to discuss how to campaign against humanism and against the idea that there could be “alienation” under socialism, Du Runsheng, a key adviser on rural issues, asked the group if they knew the meaning of “alienation.” When most confessed that they were not too clear about it, Du asked how, then, could they ever expect peasants to understand what alienation means. It is ridiculous, Du said, to try to carry on such a campaign in the countryside. Wan Li, too, argued that the campaign should not be carried out in rural areas. Zhao Ziyang pleaded that the campaign not be allowed to interfere with the economy. Fang Yi argued that it should not be allowed to interfere with scientific areas. And Yu Qiuli, then head of the Political Department of the PLA, quickly stopped the campaign from reaching the army. These officials succeeded in restricting the scope of the campaign. After scarcely a month, Deng, trying to balance his sense of a need to set limits to criticisms of the party with the widespread opposition to political campaigns, allowed the campaign to wind down. On January 3, 1984, Hu Qiaomu gave a lengthy authoritative statement on alienation that essentially ended the campaign but left in place the boundaries limiting free expression.
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In the minds of many intellectuals, Deng Liqun was the person responsible for the campaign. As a result, he was placed on the defensive and underwent a self-criticism; he was accused of initiating another anti-rightist campaign.
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Hu Deping, eldest son of Hu Yaobang, and Deng Pufang, eldest son of Deng Xiaoping, like other intellectuals, criticized Deng Liqun for carrying the campaign further than Deng Xiaoping had intended. Deng Liqun made it clear that Deng Xiaoping made the decision to launch the campaign. His refusal to protect his leader was not soon forgotten: at Deng Xiaoping's funeral some fifteen years later, Deng Pufang made it clear that Deng Liqun would not be welcome. Hu Qiaomu, under pressure from the outspoken intellectuals, later went so far as to say the anti-spiritual-pollution campaign was a mistake. Indeed,
Deng Liqun, realizing that the struggle against spiritual pollution had not achieved its goals, told Hu Qiaomu a year later, on March 14, 1984, that “the struggle against spiritual pollution will be a long-lasting one.”
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