With the nation's socialist dreams falling apart, the big question is what next.
The grand parade of China’s 60th anniversary (1949-2009) was for an intended audience: its very own. Though China has sealed its place on the global map, yet at home, the once invincible Communist Party seemed to be faltering and using this occasion to showcase its achievements to its increasingly recalcitrant citizens. Unusually this time, anniversary preparations had been marked by a sense of insecurity and paranoia with a high security presence at Tiananmen Square. Ironically, in the celebration of the People’s Republic, the people were the suspects.
The last few weeks have been volatile in Beijing, marked by a bizarre incident in which an unemployed migrant stabbed bystanders and, more recently, an explosion in a central Beijing restaurant. Tiananmen Square had become a virtual fortress as China geared up for its first military parade since 1999. Obviously, the Party was feeling the heat of discontent and, in a reversal of sorts, the message of the celebrations was more for domestic and less for foreign consumption.
Nevertheless, China’s spirited celebration was a vindication of its long journey and, indeed, its dramatic rise from being a feeble developing nation to one of the leading economic, political and diplomatic players in the world. China has grown, both in terms of economy and international stature. This would not have been possible, but for the sacrifice, resilience and remarkable fortitude of its people—who suffered, endured as also made unimaginable material progress under a socialist regime.
The achievements of the past 60 years have been momentous, but is China now at a critical juncture in history?
China observers often discuss, informally, that every cycle of 10 years brings either an upheaval, or a defining historic moment to the country. By way of understanding, this can be interpreted in many ways, good or bad. The last half-a-century has been both unpredictable and eventful. If one goes back into the annals of recent history, the unmistakable moment in the 1940’s was China’s red revolution: of Mao’s lead over the peasantry to successfully command the first “People’s Democratic Revolution” with the peasantry as the lead proletariat. This fundamental premise questioned and turned the orthodox Marxist formulation on its head. The 1950’s was marked by a disastrous famine when millions perished, a fact sheathed and cloaked in an authoritarian system, which, economist Amartya Sen so famously argued, would not have occurred in a democracy. The next decade, the 1960’s, saw the nation sliding into strife and chaos as Mao began an ill-fated attempt at “Continuous Revolution” by launching the Cultural Revolution in 1966, which lasted a decade.
And then came the most defining moment in the nation’s recent economic history in 1978 as China, under the tutelage of Deng Xiaoping, discredited in practice, if not in theory, Maoist fundamentals and embraced the market. The 1980’s was marred by bloodbath in 1989—the Tiananmen Square massacre—which captured, in many ways, the anxieties of a nation in transition. The 1990’s saw an eventful consolidation of China, with Hong Kong and Macau returning to its fold, as well as a transition to the fourth-generation leadership with Hu Jintao at the helm. And, this decade saw China symbolically asserting its resurgence by confidently and successfully staging the Olympics.
What will the next decade herald?
The answer lies somewhere in the magnitude of transformation that China is undergoing. China has been in a state of flux, but seasoned sinologist Joseph Fewsmith captured the essence of it all by saying: “A lot has changed, (and yet) nothing has changed.” In terms of fundamental change, the socialist dream has fallen apart. The revolutionaries are dead and so is the revolution. Gone are the vestiges of the egalitarian socialist order, in spite of China’s claims to “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.
But in terms of living standards, China has witnessed what most of us know already: galloping economic growth, steadily improving material standards and better quality of life. China’s urbanisation and infrastructure development have also proceeded furiously. Though there is a debate over the erosion of socio-economic indicators and the gap between the rich and the poor since reforms, China is way ahead compared to India.
The Chinese social landscape has changed. Gone are the dreary Mao suits that dressed all its people homogeneously, and the rigid and tight social control that characterised the Chinese society. Spartan living, which socialist songs extolled, has faded into oblivion and the inglorious “ration tickets”, which controlled access to necessities, are now a faint memory. It is the clime and time of a free market, where consumption and the consumer are ruling the roost. Media is booming in terms of numbers, Internet and phone users have grown phenomenally, and even eight opposition parties have raised their heads.
There is no doubt China has proved that state-led and state-directed growth can ensure material progress. But if the Party must take credit for the achievements, it must also take cognizance of the implications and the peculiar predicament that it has got itself in. Both the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) are simmering with discontent despite half-a-century of Chinese control. The growing unrest in the countryside due to the ever-widening disparities and inequities between the rich and the poor, rural and urban and between provinces is against everything that the revolution and socialism promised to do away with. By some standards, the rich-poor disparity in China dwarfs India’s infamous inequities.
The recent turn of events are proving that there is only that much that the Party can control. On the eve of the anniversary, the Party was compelled to issue a White Paper on Ethnic Policy, promise a “sunshine law” that will open up the Party to scrutiny and rejig socialism in order to have a “people-centric growth”.
For the Communist Party, the challenges as well as its own destiny vest in its own people if it must continue to have the legitimacy to govern. Coming decades, no doubt, will have some answers, and the answers could be the defining events of those decades.
(Anurag Viswanath is a visiting fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. The views expressed are his own.)
