DBWI: 2005 Chinese Revolution Fails

The Death of Former General Secretary Zhao Ziyang had immediate repercussions for China and the whole world. On the night of 18 October, eighty thousand students and workers marched into Tiananmen Square. By dawn, the number had risen to a 300,000. The Chinese Government at the time tried to intervene and arrest the people by sending the police, but the whole of Beijing was infuriated, and millions packed not just the square, but every major street in the city, as parents and workers joined in to protect their children and friends outside. They also advocated the end to corruption and freedom.

Other cities, especially Shanghai and Tianjin, learning of the attempted crackdown on the protests, had also experienced demonstrations and protests. When the police failed to crack down on the protests, martial law was declared all over China, exactly the same method they did back in 1989. The number of protesters went up to about 10% of the population, thereby making it the largest in history. When the army tried to send in tanks, the situation got worse. The soldiers largely joined the protests, and they supported the people. The people successfully defended their respective cities and arrested their local party chiefs and mayors when found as hardliners.

Meanwhile the Communist Party was again divided on the issue. On October 22, it was rumored that Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice Premier Wu Yi supported dialogue with the people, but the people did not believe it until after they were saved from arrest, still handcuffed, on November 5 by angry protesters in a small house in Beijing. Eventually, dissidents such as Bao Tong and Ding Zilin were released by the people after they converged on their Beijing homes.

The troops began to open the way for protesters to enter Zhongnanhai and the Great Hall of the People on November 11. On that day, the CPC members who advocated the use of force (e.g. General Secretary Hu Jintao and Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan and their lackeys) tried to leave Beijing, but they were arrested by the people. They were executed on December 25, 2005 on multiple counts of murder and genocide, being the last people in China to be executed. On November 15, the fighting had ended, and martial law had been raised across China.

The Chinese people succeeded in achieving what their compatriots did not in 1987 and 1989: that was freedom. On November 22, the portrait of Mao Zedong was replaced by the portrait of Zhao Ziyang, a man who advocated democracy and economic reform, signalling a massive change for China.

Now China is a stable multiparty democracy, keeping cordial relations with Russia and the West.

I really wonder what the world would look like had the protests failed. Seeing how the hardliners of the CPC were willing to kill a lot of people, I think millions would have died-yes millions-had they gone incredibly insane. It was also a boon for the people that the troops were fed up of corruption, so they refused to obey the orders of those people.

What do you think of China had the hardliners won? Do you think the Chinese economy would grow as fast as it did IOTL, and do you think that pollution would be reduced as fast as they did IOTL? These are just a few questions. What does everyone think?

Also, I think Taiwan would not have reunified with China IOTL, of course.
 
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Speaking as a Hongkonger, I can first and foremost say that the Revolution was the best thing to happen to us after 1997. Our first Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, was a corrupt, autocratic jackass who screwed over our political rights, and one look at all those scandals that tainted his rule shows just how bad the Reds would have treated us if 10 years of their rule was continued. Without the timeliness of the Revolution, it's likely that Hong Kong would have become even worse than now. On the other hand, I do recall that Tung was planning on resigning in a couple months, especially after Hu criticized him for his terrible job the previous year, and I don't know who was going to replace him, but who could do worse, I wonder?...

Anyway, yes, I don't think that the CCP would have been lenient on the revolutionaries if they had failed. I know that after Zhao's arrest in 1989, he was purged like Deng Xiaoping before him during the Cultural Revolution, only he had no chance to redeem himself in life, and there was a subsequent crackdown on anything mentioning him. It's likely the revolutionaries would have suffered the same fate, or worse, would have undergone a Stalinist-style show trial and executed.

As for the economy, it's hard to say. When Deng took power, his economic reforms jumpstarted the Chinese economy to make it one of the fastest-growing in the world, but it followed a model of crony capitalism, and having read up extensively on the subject of Communism in crisis in China, I can confidently say that the lack of concrete proof that the economic situation for the average Chinese family was getting better was because of this model profiting officials and businesses at the expense of most people, and was one of the motivations for both 1989 and 2005. The changes to the post-Revolution economy have been very beneficial for many households, but without sufficient reforms to do away with that system or crack down on corruption, I can't say the same would hold true for a China still run by the CCP.
 
