Grass-Roots Signs of Change

When Deng Xiaoping threw open China’s doors to the West in 1979, it was the privately held belief of many U.S. policymakers that Deng’s opening would eventually trigger a profound societal transformation inside the People’s Republic. By engaging China in continuous economic, social and cultural interaction, it was believed, the West would set in motion a consumer-driven, market-oriented revolution of rising expectations that would alter fundamentally the nature and shape of Chinese communism.

The surprise release into exile of Wei Jingsheng, China’s most famous political prisoner, after almost 18 years of incarceration raised anew the question of China’s evolutionary trajectory. Was Wei’s release a positive sign of progress, a victory for political openness and human dignity in China? Or was it essentially a cynical gesture, offered up by an insecure communist oligarchy intent on manipulating foreign opinion?

Notwithstanding an outpouring of editorial opinion on either side of this issue, there are no easy answers. Viewed from one perspective, Wei’s harsh prison ordeal, taken together with such continuing humanitarian affronts as Beijing’s unrelenting cover-up of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre and the ongoing persecution of religious dissidents in Tibet, serves powerfully to dampen heightened expectations of a kinder, gentler China.

From another perspective, however, truly historic changes are readily apparent inside China. While the wholesale metamorphosis anticipated by U.S. policymakers in 1979 has not yet visibly mellowed those at the apex of Communist Party power in Beijing, it has dramatically altered the social landscape in myriad villages, towns and urban neighborhoods. The essence of totalitarianism lies in the exercise of total control over people’s lives, both public and private. By this measure, China has ceased to be totalitarian. In particular, three of the communist state’s traditional weapons of monopolistic social control have been visibly attenuated by two decades of reform: the power to allocate economic rewards and punishments; the power to define cultural norms and tastes; and the power to control the movement of information, ideas and individuals.

Today, the Chinese people exercise a far greater range of choices in living their lives than ever before. With the growth of market forces and the steady rise of non-state-dominated sectors of the economy, individual citizens have been afforded unprecedented opportunities to choose where to live, where to work, what to buy and, increasingly, what to think.

The empowerment of Chinese society vis-a-vis the state is clearly visible in the cultural marketplace. While the communist regime’s traditional ideological doctrines are still routinely dusted off and trotted out on formal ceremonial occasions, the daily lives of most Chinese are remarkably free from the regimentation of Maoist-type thought control. Liberated from the crushing, cradle-to-grave embrace of a paternalistic party and state, people have started to define and pursue their self-interest.

Over the past decade and a half, information sources have proliferated in China like mushrooms after the proverbial spring rain. Today there are hundreds of nongovernment-run magazines, newspapers, publishing houses and radio stations operating throughout the country, disseminating information and opinion on a wide variety of issues, state-approved and otherwise.

While the government tries to regulate the content of these myriad, diverse media, the task has proved overwhelming, as has the task of trying to control the dissemination of ideas and information over the newest source of intellectual and cultural pluralism in China: the Internet.

While political democratization has been painfully slow to materialize at the national level, the picture appears considerably brighter at the grass-roots level. Since 1987, in tens of thousands of rural districts throughout China, farmers have participated in the nomination and election of village officials, a procedure that has visibly increased the responsibility and accountability of local leaders. This system of grass-roots democracy will shortly be extended upward to the township level, offering town dwellers an unprecedented alternative to the traditional, rubber-stamp ratification of party-nominated leaders.

Wei Jingsheng’s prison experience reminds us that the much-heralded Chinese revolution of rising expectations has yet to produce either significant political reform or enhanced political tolerance at the top. Just beneath the surface, however, the transformative power of the marketplace is working its silent magic.

While such a historic development does not guarantee a smooth or successful democratic transition, the recent history of Taiwan and South Korea suggests that when newly emergent social forces begin to gain economic autonomy and self-confidence, even highly insecure, rigidly authoritarian one-party regimes may be powerfully constrained to transform themselves or face extinction.