Bold Yet Frustrated in China : As Country Struggles, It Finds Revolution, Reform Don’t Mix By

“It doesn’t pay to speak,” the dissident journalist Wang Ruoshui said to me in Beijing, “and also, to have spoken proves of no use.” Yet he has been speaking out. Like other intellectuals, Wang, a protege of ousted Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang who died Saturday, is at once bold and deeply frustrated.

Overall, the mood in China is mixed. There is an appreciation of the benefits of the 1980s reforms, in rural areas especially where farmers’ incomes have risen fourfold in a decade, but a lack of clear agreement on the next steps. Living standards and expectations are rising, yet there is pessimism about the political system. There is now a surge of sympathy for Hu, the boldest reform leader, but it comes three years too late to salvage his role in China’s struggle to modernize.

This ambiguity has two causes. Modernization--in any country--is a deceptive beast that changes its skin as the seasons pass. And China is ruled by a Communist regime that, in economic affairs, wishes it wasn’t one.

Leaders who still cling to shreds of orthodoxy, like Premier Li Peng, say paternalistic things that clash with the logic of economic policy, of which party chief Zhao Ziyang has been a bold champion (“Without reform, China will lose the right to exist on the globe.”) Meanwhile, senior leader Deng Xiaoping sits enigmatically on the mountaintop, watching his younger tigers jostle below.

Some recent policy innovations are intriguing. A start is being made to turn urban housing into a commodity, instead of a highly subsidized, state-owned virtual freebie. And in the land where Mao made a revolution, shareholding is back.

The worrisome thing is that few innovations are carried through. A regional airline arises to give the state company, CAAC, a taste of competition--but it remains so hamstrung that CAAC is not challenged. Small business is encouraged to provide needed services and lower unemployment, but the small is forbidden to grow into the large. Shareholding is designed to give workers incentive to excel, but workers are not permitted to sell their shares until they retire or leave the plant.

Li Peng’s blunt speech at the recent parliament session showed he is putting reform under such pressure that it is in danger of remaining a token. As a token it can’t produce great results. Yet, if reform goes beyond the token stage, it challenges the Communist system.

A China that 40 years ago “revolutionized” itself has for the past 10 years been trying to “reform” itself. This is a startling idea. At minimum, reform-after-revolution suggests that something went wrong with the revolution; indeed, this is the near-universal view in China. But the big question remains of what the goal of reform-after-revolution can be.

Can the goals be clear if, as I suspect, modernization has edged aside socialism as the prized value?

The Chinese communists used to toss aloft the colored balls of “class struggle”; today they prefer the metal-and-plastic toys of “the four modernizations.” But modernity is an ever-changing destination. The process of modernizations creates a diversity of interests, experience, expectations and values.

The heart of the problem of Deng’s reforms--and the reason for the mixed mood--is that the revolution set in place a Leninist political system, while reform is seeking to set in place a commodity economy--and the two don’t mix.

The Communist Party hides the fact that politics and economics are tugging in opposite directions by a fancy theory--”Preliminary stage of socialism.” This concept justifies small business, family farming, shareholding and all the other unsocialist things that so excite the Chinese government and people today.

“Marxism isn’t suitable for China,” a leading economist said with agitation. As if wary of his own conviction, he climbed back to political safety: “Of course, one day it will be.”

“Preliminary stage of socialism” is simply a delaying device to satisfy orthodox communists who insist that the words of Marxism still have a meaning. It is somewhat akin to saying that the preliminary stage of sleeping is being wide awake.

Although China’s rulers know that communism has run dry as a fount for future policy, and in economic policy have their feet on an un-Marxist path,? they are still China’s rulers. Liking their own power, they are not about to step aside for any non-Leninist, alternative rulers.

Yet, either economic reform will bring substantial political change, or political nonchange will cripple the economic reform. In my view, the latter is almost certain. Li Peng is certainly responding to severe problems of inflation and corruption, which worry the Chinese people. But to stand still now would be perilous. And the basic reason for not pressing ahead is that the Leninist system--backed by Zhao as well as Li--might be put at risk by further substantial opening up to market forces.

China’s most basic need is for economic and political freedom, and some of its intellectuals are belatedly starting to say so. A bold young electrician, Wei Jingsheng, is in a prison, wasted and ill, serving a 15-year sentence for saying that, without democracy, Deng’s goal of modernization will not be attained. In February a group of Chinese intellectuals--including journalist Wang Ruoshui--signed a petition asking for his release. No wonder this sad case lives on. Wei was put away because he uttered a very unpalatable truth.