Search
Close this search box.

The Tiananmen Massacre – 25 years on

Peter Main

The massacre that took place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989 was a turning point not only for China but for the whole world. It marked the decisive shift in a factional battle that had divided the Chinese Communist Party almost since it came to power in 1949, opening the way to the restoration of capitalism and to China’s emergence as a new imperialist power.

It was the impossibility of sustaining balanced economic development under the regime of Socialism in One Country and bureaucratic command planning that fuelled the factional fighting within the party leadership. Although both wings were committed to maintaining the dictatorial rule of the CCP, one, historically led by Mao Zedong before his death in 1976, believed backwardness could be overcome by a combination of mass mobilisation and a concentration on heavy industrial development while the other, led in the 1970’s by Deng Xiaoping, favoured “market reforms” to provide the stimulus for growth.

By 1978, Deng’s faction was dominant and began to implement their programme, beginning with the effective privatisation of agriculture and proposing “liberalisation” and greater “management incentives” for the industrial sector. They also favoured “opening to the world” that is, increasing exports and allowing some inward investment, primarily from overseas Chinese capitalists based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South East Asia. At the same time, they preserved the centrally planned industrial core of the economy.

Deng and his faction were not unopposed. Within the Party, the state apparatus and, especially, the military, economic “liberalisation” was seen by many as a threat to political stability. The internal feuding allowed a degree of public debate to develop. As early as 1979, the Democracy Wall, in Beijing, became a focus for dissent using posters as a means of addressing the public on issues of public policy and, increasingly, calls for political as well as economic liberalisation.

Although the Democracy Wall was quickly closed down, public debate continued and some within Deng’s faction, notably Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary, associated themselves with it in order to strengthen their position against the “hardliners”. However, in a move that showed the real priorities of Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang was removed in 1987 as the extent of public dissent began to frighten the leadership.

The combination of central planning and market reforms had created a situation where officials and managerial staff were able to buy goods and materials at low “state procurement prices” and then sell them for handsome profits on the black market. It was growing public anger at this, and the resulting inflation, that fuelled criticism of the party and demands for greater transparency and “democracy” especially amongst students.

It was the death and, more particularly the funeral, of Hu Yaobang in April 1989, that provided the impetus for what became the Democracy Movement. Despite a government ban, as many as 200,000 thronged into Tiananmen Square demanding that the Party “re-assess” Hu’s status and calling for democratic reforms. A solid core of activists remained in the Square and became the organising centre for the movement.

Faced with such a scale of opposition, the government was forced, initially, to tolerate the protests. A second major focus for mobilisation came three weeks later when Mikhail Gorbachev, the head of the Soviet Union, visited Beijing. For those in the Square, Gorbachev, with his programme of “Glasnost” (openness) in the Soviet Union, appeared as a champion of reform. In order to prevent an open demonstration of mass support for a similar policy in China, the Party leaders were forced to bring their guest into the government precinct through a rear entrance.

By this time, mid-May, some students had begun a hunger strike and demonstrations in their support were spreading to other major cities in China. At the same time, the working class of Beijing began to become involved and the Beijing Autonomous Workers’ Federation was founded with the conscious aim of mobilising workers not only in support of the students but for their own economic and political demands. These developments forced a split in the Party leadership. Hu’s successor as General Secretary, Zhao Ziyang, favoured concessions and openly associated with the hunger strikers, visiting them on the Square but advising them to end their protest.

That marked the end of Zhao’s career. The following day, May 19, the Premier, Li Peng, declared martial law, preparing the way for the forcible clearing of the Square. However, the first attempts failed as troops from the local garrison began to fraternise with the students. Organised delegations of workers also began arriving in greater numbers with their own placards and demands. For several days the government appeared undecided, many believed that the scale of support had grown so much that victory was now only a matter of time, the government would have to climb down.

