[MUSIC] Now I believe very strongly that leaders in a country such as China, have their own values, and that those values motivate them to act on certain issues. And that those values can sometimes help structure the conflicts that the leaders of the groups that leaders can form, and can also have a very big impact on stability. So if we look at the relationship between ideology and conflict during the Mao era, what we find is that Mao was really motivated heavily, at least I believe this, that he was heavily motivated by ideology. And that for him, the conflicts over ideology whether China would be moving towards communism, slowing down. These kinds of issues were fundamental to him. And because they were so fundamental, he would get rid of leaders if that was a problem. So it was very destabilizing. Second is, if you get this split among the leaders, then as I said, it's not just Mao's views, but the distribution of views in terms of reform. Here I say, differences in the distribution of values, but I mean, really, in terms of reform, some groups may want to have more reform, some may oppose reform. These kinds of conflicts, we'll see this in a second, those kinds of conflict can also be highly destabilizing. Now we know in terms of Mao that if we look back at the cultural revolution, Mao was really concerned that somehow the Communist party was turning its back on socialism, and was bringing about what he liked to call a capitalist restoration. And because of that, he launched the Cultural Revolution. And we've been told that as many as perhaps 100 million people suffered during the Cultural Revolution. The economy performed poorly and that there was little growth well into the late 1970s. And it's only with the coming of Dung and the reforms that you really can recover, that China was really able to recover. Now, because Mao saw these crises, these ideological fights, as so fundamental, he wanted to win those fights. And so we call this concept in political science really zero sum games, right? If I get ten, you get zero. There's no sharing. It's not I'm going to get six and you're going to get four. I'm going to get ten, you're going to get zero, and you're out of the game. And for those of you who know French, the word for window in French is [FOREIGN], which is close to the word defenestrated. And defenestrated means to die by being thrown out the window. And so when Mao defeated Yu, and we'll see this later on, I'll show you a slide of what happens to many of the leaders who challenged Mao, they died by being, sort of sane, they sort of died by being the thrown out the window. Now elite conflicts are often organized in what we in the West call factions. In Hong Kong, they're very interested in these kinds of factions within the top leadership. And they link together Communist Party leaders, based on personal ties, on ideological ties, and also their views on policy. Historically, we find that officers who served in the same field army during the Civil War, will often help each other out when there are political battles after 1949. And the Chinese leadership actually believe that these kinds of personal ties are very important. One of my best friends in China, his father served with Lin Biao, who was the defense minister who in 1971, tried to kill Mao. And after Lin Biao died, my friend's father was forced into retirement and lived along the coast of Shandong in a town called Yentai, which is a lovely place. But he was never charged. They never found him guilty of any involvement in any kind of conspiracy. But just to be safe, the leadership decided since he had served with Lin Biao better to just get him to sit out the rest of his life outside of Chinese politics. Now, I believe that these factional links can also be based on shared views about policy, so what we find are conservatives, bureaucrats, radical reformers, Maoists. These are the ways we link people together, lock people together into factions. And then try and see to what extent this actually does explain policy and fights. In the 1980's, it's clear that's one of the periods when there are really two very polarized, two very sharp divisions between conservatives and radical reformers, who had very different views about China's economic and political future. They had very, very viewed, very different views as well about policies. Now, on the one hand, we had radical reformers such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, they were the radical reformers and another group on the side was Li Peng, Yao Yilin and Chen Yun, with Deng Xiaoping, really sitting there in the middle, retaining, maintaining the balance. And I would argue that, and I'll show you a slide in just a second, I would argue that in many ways when we think about Tiananmen, the crisis in June 1989, the build-up to that crisis and even almost the first ten years building up to that crisis, it really was due to a sharp disagreements over policy, both in terms of economic policy and political policy, between the conservatives and the radical reformers. Now, what happens is in, let me show you this slide here. I think it's a better