Part Two: Dai Qing on the behind-the-scenes tensions leading up to the Tiananmen Incident and her thoughts on the “’89 Student Movement”.

By Chen Xiaoping | Voice of America (VOA) | English translation by Probe International

September 14, 2024

Iconic investigative reporter Dai Qing offers fresh insights into the Party’s internal struggles in an exclusive interview with Voice of America.

New York — Chinese investigative journalist and renowned author Dai Qing recently released a revised edition of her book Deng Xiaoping in 1989 in New York, drawing on her own experiences, interviews, and research. In an exclusive interview with Voice of America’s ‘In-Depth Perspective,’ her first media appearance in years, Dai shared her belief that in the early
spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stood at a crossroads, with two heritages to choose from: one rooted in Soviet-Comintern ideology, and another, passed down through Taiwan, that drew on China’s millennia-old cultural heritage.

According to Dai, had Deng Xiaoping followed the latter path and gradually implemented reforms, China could have aligned
with the world. Deng, however, considered political reform, but that effort came to an abrupt end following the Tiananmen Square Incident.

Could CCP Reforms Have Paved the Way for China to Integrate with the World?

Dai Qing remains optimistic about Deng Xiaoping’s intentions before the Tiananmen Square Incident. She believes Deng was contemplating “substantial reforms” and that he might have been able to “use autocratic means to bring an end to autocracy, marking the beginning of a new system.” This judgment, she explained, comes from what Wang Feng and Li Rui had revealed—Deng was possibly considering removing the Four Persistence Principles from China’s constitution. In Deng Xiaoping in 1989, Dai wrote that “Red China was inching closer to the world thanks to the party’s awakening.”

In the early months of 1989, before Hu Yaobang’s death, Dai explained, the political landscape of China was shaped by the “Deng-Hu-Zhao” system. If social stability had been maintained and incremental progress continued, she believed China still had a chance. She described how the CCP had two “traditions” it could follow: one from the Soviet-Comintern line, and the other from China’s millennia-old culture—passed down through the Kuomintang, Beiyang government, and Taiwan. Dai suggested that if China had embraced Taiwan’s tradition and made gradual reforms, “millimeter by millimeter,” it could have integrated with the world. But, as she put it, “China became what it is today.”

During the interview, Dai also touched on Deng Xiaoping’s view that China’s biggest danger wasn’t liberalization, but leftist tendencies. (Note: Deng’s original words were, “China should be alert against the right, but the main concern is preventing ‘the left.’”) Dai said Deng’s wish before dying was to see China evolve gradually into something more like Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Not everyone shares Dai Qing’s hopeful take on Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Chen Xiaoya, a former associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and author of The 1989 Democracy Movement, criticized Dai for being overly forgiving of Deng’s political maneuvers, accusing her of showering Deng with “constant praise, almost to the point of admiration.” In his
preface to Deng Xiaoping in 1989, Professor Wu Guoguang questioned the feasibility of Dai’s “millimeter progress” approach, arguing that such gradual reform would “inevitably hit the CCP’s bottom line and be forced to stop.” Meanwhile, political scholar Liu Junning and economist Xu Chenggang both asserted that reform within a totalitarian communist state was an
impossible mission, with Xu highlighting that the success rate for transitions in such regimes stands at zero.

Dai acknowledged that while gradual change under the CCP may seem possible, blind optimism is dangerous. She cited the example of a group of people who, before the 18th Party Congress, wrote to Xi Jinping, hoping he would follow his father Xi Zhongxun’s footsteps and push for reform and opening up—something she considered a sign of naive optimism.

Deng Xiaoping: Mao’s Favored Disciple, Not His Loyal Servant

In his memoir Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang, Zhao Ziyang noted that Deng Xiaoping’s concept of reform was “primarily administrative.” Wu Wei, who was involved in discussions on CCP political reform, observed that Deng’s speech on “Reforming the Leadership System of the Party and the State,” delivered during an expanded Politburo meeting in August 1980, reflected “a profound understanding of democracy.” Yet by 1986, Deng’s political reform goals had shifted from addressing power centralization to simply reforming the administration.

In her interview with the ‘In-Depth Perspective’ program of VOA, Dai argued that many misinterpret Deng’s reforms by isolating one of his contradictory decisions as his true stance. She emphasized that Deng was Mao Zedong’s devoted disciple, not merely his loyal servant—meaning Deng adopted many of Mao’s ideas, including the belief that “the Communist Party must have the final say.” Dai remarked, “What Deng hated most was the idea of dividing power—especially the power of the Communist Party.”

Did Tiananmen Square Incident End Deng’s Reforms?

Dai believes the Tiananmen Square massacre marked the end of Deng Xiaoping’s limited reforms and his prolonged power struggle against Chen Yun’s vision of a planned socialist economy. In the end, Chen Yun won, effectively terminating Deng’s reform agenda. Dai also noted a fundamental difference between Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, despite the fact that Deng fully supported Zhao. Using Max Weber’s concepts of the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of conviction, Dai explained that Deng believed in the ethics of responsibility—he felt responsible for ensuring that the people could live stable, prosperous lives. He genuinely liked Zhao Ziyang and hoped Zhao would carry out his policies. However, Zhao followed the ethics of conviction, believing that people’s freedom of thought was just as important as their material well-being. This is why Zhao insisted that the protesting students be allowed to express themselves and opposed deploying the military to confront civilians. Dai said that deep down, Deng and Zhao were fundamentally different in their ethical beliefs, and this was the root of their conflict.

Tiananmen Incident is often referred to as a “patriotic democratic movement,” but Dai argued in Deng Xiaoping in 1989 that it wasn’t a democratic movement, but rather the greatest tragedy in China’s modernization process. Fifteen years ago, Dai first expressed this view during a discussion forum. Dai is not the first intellectual involved in Tiananmen Incident discussion to challenge its nature as a democratic movement. Writer Su Xiaokang, for instance, viewed it as a failed civil protest.

In the West, former University of Chicago sociology professor Zhao Dingxin—now teaching at Zhejiang University in China published The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement in 2001, which has since been recognized as one of the most significant studies of Tiananmen by Western scholars. Jeremy Brown, a Canadian social historian and author of June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989, told VOA that Zhao Dingxin “explained very well how the student movement began and where it went wrong. Of course, the students made many mistakes—it wasn’t a flawless movement.”

Zhao Dingxin referred to the protests as the “’89 Student Movement” and defined them as “a large-scale social movement that erupted within an authoritarian regime.” He added, “The students challenged the state by demanding political reform, which can be seen as a failed revolution.”

Dai argued that while there’s no dispute over the term “patriotic,” the label “democratic movement” deserves scrutiny. In her view, a true democratic movement must grow in a society that is constantly evolving, with mature individuals, economic systems, and cultural foundations.

A democratic movement requires both organization and a forward-moving agenda, but in 1989, China only had remnants of Leninist class struggle and Mao Zedong’s belief in the supremacy of conflict. Dai believes that Hu Yaobang’s ousting marked the beginning of the end for CCP reform, and Zhao Ziyang’s downfall signaled its ultimate demise. Deng Xiaoping’s dream of
turning China into something akin to Hong Kong and Taiwan ended in failure. Since then, from Jiang Zemin to Xi Jinping, China has reverted to the old path of autocracy—the only real difference being how today’s vested interests profit from the system.

For the original Chinese-language version of this article, see the publisher’s website here.

For the English-language translation of Part One in this conversation, see here.