22 { China’s Quest
state domination over society were no longer used to twist the Chinese people
via thought reform into “new human beings” appropriate to an imagined uto-
pia. Now it was enough that the people loyally obeyed the party. This sort of
arrangement was named “post-totalitarian communism” by East European
writers who experienced similar transformations in their countries in the
1960s. The level of personal freedom in China in the 1980s and 1990s might
seem paltry compared to a liberal democracy like Taiwan, South Korea, or
Japan. But compared to China’s own recent past, the 1980s represented swift
and substantial expansion of the sphere of personal freedom.
A second reason why Act II is “a happy interregnum” is that the door was
not closed to reforming out of existence the Soviet/Leninist nature of the PRC.
Indeed, that door seemed to be half open. There were high-ranking people in
the CCP elite who felt that basic political reform needed to parallel economic
reform—people like Hu Yaobang, appointed chairman of the CCP in 1981
and general secretary in 1982 (a post he held until 1987), and Zhao Ziyang,
appointed premier in 1980 and general secretary in 1987. Deng Xiaoping did
not entirely embrace the political reform ideas of Hu and Zhao. Indeed, he
repeatedly warned them to avoid “western-style democracy” and “bourgeois
liberalization.” But Deng ruled during this decade by balancing between con-
servative and pro–political reform wings of the party. There were political
reformers in the party leadership core, and they had a voice. The breath and
speed of relaxation of party controls over society in the 1980s also gave hope,
both within China and abroad, that those reforms might extend to reform of
the basic structures of the party state. A significant number of Chinese intel-
lectuals and university students openly embraced liberal democratic ideas,
and were broadly tolerated—with occasional examples made to scare the rest.
Still, the path to gradual, peaceful evolution of the PRC toward liberal democ-
racy under the tutelage of a reform wing of the Chinese Communist Party
seemed open. The door to that course had not yet been closed, as it would be
in 1989.
A third reason why 1978–1989 was a “happy interregnum” was that it was
a period of genuine and substantial cooperation between the PRC and the
United States. In a number of areas, Beijing and Washington worked together
effectively as genuine partners, constituting what was often called a “quasi
alliance” against the Soviet Union. Most broadly, during this period each of
the two countries, the United States and the PRC, looked on the power of the
other as in its own interest—a situation radically different than during both
the pre-1972 and the post-1989 periods. This boded well for the development
of long-term peaceful and cooperative relations.
Act III of PRC foreign relations began with the crisis of global communism
of 1989–1991. China’s Leninist state, the PRC, found itself living in a world
swept by liberal ideals carried by powerful new technologies in a world under
unparalleled domination by an alliance of democratic countries. This started