520 { China’s Quest
of that country ... the Chinese side is [nevertheless] concerned about the
situation in the Soviet Union, hoping that it will enjoy political stability,
economic development, and national unity.”^36 This was an implicit appeal
for the use of whatever means necessary to repress instability and disunity.
Beijing Party Secretary and Politburo member Li Ximing visited Moscow in
March 1991. During the visit, Li lauded and encouraged the CPSU’s healthy
forces:
The Soviet Communist Party has been leading the Soviet people in sur-
mounting numerous difficulties in the course of their socialist revolu-
tion and socialist construction in the past 70 years ... We sincerely hope
that the comrades of the Soviet Communist Party will surely revolve
the current problems ... and move the situation into a track of steady and
healthy development.^37
After a tour of sites associated with the Bolshevik insurrection in
Leningrad, Li Ximing wrote in a visitors’ register: “Members of the Chinese
Communist Party will forever remember Lenin’s profound remarks: forget-
ting the past means betrayal.”^38
The visit by CCP Secretary General Jiang Zemin in May 1991 for a summit
meeting with Secretary General Gorbachev represented a CCP endorsement
of Gorbachev and, as such, a reflection of Chinese recognition of the growing
weakness of the healthy hard-line forces in the Soviet Union. Jiang was not
yet president of the PRC; he would not assume that post until 1993. This meant
that if he were to visit the USSR and meet Gorbachev, he would have to do so
in his party capacity. The CCP decision to bless Gorbachev as leader of the
CPSU with Jiang’s May 1991 visit reflected a judgment that Gorbachev was the
lesser of two evils. The rapid growth of Yeltsin’s secessionist and liberal demo-
cratic forces posed the risk of victory of the anticommunist forces. Gorbachev
was a liberal communist, but at least he was still a communist, one who won
re-election at the 28th Congress in July 1990 (at which Yeltsin withdrew from
the party) by a margin of three to one.
Jiang’s May 1991 visit was the apogee of CCP delegation diplomacy. Jiang
told Gorbachev, “It is our heartfelt hope and conviction that the great Soviet
people, who have made a significant contribution to the cause of human prog-
ress and who are imbued with a glorious revolutionary tradition, will sur-
mount their existing temporary difficulties and score final victory in their
social reform and construction.”^39 To Soviet Vice President Gennady Yanayev,
head of the future failed coup, Jiang conveyed his hope that the Soviet Union
would adhere to the socialist road. Both China and the Soviet Union were
facing the problem of how to preserve the socialist system, Jiang said, and
should not underestimate the Western countries’ efforts to take advantage
of Chinese and Soviet reforms to peddle Western ideology by means of their