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CHAPTER ONE

The Affirmation, Development, and Negation of Marxism

THE YEAR 1989 witnessed both the forceful suppression of the Tian-
anmen demonstrators in China and the swift collapse of communism in
Eastern Europe. These events were followed in 1991 by the demise of the
birthplace of the October Revolution. The disparities among these dra-
matic and almost concurrent events have raised important questions
about the sources of the divergent outcomes in these systems. Why was
the Chinese leadership able to cling successfully to the intrasystem, re-
formist approach, whereas Mikhail Gorbachev presided over a revolution
that led to the demise of the Soviet Communist party and state? In the
Soviet case, Gorbachev's relentless efforts to promote "new thinking"
clearly helped to open the path for substantial reforms that eventually
heralded the collapse of the entire Stalinist edifice. By contrast, Deng
Xiaoping's simultaneous promotion of "rethinking socialism" and the
Four Fundamental Principles (i.e., adherence to the leadership of the
party, to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, to the socialist
road, and to the people's democratic dictatorship) has both stimulated the
kind of revolutionary dynamism displayed by the Tiananmen demonstra-
tors and brought about its suppression.

The rethinking of established socialism that accompanied both the Chi-
nese and the Soviet reform processes preceding the dramatic events of
1989 had a direct link to the character and outcome of the reforms under-
taken in these communist societies. This was particularly manifest from
the reaction of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to the events in
China and in other communist systems. After the traumatic ending of the
mass demonstrations in China in mid-1989, the conservative-dominated
official rhetoric immediately turned to pinpoint a "small handful" of insti-
gators who had allegedly exploited the good intentions of the masses by
attempting to stage the overthrow of the socialist system and the Commu-
nist party. The accused instigators, as they came to be identified in official
accounts, included mainly reform theorists and intellectuals prominently
associated with advocating the "rethinking" of socialism and capitalism.
The direction in which this reconceptualization had developed was now
said to have approached the negation of socialism and the advocacy of
bourgeois liberalism. It is this ideological position of the "counterrevolu-
tionaries" on which post-June 4 official attacks centered. It allegedly rep-
resented a recent intellectual and political trend that advocated renounc-
ing China's socialist framework politically, economically, and ideologi-
cally. Thus official rhetoric depicted the events of mid-1989 as in essence
a battle between socialism and capitalism and posited the crackdown as
the struggle for the survival of the 1949 Revolution.

The flourishing of these bourgeois liberalization trends, moreover, was
attributed to the influence of a heterodox approach to socialism within the
party leadership. The former general secretary of the party, Zhao Ziyang,
in particular was held responsible for the spread of "bourgeois liberal"
tendencies. His tolerance of proponents of "bourgeois liberalization," his
promotion of some of them as his brain trust, and his own indifferent
attitudes toward socialism were said to have encouraged the ideological
climate that contributed to the "counterrevolutionary" riot of 1989.
Thus the roots of the so-called battle between socialism and capitalism
were traced to the reform program of Zhao and his brain trust since the
mid-1980s. As one Renmin ribao editorial claimed, bourgeois liberal
forces "have covered their anti-socialist views in the name of reform and
in this way have created considerable ideological confusion. More seri-
ously, they have obtained support from within the party." Wang Renzhi,
head of the CCP Central Committee's Department of Propaganda
(CDP), called the crisis of 1989 "a struggle between reform of a socialist
nature or reform of a capitalist nature." The reform program of Zhao and
the bourgeois liberals, he charged, "amounts to . . . replacing the socialist
system and installing the capitalist system." Therefore, the protests of
1989 and the subsequent crackdown symbolized "a class struggle in the
ideological arena." At the same time, the social basis of the protests of
1989 was attributed to the consequences of Zhao's deviation from social-
ism. That is, Zhao's "unrestrained" market reforms were blamed for cre-
ating widespread economic corruption and social inequality, which were
the initial causes of the popular protests.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Communist party and the Soviet
Union in late 1991, the CCP also attributed the "peaceful dissolution" of
the birthplace of the October Revolution to Gorbachev's infidelity to and
betrayal of socialism. His promotion of "new thinking" and "humanistic
and democratic socialism" and his gradual "desertion and negation of so-
cialism" during his six years in office were said to have directly eroded the
socialist ethos and yielded ground to antisocialist forces in and outside the
party. To avoid experiencing the fate of socialism in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union, the CCP has issued internal documents among official
strata and workplaces to strengthen "socialist education" and criticize the
Soviet reassessment of socialism.

