Every five years since 1949, China has had a meeting of the National Congress. The 15th National Congress ended on September 18, 1997 after approving the work of the 14th Congress. There were a few differences. One of them was the death in February, 1997 of Deng Xiaopeng. The 15th Congress predictably approved Deng's theory and that it must guide all the Communists actions over the next five years. China's military establishment of three million men would be reduced by 500,000, and so-called state-owned enterprises (SOE) would be sold off. These SOEs have a long history. They were set up to cope with China's rising unemployment. Would be foreign investors were told they would have to provide jobs for Chinese workers. More often than not, these SOEs were acquired from the foreign investors who were given fourteen years to recover their investment plus a reasonable return on capital. These foreign investments were incorporated pursuant to China's Joint Venture Law, a great many incorporated between 1978 and 1980. With termination of the fourteen-year deals, ownership vested in China's government, and China had a major problem; it could not find enough skilled employees to operate the hotels or plants built by foreign investors. With reversion to local Chinese ownership, they began to lose money, so they were subsidized by Beijing.

By 1998, China had a problem. Deputy Prime Minister Zhu Rongji has been betting that an expanding service sector, along with trade and foreign investment, should help employ the next generation. Many leaders in Beijing have lost their heads over other less risky bets. On the block as redundant, there are tens of millions of workers who will be laid off, particularly in the rust-belt cities of Harbin, Shenyang and others in rural areas. Chinese leaders, however, have been looking fearfully at Asia's ballooning bank debt and local currency problems. Even locally, China has problems. Shanghai, for example, has a 40 percent office vacancy rate. Property values in Hong Kong have dropped precipitately, and tension has risen. At a recent meeting of bankers and investors in Hong Kong, Zhu Rongji , China's new economic chief, Zhu avoided answering a question worrying everyone present. How does China plan to transfer ownership of some major but unprofitable companies from the government to some form of share-holding without casting a lot of workers out into the street.? According to The New York Times for September 23, 1997, China has some $130 billion in foreign currency reserves. Presumably, part of this huge fund will be used to subsidize China's "iron rice bowl," the promise of cradle to grave security for the unemployed. What's left over will probably be used to get a bigger bang for the buck of 2.5 million soldiers and sailors left after the reduction in the armed forces. Modernizing China's armed forces over three years may be extraordinarily difficult. As it appears later in this chapter, China simply does not yet have the indigenous talent to develop a modern jet fighter or even to develop its own in-flight refueling capability. Two of China's four Russian submarines have broken down because of poor maintenance. And pilots trained in 1960-era jet aircraft are reluctant to trust high-tech radar's in their new Soviet-made jets. Furthermore, the bulk of its weapons are still several generations behind those of other powers in the region, such as Singapore, Malaysia, and even Taiwan. China is a long way from having graduated enough aeronautical engineers and designers from its universities. And they're only beginning to graduate enough talent to design and manufacture the technology needed to supply a modern military establishment. It is very costly to purchase this hardware from the United States or a company in Europe without having the indigenous talent to develop new models of, for example, a tank or a jet fighter. One might conclude that banks would not lend money to Chinese companies to develop the country's own military infrastructure.

Banks will liquidate huge loans made by China's banks for political reasons, not the creditworthy to failing state enterprises. China which claims status as developing or third world state is almost certain to buy arms for its newly-lean army, navy, and air force. And if the people cast into the street by plant closures throughout China, resort to street protests as they did in Jiangmian City in Sichuen, the People's Liberation army (PLA) will be flown to the trouble spots to quash insurrections, just as the PLA was used by Deng against students in 1989 at Tiananmen Square. During the last several decades, China has built a Laogai, or prison system, throughout China equal in all respects to Russia's Gulag Archipelago. Nonviolent dissidents in Tibet and Sinkiang will be the first to disappear. As it did in the Tiananmen Square, China treated student protests as counterrevolutionary or "rightist" conduct. The National Congress has really changed nothing. A few members of the Politburo resigned rather than suffering demotion, and a few new faces appeared. The Congress certainly endorsed the events of 1989 and anointed those responsible with more power. Jiang Zemin was one of them, and he was a guest of the United States in late 1997.

In a recent book about China, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress, its authors suggest that "China has committed itself to an economic strategy that will succeed only through intensified integration into the world economy." The Hong Kong transition will test this policy seriously as to matters that extend beyond 1997. Both the United States and the United Kingdom have asserted an interest in Hong Kong's post1997 political welfare. In 1992,Congress enacted the Hong Kong Policy Act, while the UK enacted the Joint Declaration of Policy with China in 1984. Both documents establish an interest in Hong Kong's economic autonomy, political stability, and human rights. When faced with these challenges, China's leaders gave higher priority to political control than Hong Kong's economic welfare. These were all developments that occurred during Deng Xiaopeng's lifetime. Whether the direction he took will change with Li Peng and Jiang Zemin. Li Peng may not succeed in getting his old position in 1998, and Jiang Zemin's status was confirmed as the supreme leader.

