Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1996. Trials of the arrested student leaders and other dissidents were
held in 1991, when the world's attention was focused not on China but
on the first Gulf War in Kuwait and Iraq. The United States did not draw
much attention to these trials, and there was probably some sort of tacit
agreement with China during this time: the United States would tone
down its denunciation of the Tiananmen SquareMassacre if China, with
its permanent seat on the Security Council, would not veto the United
Nations resolution authorizing the Gulf War.
By 1991 Jiang Zemin was poised to succeed Deng Xiaoping, having
consolidated political and military power into his own hands. He now
concurrently held positions as party head, president of the People's
Republic of China, and the all-important chairmanship of the Military
Affairs Commission. He then attempted to achieve a measure of popu-
lar support and legitimacy from the Chinese public by appealing to
their innate patriotism and by continuing to foster economic develop-
ment. The pursuit of wealth and continuing resentment of foreign (i.e.,
mainly American and Japanese) criticism and badgering of China
would, he hoped, distract the Chinese people from seeking liberal
democracy and freedom. He and Deng Xiaoping both concluded that
the Communist regime in China would have fallen in 1989 had China
not begun growing wealthy during the 1980s, so they continued to
foster and encourage economic development. Jiang and Deng rejected
notions that free market economic development always leads to democ-
ratization and were determined to make China a wealthy authoritarian
state. For them, in other words, economic development in China was
not the path toward democratization, but away from it.
Western journalists in the 1980s and 1990s often concluded that
China had “gone capitalist,” but the Chinese government rejected this.
“Socialism with Chinese characteristics” was the government's pre-
ferred description for what was happening in China. That is, while
some private sector enterprises were developing, most businesses con-
tinued to be publicly owned and managed, but with a relatively free
market rather than central planning determining production and
prices. The government continued to apply five-year plans for China,
but these were much less artificial and intrusive into the private market
than they had been during the 1950s.
By 1995, after Deng had slipped into ill health and senescence, Jiang
was more or less running the country. A new leadership group, with
Jiang Zemin at the core, had taken over in China. After months of
insisting that he was in fine health, the Chinese media announced on
February 19, 1997, that Deng Xiaoping had finally died, and Jiang's
transition to formal leadership of China was relatively uneventful.