The CCP's characterization of an ideological battle between socialist
and "bourgeois liberal" forces within and outside the party was not just
political propaganda to provide a post facto legitimation for the suppres-
sion of the protest movement or for the dismissal of the victims in the
power struggle among the elites. Rather, it epitomized the explosion of a
deep-seated conflict between the so-called conservative and radical re-
formers over the nature of socialism (see table 1). Over the last decade,
this conflict permeated the politics of reform at the top. Radical reformers,
mostly the younger generation of leaders, placed priority on adapting es-
tablished socialism to the requirements of reform and on "developing"
Marxism under contemporary conditions. They encouraged a critical re-
assessment of established theory and practice and permitted this effort to
extend to China's entire experience with Marxism. These efforts have
been so transformative that they have brought revolutionary changes in
Chinese thinking about socialism. More orthodox reformers, mostly vet-
eran revolutionaries, placed priority on reform within the basic confines of
socialism and on "upholding" Marxism. Referred to by the dissident in-
tellectual Guo Luoji as "Marxist fundamentalists," members of this group
have clung to their political and moral ground by appealing to the contin-
uing orthodoxy of the Four Fundamental Principles. The parallel exis-
tence of a growing iconoclasm and a confining doctrine has generated
much tension and contradiction in Chinese politics.

Indeed, according to Yan Jiaqi, former director of the Institute of Polit-
ical Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and a key
member of the CCP Commission on Political Structural Reform, the lack
of a strong ideological backing was one of the main reasons for the even-
tual collapse of Zhao's reform program and of the reform leader himself.
Reform threatened the foundation of the system and had itself to be de-
fended on doctrinal grounds. Such grounds are needed not only to pro-
mote reform but also to sustain it during difficult periods. In late 1988 in
particular, the crisis of economic reform reached such unprecedented se-
verity that it put the legitimacy of Zhao's entire program into question. In
part, this was because the crisis was precipitated by Zhao's attempt that
summer to bring about a more thorough transition to the market and by
his neglect of traditional strongholds of socialist economy, such as macro-
economic balance, the rural economy, and state enterprises. The negative
consequences of Zhao's policies (double-digit inflation, financial panic, a
runaway economy, agricultural decline, a squeezed state sector, and,
above all, cadre racketeering) were all attributed to his deliberate erosion
of two leading economic mechanisms of socialism, namely, planning and
public ownership. The failures of Zhao's reforms, therefore, exposed him
both to policy criticisms and to charges of ideological deviation.

On a more personal level, Zhao's ideological persuasiveness was crucial
to sustaining his reform agenda because he lacked Deng's prestige and
power base. A weak ideological standing would mean the deprivation of a
powerful means of legitimation in an ideologically conscious political
party. Yet despite the throngs of intellectuals and theorists rallying for
him, Zhao's ideological standing was precarious in 1988. Earlier reforms
were partial accommodations to the capitalist mode of production, justifi-
able within the frame of "socialism with Chinese characteristics." But the
question in 1988 was of a different nature. It was no longer one of what
and how much of nonsocialist modes of production to introduce. Zhao's
attempts to bring about a full transition to the market and an overhaul of
state ownership entailed the abandonment of what was left of the socialist
components of the economy. Despite Zhao's efforts to devise a new the-
ory of socialism for China, neither the notion of the "primary stage of
socialism" nor that of "socialist commodity economy" was sufficient to
defend himself or his policies from charges of ideological deviation. In the
end, his ideological standing was branded as closer to that of "bourgeois
liberals" than to the Four Fundamental Principles (see table 2). Many
criticisms of established socialism made under Zhao were now seen as
attacks on socialism. The showdown over the direction of reform in mid-
1989--between radical and conservative reformers, on the one hand, and
the liberal intellectuals and the state, on the other--has once again shown
the centrality of the ideological question in Chinese politics. The essence
of the battle among these contending forces in and outside the party is
symbolized respectively in the "upholding," "development," and "nega-
tion" of Marxism. "Affirmers" and "negators," in opposite ways, have
both raised the question of the validity of Marxism as the source of truth
and rectitude, and as the basis of social development for China. While the
former insist on Marxism as the sole valid source, the latter oppose it.
"Developers," on the other hand, have taken the middle road of building
socialism with Chinese characteristics and the primary stage of socialism.
Except for the dramatic turn of events in mid-1989 and shortly after, the
developers' platform dominated the official forum and provided the basis
upon which to reappraise and rectify China's socialist path. Dodging chal-
lenges from the so-called Left and Right, it sought to accommodate
within socialism exogenous values and practices necessitated by or arising
out of reform. And it has represented a new approach to and understand-
ing of socialism.

This study is an investigation of the incremental reassessment and refor-
mulation of socialism in post-Mao China. It is also an analysis of how and
why these efforts became a focal point of political contention within the
party and a catalyst of bourgeois liberalization outside it. Finally, through
a comparison of the Chinese discourse with its Soviet counterpart in the
final chapter, the study offers an interpretation linking these discourses to
the divergent outcomes of reform and revolution in the two countries.

SOCIALISM AND REFORM

The Chinese reassessment of socialism is an important and yet little stud-
ied subject. The empirical aspect of the post-Mao reforms has attracted
much attention academically and journalistically. So has the recent demise
of socialism globally. But amid the attention, not to mention celebration,
important questions concerning how the elites and people of former and
reforming socialist countries themselves have thought about the idea and
track record of socialism, and the impact of this thinking on reforms, have
apparently been neglected. For example, if established socialism had failed
as a design of social order and model of development, how do members of
those countries think about what went wrong, and why? What remedies
should there be in the light of the diagnosed and perceived problems?
How have different political and social groups reacted to these questions?
And what has been the impact of their analyses on empirical changes and
the future?

