How collapse of the Soviet Union still weighs on Chinese leaders’ minds 30 years on
- The political turmoil that ended the world’s first communist state spurred Beijing to maintain tight political control while it allowed economic liberalisation
- Xi Jinping has said great powers fall when the central authority loses power and respect, and has sought to tighten ideological control since coming to power
The Soviet Union’s collapse at the end of 1991, has weighed heavily on the minds of China’s leaders over the past three decades as they seek to avoid a similar fate.
Observers argue its transition from a planned to a market economy that began in the 1970s avoided the pains suffered by Russia and other Soviet states due to rapid privatisation and price liberalism, while the leadership has maintained tight political control.
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Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian Federation’s first minister of foreign affairs, said that leading figures such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin failed to seize the moment, and had not been able to control the chain of events – which began to spiral out of control with the aborted coup attempt in 1991 that triggered the collapse of the USSR – and control economic problems such as rampant inflation.
“The results of those events very much depended on political guidance, on political figures and leaders,” Kozyrev told an online panel organised by the US think tank Kennan Institute on December 9.
“Unfortunately both Gorbachev and Yeltsin, they failed to live up to the opportunity for a variety of reasons … The leaders, they should have taken over but they failed to.”
Kozyrev also said he thought Deng Xiaoping, who ruled China in the 1980s and continued to exert influence until his death in 1997, was much better prepared to lead the reform process than any Soviet or post-Soviet leaders, including Yegor Gaidar, the architect of Russia’s controversial economic reforms in the 1990s.
Deng, who studied and worked in France for five years, had exposure to capitalism and experience with business, which may have given him a better understanding of how a capitalist society functioned, Kozyrev said.
Kozyrev also argued that the Chinese leadership was more flexible regarding economics but still maintained political control, as seen in the bloody crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters.
Joseph Torigian, an assistant professor at American University who researches elite politics in Russia and China, said that for President Xi Jinping the biggest lesson from the end of the Soviet Union was to maintain ideological control and uphold Marxist-Leninist principles.
His father, Xi Zhongxun was part of the first generation of Chinese Communist Party leaders, and his son had grown up reading Russian and Soviet revolutionary literature and made his first overseas trip to Russia.
“Xi has demonstrated throughout his career and also within the context of how he talks about the Soviet Union, this obsession with motivation, morale and belief in the party’s mission,” Torigian said.
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“It hasn’t always meant he’s going to take a dogmatic approach to issues. Whenever he does bring up this fascination with ideals, he always talks about how we need to be practical and take things slow.”
Xi has argued the loss of control was the underlying reason for the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party, saying in a 2013 speech that no one had been brave enough to stand and fight for it when it was being dissolved.
He later argued that one of the common reasons for a great nation to fall was the central authority losing power and respect.
The need for control has seen the Chinese authorities introducing a series of regulations to tighten their grip over the private sector in recent years, targeting industries such as technology and private education, while Xi’s “common prosperity” campaign aims to reduce wealth inequality.
Cheng Xiaonong, a former aide to Zhao Ziyang, the reformist Chinese premier who was removed from power because of his support for the 1989 Tiananmen protesters, said the Chinese Communist Party would never repeat the path of the Soviet Communist Party.
In September he told the Taiwanese online television programme Xfile report that some post-Soviet states were able to transition to democratic systems because some dissenting voices were tolerated and these then developed into wider social movements.
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Independent intellectuals who criticise the ruling regime tend to command respect from the public, and their criticisms can play a big part in collective discourse in society and culture, Cheng said.
“Then society would see critical discourse overpower official propaganda. This is not only just a war of words, but it would lay a widespread foundation for social transition,” Cheng said.
But he noted that under Xi, censorship of social media has tightened and party critics and activists have been given long jail terms. Meanwhile, the education curriculum has placed increasing emphasis on Xi Jinping Thought and loyalty to the party.
“For many people, the CCP regime looks very stable now. That’s not wrong,” said Cheng, adding that even during the tumultuous years of Mao Zedong’s rule that saw famine and the Cultural Revolution, the party’s power was secure as long as it had control.
