470 { China’s Quest
obstruction, according to the MSS. Petitions and protest telegrams were
flooding into central organs, the MSS reported. There were signs, according
to a MSS report on May 10, that workers were beginning to join the protests.
This was an especially ominous sign for CCP leaders. “If the workers rise up,
we’re in big trouble,” Yang Shangkun (another of Deng Xiaoping’s represen-
tatives on the Standing committee) opined.^13 Deng adumbrated the party’s
situation this way when he decided to impose martial law: “we’ve never faced
this kind of thing before: a small handful infiltrating into such a huge num-
ber of students and masses.” Elder Li Xiannian seconded Deng’s view: “If we
don’t put Beijing under martial law, we’ll all end up under house arrest.”^14
Bo Yibo concurred: “The whole imperialist Western world wants to make
socialist countries leave the socialist road and become satellites in the system
of international monopoly capitalism. The people with ulterior motives who
are behind this student movement have support from the United States and
Europe and from the Kuomintang reactionaries in Taiwan.”^15 Deng Xiaoping
was greatly concerned that PLA forces might become infected by the ideas
of the student demonstrators and refuse to follow orders given by the CCP
center.
The best demonstration of the deep challenge to the CCP in spring 1989
was the collapse of Leninist dictatorships in Eastern Europe in 1989 and
then in the USSR itself over the next two years. There is no way of knowing
how the CCP would have fared if Zhao Ziyang had prevailed in the critical
debates of May 1989—perhaps if he had not made his ill-timed visit to North
Korea, which allowed Li Peng to push through the editorial of April 26, or
had not forfeited the support of Deng Xiaoping through revealing comments
to Gorbachev. Zhao Ziyang’s belief in 1989 was that the CCP should continue
to rule China, but that it needed to learn to rule by new methods: tolerance
of autonomous social groups, dialogue with various groups, more “vitality”
in elections, freedom of press and artistic expression, rule by law rather than
by men.^16
As unpleasant as it may be to people of liberal democratic persuasion, it
must be recognized that Li Peng, Yao Yilin, and Deng Xiaoping may have
been correct; Zhao Ziyang’s strategy of compromise, splitting, and guiding
via dialogue might not have worked any better in China than it did in Poland
or elsewhere in East Europe. Dialogue could have mobilized other groups
in society and allowed them to negotiate programs that combined interests.
Continuation of a permissive approach could have seen other social sectors,
the urban working class or the peasants, join in the movement. New orga-
nizations could have formed alliances across social groups. Demands could
have escalated further, as was already happening. The party could have split,
with elements opting to secure a position in a postcommunist state. It is pos-
sible that Zhao’s prescription would have led to the rapid dismantling of the
CCP’s Leninist state, as in Poland and the USSR.