China Enters the 1980s

Ross Terrill

From Foreign Affairs, Spring 1980

Article preview: first 500 of 6,785 words total.

Summary:  The mood in China as the 1980s begin, and a post-Mao policy line is consolidated, is one of cautious hopefulness. There is a fervent desire for progress, blended with an acute awareness of the limits on future possibilities. Of all the differences since the great but oppressive Mao Zedong was embalmed in 1976, there are four which stand out.

Ross Terrill, author of 800,000,000: The Real China, Flowers On An Iron Tree, The Future of China, and other books, has been a frequent visitor to China, first in 1964 and most recently in 1980. He has just completed a biography of Mao Zedong (Harper & Row). Copyright (c) Ross Terrill.

The mood in China as the 1980s begin, and a post-Mao policy line is consolidated, is one of cautious hopefulness. There is a fervent desire for progress, blended with an acute awareness of the limits on future possibilities. Of all the differences since the great but oppressive Mao Zedong was embalmed in 1976, there are four which stand out.

First, people high and low see economic growth as China's highest priority. In the factories the slogans are about output, product quality and competitions between teams of workers: the conversations in the canteens are about pay packets and what to spend them on. Some private enterprise is returning to the cities, to provide much desired special products and services, and to alleviate an increasingly serious unemployment problem. The spirit of industry has been galvanized by the assertion from on high that profit and market response are the only valid measures of industrial performance.

In most of the countryside political and bureaucratic pressures on the farmers have been eased, to spur them to grow more by growing what they want to grow. In town and village alike, hard work and initiative (as well as birth control) are being rewarded in cash; one-sixth of an industrial wage can hinge on a bonus, and one-fourth of a farm income can come from private cultivation. Even the young urban dissidents are part of the age of economics. They have been selling their leaflets-unlike dissidents in the rest of the Marxist world, who tend to give their literature away; even Wei Jingsheng, the outspoken young editor who was jailed for "counterrevolutionary activity" last year, said at his trial: "We publish our magazines for the purpose of . . . making China more prosperous and powerful."

One cannot but recall how Mao in 1965 reminded André Malraux of Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin's remark, "Communism means the raising of living standards," and then sneeringly dismissed it: "and swimming is a way of putting on a pair of trunks." "Politics in command," which was Mao's update of Confucian social moralism, has given way to "production in command." The government tells the citizens to work hard and to reach for material rewards; "politics in command" effectively discounted both.

The traditional materialism of the Chinese has reappeared, then, as the shackles of an overplanned economy have been pulled back a little. Under Mao, China as a nation stood up. In these post-Mao years the Chinese individual is trying to stand up and claim a place in the sun.

A second change is nothing less than the castration of Marxism. One aspect is theoretical: class struggle is no longer talked about or believed in. A practical aspect follows: the tentacles of ideology have been untwined from one realm after another of Chinese life.

People may go to the opera or watch an evening of television without hearing any Marxist message. In the schools the running battle between "red" and "expert" has been won resoundingly by professionals who say education means the ...

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