The People’s Republic of China is situated in eastern Asia, with coastlines on the Yellow Sea and the East and South China seas. Area: 9,572,900 sq km (3,696,100 sq mi), including Tibet and excluding Taiwan. (See Taiwan, below.) Pop. (1994 est., excluding Taiwan): 1,192,300,000. Cap.: Beijing (Peking). Monetary unit: renminbi yuan, with (Oct. 7, 1994) an interbank rate of 8.53 yuan to U.S. $1 (13.57 yuan = £ 1 sterling). President in 1994, Jiang Zemin (Chiang Tse-min); premier, Li Peng (Li P’eng).
As contradictory political, economic, and social trends pulled China, a country of nearly 1.2 billion people, in opposite directions in 1994, it was difficult to discern a coherent pattern in the government’s policies. At the beginning of the year, China’s leaders proclaimed a period of comprehensive reforms, but these were nowhere in evidence at year’s end apart from the introduction of a new tax system. Two conflicting images of China were unmistakable. The first was that of a rapidly developing economic powerhouse, playing an increasingly important international role and vigorously asserting its interests on the stage of Asian and world politics. The second was that of a country with decreasing internal cohesion, beset by intractable social and economic problems and indifferently governed by Communist Party veterans mainly interested in clinging to power. Ample evidence supported both of these images. China seemed to be a vessel adrift at high speed, its destination unknowable.
This situation stemmed in part from the continuing deathwatch over senior leader Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p’ing), which preoccupied the top leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC), notably Pres. Jiang Zemin (Chiang Tse-min), Premier Li Peng (Li P’eng), and the chairman of the National People’s Congress, Qiao Shi (Ch’iao Shih). (See BIOGRAPHIES.) Deng, who celebrated his 90th birthday on August 22, was reportedly suffering from Parkinson’s disease and various other illnesses. He appeared in public just once, on television, at the Chinese New Year’s reception in Shanghai.
In political as well as economic terms, Shanghai’s star rose in 1994. Former mayor Jiang, chosen by Deng in 1989 as the core of China’s new leadership, further strengthened his position as general secretary of the CPC, chairman of the Central Military Commission, and president. In September the fourth plenum of the 14th Central Committee elevated Shanghai Mayor Huang Ju (Huang Chü), a Jiang ally, to the Political Bureau of the CPC, and leading economic reformers Wu Bangguo (Wu Pang-kuo) and Jiang Chunyun (Chiang Ch’un-yün) to the Secretariat. Jiang continued to cultivate the military, promoting 19 generals in the course of the year. His greatest political asset, should he stumble badly, was that Deng was probably too feeble to dismiss him, as the senior leader had done to earlier designated successors Hu Yaobang (Hu Yao-pang) in 1987 and Zhao Ziyang (Chao Tzu-yang) in 1989.
Given its numerous problems, China could ill afford a post-Deng succession struggle. The collective leadership of Jiang, Li, and Qiao would probably work together, at least in the initial stage of the post-Deng period. Deng’s generation was all but gone, and the reputation of the late Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) was further tarnished with the publication in the West of The Private Life of Chairman Mao. These intimate memoirs by Mao’s longtime personal physician, Li Zhisui (Li Chih-sui), portrayed the supposed exemplar of revolutionary virtue as a cruel and depraved monster, a despot who took pleasure in destroying his political adversaries, and a satyr with an insatiable appetite for young women. Estimates by respected scholars had suggested that as many as 60 million to 80 million Chinese may have died as a result of Mao’s policies between 1949 and 1976. China’s leaders, nonetheless, continued to honour Mao as a great patriot and national hero.
The results of the CPC’s fourth plenum suggested disagreement within the leadership over how to tackle the nation’s economic and social problems. The emphasis of the third plenum (November 1993) had been economic reform. The fourth plenum focused on ways to strengthen the influence of the CPC, which had been considerably attenuated by 15 years of capitalist-style reforms. "The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Concerning Some Major Issues on Strengthening Party Building" called for improving the system of "democratic centralism," choosing able and honest officials, and rebuilding the party’s rural branches. Given the growing economic gap between urban and rural China, however, and the leadership’s anxiety about the spectre of growing rural unrest, such a program was not difficult to understand. The party also sought to rekindle ideological fervour through a nationwide Program for Implementation of Education in Patriotism. In this connection Li Ruihuan (Li Jui-huan), fourth-ranking member of the Political Bureau Standing Committee, told an international conference on Confucianism that it was the duty of every Chinese to enhance the study of Confucianism. Having abandoned Karl Marx in all but name, the CPC sought moral salvation from the Chinese sage it had vilified not long before.
That Confucius was presented as an authoritarian taskmaster rather than the apostle of Chinese humanism was evident from the party’s intolerance of political dissent. Even before international pressure eased on China, the government displayed a hard-edged attitude toward human rights and political opposition. The outspoken democratic activist Wei Jingsheng (Wei Ching-sheng), released in 1993 after serving nearly 15 years in prison, was rearrested in April 1994. U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton’s decision in late May to delink U.S.-China trade from human rights considerations made China’s democrats and dissenters vulnerable to intensified state repression. Among the many sentenced to labour camps were Yang Zhou (Yang Chou), spokesman for the Chinese Human Rights Association, and Shanghai democracy activists Bao Ge (Pao Ke) and Yang Qinheng (Yang Ch’in-heng). Journalists Xi Yang (Hsi Yang) and Gao Yu (Kao Yü) were among those imprisoned on spurious charges of publishing state secrets. Leaders of China’s tiny Labour Alliance, an embryonic free-trade union, were arrested or forced underground, and 14 dissidents were tried in July, the largest number in a political trial since 1989. In December nine pro-democracy activists were jailed; three of the dissidents were sentenced to more than 15 years. Nonconforming religious leaders and worshipers were another target of state repression.
All these arrests were part of a systematic effort to implement the 1993 State Security Law, which, among other things, sought to sever ties between dissidents and their international supporters. Human Rights Watch/Asia, a human rights organization with excellent sources of information on China, reported that Chinese physicians were "harvesting" kidneys and other organs from condemned prisoners, sometimes under anesthesia before their actual execution, to use in organ transplants for high-ranking Chinese officials or for sale to foreigners; the going price for a kidney was $30,000. This report was confirmed by the on-site investigations of Harry Wu, a former prisoner in the Chinese gulag.