Mikhail Gorbachev visited China in 1989 and found a revolution looming. What he saw changed history

[beijingwalker]

Mikhail Gorbachev visited China in 1989 and found a revolution looming. What he saw changed history​

By Stan Grant
August 31 2022

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping believed Mikhail Gorbachev failed by putting political reform ahead of economic change.(AFP: Catherine Henriette)

Deng Xiaoping thought Mikhail Gorbachev was an idiot.

We know this because Deng's son, Deng Zhifang, said so.

Deng looked at Gorbachev, who died today aged 91, and saw failure. Gorbachev was swept up in the forces that drove the collapse of the Soviet Union, Deng made sure the Chinese Communist Party would survive.

Gorbachev, reacting to internal pressures, external revolt and economic crisis, showed his hand, opening up the secretive, closed system. Deng hid his intentions and bided his time.

The trajectory of our world was set in 1989. The year the Berlin Wall came down and the year Deng Xiaoping took a brutal decision to change the course of his country.

The two men's paths would cross.

A storm was brewing​

In May 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing. It was the first visit by a Soviet leader in 30 years.

It was part of a rapprochement between the communist powers. Yet a storm was brewing.

As Deng and Gorbachev met, the LA Times reported:

"The talks Monday and today have been largely overshadowed by continuing student protests in Tian An Men Square outside the Great Hall. About 50,000 people were gathered in the square this morning as the meeting between Deng and Gorbachev began and thousands more were marching toward the centre of Beijing in the fourth day of a hunger strike that has grown to include more than 2,000 students demanding a dialogue with Chinese leaders on ways to expand democracy here."

Gorbachev was alarmed. He saw a revolution looming. Some in the Soviet leader's delegation wondered if they were normalising relations with dead men.

Of course they would think that. Revolution was in the air across Europe as democracy movements grew in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. In Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu would be ousted.

Soldiers held back protesters at the Great Hall of the People while Deng and Gorbachev met inside on May 16, 1989. (AFP: Toshio Sakai)

The year before his visit to China, Gorbachev was feted at the United Nations in New York. He toured the citadel of capitalism posing for his photo under a neon Coca-Cola sign.

Gorbachev addressed the United Nations about a new world — a world where old enmities and ideological division must be put aside.

As he said to thunderous applause: "The world has changed, and so have the nature, role and place of these relations in world politics."

Deng got to America a decade before Gorbachev. He also took in the sites, visiting a rodeo, listening to Willie Nelson and meeting Henry Kissinger.

US President Jimmy Carter welcomes Deng Xiaoping to the White House in 1979.(Wikimedia)

While Deng was in the United States, pro-democracy forces were gathering back in China.

Deng faced a fork in the road. Mao Zedong — the great revolutionary leader — was dead and after years of Mao's iron fist, Communist party leaders were debating new ideas.

Unlike Gorbachev, Deng would not tear down his system to try to save it. He returned from America determined to beat the West at its own game.

As Deng said: "If we can't grow faster than the capitalist countries, then we can't show the superiority of our system."

A choice between two roads​

Deng began to release the Communist grip on the market economy, especially in rural areas. Special economic zones were established that welcomed foreign investment.

Pressures were building in the country: inflation and inequality. There were calls for faster reform and inevitably greater freedom.

Some Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square welcomed Gorbachev as a hero. (AFP: Catherine Henriette)

The year 1989 was a flashpoint. Gorbachev was riding the waves of history. Deng looked as though he could be swallowed by them.

Some of the Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square welcomed the Soviet leader as a hero.

There were two roads: the Gorbachev road of political reform and the Deng road of political force.

Gorbachev rejected the China road. As he told his entourage: "I do not want the Red Square to look like Tiananmen Square."

What a moment, two titans of the Communist movement eyeballing each other across a table.

Gorbachev felt history was with him. Deng sought to bend history to his will.

We know now that Deng ordered his troops to massacre the Tiananmen protesters.

