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ShareIf the history of the Tiananmen Square movement of 1989 is represented as a jigsaw puzzle, one important piece -- detailing the inner workings of the Communist Party's decision-making process and responses to the crisis -- was missing from the picture until The Tiananmen Papers was published in 2001.
The sensational book was based on hundreds of top-secret official documents, obtained by a reformist-minded compiler (identified pseudonymously as Zhang Liang). The explosive documents revealed how close the Chinese regime was to collapse in 1989, and how deep the split in the Communist Party ran.
In a telephone interview to DNA's Venkatesan Vembu, the book's co-editor, Andrew J Nathan, professor of political science at Columbia University and a specialist in Chinese politics and foreign policy, explains the historical significance of the book. Excerpts:
What is the historical legacy of The Tiananmen Papers?
The book did not have any political impact on the regime. The compiler ('Zhang Liang') had hoped for that and I myself had anticipated it would shake up the regime. But that didn't happen. (The regime) was successful in bottling it up so the news did not get around in China. But the book is one of several elements that have contributed to keeping the memory of the Tiananmen Square movement from being wiped out. It's a record that has to be addressed sooner or later by the regime.
What did the book tell us about the Chinese government and the Communist Party that we didn't know?
The most important thing we learnt was how deep the division in the top leadership of the Communist Party was at the time. We also learnt a lot of details about how the party-state system works, the flow of intelligence, the responsiveness of the ministries, the way the high-level officials put their heads together to pool their information. We saw how the system functions.
What significance does it hold 20 years after Tiananmen? Is it the same Communist Party today or has it evolved over time?
It is in some ways the same Communist Party and in other ways it's different. The difference is this: after the division in 1989 almost caused the collapse of the regime, the leadership has never allowed itself to be that divided. They have stayed very unified, they have avoided another such crisis, they have tried to keep control over corruption, they have prevented inflation and economic slowdowns, they have been very proactive in running ahead of any crises that might emerge. I call it 'resilient authoritarianism'. In that sense, they have pulled themselves together and it's not the same party.
But it is the same party in the sense that it is still a one-party authoritarian system that does not allow dialogue with society. When Zhao Ziyang (the then reformist-minded party general secretary, who refused to participate in the crackdown and was later purged) wanted to allow a dialogue with the protesting students, the party didn't allow it. Even today, they don't allow any social forces to emerge. They allow a quasi-civil society to emerge so long as the party controls it. And so it's still an authoritarian system.
So, the basic weakness that was revealed by Tiananmen is still built into the system: that whenever it does hit a crisis of one kind or another -- whether it is economic or corruption or something else -- and since it does not allow channels of dialogue with society, it can easily lose pubic support quickly.
That's the difference between a Chinese system and a democratic system like the US or Japan or India, where the government may at times perform extremely badly. Our government in the US performed extremely badly in recent years, but it didn't face a public uprising because it is a democracy. And you can change the government if you want to, and we have.
Post-1989, how was unity in the Communist Party achieved? Did it, for instance, silence dissent or manufacture consensus?
I think they feel that they have to stick together on political matters as otherwise, if they show any kind of weakness or division, their 'enemies' will overthrow them. Part of the reason how they can stick together so much is that they have learnt the lesson of Tiananmen, which is that if you don't stick together it's going to cause political instability. But they also stick together by constantly consulting among themselves, which (current president) Hu Jintao is good at. They have also stuck together by agreeing that each person will do his job. There's division of labour and they don't interfere in one another's work. They have worked out a system that functions very effectively for the time being, and they are doing many good things. But the system is vulnerable to disruption by a crisis or a power struggle.
Do you think it is a historical inevitability that the Communist Party will some day reverse its verdict that the student movement of 1989 was a 'counter-revolutionary riot'? What will trigger a reappraisal? Will it be the passing away of Li Peng (the then premier, who pushed for a hard line against the protesting students) and Jiang Zemin (who replaced Zhao Ziyang as party general secretary)?
As a historian, I don't believe in historical inevitability because all kinds of surprising things happen. But I do think that the question of Tiananmen has to be addressed sooner or later by the party. And, yes, as long as Jiang Zemin and Li Peng are alive, that's one of the obstacles to it, since the party leaders don't want to embarrass the senior leaders.
