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Reckoning
The later 1980s were a period of erratic growth—rapid but unstable. Tigers and sea turtles spurred development throughout the decade: East Asia’s “tiger” economies—Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea—paved China’s way in state-led, export-intensive growth. China's “Sea turtles” were the many overseas Chinese who brought capital and knowledge acquired abroad back to their mother country. However, unresolved contradictions lurked in the new political economy of Deng’s China. Frustrations over stalled political reform—enflamed by widespread urban economic grievances over inflation and corruption—erupted in street demonstrations that paralyzed the PRC in the spring of 1989. The Tiananmen crisis would have lasting political repercussions on the cause of democracy—but also unintended economic aftereffects. |
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Tiananmen Was a Turning Point of ReformPeriod: Reckoning (1985-89)
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Click to expand So, the economic component was also there in terms of the need for growth, but I would say corruption and the need for greater political reform plus inflation, which was also a factor, which was economic, of course, and, to a certain degree for the students, academic conditions, both physical and in terms of freedom, so there was a variety of causes. So, it helped to produce Tiananmen Square and I think you are right to point to that as another turning point of reform. Deng had already begun to make reforms domestically in terms of opening to the outside world, including the United States, but I think the Chinese leaders were very scared of their hold on power after Tiananmen and they recognized an increased sense of urgency to step up economic performance to keep people relatively happy, counting on men or women living by rice alone and not yearning for political freedoms as well. So, I do think, as a result of the threat of Tiananmen plus the experience of the USSR, they followed closely Gorbachev’s experience, thought he had made a mistake going for political reform before performing well economically, they were determined to get the economic situation squared away and not have too much political reform because they saw that Gorbachev, in reform, had lost not only communist control, but a whole Soviet empire. So they drew those conclusions from the Soviet experience, plus the close call in Tiananmen to decide that they would do everything they could to raise the standard of living of the Chinese people and hoped that that would lead to political stability and to go slow on political reform.
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