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CCP's FEAR: West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early on Nov. 11, 1989, as they watch East German border guards demolishing a section of the wall. Ever since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the CCP has sought to avoid a similar fate. (Gerard Malie/AFP/Getty Images)
Twenty years ago, when the communist camp collapsed in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, people were speculating when communism would also collapse in China.
Another wave of democratic movements has been changing the political landscape in the Middle East in recent months, and people are again debating what might happen in China in the near future.
As of today, the feeling among much of the general public in the West is that the communist regime is stronger than ever in its grip on power. Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times predicting that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would win a landslide victory if there were a free election in China today. He says Chinese people are satisfied with the Chinese communist regime’s governance.
Chinese dissidents in the West, on the other hand, strongly believe that the CCP is on the verge of collapse and is extremely vulnerable. Wei Jingsheng, a veteran fighter for a free China, has pointed out that the Chinese communist regime is very much like a frightened bird, overacting to any sign of social unrest. He concluded that this is the beginning of the end for the regime.
Despite the drastic differences among scholars, dissidents, and activists on the direction China is taking, everyone seems to agree on one thing: Some kind of change has to happen.
What might the change be?
Change From the Top: The Soviet Model
Gorbachev’s launching his campaign of perestroika was actually the second time that the top leader of the former Soviet Union decided to break away from his predecessor. Before him, Khrushchev’s speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 criticized Stalin for his brutality against his own colleagues and people.
Mao, the late Chinese communist czar, started an ideological war against Khrushchev in defense of Stalin, whom he considered one of the most important mentors to his own revolution in China. He criticized Khrushchev and initiated a Great Cultural revolution in 1966 in order to prevent what happened to Stalin from happening to him in China.
At the cost of millions of lives and social and economic disaster, Mao’s preemptive strike successfully purged his potential political rivals and maintained his status as the “great helmsman.” Up till today, his portrait is hung together with Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin on the Walls of the Forbidden City.
Recently, songs and dances that were popular during the Great Cultural revolution have come back in vogue as some of the CCP leaders are trying to claim Mao’s heritage in order to gain the upper hand in the upcoming power struggles.
Preventing a Soviet-style collapse of the communist regime has become an obsession for the CCP.
In the middle of the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, Deng Xiaoping, then the paramount leader of the CCP, ordered a military crackdown, killing thousands, in response to the demand from students and scholars for freedom and transparency in China.
Ever since, preventing a Soviet-style collapse of the communist regime has become an obsession for the CCP. The Research Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the think tank for CCP leaders, and the School of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the prep school for CCP leaders, have conducted systematic research on the subject.
According to research published at the 20-year anniversary of the defeat of the communist movement in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the following are the reasons for the fall: (1) The major leaders in the Party betrayed Marxism and Leninism. (2) The Party lost control of media and propaganda. (3) The Party failed in economic development. (4) Widespread corruption existed among the leaders at every level of the Communist Party.
The CCP has been working very hard to learn from these lessons. It has established a system to pick the successor who has a track record of loyalty to communist doctrine and whose power is balanced by six to eight other members in a so-called collective leadership. Party leaders watch each other closely to make sure the CCP will keep control of the country.
They have invested heavily in control of the media and Internet, not only blocking and censoring information, but also hiring a large group of people writing and blogging commentaries to influence public opinion in favor of the CCP.
The CCP also has succeeded in keeping the economy growing fast for almost two decades—at the cost of environmental damage, material waste, and the abuse of labor rights.
The only thing that the CCP has so far failed to control is corruption. The corruption is so bad that any serious attempt at campaigning against corruption would definitely affect almost every communist cadre and lead to the questioning of the CCP’s legitimacy. In conclusion, the Soviet model of top-down change is unlikely to happen in China.
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