China's paramount leader died on February 19, 1997. The death of Deng Xiaoping was not unexpected; he had been in declining health for as much as three years before he actually died.. Publicly, Deng's death affected only the leadership succession. Jiang Zemin became the primary Party official; he had been president until Deng died. Next in line was Prime Minister Li Peng. Deng's funeral took place in the Great Hall of the People, and some 10,000 guests attended this affair in the huge structure located in Tiananmen Square, the scene of a savage massacre of students ordered by Deng in June, 1989. Jiang may not last long, although there is nothing to indicate he has not gotten the support of the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA). By the year 2000, the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) will have a population of 1.2 billion people. Nearly 270 million of these people will not have a job. China's rise as a great power in the last decade all occurred while Deng was paramount leader. Mao Tsetung was Deng's predecessor and died in 1976. More than anything else, Deng was preoccupied with power.

Deng was born in 1904. He spent five years in France working for subsistence wages as part of a workstudy program. Back in China during the 1930s and 1940s, he was close to the pinnacle of power of the Communist Party. Deng was a close friend of Zhou Enlai, Prime Minister in 1937. After World War II, Deng, a fellow traveler on the Long March of 1934 with Mao, joined Mao in declaring the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. By `1954, Deng had become General Secretary of the Communist Party with the approval of Mao. Even as General Secretary, Deng was not immune from the fall out from Party disputes.

In 1967, Deng was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. His political rehabilitation was supervised by the Red Guard. However, in 1954, Deng, newly appointed, used his position to get rid those party regulars who responded to Mao's invitation when he said "Let all flowers bloom in the garden of socialism." Those imprudent enough to accept this invitation in full measure paid a penalty supervised by Deng. He led a witch hunt against them. Deng apparently ignored the Great Famine in China between 1958 and 1961, even though some 30 million people simply starved to death while Mao continued to order the export of food. A famine was not possible for those who accepted and followed Marxist-Leninist principles. Peasants who starved to death were lying according to Mao. Moreover, even today, the amount of arable land within China has been relentlessly reduced as the population relentlessly increases to 1.2 billion people by the year 2000. Even the remaining land has been over-cultivated while pesticide residue has leached the soil and polluted the watershed from which rivers are fed There will no doubt be further red tides -- one was reported in Hong Kong Harbor in 1994 -- and they will be increasingly toxic to humans. A red tide occurs from the combination of human, untreated waste, pesticide runoff, and other contaminating chemicals such as PCB (polychlorinatedbyphenyls) By July 1, 1997 Hong Kong and Kowloon will all revert to rule from Beijing. If the new leadership there is unable to manage the shift, Jiang Zemin and his colleagues may all disappear. Instability is a distinct possibility, particularly in those areas of China with a significant Muslim population such as the Uighur autonomous area in Sinkiang where there has been recent violence.

Deng left a political legacy of economic reform so pervasive that there has been a rising tide of prosperity in the last five years or so. During this period of growth, China ran a favorable balance of trade with the United States. Each year from about 1991 to the present, the United States ran a trade deficit in an amount that grew every year. Chinese businessmen loved it, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made a huge profit. The deals it made were one-sided. Boeing, for example, sold its passenger jets but Army generals insisted that there must be local content. The tail assembly of the Boeing 737 was made in China, and American workers lost their jobs as a result. To swing these deals, China established Chinese National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC). It is owned by the government. Buyers within the United States were Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. In Europe, the only buyer was Airbus, so China could whipsaw Boeing and/or McDonnell to get the best deal for China.The best deal was almost literally a complete plant in Ohio with all the computer-operated machines an aircraft manufacturing facility needed. If McDonnell Douglas, for example was reluctant to sell the computer-operated machines, the representatives of CATIC would simply remind managerial personnel that Airbus was being approached in Europe. Finally, McDonnell Douglas capitulated, and lost 4000 jobs in Ohio. This deal is more fully described in War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in America by John J. Fialka in early 1997. Other American companies have been standing in line to open shop in the PRC. They include companies from IBM to AT&T. The American-Chinese Business Council lists some 500 companies all willing to lobby Congress to continue the status of Most Favored Nation (MFN). China is the largest market in the world, and chief executive officers have been drooling at the profits to be made, even though China has a demonstrably poor record on human rights.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has encouraged many Chinese to begin thinking about their liberty as being the foundation of a new political alignment in the autonomous regions of Central Asia. In Western China Xinjiang is one such autonomous region with a Muslim minority. Ethnic Uighurs who are Muslim and speak a distinct Turkic language make up 60 percent of the population of 16 million in what is called the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region. Its capital city is Urumqi. On its Western border lies Kazakhstan where an international consortium successfully developed oil wells producing some 600,000 barrels per day. One pipeline runs to the Black Sea via Georgia. A another pipeline may run through Azerbaijan and Turkey to a port on the Mediterranean Sea. South of Kazakhstan are four countries now independent of Russia, Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.They are all Muslim. Some 18 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is said to be available in Turkmenistan.