Two men, two countries​

Should Gorbachev have been as ruthless? Could he have saved the Soviet Union?

One of Gorbachev's aides, Georgy Shakhnazarov, said his leader "lacked the guts to have his Tiananmen".

As Vladislav Zubok writes in his book, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, Deng "preferred brute force to reclaim the 'mandate of heaven'."

Of course, it is not as simple as just comparing two men; two countries. They each faced different pressures.

China's economy was less industrialised and there was a great energy to be unleashed in rural reform.

Gorbachev was facing multiple threats. As Zubok says in 1989, Gorbachev and his followers "have no map, their compass is broken".

Deng believed Gorbachev failed by putting political reform ahead of economic change. He put the "cart before the horse".

History tells us who won.

In November '89 the Berlin Wall came down. By 1991, the Soviet flag was lowered in Red Square for the last time.

In 1989, China and the Soviet Union took different paths. History shows who won

Mikhail Gorbachev was swept up in the forces that drove the collapse of the Soviet Union, while Deng Xiaoping made sure the Chinese Communist Party would survive, writes Stan Grant.

www.abc.net.au

 

[beijingwalker]

In 1989 China was still one of the poorest countries on this planet, the vast majority of her population lived in poverty, USSR back then was a global superpower. Deng and Gorbachev made different decisions at that point in the history, year 1989, two countries embarked into different historic paths, these two people changed the whole fate of the two nations.

 

[ejaz007]

Last Soviet leader Gorbachev passes away​

Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died after a serious and long illness, says Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow​

By AFP
August 31, 2022

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.— AFP
MOSCOW: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow aged 91, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.

“Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said, quoted by the Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies. Gorbachev, who was in power between 1985 and 1991 and helped bring US-Soviet relations out of a deep freeze, was the last surviving Cold War leader.
He spent much of the last two decades on the political periphery, intermittently calling for the Kremlin and the White House to mend ties as tensions soared to Cold War levels since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched an offensive in Ukraine earlier this year.
Gorbachev spent the twilight years of his life in and out of hospital with increasingly fragile health and observed self-quarantine during the pandemic as a precaution against the coronavirus.
Gorbachev was remembered fondly in the West, where he was referred to affectionately by the nickname Gorby and best known for defusing US-Soviet nuclear tensions in the 1980s as well as bringing Eastern Europe out from behind the Iron Curtain.
He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for negotiating a historic nuclear arms pact with US leader Ronald Reagan and his decision to withhold the Soviet army when the Berlin Wall fell a year earlier was seen as key to preserving Cold War peace.He was also championed in the West for spearheading reforms to achieve transparency and greater public discussion that hastened the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Last Soviet leader Gorbachev passes away

MOSCOW: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow aged 91, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.“Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a...

www.thenews.com.pk

 

[beijingwalker]

Gorbachev's 1989 China visit—a flicker of hope for Tiananmen Square protesters​

World News
Updated on Aug 31, 2022 09:01 AM IST

China’s uneasiness with Gorbachev’s legacy is understandable given that he is seen to be responsible for the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the other Communist stronghold​

Mikhail Gorbachev. (AFP)

Official Chinese news agency Xinhua’s report on the death of former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev on Wednesday morning was terse. “Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the report said, quoting the Russian Central Clinical Hospital. “Gorbachev was born in March 1931, and served as president of the Soviet Union from March 1990 to December 1991.”

Nothing warm, nothing glowing for a world leader whose influence on global politics is undeniable. China’s uneasiness with Gorbachev’s legacy is understandable, given that he is seen to be responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, the other Communist stronghold.

Gorbachev also spent four fully awkward days in China amid the large-scale pro-democracy protests, which rocked China in 1989, ending in a bloodbath.

China looks at Gorbachev and his legacy as a lesson on what not to do in the name of reform. For four days beginning May 15, 1989, Gorbachev was in Beijing and Shanghai for the first high-level Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years.

