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China Political Reform
The August 1980 address on reform made by Deng to the Political
Bureau became the basis in 1987 for changes in the party and state
leadership systems. In the 1980 speech, Deng had called for
strengthening the people's congresses, separating party and
government organizations, reforming the cadre system, and
establishing an independent judiciary. By 1986 the leadership's
apparently overriding interest in Deng's plan was to curtail
excessive party interference in governmental and economic decision
making, and it was therefore bound eventually to provoke
apprehension and resistance. In early 1986, with responsibility for
political reform resting in the party Secretariat, several reports
were aired concerning party secretaries at lower levels who had
refused to relinquish decision-making power to benefit local
economic reform management. Many local unit secretaries had
succeeded in reclaiming authority previously given up. While Deng
and the central reform leaders emphasized that party interference
in government affairs actually weakened party leadership,
conservative leaders such as Peng Zhen continued to speak about
party unity and spirit and about the more gradual means to
political change. Gradual means included additional legislation and
the proper functioning of democratic centralism.
In addition to the new emphasis on power sharing in economic
management, pressures increased to realize the goals of "socialist
democracy" by increasing participation in public affairs through
direct elections from a field of candidates. In fact, it was a
student protest over the local slate of officials for a people's
congress election in Anhui Province that sparked the student
demonstrations that spread throughout the country in late 1986. In
extending the argument for increased freedoms and democratic
practices, demonstrators began even to question the presiding role
of the party in the political system. Demonstrations in at least
seventeen cities, with participants in the tens of thousands, also
threatened to disrupt the urban economy and the continuation of the
economic reform program. The drive to decentralize power and to
separate party from government authority created political strains
already apparent from the fact that no authoritative statement on
these key issues ensued from the Sixth Plenum of the Twelfth
Central Committee held in September 1986. The student
demonstrations that followed lent credibility to conservative
ideologues in the Secretariat, such as Deng Liqun, who argued that
continued political relaxation and reform would inevitably lead to
social chaos.
Data as of July 1987
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