Some Uighurs who reached Alma Ata in Kazakhstan described the violence of February 25th in Uurumqi as a spontaneous uprising against persecution. Three bombs exploded, killing five people and wounding dozens of others. The Uighurs say the Beijing government uses excessive force in quelling local violence. Even worse, the local ethnic Chinese deny them access to mosques and religious teaching. They also say they have become increasingly impoverished by the diversion of state investment funds for irrigation and agricultural improvements to areas settled by Han Chinese immigrants. With an unconscious irony, Dr. Abdul Qader Tash, Editor-in-Chief of Arab News wrote a polemic in the February 13, 1997 issue. In part, it reads as follows: "Since China annexed Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang), the authorities have claimed that it was an autonomous province because of its special ethnic, religious and linguistic characteristics which distinguish it from the rest of the country. In fact, however, that autonomy is mere window dressing. The Chinese treat the Uighur area as a colony and its people, the Uighurs, as aliens who must be exterminated and humiliated.....Millions of ethnic Han Chinese Buddhists have been brought to different cities, towns, and villages of [the Uighur] area and settled there....Chinese authorities have also adopted inhuman measures to implement birth control in the province. Uighurs fleeing their country tell stories of compulsory abortions being performed on Muslim women, especially in rural areas..."

These charges from the Muslim world make a rough sort of sense. China's government has unleashed a fierce rhetorical campaign against what it sees as the grim threat of Muslim separatism. Leaders in Beijing see this threat as far more credible than the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1951; when the Dalai Lama was unarmed. The government has also encouraged Han Chinese to emigrate from the dense, overpopulated areas of the Chinese coast, e.g.., Shanghai. In Xinjiang, locals resent Hans who get the best jobs on the construction sites and the oil fields. Nuclear tests at Lop Nor made the Uighurs feel unsafe from radiation danger. In any case, the Uighurs are essentially unarmed, even though the level of violence has increased in the last few years.

With respect to its army and air force, the PRC has gotten mixed reviews. Richard Bernstein and Ross Monro just finished a book entitled The Coming Conflict with China. Unfortunately, it was published before Deng's death. Thus, its readers will not be enlightened by the chaos that will certainly exist. This variety of news will be suppressed by Xinhua, China's national press agency. The chaos will last at least until October, the month in 1997 that the Peoples' Congress meets to confirm action taken by the Party.

Robert Ross, a Professor of Political Science at Boston College has another view, one he expressed in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. Unfortunately, he too published before Deng died, though he could not have been unaware of Deng's silence due to illness for about three years before publication. Even so, Ross offered two theories and commented that "The difference between these two policy packages is significant, but they share a concern for China's increasing ability to destabilize the regional balance of power and threaten vital American interests. In both cases, this concern is based on incorrect assumptions about Chinese strategic capabilities. The reason there is not a 'China threat' is not because China is a benign status quo power, but rather because it is too weak to challenge the balance of power in Asia and will remain weak well into the 21st century. Nevertheless, China is not a second rate power. It has the ability to inflict considerable damage on a wide range of U.S. interests."

The independence of Taiwan has been a source of friction between Beijing and Washington ever since 1992. In that year, President Bush said the United States would deliver about 18 jet fighters to equalize China's acquisition of the Soviet Sukhoi27. Then in 1996, Beijing carried out military maneuvers in the straits separating the mainland from Taiwan. The United States sent a carrier to patrol the area. President Clinton was concerned. Later analysis confirmed the missiles used by China were so primitive they could have veered off course and hit Taiwan. China has one other major concern that may create friction during the process of assimilating the new leaders in Beijing. They wish to join the World Trade Organization, and Beijing's application to do so has already been sent to Geneva. There it will run into worldwide opposition based on China's dismal human rights record. Membership in the WTO is by two-thirds vote from the members, and as of December 15, 1996 there were 130 members. Accession by the People's Republic of China is not a sure thing, since human rights groups have been lobbying to exclude the PRC.

In Geneva, China will face risks, no matter what questions it answers. These trade negotiations involve not just the conditions of China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), but they are about the pace at which China will reform its economy and open its society. If, for example, the consequences of opening its economy presage further unemployment, does it follow that joining the WTO will weaken the Communist Party's grasp on power? If China wants to compete in world markets, it will have to open its own. Or is China already so powerful that it may join the WTO on its own terms? The thinking in Washington is that with a policy of engagement with China, it may have some effect on questions involving China's treatment of Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan and human rights in particular. In any case China will probably have to disclose and end its subsidies of state-owned industries. Were these industries left free to compete against free market companies, a substantial number of them would face bankruptcy. According to the Economist of March 8, 1997, state industry owes the Bank of China, itself state-owned, some $540 billion. It continues: "Nine-tenths of all bank loans go to the state sector. Household and corporate savings are drawn off in the prosperous coastal areas and, through the state credit plan, are recycled to those parts of the country where state industry looms large: the northeastern smokestack plants built with Soviet help in the 1950s, and (often defense) industries that settled in the Chinese hinterland in the 1960s, this time, to escape Soviet attack."

