Breaking the myth of the CCP monolith
It’s been over a year since the start of the ongoing China-India stand-off in eastern Ladakh. The Indian strategic community is still struggling to comprehend China’s motivations. India’s China scholarship generally suffers from a firebreak between linguist and strategic studies but Vijay Gokhale, former ambassador to China, bridges this gap. His scholarship, Chinese language skills and diplomatic experiences help in understanding the People’s Republic of China’s internal politics, which shape its foreign and security policy decisionmaking.
Gokhale’s book on Tiananmen
Square offers a view of the factionalism within mainland politics and breaks the myth that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a monolith.
By describing the political landscape leading up to the June 4 Tiananmen Square incident, he details the nuances of the party-state system’s decision-making process. This is the biggest takeaway from the book, as scholars often interpret the party’s decision-making processes subjectively due to the opacity surrounding the regime.
Tiananmen Square; The Making of a Protest can be divided into three parts. The first introduces the principal and supporting characters in the Chinese party-state system and protesting groups. While Deng Xiaoping was the central figure,
Li Peng, Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yaobang, the party elders and Jiang Zemin from the establishment, student leaders like Wu’er Kaixi, Chai Ling and Feng Congde and liberal intellectuals like Liu Shaobo and Fang Lizhi played equally important roles during the unfolding of the protests. The second part builds the context within the partystate system that led to the protests. Unlike the Western media’s portrayal of the protests as being a pro-democracy movement, in the initial stages, the student groups primarily protested over basic issues like education, employment opportunities, and for greater responsiveness to citizens by the government, and some personal freedoms. The immediate trigger for mobilisation leading to the incident was Hu Yaobang’s death on April 15, 1989, two years after he had been sidelined from national politics. The third part dwells on the reasons for the escalation of the protests into a movement, and the CCP’s role in managing it.
The author’s narration of the unfolding of events compels the reader to think of two aspects that haven’t changed in China even today: The immunity offered to the top-level leadership, and the problems associated with political reforms in the PRC.
Throughout the book, Gokhale repeatedly focuses on how Deng Xiaoping remained above the fray and weighed in on issues as the final arbiter. This helped him to command power and authority on relevant matters. But it also made him largely bulletproof by enabling him to pass on blame when required. In today’s China, although Xi Jinping occupies three important positions as head of the party, military and state, the principles that were borrowed from Deng have not changed. They manifest in different forms: Xi still has the final word, and the accountability for failure in policy governance is passed on to other members within the system. Similarly, stands on political reforms within the party have largely remained unchanged.
The author highlights the Western media’s portrayal of the Tiananmen Square incident as a pro-democracy movement and asserts that the protests were more complex. Gokhale claims there was no massacre at the Square. (The CCP) “regained its control over Tiananmen Square, likely without firing a shot inside the square”, he writes. However, he notes that violence did occur in other parts of the city where students resisted martial law. His fluid narration of the intra-party events leading up to the protests and the CCP’s crisis mishandling gives a clear idea of how the student protests snowballed into an international event.
Vijay Gokhale’s book is an important contribution to understanding the CCP’s functioning and will inspire scholars to develop a more nuanced view of China’s party-state system.