A History of China (82 page)

Life was unpleasant for the accused, even those who had been guilty of only minor infractions. They were often sentenced to hard labor, as well as seemingly constant self-criticism sessions and propaganda. Prominent writers were targeted. Ding Ling (as mentioned above, the most renowned Chinese woman writer of the time, who had already been exiled during the anti-rightist campaign of 1957) was sentenced to another five years in prison; the novelist Ba Jin was harassed and his wife allegedly died because she was denied medical attention; and as early as 1964 the writer Mao Dun was forced to resign as minister of culture. Microphones blaring the latest radical proclamations were everywhere from town centers to trains. Broadcasting of the message was relentless and undermined technical knowledge, which was vital for the economy and for society in general. Party propaganda emphasized that Redness, or loyalty to communist ideals, was more important than expertise – a serious challenge to the educated and to intellectuals. Red Guards and workers adhered to this message and took aim at the educated.

Eventually, Mao, along with Jiang Qing and three of her close associates (who became known as the Gang of Four), became concerned that the Cultural Revolution was getting out of control. They worried about the economic disruptions precipitated by the increasingly unruly demonstrations. Fearful of the growing disarray, Mao and his cohorts began to moderate their message and to criticize ultra-leftists for uncalled-for and illegal violence. They quickly recruited the People’s Liberation Army to restore order. Lin Biao responded, with alacrity, and the People’s Liberation Army quashed some of the demonstrations and helped to dismiss party cadres. Mao urged the Red Guards to go “up to the mountains and down to the villages.” He wanted to curb the urban unrest by having the Red Guards join the rural labor force. The party then urged some of the students to return to school. Mao and Lin seemed to be collaborating in bringing the party under their control. As a result of playing such a vital role, Lin began to be portrayed as virtually on the same level as Mao. By 1969, he had been elevated to the position of Mao’s successor. Yet soon thereafter Mao, fearful that the party had been devastated and concerned that the army appeared to be the dominant institution, became suspicious of Lin’s increasing power, and in 1970 turned against his chosen successor. By 1971, their divisions were irreparable. According to official Chinese sources, in September, Lin allegedly plotted to assassinate Mao. The failure of his “plot” prompted him to flee on an airplane toward the USSR. Lacking fuel, the plane was reported to have crashed in Mongolia, leaving no survivors. Rumors spread that the plane had been shot down, but there was no way to verify these reports.

Lin Biao’s disaffection and death symbolized the growing concerns about both domestic failures and China’s isolation from the rest of the world. The Cultural Revolution, with its attack against established institutions and especially on intellectuals, had robbed China of expertise in various fields. Closing of schools and universities had disrupted the educational system and had subverted the careers of promising students. Appointment to leadership positions of “Reds” rather than experts had damaged the economy, education, and numerous institutions. Disdain and attacks on the West and on intellectuals who had any connections with Western knowledge and culture exacerbated China’s difficulties and blackened China’s image in the world. The economy had stalled, and the population needed ration coupons even to buy basic goods. China’s relations with the outside world were chaotic. In 1969, pitched battles with the USSR along the Manchurian frontiers resulted in the stationing of even more Soviet troops all along the border. The potential for a Sino–Soviet war accelerated. Relations with many of the Western nations had come to an abrupt halt, and many in the West were shocked by the turbulence and violence of the Cultural Revolution. China had no official contacts with the USA, the major Western power. Taiwan represented China at the United Nations. During the height of the Cultural Revolution, the government had recalled many of its foreign ambassadors and had closed down embassies, even in the Third World. China maintained poor relations with the most populous Asian countries. It had engaged in battles with India along their joint borders in 1962 and had deplored attacks on overseas Chinese communities in Indonesia in 1964. China needed to reevaluate its policies.

Changes in China’s international relations were the first evidence of such reevaluation. In April of 1971, Chinese officials invited a US ping-pong team playing in Japan to visit China to take part in table-tennis exhibition matches. In the fall, after secret and delicate negotiations, the US and Chinese governments announced that President Richard M. Nixon would visit China in the spring of 1972. Nixon, who had been one of the most prominent anticommunists in the 1950s, capitalized on the Sino–Soviet split to restore contacts with China. The meeting did not end with unanimity, especially on the issue of Taiwan. Yet it set the stage for renewed relations. Shortly thereafter, the two countries began, at a rapid pace, to exchange political, educational, scientific, and cultural delegations. Even before President Nixon’s visit, the USA had dropped its objections and agreed to China’s membership in the United Nations as a replacement for Taiwan. With these two stumbling blocks removed, China now began to reestablish formal diplomatic relations with Western and Third World countries. Its seeming moderation led to tangible results. On January 1, 1979, the USA and China restored diplomatic relations and, within a short time, Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997 and Portugal agreed to return Macao to China. However, tensions with the USSR persisted, although both sides pulled back from the violence that had erupted in 1969. Chinese and Soviet officials and the media continued to criticize the other country’s policies, but they kept within the bounds of discourse and no longer fought.