China has its own domestic problems; the state-owned industries, many of them hovering on the edge of bankruptcy. Widespread violence of unemployed textile workers began in June in Mianyang City, a city of 5 million known as Science City. It is home to 160odd scientific research institutes of various levels. They employ over 130,000 technical personnel including over 7,000 professors, researchers and senior engineers. In June, 1997 more than 100,000 unemployed textile workers took to the streets of Mianyang City and demanded government assistance. They accused local officials of stealing their unemployment funds. In July, 1997 there was violence during a demonstration in Sichuan, a state in the Southwest of China. The demonstration was touched off by more than 100,000 workers who may have lost their pensions. They were unemployed from the closing of a bankrupt state-owned business. China is full of these companies, but the Communist rulers in Beijing have to close unprofitable companies. They are concerned at the closure of many inefficient state-run factories will lead to labor unrest that may spiral out of control. However, the rulers will have to deal with the consequences, in this case, violence that ended only when Beijing sent in troops to disperse the unemployed workers. This sort of violence is likely to increase as China enlarges its market economy. Unprofitable industries cannot compete for market share in this economic environment.

At the September, 1997 Communist Party Congress approved a plan to shift the ownership of all but 3,000 state-owned enterprises to the private sector. Actually, the vast majority of China's 300,000 state-run enterprises are small and inefficient. They are also a severe threat to the nation's economy. They are unprofitable and state-subsidized for years by banks that need access to capital now tied up in money-losing enterprises that cannot compete with newer, non-state companies. The problem, however, is not simple. No one wants to buy a losing company or even shares in that company. Employees have been compelled to buy shares, and their anger is expected to surface, when Beijing closes the door and applies for the Chinese equivalent of bankruptcy protection. Thus, some 297,000 will probably close over the nest few years. Their employees will be unemployed and angry. Plant closures have begun throughout China, and Beijing officials anticipate the worst. Wang Zhongyu, Minister of the State Economic and Trade Commission is committed to a market economy. But he already knows that only the strong survive. However, China has some 100,000 jobs that will be lost as the result of closing all or most of the weak companies. Another worry is the corruption at the managerial level. Managers often fail to pay workers and abscond with a company's assets.

Four fifths of China's land mass is rugged and inhospitable. Thus, its population has inevitably moved to the coastal areas to the point that only a small percentage of its total population live in the more remote provinces. Tibet, for example, is an autonomous province, and authorities in Beijing are moving Han Chinese to permanent homes in this hostile area, while at the same time, these authorities have systematically reduced the Tibeten population and their monasteries. Open support of the Dalai Lama represents an invitation to criminal prosecution as being counterrevolutionary. In Sinkiang, the Uighur population outnumbers the Han Chinese population. Separatist tendencies have surfaced recently, and Beijing sees this autonomous area as vital to the Chines economy. Almost two-thirds of all China's oil is thought to exist in the Tarim Basin, but not much exploration for oil seems to exist, even though China became a net importer of oil in 1995. Some demographers have estimated that the least fractious two-thirds of China's population, about 800 million, live in the eastern one-fifth of its entire land mass. To move more people into the essentially underpopulated areas of China breeds resentment on both sides. The Han Chinese do not want to leave their home in the overpopulated eastern areas of China, and in the relatively unsettled areas of China, e.g.., Tibet and Sinkiang, the Tibetan minority and the Uighur majority see a threat enforceable by the military, a Han Chinese majority excluding Uighurs from land they see as their own. These population transfers have a hidden cost. China has less arable land and agricultural quality water to support the need for food these transferees will need. Nor will they have enough fuel. Even in the heavily settled east, there is barely enough fuel to cook one meal per day. Deforestation has simply eliminated wood as fuel or as a material for building a dwelling. China's environment reflects this loss.

China's Environmental Crisis An Inquiry into the Limits of National Development by Vaclav Smil describes the environmental cost of unsustainable growth. Smil writes that:

"In China the environmental demands brought by the quest for a better life are greatly accentuated both by the size and growth of the population: severe environmental pressure is exacted by merely feeding the people. I cannot see the fact that China must feed slightly more than one fifth of humankind from less than one-fifteenth of the world's farmland simply as a welcome stimulus to engage human ingenuity in a contest with "the raw forces of nature."

The cause of alarm has not yet reached the level of governmental decision in China, even though the Three Gorges Dam designed to generate electricity by damning the Yangste River was widely criticized for its adverse effects on agriculture. Neither the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank will commit funds to this huge project; it will require the relocation of some 1.2 million people. A number of Chines writers have described the degradation of China's environment.