Gorbachev’s high-profile visit took place right in the middle of protests at Tiananmen Square -- and elsewhere in the country -- led by students and factory workers, demanding economic and political reform in China.

The official Chinese narrative will not mention it but, according to experts and international media accounts of the time, Gorbachev was a symbol of reform and hope for the protesters: A young leader at 58, compared to the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, 84, and his old comrades. Whether Gorbachev and his entourage liked to be that symbol or not is a different question.

The Soviet leader’s Beijing visit became a major embarrassment for the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) as there were a huge number of protesters at the Square and his ceremonial welcome at the venue had to be changed to avoid them.

For the students, Gorbachev’s visit meant more international focus on their demands for reform. Gorbachev was accompanied by journalists whose reports and photos of the visit – and the protests -- went out globally.

“The students have admitted that they are using the Gorbachev visit as an opportunity to air their grievances,” a Washington Post report dated May 15 said. “They [the students] are gambling that the government will not crack down on them in the midst of such an important visit because it would convey a negative image to the outside world, just as the world’s media converge on Beijing to cover the summit.”

According to a PBS report, Gorbachev’s cavalcade was blocked on literally every street of Beijing and turned out to be a big loss of face for Chinese leaders. “… They were aware of what was happening in the Soviet Union — and so were the Chinese people — that the Communist Party in the Soviet Union was more or less imploding. [The Party leaders] were very frightened in China,” wrote journalist Jan Wong for PBS.

“Gorbachev represented youth, openness, flexibility, political change--things the Chinese students yearned for, things their own leaders seemed to them incapable of delivering,” the Los Angeles Times said in a report on his visit in late June 1989.

The timing of the visit turned out to be more awkward than historical, as it was billed to be, for both sides. “Both sides clearly were embarrassed and uneasy about events, the Chinese because of their inability to control the people and the Soviets because the student demonstrators held up Soviet political reforms as a model for Chinese leaders to follow,” a report from UPI said of the visit.

The Soviet leader left China on May 19 after visiting a special economic zone in Shanghai. Two weeks later, the army and tanks were deployed at Tiananmen Square to quell the protests. It is still unknown how many died on the Square or in the rest of China in the first week of June.

Gorbachev’s legacy remains troubled for China. “Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev wrote a famous book, New Thinking for Our Country and the World. He was idealistic and bookish, believing political reforms can naturally promote constructive changes in the country,” wrote columnist Hu Xijin for the state-run tabloid Global Times last year. “The West praised him so much that made him lost. And the Soviet Union fell into chaos in a fundamental way, and could no longer be integrated.”

Gorbachev's 1989 China visit—a flicker of hope for Tiananmen Square protesters

China’s uneasiness with Gorbachev’s legacy is understandable given that he is seen to be responsible for the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the other Communist stronghold

www.hindustantimes.com

 

[Menthol]

The quality of men and the situation between China and USSR at the time is different.

China still had friends which are Overseas Chinese, especially Lee Kaun Yew who is whole-heartedly, extremely honest, and extremely smart, who told Deng the "truth" and the "right path".

While for USSR, everyone wants USSR to die.

China's reforms lead to the world's greatest political system, while USSR collapsed.


But anyway... how Gorbachev's view and opinion at the time about the new world of peace and friendship seem to be betrayed by the West today, which lead to today's Russia-Ukraine crisis and the world is on the brink of WW3.

 

[beijingwalker]

 

[Han Patriot]

We

The quality of men and the situation between China and USSR at the time is different.

China still had friends which are Overseas Chinese, especially Lee Kaun Yew who is whole-heartedly, extremely honest, and extremely smart, who told Deng the "truth" and the "right path".

While for USSR, everyone wants USSR to die.

China's reforms lead to the world's greatest political system, while USSR collapsed.


But anyway... how Gorbachev's view and opinion at the time about the new world of peace and friendship seem to be betrayed by the West today, which lead to today's Russia-Ukraine crisis and the world is on the brink of WW3.