The lack of appreciation for the connection between indigenous reas-
sessment of socialism and empirical reforms seems to have stemmed from
two latent assumptions. One is that the question of socialism is irrelevant
or that it does not genuinely exist. As noted by Arif Dirlik and Maurice
Meisner, "what is absent from much of the discussion on China today,
expert or nonexpert, is a sense of a problematic of Chinese socialism and
its historical context, which must provide a framework for all evaluations
of current developments in Chinese society." Instead, socialism is per-
ceived as irrelevant because it seems either an "ideological disguise" for a
national quest for "power and wealth" or a camouflage of factional poli-
tics. Or ideological concerns are supposedly superseded by a new "prag-
matism" or by uncontrollable bureaucratic and local interests. More
generally, socialism is simply assumed to have been abandoned.

Another underlying assumption, derived from earlier analyses of Com-
munist regimes, is that the cognitive function of Communist doctrine is
often negligible, at least less pertinent than its imperative function. That
is, the use of ideology as a normative guide is less important than its use as
a mechanism of social control. In the observation of one analyst, Commu-
nist doctrine in the hands of party leaders was "a means of influencing the
masses, a means of mobilizing classes and social strata for attaining aims
whose real meaning remains obscure to the masses." As such, it served as
the "most important linkage" in the system of control over the behavior
of individuals, groups, institutions, and society. Seen in this way, the con-
tent of ideology is significant only to the extent that it serves the purpose
of control. Therefore, "not only ideas, but also information on facts that
do not conform to communist ideology, are perverted or distorted, and
only that is passed on which does not contradict the Teaching." Since
the fundamental goal of the doctrine is to induce desired behavior and
minimize resistance to the system, ideology simply has the effect of "re-
placing terror as the chief buttress of the party's power." Thus viewed,
the cognitive function of Communist doctrine only serves its imperative
function: it is useful to the extent that it maintains social stability without
threatening those in power. Consequently, leaders and the masses alike
were all too ready and adept at renouncing Maoism for Dengism in accor-
dance with changed political circumstances.

In demonstrating the relevance of socialism in post-Mao political de-
velopment, several considerations are in order. The first is the ideological
premise of the post-Mao reforms. The starting point of the post-Mao re-
form leadership was not the abandonment of socialism but its rectifica-
tion. The change of leadership at the end of the Mao era was an intra-
generational rather than intergenerational transition. As veterans of the
Chinese Revolution, the leaders' ideological commitment must be em-
phasized because the Chinese Revolution was the result of conscious
struggle by indigenous groups. Moreover, the concern with political doc-
trine and ideological legacy is a peculiarly eminent feature of the Chinese
Communist party, as Tang Tsou has noted. No matter how socialism is
defined, it has remained meaningful to the Chinese leadership. To Chen
Yun, it may denote an economy based on central planning, public owner-
ship, and equitable distribution. To Hu Yaobang, it may denote a political
order devoted to the masses' interests and popular rule. And to Deng
Xiaoping, it may denote a path of development that will not make China
a dependency of strong powers. All these necessitated that socialism be
reoriented, rather than abandoned, for the purpose of reform. It is only by
appreciating this premise that one can comprehend the motives and con-
cerns of post-Mao reformers, their views of the system to be rectified, the
context of their choices and constraints, and the meaning and nature of
their break with the past.

The reappraisal of socialism is an important part of post-Mao develop-
ments not just because Chinese leaders made it a premise of their reform
program; it would be an important issue even in a reforming or former
socialist regime where socialism did not come about indigenously. For
serious analyses of what has gone wrong with the old system form a crucial
basis for finding appropriate remedies. That the post-Mao leadership pro-
ceeded from the premise of intrasystem reforms does not render such
analyses superficial, because the directions of reappraisal they permitted or
opposed reveal much about the nature of those analyses. Moreover, the
interplay between official and unofficial analyses, between intrasystem and
antisystem analyses, will shed light on such key issues as whether the
symptoms of past wrongs have been taken as the causes, whether the right
lessons have been learned, whether simple solutions have been sought,
and whether an enduring new order may be built on the repudiation of
the old. Those divergent analyses will offer insights into debates about
contending models of reform and why a particular model prevailed while
the others did not. In the Chinese case, the shaping of a reform model in
which economic changes preceded political ones deserves special atten-
tion in the light of the difficulty of Russia's model of political before eco-
nomic reforms.