Because of the rapid population growth, the increasing pressure on food and fuel production has resulted in deforestation, over-exploitation of natural resources, and conversion of lakes to cultivable land. These activities have led to further damage of vegetation cover, destruction of ecosystems, erosion, aggravation of natural disasters, shortages of fuel, feed, and fertilizer, exacerbation of production problems, and difficulties in increasing food production.

This description appeared in Improving the Environment by Fu Lixue and other writers in an anthology published in Beijing. Published in 1995, the paperback, Who Will Feed China, asks the question the new leaders of China must answer.

In the period between 1958 to 1961, China suffered one of the worst famines in its long history. Some thirty million people died, and until recently the fact that there had been such a horrifying famine was treated by Mao as a closely guarded secret. This was a conservative figure; some authorities put the dead at over forty million. Jasper Becker's book, Hungry Ghosts, published in 1996 describes this famine, noting however, that it was not unique. In 1876, for example, China had a major famine, in which some thirteen million people died. Widespread famines occurred in 1924, 1941, and 1946. The Great Famine occurred during the period between 1958 and 1961. It began a year after Mao decreed the Great Leap Forward which itself occurred after the Anti-Right purge of the counties in 195455. However, unlike any previous famine, the Great Famine affected all of China, not just those areas with rich harvests. The Great Leap Forward was straight Communist Party doctrine developed by Mao, who himself had no education. He was only a peasant and believed the self-serving reports of the Party functionaries that grain crops had reached historically high levels. In fact, they were far lower than ever. The Party functionaries all the way to the top believed that all problems had a scientific solution. However, they believed quacks like Lysenko and Michurin, fools who fawned on Stalin and they caused a famine in the Soviet Union, the news of which was kept secret. No one wanted to discredit the heroes of the Soviet Union. China had its own Michurin. Shi Yiqian was a bogus geneticist and grew grapes on a persimmon tree. Shi must have had Mao's ear, because in 1958 China drew up an eight-point Lysenkoist blueprint for all Chinese agriculture. The People's Daily even started a debate on how China should cope with its food surplus Everywhere Mao went, the people heard the glowing reports of astounding successes in the fields. In fact, these reports were all bogus, and there was really no way of knowing the real size of the harvest. The State Statistical Office had been dismantled, and its local offices throughout China had been converted to propaganda organs.The fact that no reliable statistics were available did not prevent Mao from calling most of the peasants liars for hiding grain. And because Mao accused the peasants of hiding grain, his recommendation was a cue for all the Party officials to follow suit.

Thus, those peasants who didn't meet their grain quotas became the targets of a Communist witch hunt. The Party had officials at every level of government. Even a small village had its Party Secretary, and this petty official had the power of life and death over every farmer in his village. If the local Party Secretary accused a farmer of hiding grain, he was usually convicted of a crime against the state. It made no difference that the accused was starving for lack of grain or anything to eat. Mao refused to accept that there was in fact a shortage and refused to open the state granaries Over the years from 1958 to 1961, China doubled its grain exports and cut its imports of food. Exports to the Soviet Union rose by 50 percent, and China delivered gratis to its friends in North Korea, North Vietnam, and Albania. As a result, more Chinese died from starvation, and, even worse, Mao rejected any thought of limiting population growth. Indeed, local Party officials created a nightmare of terror and torture. By early 1960, people began to die of starvation or died because of some crime they were alleged to have committed, or from the torture inflicted on those who had allegedly hidden grain. Some 15,000 Soviet advisers left China, completing the division of Party theology between Stalinism and Communism Chinese-style.

Mao probably welcomed the departure of Soviet technicians; they could not report to Nikita Khruschev what was really happening in China. According to Jasper Becker in his book, Hungry Ghosts, there was evidence from a document issued by the People's Liberation Army, that the morale of its troops was in doubt, because some of the soldiers openly blamed Mao for the death of their relatives. This report, dated 1963, was obtained by the State Department in Washington. In 1988, the United States Department of Agriculture issued a World Grain Database. This remarkably useful resource contains the yield. area, and production of each grain in every country from 1950 forward. Amongst other thing, it shows that if countries become densely populated before they industrialize, they inevitably suffer a heavy loss of cropland. China was no exception to this development. If industrialization has been rapid, the loss of cropland quickly overrode the rise in productivity, leading to a decline in grain production. In 1995, Chinese authorities were "sounding alarm bells." They were President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng both of whom inherited more responsibility and power after Deng's funeral. Observers should expect to hear more in the National People's Congress in October, 1997. In the meantime, the government has allowed the price of grain to rise enough to encourage farmers to remain on the land, but not enough to create urban unrest that could lead to political upheaval. As of early 1997, adjoining North Korea faces starvation, another famine. It is not known whether China would ship grain out of its granaries to feed the people of North Korea. This is a political question that will be answered in Beijing. In any case, the dire situation brought about by the rulers of North Korea and a poor harvest for two years running will certainly serve as a wakeup call in Beijing.

