WI: Tiananmen Square turns into a Revolution?

Deleted member 96212

Is there any way that the protests at Tiananmen Square could escalate into a full blown revolution a la Romania or East Germany? What would be the effects of such a revolution? Would it even succeed?
 
I don't know much about the internal politics of China, but my impression is that, under Deng at least, the Communist Party had established a significant degree of accepted legitimacy, compared to what someone like Ceaucescu enjoyed. I think it might be pretty far-fetched to imagine that the public and/or important elements of the political establishment would let it get to a point where the grand paramount leader could be hauled into "court" for a videotaped show trial, and then shot in the head while the cameras rolled, as happened to Ceaucescu. And even a relatively peaceful transfer-of-power as in East Gernamy, is probably gonna be a pretty tall order.
 
When it comes down to the potential of a "revolution", it's important to know the internal workings of the Communist Party at the time.

Under Deng Xiaoping's leadership, the Party had undergone an internal revolution. Since 1949, the history of the PRC's leadership went like this: Mao did what he wanted while everyone else tried to reign him in and fix the messes he caused. Up until his death Mao essentially was the Party in the eyes of the public, and other than a brief period in the early 1960s following the Great Leap Forward when he was sidelined, it was very hard to go against what Mao wanted. After Mao's death, there was a leadership vacuum. Mao's initial planned successor, Liu Shaoqi, had been purged and killed during the Cultural Revolution. Mao's longtime second-in-command, Zhou Enlai, had passed away months before Mao did. Mao's protege during the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao, had died in a plane crash in 1971 following an alleged coup attempt. The Gang of Four, who had provided much of the force behind the Cultural Revolution, were soon arrested after Mao wasn't around to protect them. And Mao's immediate successor, Hua Guofeng, had little political power within the party. It was in this environment that Deng, who had been purged twice during the previous decade, made a triumphant return to power and within two years of Mao's death had enough support within the party to elevate his allies to key positions and begin making significant turns away from Maoist policies.

Now, while Deng was considered the "Paramount Leader", he had little in the way of official state and party titles. During the '50s, Mao held three titles: Chairman of the Party, Chairman of the PRC (making him the head of state), and Chairman of the Central Military Commision. This gave him control over the Party, State, and military. The only prominent title he didn't hold was Premier of the State Council, which was held by Zhou. Deng in contrast only held the post of Chairman of the CMC. Deng had little desire to implement the kind of personality cult Mao had, and sought to divide power within the party to ensure the kinds of power abuses of the Mao era couldn't happen again. After sidelining Hua, he gave the title of President (which had been vacant since Liu Shaoqi had been purged back in the '60s) to Li Xiannian, General-Secretary of the Party (the position of Chairman had been abolished) to Hu Yaobang, and the job of Premier to Zhao Ziyang. While Li was more conservative, Hu and Zhao were eager to implement Deng's planned reforms, with Deng referring to them as his "left and right hands". As Deng's reforms continued into the '80s, there was much resistance within the party, as there were still plenty of people who were committed socialists and saw Deng's policies as heresy. But because Deng had divided power between his loyal subordinates, a divide began growing between those who were more reform-oriented and those who were more conservative. In 1987 the reform faction was delivered a blow when Hu Yaobang, who wanted political reforms to go far beyond what Deng and the rest of the party wanted, was removed from the post of General-Secretary. Zhao was elevated to Hu's position, while the job of Premier was given to Li Peng, a member of the conservative faction. This left Zhao in a nominal position to become Deng's successor as Paramount Leader, but the loss of Hu left him without a strong ally.

This is the state the CCP was in coming into April of 1989. While in the public eye it was united and committed to economic reform, internally there was a sharp divide, one which the Party wasn't keen to make known for fear it would make them seem weak. Officially, Zhao Ziyang was the most powerful man in the country. Deng was no longer a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, which was the highest-level body of the CCP, though he still retained the title of CMC Chair. Unofficially, Deng very much still had the final say. While he left day-to-day affairs of the party and state to Zhao, Li, and the PSC, the ultimate power belonged to Deng and his closest allies, a group of men called the "Eight Elders", men who had been in the party since the days of the civil war. They had fought the KMT and the Japanese, helped make the PRC into a stable government in the '50s, had suffered great pain and humiliation during the Cultural Revolution, and had kept a careful eye on the reforms to ensure the state/party remained stable. They were conservative in the basest sense: Skeptical yet supportive of Deng's economics, fearful of Mao-era zealotry, and concerned that too much change would bring China to the brink of chaos.

On April 15, Hu Yaobang passed away. Because of his image as a reformer, he was beloved by student activists across the country, and impromptu demonstrations began in his honor in Beijing. These demonstrations, while initially focused on mourning for the late General Secretary, soon evolved into calls for political reform. Now, it's important to note that while they were calling for change, for the most part these weren't radicals. They had nothing particularly against Deng, and their calls were less targeted at specific individuals and more the Party as a whole. But despite that, the demonstrations were mostly just against political corruption and calls for more liberalization. There were few who advocated for anything as serious as overthrowing the Party.