The discrepancy between the practical goals of reform and the funda-
mental principles of socialism is necessarily a source of political conflict,
and an analysis of this discrepancy is necessary to a complete understand-
ing of post-Mao political developments. The drastic course of change in
post-Mao China has often led to the neglect of the facts that there have
been serious struggles over the nature and goals of reform and that a par-
ticular course of change has only occurred as an outcome of such strug-
gles. Moreover, these struggles and outcomes are by no means settled, as
has been demonstrated by the zigzag course of post-Mao politics. Integral
to those struggles has been a disagreement over the ideological direction
of policy change, which is characteristic of politicians of a revolutionary
movement. In his study of Soviet ideology from the beginning of bolshe-
vism to the height of Stalinism, Barrington Moore has observed several
kinds of elite resistance to change in the political doctrine of the revolu-
tionary movement. One is the tendency for various groups within the
movement to develop emotional attachments to its doctrine. Another is
the tendency for some leaders to take official doctrine seriously, as in the
case of N. I. Bukharin, so that compromising or adapting becomes very
difficult for them. Martin Seliger has also noted different responses of
politicians to ideological change: "Purists and diehards are normally both-
ered by dissonance between cherished and applied principles, and, in re-
turn, they worry the leadership with their rather articulate misgivings--
which at least part of the leadership may share but choose to ignore."
For true believers and emotional adherents, political conflict over policy
change has a fundamental value dimension. Insofar as reform threatens
certain features and goals of socialism, control over ideology influences
the reform agenda to be pursued.

The question is also more than that of the difficulty of some politicians
to part with cherished ideals. The convictions of veteran revolutionaries
are deeply rooted in history and in the issues that motivated their pursuit
of the Chinese Revolution in the first place. The qualms that these veteran
revolutionaries have felt over certain changes reflect a general Chinese
qualm, as Arif Dirlik notes, about joining the "capitalist stream of history"
and abandoning certain national goals embodied in the Chinese Revolu-
tion. Most of all, this qualm reflects concerns about national indepen-
dence and memories of semicolonialism and imperialism. In this context,
socialism becomes a source of conflict over the direction of reform be-
tween politicians who are able to compromise under political exigencies
and those who find it more difficult to do so. It is this content of leaders'
cherished beliefs, more than the force of their habitual attachments,
that has made elite conflicts impassioned and sustained. In this sense,
Dirlik has a point in objecting to the labeling of veteran leaders as "conser-
vatives."

The rethinking of the socialist system is also more than a function of
elite conflict and reform politics. The acceptance of socialism in modern
China was the corollary of the breakdown of traditional Confucianism and
disillusionment with Western liberalism in the early twentieth century.
Thus the rethinking of the socialist path of national development is an
object of contention not merely by policymakers, but also by the entire
nation. As Li Honglin, one of the leaders of the Chinese reappraisal, puts
it, the rethinking efforts of the post-Mao era date back more than a hun-
dred years to when China was first forced to realize the need to build a
strong, modern country. Or, as Joseph Fewsmith demonstrates, "al-
though the Dengist reforms represent a reaction against the Cultural
Revolution and the `leftist' traditions within the CCP, they also are forced
to confront the very dilemma that produced the communist movement
and revolution in the first place." Yet socialism is not a mere "ideological
disguise" for the quest for "wealth and power," because the Chinese con-
cern with it has involved fundamental questions of the type of modern
country to be built and the means of building it. The current rethinking,
therefore, has been a continuation of the historical search for the nation's
choice of guiding values, its path of modernization, and the desirable
form of society. In this broader context, the officially sponsored rethink-
ing of socialism has eventually evolved into unofficial challenges to the
very place of socialism as a source of value and a path of development
for China.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the so-called conservative
reformers associate the defense of socialism with patriotism, which was an
original goal of the Chinese Revolution. They equate certain reforms with
capitalism, against which the revolution was partly motivated. Most of all,
they see the wholesale acceptance of the Western-type economic and po-
litical system as "wholesale Westernization," which all reform movements
in modern China have tended to oppose. These designations are more
than mere polemic; they reflect both the genuine concern of these leaders
for certain social goals and the difficulty of China as a nation to deal with
Western civilization, including capitalism. To the extent that more re-
form-minded leaders have responded to such misgivings seriously and
sometimes sympathetically, those conservative sentiments indeed echo a
general Chinese concern with that part of national history and self-image
associated with the quest for socialism. In this context, the post-Mao re-
thinking, of whatever ideological leaning, has not been a mere rationale
for retreat from socialism. It must be seen as part of the effort to search for
China's own path of modernization on its "own terms."

The crisis of Marxism also contains an internal dynamic for the rethink-
ing of socialism. Changes abroad and pressures at home have raised ques-
tions about the sagacity of classic teachings. The opening to the outside
has intensified the realization of the gap between reality and doctrine.
College textbooks on the political economy of socialism have been up-
dated at least five times within the past decade. Classic teachings on capi-
talist political economy have posed greater difficulties: written by the
classic masters, they cannot be updated randomly. The strenuous efforts
of the political economy instructor to struggle through a class with a
doubting audience are a reflection of this deep dilemma. If the basic pre-
cepts of socialism are based on the critique of its historical predecessor
over a century ago, reality has cast many shadows on them. The loftiness
of socialist ideals has also lost much appeal, as popular fervor has been
exhausted by excessive ideologizing. As different groups have different
diagnoses and remedies for these problems, there inevitably are conflicts
over what to do about the crisis of faith.