Tensions in the South China Sea were heightened in March of 1997. Vietnam lodged a protest over oil well drilling in the Spratly Islands which Vietnam had placed in its continental shelf and international economic zone. In all, six countries in this area all claim an interest in the Spratly Islands, which are thought to have extensive oil reservoir. China is not militarily endowed with armed forces to defend its claim against Singapore, Malaysia ,the Philippines, and Brunei. These conflicting claims are a cause of instability and miscalculation, as Richard K. Betts notes in his essay in East Asian Security.

One example [of instability] is the discord over who owns the Spratly Islands....In one sense, the issue is trivial and hard to see as the source of major conflict, since the islands are tiny, barren, and isolated.....That insignificance, however, abets miscalculation and unintended provocation. Moreover, if important amounts of oil turn up in the area, greed will compound national honor as potential fuel for conflict.

It is worth noting that the protest by Vietnam was lodged with the Ambassador of China in Hanoi and after the death of Deng on February 19, 1997. China had sent a drilling crew to the Spratly Islands, and Vietnam reacted in predictable fashion. These islands are 500 miles south of the closest point in China. Is this enough to create an unintended provocation or was it intentional?. During a speech to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) general staff in late 1992, there was a deliberate leak to the Hong Kong South China News. The Chinese government had decided to acquire an aircraft carrier and settle the Spratly Islands by force if Vietnam did not accept Chines terms by 1997. No operational carrier was acquired by China, but it has other options.

Having acquired Sukhoi jets from the Soviet Union, China could offer its tiny Navy air cover from fields on Hainan, a mere 250 miles from the Spratly Islands. China simply does not yet have the ability to project its air or sea power to any great distance. Singapore is far more sophisticated in its purchase of military hardware. The same is true of Malaysia. Indonesia offers new corvettes in its Navy, but its military staff may see the Spratly Islands as not threatening its own supply of oil. Singapore and Malaysia have different views of the importance of these tiny islands -- there may not be quantities of oil significant enough to tip the military equation at all. And, for its part, China may be having nationalist conflicts in both Sinkiang and Tibet. Recently, Beijing was the site of bombs exploding on at least one bus with some killed and wounded. The Security Service issued orders suggesting the bombs were planted by Uighur nationalists. Sinkiang is a Chinese autonomous province with some seven million Uighurs and eight million Han Chinese, many of them having been ordered to move from their homes in other parts of China. The Uighur population, however, has been living in the northwest section of Sinkiang, the Tarim Basin, said by Beijing to be rich in oil.

The new rulers of the PRC have not yet had to disperse a student protest in Tiananmen Square, the venue of such demonstrations since the May Fourth Incident of May 4, 1919. In this early use of Tiananmen Square, this area had its beginnings as a national symbol of protest. On May 4, 1919 young Chinese took to the streets with banners to protest the government's agreement to accept the ceding of Germany's territorial concessions in China to Japan while the Treaty of Versailles was being negotiated following World War I. The warlord ruling North China at the time responded by beating and arresting scores of demonstrators. Instead of ending their protest, students widened it by dispersing throughout the city and continued delivering political speeches about the corrupt government and its humiliating appeasement of Japan. Slightly more than six years later, another student demonstration protesting the killing of thirteen Chines anti-imperialists. The demonstrators called for the abolition of unequal treaties that gave foreigners extraterritorial immunity under Chinese law.

On March 18, 1926 students once again marched to Tiananmen Square to protest warlord Zhanh Zuolin's capitulation to new Japanese demands. After World War II, this venue continued as a site for devotional demonstrations favoring Mao and the Communist Party. Mao died in 1976, and a tomb was designed for the Great Helmsman. On April 5, 1976 Zhou Enlai and thousands of Chinese defied a ban on demonstrations by students who believed Zhou was both fair and moderate. This demonstration had its origins in the Cultural Revolution ordered by Mao. Deng himself was reeducated by Red Guards. Then, in 1978, students and other Chines looking for at least some democracy began pasting up posters criticizing past Communist Party policies. This protest was named the Democracy Wall, but Deng, who, by this time, had been rehabilitated, took a firm hand end even these

A student activist, Wei Jingsheng was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison on charges of having sold state secrets to a foreigner. He was released in 1993 in an effort by the government to enhance its chances of bringing the 2000 Olympic Games to Beijing. During the period from about 1978 to 1989, critics of Deng argued that altering the structure of government to exclude democratic political change was self-defeating. China, they said, could never attain the level of political stability essential to support long term economic growth. This political schizophrenia continued right up to June 4, 1989 and the historic student demonstration of that period. The entire world saw this demonstration in Tiananmenn Square via television.

In a remarkable book recently published by Random House, the past of China was captured by the simple camera. Its title was The Chinese Century A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years. This collection of previously unpublished photos was edited by Johnathan D. Spence and Annping Chinn. In an Editor's Note the following is worth noting "The photographs reproduced in this book are the result of extensive research in archives, museums, and private collections around the world, in China, Europe and America..."