But the demonstrations made the conservative faction very nervous. There was fear that if they were allowed to continue, it would result in the eventual end of CCP rule. Zhao Ziyang and the moderates, however, took a much more conciliatory approach. They hoped to persuade the demonstrators to go home by meeting with them and compromising with their demands. It was believed that the students would go home satisfied, the conservatives would be calmed, and the economic and hopefully political liberalizations could continue unhindered.

But soon, Zhao had to leave the country on a scheduled trip to North Korea. Zhao feared that if he canceled the trip, it would be seen as a sign that the government wasn't in full control of the situation. But upon his departure, Li Peng called a meeting of the PSC at Deng's home. At the meeting, he painted the protestors as being anti-socialist, anti-party, and anti-Deng. Without Zhao to oppose him, it was easy for him to convince the rest of the leadership that the protesters were counter-revolutionaries funded and organized by the West. The meeting approved for an editorial to be published in People's Daily on April 26. The editorial, which bore Deng's name, took a very harsh stance towards the protestors and stated that the Party would have a "no-tolerance" policy regarding them. The protestors were shocked by this, as they had kept their demands to fairly moderate proposals. Because Zhao had promised meetings and compromise, they felt that the party and government had betrayed them. The protests soon grew in numbers and began to bear a much more angry sentiment.

Zhao returned to find that the protests had escalated far beyond what they had been, and he was furious at Li for going behind his back. He tried to continue to push for dialogue with the protestors, and tried to get a revised, more apologetic editorial published that would retract the April 26 statement. But by this point the protests had changed completely. They had gone from student demonstrations that called for reform, and had grown to encompass people from all walks of life across the city. They weren't all looking for the same thing. Some were hoping China would adopt the liberal capitalist model of the West. Others were condemning of Deng's market reforms and wanted the genuine promise of socialism that Mao had been unable to deliver. But they were unified in a desire for more political democratization, opposition to corruption, and a marked criticism of the one-party state. The government had hoped the editorial would isolate the protestors and turn public opinion against them, but it had backfired tremendously. By now, many students were on a hunger strike, Gorbachev had come to Beijing on a previously scheduled visit and had witnessed the scale of the protests, demonstrations in solidarity had broken out all over China, and the global media had come to broadcast the protests to the rest of the world. By now the divide within the Chinese leadership had been made very public, and the party had essentially lost control of the situation. Government attempts at token compromises were dismissed by the protesters, who felt the leadership as a whole had become discredited by the April 26th editorial.

Zhao's moderate faction was quickly becoming isolated within the party leadership as a whole. At a meeting of the PSC, Li called for martial law to be established, as the demonstrations had become impossible to negotiate with on terms that the party favored. He blamed Zhao for his unilateral efforts to appease the students, feeling they had exposed a divide in the party and had emboldened the protests. Zhao adamantly opposed Li's call, but by now it was too late. Up till now, Deng had largely remained on the sidelines, with the exception of the April 26th editorial. Deng didn't so much care how the protests had been resolved, so long as they eventually ended with a favorable outcome to the Party. He had only approved the editorial because of Li's scaremongering. But by now, he felt that the protests had escalated to almost revolutionary levels and the only choices were martial law or the overthrow of the party. While some of Deng's allies were initially supportive of Zhao, once Deng made his opinion known everyone began lining up behind him and Li. Zhao was left alone with no support. Seeing the writing on the wall, Zhao went to Tienanmen Square in the early morning of May 19th and spoke to the protestors with a megaphone:

"Students, we came too late. We are sorry. You talk about us, criticize us, it is all necessary. The reason that I came here is not to ask you to forgive us. All I want to say is that students are getting very weak, it is the 7th day since you went on hunger strike, you can't continue like this. [...] You are still young, there are still many days yet to come, you must live healthy, and see the day when China accomplishes the four modernizations. You are not like us, we are already old, it doesn't matter to us any more."


It was to be his last act as General Secretary, as he was soon removed from the position and eventually condemned to house arrest until his death in 2005, with his tenure and actions as Premier and General Secretary ignored by the Chinese media and becoming essentially unpersoned.

Martial law was declared the next day. While the initial units sent into the city were turned away at citizen barricades at the city's outskirts, by June forces from elsewhere in the country had moved in. On the night of June 3 into the morning on June 4, the army violently cleared the city of protestors. Zhao's supporters were purged from all leadership positions, and the Party ensured such an internal divide couldn't happen again. When Deng found a new successor in the form of Shanghai Party Secretary Jiang Zemin, Jiang was given enough power to dominate the Party and State, even if he still had to lead by consensus. No longer would the Premier and the General Secretary be at such odds, as the new power conventions gave the General Secretary the titles of President and CMC Chairman.