In short, the elaborate efforts to reexamine socialism in the post-Mao
period and the persisting disagreements among major groups over the
nature and severity of the problems and their import for the direction of
socialism in China have demonstrated the important link between the re-
thinking of socialism and empirical reforms. They have also raised an array
of interesting questions about the relationship between socialism and
Chinese practice, between socialism and problems of the Chinese system,
and between rethinking and empirical reforms. An important objective
of this study is to elucidate the post-Mao rethinking as a response to
these questions.

Existing studies of post-Mao ideological developments have dealt
mostly with the first few years of Deng's ascendancy, when ideological
shifts were most dramatic. More recently a few works have assessed the
import of post-Mao reforms for Chinese socialism. The only work that
gives full attention to the question of socialism in the context of post-Mao
reforms is Marxism and the Chinese Experience, edited by Arif Dirlik and
Maurice Meisner. The authors address the meaning of the definition and
direction that Mao's successors have given to socialism from a metahis-
torical point of view. Meisner observes that the post-Mao course of de-
radicalization has reduced socialism to an "ideology of modernization."
Dirlik characterizes the post-Mao course of policy and ideology as "post-
socialism," in which capitalism is accommodated but socialism is retained
as a future option. However, because both are concerned with issues of
historical and theoretical import involving broad generalizations, they
tend to emphasize the "unsocialist" nature of post-Mao politics. In doing
so, they neglect the presence of divergent interpretations of socialism,
elite consensus on a basic socialist discourse, the hegemony of the norma-
tive and analytical framework of Marxism, and the accommodation of cap-
italist practices without full acceptance of the underlying values of capital-
ism. In short, a systematic study has yet to be made that will account for
these phenomena and look closely into the substance of the post-Mao
discourse on socialism.

THE REASSESSMENT OF SOCIALISM AND THE "RATIONALITY" MODEL

Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg have characterized three
major models in English-language studies of Chinese politics: the ration-
ality model, the power model, and the bureaucratic model. The first
model emphasizes the importance of policy preferences and value conflicts
in policy processes. The second stresses the role of personal and factional
power motives of participants in policy processes. The third underscores
the constraints of bureaucratic and local interests in policy processes. The
present study reflects a conceptual focus on the role of ideas and choices
in political change and thus falls into the "rationality" model. The under-
lying assumptions of this model about coherent groups in policy disputes,
different leaders' distinctive values and preferences, reasoned diagnoses
of problems and rational debates over perceived problems, the inner logic
and coherence of each viewpoint in a particular policy debate, and the
evaluation of choices are also the premises upon which this study is
built.

In this context, it is pertinent to consider the limitations of the other
two models, which dismiss the relevance of value conflicts and policy pref-
erences in Chinese politics. The power paradigm, deriving from factional
politics, views power politics and factional concerns as the primary basis
for elite conflicts in Chinese politics and depicts policy and ideological
disputes as a symbolic expression of factional alignment. The dismissal of
the substantive significance of value conflicts is problematic on several ac-
counts. The assumption that politics is a mere contest for power and
selfish quests is above all one-sided. It ignores the basic fact that politics is
often a struggle between different views of how society should be orga-
nized, resources distributed, and authority exercised. To deny the influ-
ence of values is also problematic epistemologically, for this fails to recog-
nize politicians' need for affective and analytical categories. Individuals,
not least of all politicians, rely on these tools to "make sense of complex
social and political reality." And in a long-established socialist regime,
Marxism-Leninism alone furnishes leaders with a conceptual framework
for organizing their understanding of the world. Even a cynical observer
of Soviet ideology concedes that there is a basic Marxist component in the
operative ideology of Soviet politicians, which is no other than their co-
herent vision of the world in Marxist perspectives and categories. The
same is true of Chinese revolutionary leaders. Some key Marxist notions,
such as the central role of material conditions in determining the forms of
superstructure, the paradigm of the forces of production versus social rela-
tions of production, and the relationship between base and superstruc-
ture, have influenced the basic way of thinking of the Chinese leader-
ship--reformers and conservatives.

On the empirical side, factionalism cannot satisfactorily explain the
conflict between the radical and conservative reformers in post-Mao
China. Zhao Ziyang is known to be wary of cultivating factions and
guanxi (interpersonal connections), and Chen Yun is reputedly not keen
on such dealings. The assumption about the reducibility of power mo-
tives is not only ill-founded but may itself be culturally biased, as it seems
to be based on one's observation of political behavior in one's own cul-
tural context. Not surprisingly, leading Chinese participants and observers
of post-Mao politics almost uniformly agree that power struggles and fac-
tionalism among Chinese elites often originate from ideological cleavages
rather than the other way around. Group clingings develop because of
shared perspectives, and interpersonal animosity accumulates because of
divergent outlooks. Deng Liqun may be the only leader who can clearly
be said to cultivate his personal political circle (conservative theoreticians
and literary figures under the CDP and the Secretariat of the Central
Committee) and pursue personal ambitions under an ideological band-
wagon. But even here, ideological affinity is the essential denominator.