China in the late nineteenth century retained astonishing continuities with what we know of the country in the third century B.C., when it first became a unified state ruled by an autocratic Emperor. Successive regimes might have standardized the written language, put in place a massive centralized bureaucracy, and built canals and road systems to link the big commercial centers, yet in 1890 Chinese lives remained generally unaffected by these changes. Most people still spoke dialects unintelligible to those from other regions, practiced folk religions in a bewildering array of local temples, raised families and arranged marriages according to local traditions, and dealt with the bureaucracy at any of its levels only when they absolutely had to. There was, indeed, no way that the traditional state could control public expressions of dissent were not tolerated by Deng. China was vast, approximately the size of the continental United States, and considerably larger than Europe. The climate and geography of the country ranged from the freezing ice-coated winters and short growing seasons of Heilongjiang on the borders with Russia to the north to the lush tropical agriculture and fisheries of the southwest on the borders with Vietnam and Burma, and the arid windblown deserts that stretched from the edges of Tibet to the outer reaches of Turkestan.

No history of China can be complete without the invaluable photographs in The Chinese Century and the text that accompanies them. There are hundreds of them plus an excellent description of not just the photo itself, but also text with a brief summary of the history to which it relates. In one scene, there is a dramatic photo showing the utter devastation caused by the flood of 1991 in Anhui. In this great manmade natural disaster, the provincial government of Anhui blasted holes in the dikes on the Huai and Chu Rivers overflowing because of late spring rains. The ensuing flooding left 900,000 homeless and a further three million cut off to save the area's coal mines, power plants and down-river cities from being flooded and the less easily controlled urban population put at risk. Shanghai was only one example. The figures may not be entirely accurate, but some four million Chinese are unemployed in that city alone, victims of the Anhui flood and the loss of arable land in China's rural areas. During the Cultural Revolution, China had brought into cultivation all untilled but fertile soil -- and had done colossal environmental damage by plowing up steppe grassland, stripping hillsides, and draining and cultivating lake beds and the overflow catchment areas adjacent to great rivers. The story of Hong Kong is still another example of speculation leading to major uncertainty after this area reverts to China after June 30, 1997.With Deng's death on February 19, 1997 one may wonder just what this man did.

Although Deng's reforms were of great significance, they consisted of nothing more complicated than abandoning a system that had failed catastrophically twenty years earlier. Curiously the same system failed in the Soviet Union two decades before that. Statistics are often unreliable, so they are viewed with mistrust by writers of history. During the 1960s and 1970s, China's most critical security threat came from the Soviet Union, which caused about two-thirds of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to be routed to the north and northwest in defense of Manchuria. In 1972, Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing and started the slow rapprochement with the United States, partly as a counterweight to Soviet influence and occasional border clashes along the Manchurian border with the Soviet Union. Mao died in 1976.

After the maneuvering for leadership succession, which Deng Xiaoping won, he called for defense conversion, but also for a military campaign beyond China's borders. However, he did not foresee the generally poor performance of the Chinese army when it invaded Vietnam in 1979. On that occasion, the PLA penetrated deep into Vietnamese territory and occupied several small provincial capitals. It could not convince the public, either abroad or at home, that the PLA had won, because it had suffered heavy casualties. So, instead of teaching the Vietnamese a lesson, as Deng had instructed, the PLA was taught a lesson it is still working on.

The Soviet threat was minimized by Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and Deng believed the PLA needed testing by had failed catastrophically twenty years earlier. Curiously, the same system failed in the Soviet Union two decades before that. Deng must share the responsibility for ignoring the lessons of both earlier failures. While economic reforms have propelled China in the right directions, the peasants have gone back to the situation they were in before the Communist Revolution. The peasants are once again small landowners but with less arable land to divide up. Deng's successors must deal with the virtually intractable problem of finding employment for a growing surplus of labor in the country's rural areas. Chinese leaders also supported defense conversion, while, at the same time, actually reducing the size of the PLA by 25 percent. The million plus troops out of jobs were added to the huge number of Chinese for whom Mao had promised a better quality of life. Thus, at a time when military spending probably tripled, the outward appearance was economic growth of the civilian economy. The PLA actually owned many companies dedicated to civilian production, and this fact has been shown in the type of aircraft the Chinese air force has been using. Its aircraft are old, probably obsolete Soviet aircraft. Having been stunned by the Persian Gulf War and America's use of "smart weapons" and modern aircraft, China seems to have a long way to go to convert its military into a well-armed and efficient military force. The last time it was seen in action was 1989. Then, Deng authorized the PLA to suppress the student protest in Tiananmen Square. The slaughter of unarmed students is hardly the sort of training Chines troops will need to invade and regain Taiwan, even though Beijing has stated on more than one occasion that it will reacquire Taiwan by peaceful means.

