This chapter covers the eve of the 1989 Spring Democracy Movement. In late 1987, party chief Zhao Ziyang at the Thirteenth Party Congress announced that China was still in the “primary stage of socialism” and urged the party-state bureaucracy to be more tolerant of economic and social practices that were conventionally regarded as nonsocialist. The theory of the “primary stage of socialism” was used to justify the economic reforms that had introduced many semicapitalist methods into China's economy. In the counterelite's interpretation, Zhao's announcement was a shy admission of the impracticability of socialism in China. In the relaxed political climate following this announcement, the counterelite began openly debating the best way to end communism in China, which resulted in two competing programs: “enlightened despotism” and “liberal democracy.”

Background:

the political implications of the Dengist economic reforms

As I pointed out earlier, when I discussed the dual-traffic policy of “anti-Left in economics and anti-Right in politics,” the core of the Dengist reform program was economic restructuring aiming5at productivity and efficiency. In this regard, the reforms were based on a simple principle: Any economic methods were acceptable as long as “socialist public ownership” was maintained. With this base line, the Dengist leadership allowed a variety of market mechanisms and capitalist entrepreneurship to operate.