506 { China’s Quest
Sofia, and Bucharest) reached out to Beijing for support. Beijing responded
positively to these appeals, although in a deliberately low-key manner
designed to appear as normal cooperative relations between two sovereign
states. In private sessions, these hard-line communists exchanged frank
views about how to uphold proletarian state power in the face of counter-
revolutionary challenges.
A second key CCP policy response was to accommodate swiftly to regime
change. Beijing did what it could to support the embattled East European
communist regimes, but when those efforts failed and regimes were toppled,
Beijing moved swiftly to develop working relations with the successor gov-
ernments. Refusal to come quickly to terms with the actual political out-
comes of processes at work in Eastern Europe would serve little purpose other
than ideological satisfaction. But delay, and still more ideological condemna-
tion, could create opportunities for Taiwan to exploit. Unless Beijing moved
swiftly to explain its One China policy to the new East European govern-
ments, Taipei might use those rulers’ liberal and anticommunist views to ex-
pand ties in Europe. Delay by Beijing in recognizing the new postcommunist
Eastern European regimes could also carry economic costs of lost trade and
investment. The Eastern European countries were, after all, developed coun-
tries (at least by global standards), and promised to be good customers for
Chinese goods. The Four Modernizations remained a top-ranked policy goal.
Nor would openly drawing ideological lines in Eastern Europe help
Beijing escape the stigma of the Beijing Massacre. In furtherance of that
goal, Beijing was telling the world that norms of state sovereignty precluded
judgment of other state’s internal developments; that each country had the
right to choose its own developmental path and other states should not “in-
terfere.” Opining negatively about East European developments, or keeping
the new East European governments at arm’s length because of their coun-
terrevolutionary nature, would have exposed the CCP to charges of hypoc-
risy, weakening its case for putting the Beijing Massacre behind. If Chinese
fingerprints were found on applications of a “Chinese solution” in East
Europe, the cost to China’s reputation could have been heavy. Supporting
embattled regimes followed by a willingness to quickly come to terms
with whatever regimes emerged was a policy that seemed to serve Chinese
interests well.
Because of the economic and political importance of the Federal Republic
of Germany (FRG, then usually called West Germany) in Europe, Gorbachev
and his reformers deemed liberal reform in the German Democratic Republic
(GDR, usually called East Germany) especially important. GDR leaders were
extremely reluctant to follow Gorbachev’s path of perestroika (reform), con-
vinced that the demise of their own state lay down that path. In retrospect, of
course, it is apparent that these old-style communists had a realistic estimate
of the situation and that Gorbachev labored under severe illusions.