This statement is on the same level of truth as it is currently displaying in Hong Kong. The United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China signed a "Joint Declaration....on the Question of Hong Kong on December 19, 1984. There are a number of paragraphs in this declaration that should be noted. With effect from July 1, 1997 the PRC has established certain polices; one of them was based on Article 31 of the PRC Constitution. It permits "the state to establish special administrative regions when necessary." Thus, Hong Kong will become the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and effectively govern this former Crown colony. Article v of the basic policies reads as follows:

The current social and economic Systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the lifestyle. Rights and freedoms including those of the person, of speech of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic research, and of religious belief will be ensured by law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

In the period between 1984 and 1989, Hong Kong factions tried to expedite the pace of democratic change; they wanted to have a democratic governing body before the 1997 turnover. In 1989, however, the student protest in Tiananmen Square occurred. On June 3, 1989 and for days thereafter, Beijing ordered the PLA to crush this demonstration. In fact, the PLA killed hundreds, some say thousands of unarmed student protesters. Over one million Chinese in Hong Kong demonstrated in favor of the students. Beijing made sure that this sort of protest would not be allowed when its handpicked legislature ruled Hong Kong. The Communist government of the PRC has a long memory; it had not forgotten the student protest of 1989.

On March 28, 1990 the National People's Congress (NPC) convened in Beijing. By unanimous vote, the NPC established the Hong Kong Special Administrative District effective on July 1, 1997. Another resolution enabled the NPC to set up the Basic Law Committee which would advise the Standing Committee on the interpretation and amendment of the Basic Law. A third resolution established a preparatory committee in 1996; it would be responsible for setting up the first government of Hong Kong. At least half its members would be from Hong Kong, and the other half would be appointed in Beijing. The rulers there provided no judicial system allowing legal challenges to actions of the government of Hong Kong. At least two years before the turnover, Beijing had made it clear that democratic elections in Hong Kong would never occur. The Beijing government disclosed that the Legislative Council would all be appointed not elected by Hong Kong voters.

The courts established by the rulers in Beijing will not protect human rights or property rights. Furthermore, American-owned businesses in Hong Kong will have to toe the Communist Party line or face eviction after cancellation of their corporate licenses for conduct considered counterrevolutionary by Beijing. Competition may but will probably not occur, except on Beijing's terms.

In 1997, Tung Cheehwa, the shipping magnate was chosen in by Beijing as Hong Kong's first appointed Chief Executive. Tung declared that "Hong Kong was extremely vulnerable to external forces." The new government," he said, "must strike a balance between civil liberties and social stability, personal rights and social obligations, individual interests and the common good." With Tung's proposal, all organizations and societies will now be required to register with the police. In the past, organizations had only to notify the government of their existence. Furthermore, the local government will have the power to ban any organization "in the interest of national security." It is really quite difficult to visualize any situation in Hong Kong with all its police and PLA military units that could possibly threaten local security. National security would involve some vital interest that had to be protected by the state. Free speech is expected to disappear after June 30, 1997. Article xii also states that:

The above-stated basic policies of the People's Republic of China Joint Declaration will be stipulated, in a Basic Law of the Hong Kong regarding Hong Kong and the elaboration of them in Annex 1 to this Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China , by the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, and remain unchanged for 50 years.

The National People's Congress is Beijing's "rubber stamp" organization for all laws The last paragraph of Article XIII in Annex 1 provides that "The provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights as applied to Hong Kong shall remain in force."

Curiously, no one listed the language of the portions of these documents that were to remain in effect. In view of this ambiguity, Beijing will probably argue that these vital documents have no force or effect, having been passed by the United Nations General Assembly about forty-five years ago. None of these solemn documents and the promises made in them in 1984 seem to bother the Chinese today. For all practical purposes, the leaders in Beijing have ordered the Basic Law of 1990 shredded. Predictably, the reaction in Hong Kong was one of anger. Christine Loh, an independent lawyer who will lose her seat when the PRC replaces Hong Kong's elected legislature, said in the New York Times, "The proposals cast a pall of doubt over the future of every civic, community and non-governmental organization in Hong Kong. No one in Hong Kong has serious worries about social stability. As a society, of course, we do have real problems to tackle corruption, for example. But it is perfectly clear that social stability is not one of our problems."

At Commercial Radio's morning talk show, "Teapot in a Tempest, " callers were fierce in their denunciation of Tung's proposals. When one caller wondered whether it would do any good to express opposition, the popular host of the show, replied "If they get 300,000 letters saying the same thing, they will notice." Emily Lau, an independent legislator who had been strongly critical of China's approach to Hong Kong described Tung's proposals as dangerous and unnecessary. She announced a protest for the weekend and planned to march to Tung's office. Such a peaceful protest would not be approved by the police after June 30, 1997. The South China Morning Post, the leading English language newspaper expressed alarm. "It has not been explained why the police require greater powers and how they will be applied," one of its editorial writers noted. "But the fact that the changes are felt to be so important by the future authorities can only be seen as a sign of a more restrictive approach which places insufficient faith in the civic sense of the people of the territory."

Listen to Teresa Teng; one of China's most popular singers.

 

All contents © 1998 William M. Brinton