Well, there is still much to be concerned about China. The 1999 accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy, showed the ugly side of nationalism with the anti-American protests. The 2002 brutal crackdown on Muslim extremists in Xinjiang, although backed by the White House was considered particularly brutal. China is challenging the Philippines, Japan, and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands. Also the fact that the Dalai Lama is still labelled a "secessionist terrorist " in Dharmasala, is not very reassuring...
 
Well, there is still much to be concerned about China. The 1999 accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy, showed the ugly side of nationalism with the anti-American protests. The 2002 brutal crackdown on Muslim extremists in Xinjiang, although backed by the White House was considered particularly brutal. China is challenging the Philippines, Japan, and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands. Also the fact that the Dalai Lama is still labelled a "secessionist terrorist " in Dharmasala, is not very reassuring...
You're a bit late, aren't you? Sino-American relations are at a all time high because of the revolution. Yes, there was anti-Americanism, but that was a time when the PRC was still here. Dalai Lama is also not labelled a terrorist anymore because of better Chinese human rights now. The only nation China is challenging is North Korea as tensions had coold down is East Asia.
 
In retrospect something like this could not have been delayed by any more than ten years. The growth of a private-sector based middle class meant the state could not as easily control the levers of power as it did before.

Much of the optimism expressed on western media turned out to be misplaced. China isn't more of a multiparty democracy than Singapore is. The Communist Party simply renamed itself the United People's Progressive Party and then keeps winning each election with massive majorities. The UPPP "only" won 65% of the vote in last week's Shanghai City Council elections, and that was supposedly an opposition stronghold. 95% of the Communist Party cadres are still in office. And, it's well known that courts are stacked with UPPP appointees who are reluctant to rule against it. And, if anything, the most viable opposition to the UPPP comes from its left, with the Democratic Labour Party led by Bo Xilai who accuses the UPPP of firing millions of state employees and betraying its historic duty towards the working class.

What happened in 2005 was more of a slick and sophisticated regime reform than a regime change.
 
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You're a bit late, aren't you? Sino-American relations are at a all time high because of the revolution. Yes, there was anti-Americanism, but that was a time when the PRC was still here. Dalai Lama is also not labelled a terrorist anymore because of better Chinese human rights now. The only nation China is challenging is North Korea as tensions had coold down is East Asia.
There is still more to be concerned about. As early as 2013, Amnesty International has reported regular harassment and arrest of Christian missionaries. Chinese unemployment in the southern part of the country remains high despite the government loosening its grip of the economy. And the Philippines still has the suit against China over the Spratly Islands,....
 
There is still more to be concerned about. As early as 2013, Amnesty International has reported regular harassment and arrest of Christian missionaries. Chinese unemployment in the southern part of the country remains high despite the government loosening its grip of the economy. And the Philippines still has the suit against China over the Spratly Islands,....

This. The UPPP's incumbency advantage is worth literally hundreds of millions of votes. Having UPPP connections is a pre-requisite to employment in the civil service and the still very significant state-owned enterprises. And being on friendly terms with them is advantageous for private businesses. It also successfully portrayed itself as the most competent choice to guide China during the transition period.

Then of course it has other means to enforce its hegemony: disqualifying opposition candidates on technicalities, media regulation laws, harassing NGOs with tax audits, using "dumpling ballots" to rig close elections, etc. So China today resembles Mexico under the PRI than Taiwan or South Korea in the 1990s.
 
About the Philippines, I think the tensions are far higher ITTL. The Democratic government in China had stated clearly that they won't resolve to use force in their Spratlys dispute. Given the aggressive nature of the CCP, whoa, East Asia is a very scary place ITTL. World War III anyone?