The bureaucratic paradigm, deriving from bureaucratic politics and
policy implementation, points to the constraints of bureaucratic and local
interests that can overshadow value conflicts or policy preferences of the
center. Several factors weigh against this argument. The center initi-
ates and engineers reforms, while the bureaucracy can only adapt or dis-
tort them. The center determines the overall policy direction and makes
concentrated policy efforts while local efforts and influences are frag-
mented and unsystematic. The center also has the power and capacity to
react to the problems in policy implementation. In short, "a strong and
skillful leadership" can overcome bureaucratic impediments to reform.
Finally, the size and scope of changes in post-Mao China have demon-
strated the dominant role of the central leadership. Although policies
that are technical in nature (for example, energy or the Three Gorges
Dam) do not lend themselves to ideological disputes, broad policies that
affect how society will be organized, resources distributed, and authority
exercised certainly do.

In addition to these models, the cultural analysis also plays down ideo-
logical issues by asserting a Chinese capacity for pragmatism and inability
to hold strong beliefs. In this depiction, the Chinese tend to abandon
past commitments unemotionally and swing in any direction with little
psychological constraints. Since leaders and masses feel free to accept all
manners of change with no capacity to appreciate "cognitive dissonance,"
there are no such things as "inertia, friction, or tension" in the post-Mao
reform process. Such cultural traits make ideological transition smooth
and fuel pragmatic politics. This thesis ignores many problems that have
been constant concerns of the post-Mao leadership, such as "public dis-
illusionment," "faith crisis," and "conservative inertia." Efforts to con-
duct the "emancipation of the mind," "conceptual adaptation," or "cul-
tural transformation" have marked important phases of the Chinese
reform process. Different social groups, generations, and regions have
also reacted differently to change. The assumption of a nation of "prag-
matic" leaders and followers cannot explain the protracted ideological
battles in Chinese politics. It also obscures much of the fire and passion
that has fueled post-Mao political developments.

In pointing out the limitations of these various models, however, I do
not pretend that my approach is superior or that the factors emphasized in
the other models do not matter. Rather, my focus on ideas is intended to
offer a unique viewpoint from which to observe what may be obscured in
other analytical perspectives. In so doing, I seek to demonstrate that the
ideological factor cannot be excluded in any fruitful discussion of post-
Mao politics. This focus is also of great utility in the Chinese case because,
as one student of East Asian regimes notes, "the plausibility of ideological
arguments for policy choice increases with the degree of autonomy of
political elites from societal or international constraints . . . when political
elites are autonomous, their ideological visions and `projects' weigh more
heavily on the course of policy." At the very least, ideology should not
be dismissed without a serious investigation. It is ironic that while West-
ern analyses of Chinese politics tend to dismiss ideological arguments as
naive and simplistic, leading Chinese analysts tend to use the same labels
to describe arguments that emphasize power motives, bureaucratic inter-
ests, and factionalism.

Several reasons underlie this study's conceptual focus on value conflicts
and policy preferences. First, because the old Chinese system was based on
a set of explicitly articulated ideas, its reassessment offers a mirror into the
motivating force and the nature of reforms being undertaken. As one
scholar notes, change of ideology is the decisive criterion for determining
the degree of empirical change under way. If ideology is constrained by
considerations that run counter to its basic principles and yet undergoes
little substantive change, then there is no fundamental change in the
basis of the system. In this sense, ideological change is a measure of the
flexibility or limitation of change for the system as a whole.

Second, a significant portion of post-Mao politics has involved ideolog-
ical disputes. Although these disputes stemmed initially from power strug-
gles over post-Mao succession, subsequent contentions between conser-
vative and radical reformers have focused on issues of a fundamental value
dimension, such as the priority of development versus upholding of Marx-
ism, the scope of the plan versus the market, public versus nonpublic
ownership, and collectivism versus "individualism" (geren zhuyi). The
misgivings of conservative reformers over nonsocialist reform measures
can be attributed largely to their preference for planned and regulated
development, much as the propensity of radical reformers for a greater
market can be ascribed to their preference for growth-geared develop-
ment. If leaders make a difference on the type of reform, the "source of
their reform ideas and determination are a crucial variable in explaining
the nature of their reform program." At the least, the zigzag course of
Chinese politics during the past decade, as Schram notes, "must be ex-
plained in substantial part by the interplay of influence and ideas within
the leadership."

