434 { China’s Quest
Deng issued two directives in preparation for his May 1989 summit
meeting with Gorbachev: “A handshake but no hugs” and “end the past, open
the future.” The first directive was, in part at least, an attempt to reassure
Washington that the new Sino-Soviet relation would not be one of fraternal
comrades as in the 1950s. The second was an attempt to draw a line under
the disputes and animosity that had shaken relations over the past thirty
years, and open a new era of friendly cooperation. During the meeting, Deng
spoke to Gorbachev without notes, according to Qian Qichen. Deng framed
Sino-Soviet relations in terms of China’s century of humiliation by the great
powers, and then moved on to the difficulties between Moscow and Beijing
over recent decades. The core of the dispute had been, Deng judged, Moscow’s
attempt to put China in an unequal status. The purpose of recalling these
past difficulties was not to criticize the Soviet Union, Deng told Gorbachev,
but to enable the two sides to look forward rather than to the past. In spite of
everything, the Chinese people had never forgotten the help the Soviet Union
gave to the construction of New China in the 1950s. Regarding the ideological
debates between the two parties and countries, both sides had undertaken a
lot of “empty talk,” Deng said. Gorbachev agreed that the Soviet Union had
“definite mistakes and responsibility” for past unpleasantness. The two lead-
ers agreed, and stated in a joint communiqué, that henceforth state-to-state
relations would be based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which
would produce normal, friendly, good-neighborly relations. Sino-Soviet rela-
tions were not directed against any third country, and would not injure the
interest of any third country.^13 According to Gorbachev’s account, “Deng
Xiaoping was unable to refrain from commenting on the history of our re-
lations.” Gorbachev responded that one cannot rewrite or recreate history,
adding: “If we started restoring boundaries on the basis of how things were
in the past, which people resided on what territory, then essentially we would
have to re-carve the whole world.”^14
Perhaps the most powerful linkage between the Soviet Union and the
PRC at this juncture was outside the Great Hall of the People, where Deng
and Gorbachev met. Students from Beijing’s universities had gathered in
Tiananmen to demand dialogue with the government and wider political
freedoms. China’s reformers were deeply inspired by the political liber-
alization that had occurred in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Taking
inspiration from the oldest socialist country, with the most “experience in
building socialism,” China’s democratic-minded youth hoped for a “Chinese
Gorbachev” who might take China down the road of political liberalization
and democratic socialism being followed by the Soviet Union. CCP Secretary
General Zhao Ziyang “amazed” Gorbachev by the openness with which he
discussed the problem of democracy and Communist Party rule during
Gorbachev’s May 1989 visit. According to the Soviet leader’s account, Zhao
posed “a seemingly rhetorical question,” “Can a one-party system ensure the