Well even if the UPPP is the hegemonic party in China, well at least people are no longer restricted in the rights. At least you can voice out your opinions freely there and not be behind bars the next moment.

OOC: Changed the dates from January 2005 to October 2005. Zhao died on 17 October, and since I was reading "Prisoner of the State" yesterday, I kind of mixed the dates. Fixed it already :)
 
About the Philippines, I think the tensions are far higher ITTL. The Democratic government in China had stated clearly that they won't resolve to use force in their Spratlys dispute. Given the aggressive nature of the CCP, whoa, East Asia is a very scary place ITTL. World War III anyone?

Well even if the UPPP is the hegemonic party in China, well at least people are no longer restricted in the rights. At least you can voice out your opinions freely there and not be behind bars the next moment.

OOC: Changed the dates from January 2005 to October 2005. Zhao died on 17 October, and since I was reading "Prisoner of the State" yesterday, I kind of mixed the dates. Fixed it already :)

Well, the UPPP is also banking on support from the business and military community. They are pointing out despite their differences with the CCP, that they believe the oil fields under the Spratly Islands represents a national security matter. Why do you think Obama and Putin are meeting next week in Geneva?
 
I don't think the CPC's foreign policy will be that different. China is still China regardless who is in charge. And it will still deem control of its immediate waters as vital to its security. But one difference is North Korea: since 2005, the Kims were compelled to rapidly reform into a more PRC-like regime due to the UPPP's reluctance to indefinitely continue aid. At least now, an orderly Korean reunification is plausible. The CPC would have continued to reluctantly aid the hyperstalinist regime while fruitlessly hoping to convince it to reform while watching it regularly provoke the south and the US. That would have led to a chaotic collapse! :eek:
 
Yup, but at least they will not resort to violent means to assert their claims and position, unlike the CPC. See how they wanted to rain bombs on Taiwan had it became independent, but the exact happened after the CPC was "overthrown" - they reunified with China, and thus Taiwan became a stronghold of the political opposition. Had the CPC not been overthrown- wait do you think that North Korea would have turned into Somalia for a brief period of time before Chinese, South Korean, Russian and American troops keep the peace?
 
Here's one for pop culture, would video games likeHome Front, Modern Warfare or Call of Duty, have used China instead of the idea of Russia/ Islamic Caliphate forces as the current "bullet magnets".

In the meantime, India is demanding reparations for the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. Even with the democratic government, how poorly will the talks with PM Modi ?
 
In retrospect something like this could not have been delayed by any more than ten years. The growth of a private-sector based middle class meant the state could not as easily control the levers of power as it did before.

Much of the optimism expressed on western media turned out to be misplaced. China isn't more of a multiparty democracy than Singapore is. The Communist Party simply renamed itself the United People's Progressive Party and then keeps winning each election with massive majorities. The UPPP "only" won 65% of the vote in last week's Shanghai City Council elections, and that was supposedly an opposition stronghold. 95% of the Communist Party cadres are still in office. And, it's well known that courts are stacked with UPPP appointees who are reluctant to rule against it. And, if anything, the most viable opposition to the UPPP comes from its left, with the Democratic Labour Party led by Bo Xilai who accuses the UPPP of firing millions of state employees and betraying its historic duty towards the working class.

What happened in 2005 was more of a slick and sophisticated regime reform than a regime change.

OOC: Isn't it more realistic that an opposition to the Communists joins the KMT?
 
In the meantime, India is demanding reparations for the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. Even with the democratic government, how poorly will the talks with PM Modi ?

It's not even an official Indian government demand: it's a demand by some members of his RSS base. He knows those demands are as likely as Portugal demanding reparations from India over the conquest of Goa. That's why Modi isn't letting it stop burgeoning economic relations. Speaking of which, the Sino-Indian Industrial Park in Gujarat now employs more than a million people.

OOC: Isn't it more realistic that an opposition to the Communists joins the KMT?