In reality, the government was transferring troops from remote provinces and finalising plans not only for clearing Tiananmen Square but for an all-out suppression of all dissent. When it came, the end was as brutal as it was decisive. Although the focus was undoubtedly Tiananmen, where the tanks rolled through the tents, crushing many beneath their tracks, the offensive and the repression that followed was nationwide. Strikes were called in protest in cities right across China and it was the organisers of such working class opposition who suffered worst at the hands of the military and then the courts.

The massacre was followed by two years of martial law which obliterated all signs of dissent and every trace of organised opposition and this proved to be decisive for the restoration of capitalism. During those two years, it appeared that the “hardliners” had won and that China would return to the regime it had known in the aftermath of the “Cultural Revolution”. Inflation was brought down by government price controls, moves towards liberalisation in industry were reversed and “discipline” was imposed relentlessly.

However, such measures could no more transform the economy in the 1990s than they could in the 1970s and, once it was clear that order had been restored, overseas capital began to flow more freely into the country. In particular, it flowed into the Special Economic Zones in the coastal provinces where foreign firms could set up with government support not only in the form of tax breaks and guaranteed infrastructure and energy but, crucially, cheap labour and no labour laws. The most important of these was Shenzhen in Guangdong province where the entire project was guided by Xi Zhongxun, father of the present President, Xi Jinping.

The speed of development in these zones and more generally in Guangdong, which already had extensive trading links with Hong Kong, and the foreign currency earnings they brought into the country, stood in sharp contrast to the performance of state owned industry. This convinced Deng Xiaoping that only the full restoration of capitalism could produce continued economic growth and that this was now possible because the threat of working class resistance had been removed.

Dismantling the central planning apparatus and privatising all but the largest or most strategic industry still required a purge of Deng’s opponents but, at every level, the opportunity for party and state officials to enrich themselves and their families ensured no concerted opposition. Equally, the removal of the urban workers’ rights to employment, housing, health care and education met with little resistance, even when tens of millions lost their jobs. Overall, the ruling bureaucratic caste and its party remained in complete control.

The Tiananmen Massacre also had an impact internationally. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where economic planning had already been weakened by “market reforms”, mass movements for democratic reform were growing – in Poland there was already a pro-capitalist government. The realisation that any attempt to restore an untrammelled party dictatorship would require Soviet military intervention in country after country and that this would undoubtedly mean civil war and the likelihood of Western intervention, gave the upper hand to the pro-Western and pro-capitalist forces. Within five months of the Massacre, the Berlin Wall had been breached and within one year restorationist governments were in office throughout what had been the “Soviet Bloc”.

The stage was now set for what became known as “globalisation”, in effect, the unchallenged dominance of the world by the USA, now able to enforce its economic policies, the “Washington Consensus”, without opposition. Ironically, the extension of the reach of US finance capital as its corporations and banks dictated terms to the rest of the world, masked the decline in its own manufacturing capacity that allowed China to become the “workshop of the world”. The defeat of the Chinese working class had ensured unprecedented opportunities for capital accumulation that were to last well into the new century.

Nonetheless, this expansion of capitalism inevitably meant the expansion of its contradictions as well as its profits. The new century is already marked not only by the deepest and most globally synchronised crisis in history but also by a shifting balance of forces as China, now an imperialist power in its own right, begins to assert its interests against the established powers.

Meanwhile, in China itself, the world’s largest working class, while still faced by an apparently all powerful party dictatorship, is nonetheless asserting its own strength and finding its way towards forming its own fighting organisations. In just the last six months, 402 strikes were recorded by the China Labour Bulletin (for details see ) and militancy on such a scale clearly indicates not only growing confidence but a generalising of collective experience.

In advance of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, security was stepped up throughout China, known activists and dissidents were rounded up. On June 4th, in Beijing, armed police were stationed at major road junctions and there was a clampdown on internet usage – to the extent that the candle emoticon could not be accessed – it is widely used as a symbol of commemoration of the dead. On the surface, this appears to demonstrate the strength of the regime, actually it is evidence of its fear.

Content

You should also read
Share this Article
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Print
Reddit
Telegram
Share this Article
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Print
Reddit
Telegram