The role of official doctrine in political change also acquires special sig-
nificance because of the "consummatory" nature of the Chinese system, a
system that integrates all spheres of life under a common rectitude upheld
by a central authority. According to modernization theorists, a consum-
matory system is likely to resist all change (change in one sphere is threat-
ening because it affects everything else), or when it changes, it changes
totally and rapidly. It may thus either break down or reappear in revolu-
tionary forms. Post-Mao reforms have posed the second major challenge
to the "consummatory" nature of the Chinese state in modern history.
The first occurred more than a century ago when the traditional Confu-
cian state came into confrontation with the European civilization. Its
response to the challenge of change was typical of a "consummatory"
system: "It sought to reaffirm or restore the old Confucian system rather
than to modernize it. The Chinese Restorationists' ideal society was one
of static harmony among all closely integrated values, not of dynamic,
segmented growth. After its failure and the deposition of the emperor,
the political system decayed into praetorianism. Lacking the traditional
ideology and ceremonial sanctions of the Son of Heaven, and not having
developed modern sanctions, the successors of the Chinese empire had to
rely increasingly on military force." The initial resistance resulted in
decay: As the Qing court failed to reform, the traditional order disinte-
grated into the chaos of warlord politics. This led eventually to the rejec-
tion of the Confucian order in the May Fourth Movement and its total
replacement by a new "consummatory" system. "The inability to engage
in instrumental, syncretic change leads to resistance and often to break-
down. It can also lead to radical, drastic change, as it did in China . . . ,
and to the establishment of a new consummatory system." In post-Mao
China, however, the so-called consummatory system has avoided total
change or breakdown. This has been possible, arguably, because political
leaders have made conscious efforts to adjust it incrementally. In some
areas this system has been accommodating to change, while in other areas
it remains inflexible. This interesting fact must necessarily be an important
part of the post-Mao reform course that we need to understand.

The role of ideology in political change is particularly interesting when
the outcome of reform in China is contrasted with that in other Soviet-
type regimes, especially the former Soviet Union. What is the role of a
doctrinal reassessment in the reformism of China and the revolution of
the former Soviet Union? What is its role in the maintenance of the Chi-
nese system and the demise of the others? Finally, what is its role in the
successful economic transition of China and the strenuous transition of
Russia? Ideology is relevant here because, as one scholar points out, "the
Soviet Union's recent experience with `de-ideologization' of political de-
bates and the concurrent meltdown of its central political institutions have
pointed to the potential cause-effect relationship between these two phe-
nomena and the centrality of ideology to a system of this kind." In the
Chinese case, guided ideological change has served to sustain an ideologi-
cal hegemony, which has in turn contributed to political and social stabil-
ity. Systemic maintenance and stability, finally, have contributed to a
smoother economic transformation.

The central importance that the Chinese generally and historically at-
tach to the role of thinking on political action also lends justification the
conceptual focus of this study. This has been due to the Confucian exalta-
tion of doctrine, the related cultural emphasis on the primacy of ideas,
the CCP tradition of the command of correct ideas, and the legacy of
Mao. Other factors include the effects of long-time ideologization, the
integration of moral and political authority in the state, and the political
and cultural need for moral guidance. In particular, cultural tradition en-
tails that ideas play a more important role in Chinese politics than in other
Communist societies. Even the reputed pragmatist Deng Xiaoping de-
clared at the outset of post-Mao reforms that the "emancipation of the
mind" was a precondition for reform. The underlying assumption, ironi-
cally, was that the very need to deradicalize ideology demanded that ideol-
ogy itself be called upon to justify it. Equally ironically, the frequent com-
plaint of Chinese reformers and intellectuals about "rule by ideology" has
also led them to emphasize the priority of conceptual change. Thus they
see the lack of a conceptual revolution among the conservative forces as
the main obstacle to reform. As Renmin ribao remarked in 1987, "Struc-
tural reform has met with a variety of unanticipated difficulties from the
very beginning. Here, the fundamental barriers did not lie in the design of
reform programs, the choice of reform strategy, or the implementation of
policy. Rather, these barriers stemmed from ideological confusion, out-
dated concepts, and one-sided thinking, and most of all, the lack of clear
theoretical guidance." In this context the rethinking of socialism be-
came an opportunity to cast old faith that amounted to, as CASS Vice
President Zhao Fusan put it, an attitudinal revolution to provide a basis
for empirical reform. Or as Su Shaozhi, director of the CASS Institute of
Marxism, stated, when China's Marxist intellectuals reconsidered the mis-
takes that had been made during the Cultural Revolution, they realized
the importance of the "requisite of independence of thought" to chal-
lenge party doctrines and decisions.

Finally, the Chinese concern for ideological and conceptual adaptation
is related to the national search for identity and resurrection that has faced
the nation since its confrontation with the West in the last century. Not
incidentally, the reconception of socialism is frequently linked with the
question of "cultural reconstruction"--the reconstruction of Chinese cul-
tural values--in academic and political discussions. Such concerns lend
further support to a basic assumption of this study: that both the Chinese
elite and the public have taken the rethinking of socialism seriously. If we
see little concern with such larger questions in other culturally Confucian
countries, it is perhaps because China remains a "consummatory" system
and the cradle of the Confucian civilization upon which the burden of
history is more keenly felt. It is little wonder that China is the only Confu-
cian society that inherited the traditional "consummatory" system in rev-
olutionary forms and is now faced with the task of reappraisal.