OOC: The KMT on Taiwan after the transition to democracy has little coherent ideology other than vague Chinese nationalism. ITTL it will probably continue as a big-tent machine party like Japan's LDP or, ironically, the UPPP. But on the mainland, the KMT is simply history with absolutely zero organization left. IMHO, the CPC fears ideological opposition from its left more than it fears it from its right. Pro-democracy dissidents can be denounced as traitors in the state media and harassed using vague laws. The New Left have connections and sympathizers in the military and the party and are therefore far harder to silence.
 
One thing we finally found out after the fall of the Communists was the gruesome scope of the number of Chinese who died from mass shootings, forced exile, "re-education camps," the ill-advised Great Leap Forward (大跃进) from 1958 to 1961 and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (无产阶级文化大革命) from 1966 to 1976.

Based on the newly-released records, the death toll between 1949 and 2005 during the time of Communist rule came out to around 110 million, the greatest verifiable act of genocide in human history. And so much of China's historical heritage was lost because of the Cultural Revolution. :( Given this unimaginable death toll, you really wonder was the late Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's claim of 100 million Soviet citizens killed during the reign of Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1953 was close to the truth....
 
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Communism (frankly) really kills a lot of people. The 2005 Chinese Revolution was really for the betterment of the world.

Also, news: democracy activist Wan Dan (from the 1989 protests and also did so in a pro-democracy movement for China movement during the 2005 revolution) has returned to China.

Also, democracy activist and former Chinese MP Fang Lizhi has just passed away. We should conduct a three-minute silence in our homes in honor of such a great man.

Save for 90's Russia in which Yeltsin wrecked the country, but at least afterwards, Putin raised Russia from her knees, so overall, the fall of communism in all parts of the world (well North Korea is now communist in all but name, and with the democratization process that occurred after the Revolution of last year, boy, North Korea's state is surely a far cry from the 90s!). After 2005 when the Chinese government claimed they would shift to biofuels instead of oil for fuel (which was followed by the EU countries), the Russians embarked on a massive diversification campaign. Now, not only do they have low debt, but also they still grew economically in 2008-2009 at about 2.3%; they have mostly shifted to high-technology services, consumer products (everything high-tech), and oil is no longer the basis of their finances. Vladivostok today is now being turned into the Russian Giant of technology in the East [1]. And they had made it clear in 2013 that they would require their oil companies to shift to biofuels by 2040. Also, their allies in CSTO had followed their course as well. With the accession of Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine (after it was revealed that a Western-instigated coup attempt was made, and was quickly squashed by the Yanukovych government albeit under Russian conditions of economic reform[along their lines],cracking down on corruption and adopting a federal structure) and Turkmenistan to the EEU and CSTO, Eurasia has become a very stable place that is on the way to become economic juggernauts, all thanks to the downfall of communism in China and North Korea. Who knows if they would form a Union state in the future?

Also, Afghanistan today with the successful squashing of internal dissent due to CSTO commitment (after a terrorist attack by two certain Tsarnaevs [2]) and Chinese commitment (after bombing by Muslim extremists in Xinjiang) has become peaceful and is no longer considered a failed state, largely due to CSTO, Chinese and NATO economic investments in the area. The extremists in Pakistan have been largely squashed as well, but not before Ms. Malala Yousafzai was almost shot to death by the Taliban in her school bus back in 2012, and as we know she returned to Pakistan this January.

Japan, after defaulting in 2011 after the Earthquake in Japan (and fortunately they reportedly managed to protect a nuclear power plant from the Tsunami, though thanks to a renewed anti-Tsunami wall construction in 2007, has largely recovered from it and had conducted successful reforms, and their debt is now low (at 12% of GDP). This would take a toll on other economies such as South Korea and the United States, where GDP fell by around 2.3% in 2012, but at least they grew by 6.3% in 2013 and recovered afterwards. The U.S. government were also compelled to be prudent in their fiscal policy, and as a result, their debt has fallen to 34% of GDP. You know, maybe these are just butterflies from the 2005 Chinese Revolution, but who knows?

