THE GREAT REVERSAL The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 ...

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ContentsPreface 7Introduction: China's Rural Reforms 11A Small Town in China: Long Bow 1978 31A Trip to Fengyang Country, 1983 48Reform in Stride, Rural Change 1984 74The Situation in the Grasslands, 1985 84Reform Unravels: Rural Change 1986 95Bypassed by Reform: Agricultural Mechanization1986110Dazhai Revisited: 1987 124Mao's Rural Policies Revisited 140Why Not the Capitalist Road? 164Tiananmen Massacre 1989 175page 7PrefaceJune 4, 1989, stands as a stark watershed in China's modern history. The slaughter ofunarmed civilians by units of the Peoples Liberation Army as they blasted their way toTiananmen Square illuminated the "reform" era as nothing else could. It lit up, like a bolt ofcosmic lightning, the reactionary essence of China's current leading group.
This essence was known to many in China and to some abroad long before the lightningstruck in June 1989, but most members of the Western media and academic world were toomesmerized by China's reform rhetoric and market progress to apprehend the reality of theevents unfolding before their eyes. Since privatization matched their prejudices and aconsumption boom confirmed its validity, they preferred not to look too closely at theunderlying currents of economic dislocation, infrastructural decay, environmentaldegradation, social disintegration, cultural malaise, and rising class antagonisms thatthreatened to unravel the fabric of Chinese society.Mao Zedong was far more astute. More than twenty years ago during the CulturalRevolution, he exposed Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shangkun, and most of their "hard line"colleagues as capitalist roaders. He accurately predicted that if such persons ever came topower they would transform the Communist Party into a revisionist party and finally into afascist party and then the whole of China would change color.The surprising thing is not how accurate Mao's prediction turned out to be, but rather howquickly it materialized in history. The Thirdpage 8Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, dominated by Deng, set out to "reform"China only eleven years ago. Big changes, such as family contracts for farmers and theexploitation of wage labor by private entrepreneurs, large and small, surfaced in a major wayonly five years ago. Yet in this short span unforeseen afflictions have so alienated theChinese people, especially the urban dwellers most favored by reform, that in May and June1989 they filled the streets with protesters from one end of China to the other.Deng responded with guns and tanks that churned up the pavement of Changan Avenue,leaving thousands of dead and wounded in their wake. The moral bankruptcy of thisferocious military repression coupled with a revengeful nationwide hunt for culpritsdemonstrated to all who cared to see what the color of the reform really was and had been allalong.Make no mistake. The leaders in Beijing are not motivated by communist ideals; they arenot revolutionary planners or socialist builders. They are newly constituted bureaucraticcapitalists, busy carving the economy into gigantic family fiefs, ready, in true compradorstyle, to sell China out to the highest bidder. Their armed assault on the square was not anaberration but rather the culmination of a process that began when they first assumed leadingposts after the death of Mao. They set out then to dismantle whatever socialist institutions,culture, customs, and habits the Chinese people had so painstakingly built up in the courseof postliberation reconstruction. In doing so they put in motion a chain of events that ledinexorably to confrontation with the whole Chinese people.How, in so short a span of time, did Deng go from the status of admired hero, defiant yetirrepressible victim of the hated gang of four, to that of corrupt autocrat and bloodstained
Page 1: THE GREATREVERSALThe Privatization
Page 5 and 6: Introduction:China'sRuralReformsThe
Page 7 and 8: concern was, of course, the country
Page 9 and 10: I looked down in growing disbelief
Page 11 and 12: edefining what the word meant. Cert
Page 13 and 14: themselves, communists had, perforc
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Page 18 and 19: eformers. Throughout the whole cour
Page 20 and 21: in China. It emphasizes above all t
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Page 24 and 25: Hard work to transform the land was
Page 26 and 27: If meeting nonrelated young people
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Page 38 and 39: the peasants first gave support to
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Page 42 and 43: see Gaojen commune. There 7,300 abl
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Page 48 and 49: destroyed all economies of scale an
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and was raising two pigs that she e
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page 71in some of the new industrie
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page 74Reformin Stride:Rural Change
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authorities is that it automaticall
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most promising things in the collec
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than it contributes itself, it is a
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mechanization plan could have done
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page 86units, taking a mature sheep
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measures are necessary.Since these
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tremely hard to carry out. Most mea
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60,000 mou. This would make seasona
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lock the gates at Qinghua and other
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programs that discourage production
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19781979198019811982198319841985467
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Peasants who opt for transport on t
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policy. Yet they are much touted by
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millions of mu of badly eroded slop
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page 111culture must also be modern
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The Problem of UnemploymentThe most
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mechanization of the more advanced
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tractor and/or implement tire that
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difficult form of cooperation. Betw
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In order to mechanize agriculture s
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Today's reports credit reform at Da
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were deducted from net income befor
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trees that appear to be, if not aba
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denounced by the central government
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spirit of Dazhai's citizens and to
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Ironic Lessons, Past and PresentIn
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Mao'sRuralPoliciesRevisitedA questi
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point frequently raised by the refo
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page 145Furthermore, the state help
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mechanisms rather than government d
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tractors who leased collective ente
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All this alarmed certain forces in
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terthrusts over the years. All of t
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exercises." Just as happened during
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every region.In the fourth place, b
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preserve a strong collective core.
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Finally, China's independent nation
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The World Bank strategy of opening
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people. They want to transform the
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The reformers hoped and planned tha
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TiananmenMassacre:June 1989It's imp
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left, and then there would be a new
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the beginning of it. Once the army
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and I asked him why on earth he wen
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have been doing this work for many
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going to sweep everybody out, so th
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affront, as turmoil, as chaos, and
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THE GREAT REVERSAL The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 ...

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