A few words are in order about why we should take the Chinese dis-
course seriously. There seems no better way to justify this than quoting
Tsou: "an outside observer must take seriously the ideas, viewpoints, per-
ceptions and pronouncements of the participants whose actions he is
studying." Failure to do so entails at least two pitfalls. One is to dismiss
those statements on no grounds. Another is to make analysis on the basis
of limited facts. One assertion that resulted from such approaches is that
the Chinese are incapable of undertaking the critical examination of the
past that is necessary for true learning and soul searching and therefore
do not confront the deeper question of what caused the past failures of
which they complain so much--were they due to personal failings, politi-
cal culture, or Chinese Marxism? By presenting what the Chinese have
actually said, my study will offer an overwhelming body of evidence to
the contrary.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND SOURCES

The nature of this work as a comprehensive and systematic study of post-
Mao rethinking on socialism makes its interpretative framework inher-
ently complex. On one level, the study deals with controversies over the
meaning and relevance of socialism as part and parcel of the reform policy-
making process, especially elite conflicts over policies. On another level, it
traces debates as part of a genuine intellectual effort to come to grip with
basic issues of China's social and economic development. Intertwining
the two levels is the question of the relationship between them. On the
one hand, the two levels are closely related because the political context
sets a policy agenda and the boundaries of intellectual discourse even
while many intellectuals contribute to debates in support of particular pol-
icies and leaders as individuals or through institutional or informal ties to
the official strata. On the other hand, intellectuals and other social critics
do have their independent agenda and pursue independent analyses even
while they elicit official responses that form part of the discourse at the
political level. Out of this web of relationship emerge two additional sets
of conflict: that among political elites within the state and that between
the state and society. This study sets out to examine both levels of post-
Mao rethinking while attempting to clarify the interactions and conflicts
among them.

The scope of the work as a study of both political development and
political theory also makes its organizational framework rather complex. I
have chosen a chronological ordering of empirical processes in a given
period, followed by a thematic ordering of theoretical developments in
that period. The chronology is intended to lay out the political and intel-
lectual context in which debates and issues have arisen, while the thematic
discussion is to explicate their substance and theoretical import. Thus
chapter 2 deals with the process and the content of the repudiation of
Mao's legacy in 1976-1980. Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, discuss the
politics and the content of reappraising the socialist economy from 1978
to 1992. In the same order, chapters 5 and 6 examine the rethinking of
the socialist political system from 1978 and 1992. Chapter 7 analyzes the
process and content of the rethinking on Marxism as a theory and on
socialism as a model of development. Chapter 8 looks at official responses
to discussions outside the officially sanctioned framework of political and
intellectual discourse.

The discussion of the Chinese rethinking ends with a comparison of the
Chinese discourse with its Soviet counterpart under Gorbachev. This
comparison will serve three useful purposes: to shed sharper light on the
characteristics of the Chinese discourse; to illuminate the function and
impact of ideological rethinking in reforming socialist societies by linking
the discourse of the two cases to their divergent outcomes of reform and
revolution; and, finally, to elucidate certain generic problems of theory
and practice in socialist movements. This comparison will also help to fill
a void in the literature. The former Soviet Union provides an ideal case
for comparison because both regimes came to power through a hard-won
indigenous revolution and both undertook serious reappraisals of social-
ism during their recent reform courses. The dramatic turn of events in
China in mid-1989 and in the Soviet Union in late 1991 prompts one to
ask why the socialist ethos survived in the former but not the latter, and
what role ideological reorientation played in these divergent outcomes.
These questions are discussed in chapter 9. The study concludes with a
discussion of the implications of the Chinese reassessment for China's so-
cialist experience and the future.

The study draws data from a wide range of primary sources. It makes
use of official, quasi-official, and unofficial sources; national and local
presses; journalistic, academic, and interview sources. Dramatic develop-
ments in China over the past decade, such as the relaxation of control on
publication, the decentralization and multiplication of publishing facili-
ties, the flourishing of journalistic and academic publications, the auton-
omy of special economic zones, the rise of the profit ethic, and the exile of
leading dissidents, have all contributed to greater access to primary
sources that reflect a wide spectrum of opinion and information.

Official sources include both openly and internally circulated materials
from party plenums, congresses, government conventions, central work
conferences, special plenary sessions, ministerial meetings, and other offi-
cial forums. Quasi-official sources include elite statements on informal oc-
casions and analyses of official materials by party theoreticians, especially
those published by the Central Party School, Hongqi, and the People's
Publishing House, all of which provide useful elaboration and contextual
information. Also useful are the publications backed by different wings of
political leadership, such as the reformer-backed Shijie jingji daobao,
which was closed down after mid-1989.

Materials and views of unofficial capacity are mostly found in local and
academic publications. For example, Jingji yanjiu first published Su
Shaozhi's analysis of "undeveloped socialism" and later many discussions
and debates on economic reform. Publications along the southern coast
face little central control. Guangzhou yuekan, for instance, published
many provocative articles by liberal intellectuals in the late 1980s. Institu-
tionally and independently based journals have also expressed more inde-
pendent voices: Chunqiu Publishing House, for example, published a
series of books on political reform in the 1980s. Jingjixue zhoubao was
edited by Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, both imprisoned after June 4.
Finally, the Tiananmen crackdown has made it possible to interview lead-
ing government advisers, reform theorists, and liberal intellectuals now in
exile in the West.