China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [33]
Political Reform: A Stillborn Plan
After almost a year of deliberations, the task force submitted its final report, titled “Zhengzhi tizhi gaigc zongti shexiang” (A General Outline on the Reform of the Political System), to the Politburo and laid out its case for political reform. The report included a discussion on the necessity and urgency of political reform and set the goals and principles for such reform. It recommended the separation of the party from the state; reform of the People’s Congress; administrative reform; reform of the legal system; the establishment of a civil service system; the development of socialist democracy; and reform of the CCP. However, the report failed to provide a detailed action plan. Zhao complained that “there is not enough of a sense of action” in the report. For different reasons, Deng was not entirely satisfied with the report, even though he endorsed it at the end of September 1987. He thought the proposals of reform copied “some elements of checks and balances” and he reiterated his mantra that “the main goal [of political reform] is to ensure that the administrative branch can work efficiently; there cannot be too much interference. We cannot abandon our dictatorship. We must not accommodate the sentiments of democratization.” In a meeting with Zhao toward the end of the task force’s work, Deng emphasized, “You have a bit of checks and balances [in your proposal]. The Western type of checks and balances must never be practiced. We must not be influenced by that kind of thinking. Efficiency must be guaranteed.”33 It was very clear that Deng’s notion of political reform was fundamentally dif ferent from that of the liberal vision.
Nevertheless, the Central Committee approved the “outline” in October 1987. Shortly afterward, the CCP’s 13th Congress officially endorsed the essence of the task force’s report and declared that the goal of political reform was to “build socialist democratic politics.” But few specific measures were taken to follow up on the party’s declarations. Zhao implemented one symbolic reform—announcing the convening of each Politburo meeting in the media. The party’s control on the media was relaxed as well, making 1988 a year of lively debate about Chinese culture. But as the economic conditions deteriorated in the summer of 1988, mainly as a result of surging inflation caused by Deng’s premature plan to lift price controls, the regime’s focus shifted to economic stabilization. Political reform was put on hold. After the outbreak and suppression of the prodemocracy Tiananmen Square movement from April to June 1989, the regime imposed a ban on political reform discussions. Although the official pronouncements kept mentioning “socialist democracy,” “reforming the political system,” and “ruling the country according to law,” none of the reforms proposed in principle by the task force was adopted. Bao, the head of the task force, was imprisoned for seven years following the Tiananmen crackdown—a tragic, but perhaps fitting metaphor for the political reform attempted by the party’s liberal wing.
To the extent that the aftermath of the Tiananmen crisis determined the course of political evolution in China after 1989, as Joseph Fewsmith shows in his study of the policies of the Chinese leadership in the decade following the crackdown, one is tempted to ask: What if the 1989 political crisis had not happened or had been resolved in a different way?34 Few would dispute that the near-death experience of the CCP during the crisis and