Zhao Ziyang yu zhengzhi gaige (Political reform under Zhao Ziyang) (review)

58o China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 Jeanne Larsen is a comparativist, translator, andprofessor ofEnglish; her most recent novel, Manchu Palaces, traces the lives ofseveral mid-Qing women. mm Wu Guoguang. Zhao Ziyangyu zhengzhi gaige (Political reform under Zhao Ziyang). Hong Kong: The Pacific Century Institute, 1997. xxxvii, 561 pp. Paperback HK $138. This book was written by a research fellow at the former General Office of the Political Reform Research Group of the Chinese Communist Party (Zhonggong Zhengzhi Tizhi Gaige Yanjiu Xiaozu) (hereafter GO) and close aid to Bao Tong. It offers in detail an insider's perspective on political reform in China under the leadership of Zhao Ziyang from 1986 to 1989. Wu Guoguang neither employs any theory nor advocates any thesis in his book. He simply offers a factual description of how the proposals for political reform came into being. The book is based mainly on Wu's four-hundred-thousand-character working notebooks, and these raw materials are the source of a considerable amount of previously closed information about political reform in the late 1980s. This is the strength ofWu's book. While some researchers like Joseph Fewsmith and Nina Halpern have investigated the roles of think tanks and economists in the making of economic policy,1 research on the role of think tanks in political reform is lacking. Wu has managed to fill this gap by detailing the important role of the GO, Zhao Ziyang's think tank, in shaping and formulating proposals for political reform. The GO's role was crucial in conducting numerous meetings involving Party-state officials and intellectuals to solicit their views on political restructuring. Based on these views and on their own opinions, the research fellows at the GO (all of whom had working experience in Party-state organizations) drafted reports for the leaders of the Political Reform Research Group for discussion. The GO then modified these reports according to instructions from the Political Reform Research Group and other senior leaders. After successive stages of discussion and amendments, the GO produced a final draft, which was incorporated into the Thirteenth Party Congress Report. ^ ,™„ , rr ¦ This book also reveals the previously classified views of many leaders con-© 1998 by Universityr ' ' ofHawai'iPresscerning political reform and the defects ofthe Chinese political system. In internal discussion, for instance, Zhao Ziyang once commented on the excessive, virtually absolute, authority of the Communist Party leadership (p. 302). Zhao also Reviews 581 deprecated some ofthe political reform measures in the former Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. First, he regarded the release ofpolitical prisoners in the former Soviet Union as too hasty, arguing that this might cause trouble in the future . Second, Zhao held a low opinion of the attempts by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to reform their electoral system (p. 311). The book also reveals the relative liberal-mindedness ofBo Yibo in comparison to other powerful octogenarians . Bo and Zhao were in harmonious agreement on many aspects ofpolitical reform. For instance, in internal discussion in early 1987, they agreed to abolish the Party core groups in state organs and allow trade unions to be more assertive in representing the interests ofworkers (pp. 271, 288, 305). Bo was even so radical as to denounce the monopolization ofleading positions in these state organs by members ofthe Communist Party, a monopolization that he regarded as dictatorship on the part ofParty members (p. 271). Wu has devoted individual chapters to an extensive discussion ofdifferent aspects ofthe reform such as improved democratic participation by political parties and die reform of the administrative structure. Proposals from different sectors of Chinese society, for example the intellectuals, were submitted to the government , and these are also recorded in die book. These chapters demonstrate how different kinds ofconstraints such as the difficulties involved in dealing with redundant Party-state officials caused many valuable reform suggestions to be shelved. But the discussion ofthese problems can serve as a reference for future political reform in China as the need for reform has become more imperative now than in the 1980s. Wu quotes the phrase "enter in at the strait gate" (tongguo zhaimeri) from the Bible to describe die difficulties in promoting...