place to go first. So what you have in the 1980s is this, what we would all polarization, this sharp split between conservatives who are sort of on the left, so they value socialism more than, let's say economic development, which would be an important policy for the reformers. They would believe that equality is a core value, whereas the radical reformers would believe that inequality is acceptable, as long as it leads to economic growth. Third would be the radicals over here, the conservatives over here, would really emphasize the leading role of the Communist Party and ideology, Marxist Leninist ideology, and when they look at many issues, both in China and internationally, they would use a class analysis. They would always try and see who's the ruling class and see the kind of dynamic between workers and the ruling class. Whereas, the marketeers, the radical reformers, would accept more capitalist policies, and they would prefer more market and less plan. So that was the big split. Now, what happens is in 1987 Hu Yaobang who is the General Secretary of the Communist Party at that time, and a reformer a very strong radical reformer, he gets purged in 1987. Zhao Ziyang gets purged in 1989 because of Tiananmen and with them basically goes the entire reform, radical reform leadership group. And so what you really get is consensus after this for a significant number of years. Now, why do you get consensus? Well, what happens is this group basically, and their attitudes. It's not just that the group goes. It's not just that the people go. But in terms of the policy discussions, the issues, their views are no longer being voiced in the center. So, there's no more polarized conflict. And these guys are gone. If I had a red pen, I could sort of wipe them out. They're gone, and what we wind up with, after Tiananmen in 1989, getting into the early 1990's, is just one conservative viewpoint within the ruling elite. But, in 1992, Dung gets very concerned that their position is too far to the left. He makes his famous southern journey to Shun Jun. And what he does is he pulls this group, in terms of their policy, he pulls them over to the middle. And so what we wind up with is Pro-market Reformers and Conservative Reformers but all of them under sort of the same tent. They share views. There's differences but they're not the kinds of polarized differences that we see here. So I think that's a very big issue. So what happens, basically, is that after 1992, there really are no major conflicts. You get pretty much leadership consensus. The first time we really see any kind of major disagreement is in the late 1990's, as China starts to decide whether or not to move into WTO, and that's a big step for China. To accept the global economy, the rules of the global economy, and there clearly are people in China, including Li Peng, the Prime Minister, who don't like that kind of decision, who don't want to move into and accept the rules of the global economy, and so they try and resist that. And then in 1999, as China is on the verge of entering WTO, there's a political battle that emerges, and the then Prime Minister, Zhu Ronji almost loses his job. But if you look at the issues, some of the key issues like privatization of small and medium sized state owned enterprises, there's really not that much of a debate about it. It's certainly not going to be in the '80s, those kinds of issues were very hard to solve In the '90s, it's much easier to solve them, because the disagreements are just not so fundamental. Now, what we do see though, in the 1990s, is some political challenges, but those challenges are based mostly on a struggle for power. In 1993, one of the two military leaders tried to carry out some kind of coup, try and knock off Jiang Zemin, try and push him out as the leader. Dung protects him, but by and large, this is done for power. Really not much to do with ideology or values. Now we also see jockeying for power throughout the period a little bit. In 2002-2005 we have a major battle. I'll spend more time talking about that in a couple of minutes, but a major battle between Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao as Jiang tries to hold onto some political post because he doesn't want to give up his influence. Eventually, he gives up the post, but he holds on for a number of years. And this, again, is a struggle over power, not really a struggle over different views of reform. The only time we really see ideology, sort of different values, coming up in a strong way is around 2010. Bo Xilai, who at that point was party secretary of the big city of in Chongqing in Central Western China, he starts carrying out his own leftist policies in Chong Ching. Starts having people sing communist songs, what are called red songs. He tries to have much more public housing. He tries some, what other leaders would see as somewhat leftist, somewhat too radical policies, and he's doing this in part to promote himself, and to present himself as an alternative as China was moving towards a new succession, and so he really thought that this would be a way for him to get ahead. (BLANK_AUDIO)
