Fateful Embrace of Communism } 23
with the upheaval in Poland in early 1989, spread to China in April–June
1989, continued through the collapse of communist regimes in East Europe
later that year, and culminated in the demise of the USSR and the CPSU in
- Democracy was consolidated across East Asia, and democratic uprisings
erupted even in previously alien regions like Central Asia and the Middle
East. The appeal of the Marxist-Leninist ideas that underpinned the CCP
state continued to evaporate within China and globally, while democratic
states and publics basked in confidence of the truth of their own liberal ide-
ology. In this situation, the CCP was deeply fearful and insecure. It became
imperative to inoculate China’s populace against the seductive attraction of
liberal ideas.
By late May 1989, what had begun as a student movement in Beijing two
months earlier had developed into a large-scale movement mobilizing a large
portion of Beijing’s population, and then people in dozens of other major
Chinese cities, challenging such traditional CCP methods of rule as intimi-
dating free speech by “putting a [counter-revolutionary] hat” on someone,
censoring journalists, and finally, using military force against Chinese citi-
zens involved in peaceful protest. One prominent scholar judged the Chinese
uprising of 1989 to be one of the most important components of the human
struggle for freedom in the twentieth century.^24 Be that as it may, the powerful
uprising in China in spring 1989 was a close call for the CCP regime and left
its leaders deeply apprehensive about the stability of their continued rule.
CCP think tanks studied closely the overthrow of communist regimes in
East Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union. One key lesson they derived
from those experiences was “don’t relax control; don’t let autonomous move-
ments develop.” Once autonomous movements begin, they can easily gather
momentum and spread from one sector to another, with demands escalat-
ing with the growth of the movement. Soon such movements may confront
the regime with the unfortunate necessity of testing the military’s loyalty by
calling on it to suppress popular protest. Even if successful, military suppres-
sion will erode further the legitimacy of the party. The way to avoid this is to
keep tight control.
The CCP’s mid-1989 turn away from political liberalization occurred as the
world was increasingly swept by liberal values and institutions. As the CCP
was resorting to old-style communist repression in the early 1990s, liberal de-
mocracy was being consolidated in South Korea and Taiwan. In Hong Kong,
citizens marched in increasing numbers for the right to directly elect their
governor and legislative council. In Japan, too, the Liberal Democratic Party,
which had ruled since 1956, found itself ousted from power in 1994–1998 and
again in 2009. “Color revolutions” challenging communist-derived author-
itarian regimes erupted in Georgia in 2003, in the Ukraine in 2004–2005,
and in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. In Iran, too, a people who had overthrown one
dictatorship in 1979 only to find their revolution hijacked, Bolshevik-style, by