China: Modernization and "Unhealthy Tendencies"

Abstract

Beginning in the summer of 1984, and continuing down to the recent sixth plenum of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) twelfth central committee, the Chinese press has revealed a persistent concern on the part of the leadership of the CPC with the appearance of arising in the wake of recent economic reforms. Throughout 1985, serious concern was evident as the problem was addressed at various times by the CPC central committee (CC), the CPC CC discipline inspection commission, the CPC central commission for guiding party rectification, the state council, Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang, among many others. The year 1986 likewise witnessed scores of reports of economic corruption and other behavior, as well as a number of highly publicized cases of corruption involving officials, party cadre, and the relatives of high-ranking Communist Party officials. While bearing certain similarities to the earlier campaign against spiritual pollution, the campaign against tendencies has had a fundamentally different target. The spiritual pollution campaign attacked a wide range of behavior associated with moral and spiritual decay. The campaign against tendencies has been aimed at undesirable behavior on the part of party and government cadres and officials and thus bears similarity to the earlier problems of corruption in the PRC studied by Alan P. L. Liu.3 Because the are said to involve an erosion of party spirit and discipline within the ruling elite itself, concern with arresting and reversing the unhealthy occasionally assumes a tone of urgency. The dangers inherent in the continuation of the present trend are apparently perceived as real and substantial. Indeed, it is frequently suggested that, if the problem can not be effectively dealt with, economic reform and the four modernizations (of industry, agriculture, science and technology, and the military) may be difficult or impossible to achieve. In the following pages I propose to examine these new tendencies as they are reported and discussed in the Chinese press. I will suggest that the leaders of the CPC appear to have little real understanding of the underlying causes--as contrasted with the