Figure 12.3
Nixon in China. President Nixon meets with China’s Communist Party leader Mao Zedong. February 21, 1972. © Everett Collection Historical / Alamy

Domestic policies turned out to be more complicated. The Gang of Four, with Jiang Qing in the lead, accepted the changes in China’s international relations but wanted to maintain radical internal policies, especially the commune structure in the countryside. They promoted “continuous revolution” and vigilance against bourgeois elements in the Communist Party. Using historic parallels, they started a “criticize Confucius policy” and praised Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of the Qin and indeed the First Emperor of China. They portrayed Mao as Shi Huangdi, the praiseworthy Qin ruler. Dependence on labor rather than use of expensive machinery was also at the height of their agenda. They repeatedly emphasized the peasants’ ingenuity. Similarly, their agenda spilled over into industrial development. They relied on allegedly conscientious, idealistic, and exceptionally hardworking proletarians, as opposed to capital investment in technology. Asserting that leadership was crucial, they focused on proper political considerations in selecting managers in communes, factories, and mines. They tended to deride expertise and the capitalist model of economic growth and development. In short, they had barely altered their views as expressed in the Cultural Revolution, and had made only perfunctory concessions in light of the failure of their radical policies. They criticized Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and other government and party officials whose views were not as driven by ideology and who sought to adopt foreign technology to propel the economy. Like Zhou, Deng had studied in France, had joined the communists during the Jiangxi Soviet, and had taken part in the Long March. He had been a target during the Cultural Revolution for his opposition to its radicalism. In 1974, he returned from exile, and the Gang of Four responded with severe criticism.

As of 1974, Jiang Qing’s Gang of Four, seemingly with Mao’s support, appeared to have the advantage. Yet within two years the political landscape changed drastically. First, Zhou Enlai died in February of 1976, stimulating extraordinary expressions of public grief. Demonstrations developed that were covertly, and on occasion overtly, critical of the radical policies and even of Mao himself. The demonstrators portrayed Zhou as a moderate and as closer to the true proletarian cause than most of the leadership. At this point, the Gang of Four launched its own broadsides against the less ideological opposition. The struggle continued through the summer, a season punctuated on July 28 with a catastrophic earthquake in Tangshan, an area within a hundred miles of Beijing, that led to the deaths of several hundred thousand people. Chinese who remembered the traditional dynastic view of the past knew that natural catastrophes were often harbingers of dynastic change or collapse. Within two months of the earthquake, Mao had died, an indication to believers that the earthquake signaled significant changes. The tensions between the two ­factions were exacerbated. Yet, without Mao’s protection, the radical and despised Gang of Four faced perilous circumstances. Although Mao had tapped Hua Guofeng (1921–2008), a colorless bureaucrat who seemed to favor the radicals, as his successor, Hua found the Gang to be his competitors and overly radical as China reentered the world. Within a month, he arrested the Gang, including Mao’s widow, and initiated a campaign to blacken their reputations.

Meanwhile, Deng Xiaoping, one of Mao’s comrades-in-arms, who had had a tempestuous relationship with the deceased party leader, emerged as the leader of the moderates, who wanted a rational and carefully planned approach to the economy that was not based on ideological blinders. Deng and his allies were pragmatists who would, if necessary, contravene orthodox Marxist–Maoist thinking to foster economic growth. They opted for modernization, which, in practice, often meant adoption of foreign technology in key ­economic sectors. Such a policy necessitated the training of skilled personnel, which, in turn, required the restoration of universities. Higher education, which had suffered inordinately during the Cultural Revolution, had to be stabilized and organized. Within a short time, the government developed stiff entrance examinations for admission into major universities, which had been restaffed with outstanding academics and researchers. Simultaneously, the authorities negotiated with the Western powers and Japan to offer opportunities for Chinese students to train in their lands. These new policies overturned the Cultural Revolution dictum of the greater value of “Reds,” or ideologically pure individuals, than experts. Deng and his supporters in the Communist Party and the military were convinced that economic planning and the use of experts, rather than the seemingly anarchic and disorderly Cultural Revolution policies, were the optimal means of fostering economic growth. They also believed that incentives were required for greater productivity.

However, before they could embark on their pragmatic policies, they had to deal with the most prominent radicals, as well as those who had been harmed by the Cultural Revolution. Their principal opponents could defend ­themselves by claiming that Mao had approved of their radical views, with the result that Deng and the pragmatists were left with no other choice and the difficult task of questioning Mao’s policies without denying him a place in the pantheon of communist heroes. After considerable discussion and several pronouncements, they devised an evaluation of Mao that was mostly positive but also revealed his deficiencies. They portrayed him as a great leader who had his faults, with a percentage of good traits and a percentage of bad traits. His body was embalmed, and a special memorial hall, where the public could view it, was built in Tiananmen, the central square in Beijing. Under this cover, Deng and his collaborators could deal with the Gang of Four. Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and another member of the Gang were tried and received sentences of capital ­punishment, although they were eventually resentenced to life imprisonment. The other two Gang members received lighter sentences. On the other hand, the government worked quickly to undo the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. The writers Ding Ling, Mao Dun, and Ba Jin were rehabilitated, allowed to return from the countryside to the capital, and permitted to travel abroad. Deng then outmaneuvered Hua Guofeng and became the undisputed leader of the country.

Having routed the radicals, Deng and the pragmatists could focus specifically on the economy, but they faced an immediate, almost insurmountable problem. As Ma Yinchu, the economist and former president of Beijing University in the 1950s, had predicted, the continued increase in population was threatening to undermine advances in the economy. The 1950s attacks on advocates of birth control for allegedly adopting the views of such classical economists as Thomas Malthus had harmed efforts to limit population growth. Even when the government began to pursue birth-control policies and provided contraception in the 1960s, it had relied on education and propaganda and had not imposed sanctions on multiple births and large families. Faced with a population of 1,200,000 people, in 1979 it decided to initiate more stringent policies to cap this growth. Without such a reduction, the ­government could not expect as rapid economic advances as it had hoped for. It formulated the so-called one-child-per-family policy, mandating disincentives for families that opted for multiple births. Couples who had one child would receive the state’s health, educational, and welfare benefits for free. Those who chose to have more than one child would pay for these somewhat reduced benefits and would encounter more difficulties in employment and promotion at work.