Also, the Philippines reached a high-point of growth of growth in Q1-2015: 13.2%, after successful reforms and complete liberalization of the Philippine economy under President Manny Villar: Wait I've recieved my latest stipend. Thank God he instituted that just before I came to QCSHS: Really takes a lot of burden on my project expenses (PHP 2000/month is such a boon for everyone). Also, even with the quarrel with China over the Spratlys, China is still our largest trade partner, but who cares about oil? We already have nuclear power plants anyway, so who cares about fossil fuels? I think the fruitful economic trade with China would not have happened under the PRC. It avoided recession in 2008-09 (growth at 4.5%), and in 2011-12 (growth at 6.3%). The Philippines sure is in a better state under President Villar, and I think the Federal Republic of China has a factor in this high economic growth. [3]

China today would not have experience the increased economic growth (though still high) had the PRC held on to power. Maybe the world wouldn't have recovered as fast as it did from the 2008-09 and 2011-12 recessions and they wouldn't experience the high growth ITTL had they not followed Russia's and China's prudent economic models (which successfully supports welfare to the fullest as well).

Greece, after defaulting under the pro-austerity government, decided to trash their membership in the EU and reinstate the drachma and pegged it to the Chinese Yuan, and now they have surpassed pre-depression levels and is a place of dynamism in southern Europe. Their leaving the EU led the EU to reform, and today, the EU is financially stable, having followed Russia's and China's economic model.

Iraq is largely stable now, thanks to China's and Russia's effort with the US.

Syria avoided civil war in 2011 thanks to US and Russian pressure to reform.

The world seems to be a better place without the CPC...


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[1]. OOC: Just for my BH6 fandom. I hate the term "San Fransokyo", and I don't want to focus much on the USA, and since Vladivostok IOTL is called "The Russian San Francisco" (e.g. Russky Bridge, its hilly landscape, bays, etc.), well that serves as my setting. I am just 14 years old :)

[2]. OOC: The Tsarnaevs, I recall, came from Russia (and before that Uzbekistan). Due to the butteflies ITTL, they would not leave for the USA.

[3]. OOC: Cory Aquino's colon cancer gets detected early, and so she does not die in 2009, which influence the elections greatly as they clamored for Noynoy to become President.
 
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OOC: The KMT on Taiwan after the transition to democracy has little coherent ideology other than vague Chinese nationalism. ITTL it will probably continue as a big-tent machine party like Japan's LDP or, ironically, the UPPP. But on the mainland, the KMT is simply history with absolutely zero organization left. IMHO, the CPC fears ideological opposition from its left more than it fears it from its right. Pro-democracy dissidents can be denounced as traitors in the state media and harassed using vague laws. The New Left have connections and sympathizers in the military and the party and are therefore far harder to silence.

No chance that KMT would try to return to the homeland after a fall of Chine one party system? So try to form a new organization, adopt a program seeking for democratization and liberalization, trying to gain the votes of the middle and upper classes?
 
Just in: Li Peng and his allies in suppresing the 1989 protests have been condemned to life in prison. The authorities didn't care whether they were old or not.

At least that's justice being served. Of course that won't happen with a CPC/CCP in Power.
 
One of the most poignant moments that was caused by China's democratization was Japan's Emperor Akhito formally apologizing about war crimes from WWII in 2010. It was 65 years late, but for my grandparents who suffered during the Bataan Death March, it couldn't have come sooner. My guess is that without a democratic China applying political and economic pressure both at the United Nations and G-8 Summits, Japan would have dismissed calls for apology indefinitely.
 
Yeah. And with the Chinese economy being the largest in the world since 2012, I see no reason why they wouldn't apologize.

Also, how lower will China's population be with the one-child policy still in place? Also, could Japan and the other European states reverse their declining birth rates with the CPC around (as the UPPP made a four-child campaign and then a five-child campaign to stabilize the population without making it decline).
 
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