I don't think that the protests could've escalated into a Warsaw Pact-style revolution. By the time the demonstrations had reached the scale that they did, armed retaliation by the state was inevitable. And this wasn't Poland or Czechoslovakia, where the economy was suffering and the government was widely seen as a foreign puppet. Deng was very popular across China for his policies. It's the reason why the protests were initially just calls for reforms and not for radical action. If Zhao had a larger powerbase, including a more favorable Premier than Li Peng, then it's likely he would've have been able to seek compromises with the demonstrators. Some small-scale reforms would have been achieved, the protestors would have gone home satisfied, and the conservatives, while not thrilled, would have been at least placated with the situation being stabilized. Deng would have approved, as it would have eased tensions between the party and the public while still maintaining his vision for the Party. Zhao likely would have become a full successor to Deng, and while he probably wouldn't wield the kind of power Deng or his OTL successors have, he would have elevated the reformist faction into the dominant one in the Party. I doubt it would've have become a multi-party state, but democracy and civil liberties would have undoubtedly become stronger across China then they are now.
 
Last edited:
This is very interesting.

Where did you find this much detail on what was going on inside the Party at the time?

fasquardon

A various assortment of sources. Documentaries over the years, articles and such. A particularly good source are the journals of Zhao Ziyang himself, which he recorded while under house arrest. They were smuggled out and published outside of China after his death. They were compiled into a book called Prisoner of the State. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_the_State:_The_Secret_Journal_of_Premier_Zhao_Ziyang
 
There was one very long one, "A Different Song" or something - while very detailed, it also relied on quite a few quasi-ASB things happening.

djPROUDGEEK's reply is excellent and really informative. I wouldn't say it was impossible to have shaken the regime however. Their crackdown was so severe precisely because they genuinely thought it represented an existential threat. Remember that there were protests in numerous Chinese cities. The military operation wasn't just to clear the Square - they had effectively lost control of Beijing. Some top military leaders refused to carry out orders, there were government officials joining the protests, state media was reporting freely (and sympathetically), and workers were preparing to call a general strike (which might have been what precipitated the final decision to crack down).

Obviously it came to nothing. But revolutions are unpredictable and can turn on slight changes. Many regimes have fallen as a result of less. Not crazy to imagine an outcome like that in China.

After that, what comes next? Let's say the crackdown fails and troops defect. Then you see protests in Beijing surge even greater. Zhao is recalled, Li and Deng are put under house arrest (though Deng is let off easily). Zhao probably calls for reforms, but in the radicalizing environment of a revolution, this quickly goes towards promises of a broad liberalization. Communist Party gets renamed "People's Party," hardliners are purged and put on trial, other parties are legalized, rights to assembly and speech are declared, and elections are held sometime in 1990 which Zhao wins by a large margin (akin to the post-Ceausescu elections in Romania).

Thereafter, though, things get murky. China OTL faced a severe growth slowdown in the years immediately following Tiananmen. Revolutions are worse in the short run. They'll probably face a severe economic slowdown and crisis in the early 1990s. Zhao would face a rocky term or two and the successor Communist/People's Party likely splits or falls apart in the years that follow. In a best case scenario, by the mid-90s a new constitution is written, growth resumes, Zhao steps down, and China ends up remaining broadly democratic. Even then, though, there's a strong chance it could slip back into a Putin-style authoritarian regression, and much would depend on how much the Communist Era bureaucracy and security sectors remained intact. That might mean that present-day China is still a fast growing but authoritarian, nationalistic regime like OTL, just with a Putin or PRI(Mexico)-style regime rather than an out-an-out de jure one party state.
 
One interesting possibility lays in the BWAF (gongzilian in Chinese).

OTL, inspired by the britality of the 4/20 breakup of a studemt demo. A small group of activists began organizing factory workers quietly and independently of the student movement. They wereupset about the cops beating the students, but had their own grievences. By mid-May, they felt they could openly align with the students.

But, what if things went differently. Lets say there was an earlier crackdown. 4/27, the day after Deng calls the demos anti-party and anti-socialist, when they actually try to get into Tianamen Square is a good date. Lets say something gets out of hand. Maybe a cop gets scared, knocks heads too hard, and violence erupts. The military steps in and crushes the students.

The gongzilian isn't really out in the open at this point, and is unlikely to be for some time. But their grievances are still there, and are probably less likely to be addressed. So they'll still be organizing, just more quietly. And they'll wait until they're much stronger.

OTL there were conflicts between the students and workers. But here, that didn't develop so strongly. The students could easily be seen as martyrs. Even worse, they could be seen as a cautionary lesson on the failure of peaceful resistance.

Now that sets more of a stage for something more like Poland.
 
Top