Well said bro. The Russians were betrayed by their new friends. They thought the West would embrace them, how wrong could they be.

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View attachment 875136

The Question is where is America's Deng. 50% of the US pop thinks US will face civil war. Deng did the right choice, those democrazy students thought democracy would make them great, its not the political system numb numb, its the economic system, the market economy is what made China Great. Before universal suffrage, great empires were authoratarian and capitalistic, that was the answer. China found it just as Imperial Japan and Nazis found it. Universal suffrage came as a result of those authoratarian empires gaining wealth for their populace. It's not the other way round. Up until the 1900s only landed people could vote in the US. The elites were the key, democracy had nothing to do with their superpowerdom, not with blacks enslaved for 100s of years. The key was capitalism, just as the Spaniards and Portuguese founded private companies to explore and exploit.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

1989 was the fall of the Berlin Wall not the fall of the Soviet Union...which nobody is mentioning here.

He was more worried more about East Germany's population rising up than Russia's. A population seeing modernization and growth across the border that if they dared cross they'd get shot by their own military (much like North Koreans looking at the South).

 

[etylo]

We

Well said bro. The Russians were betrayed by their new friends. They thought the West would embrace them, how wrong could they be.


The Question is where is America's Deng. 50% of the US pop thinks US will face civil war. Deng did the right choice, those democrazy students thought democracy would make them great, its not the political system numb numb, its the economic system, the market economy is what made China Great. Before universal suffrage, great empires were authoratarian and capitalistic, that was the answer. China found it just as Imperial Japan and Nazis found it. Universal suffrage came as a result of those authoratarian empires gaining wealth for their populace. It's not the other way round. Up until the 1900s only landed people could vote in the US. The elites were the key, democracy had nothing to do with their superpowerdom, not with blacks enslaved for 100s of years. The key was capitalism, just as the Spaniards and Portuguese founded private companies to explore and exploit.

Please don't compare China to the militarist Imperial Japan and Nazis Germany the most evil countries in history, no way they are comparable, are you Chinese brain washed by the current west's ant-China narrative ?

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

We

Well said bro. The Russians were betrayed by their new friends. They thought the West would embrace them, how wrong could they be.

It's a two-way street. Nobody is going to embrace somebody who doesn't want to embrace you back.

Anyways...Russia was helped a lot...way more than they helped the West. Other than oil and gas they have given the West pretty much NOTHING in advancement.

You go into Russia (and China for that matter) now and you see the same kinds of things you see in the West. This was definitely not the case before the collapse as an experience like this was a mere fantasy to them.

This apartment is full of Western stuff.

What have they given back to us???????
Name something? Anything?

To say they got the short end of this is absolutely ridiculous.

This was late 1980's Soviet supermarkets without western conveniences

..oh and yes we were modern back in the 1980s too...note the barcode scanners.

Food shopping in Russia today

 

[beijingwalker]

Anyways...Russia was helped a lot...way more than they helped the West. Other than oil and gas they have given the West pretty much NOTHING in advancement.

You call open world market "help"? so as long as the west doesn't sanction you, it helps you?

 

[Han Patriot]

You call open world market "help"? so as long as the west doesn't sanction you, it helps you?

The West was literally taking the Ruskies for a ride. And the biggest strategic mistake was pushing Russia to China. Lol

 

[Han Patriot]

Please don't compare China to the militarist Imperial Japan and Nazis Germany the most evil countries in history, no way they are comparable, are you Chinese brain washed by the current west's ant-China narrative ?

Nazis and Imperial Japan were very industrialised and did good for their country. That does not mean I agree with their war atrocities. Two different things, they became powerful because of a persistent political party with strategic goals. No different from China.

 

[etylo]

Nazis and Imperial Japan were very industrialised and did good for their country. That does not mean I agree with their war atrocities. Two different things, they became powerful because of a persistent political party with strategic goals. No different from China.

Comparing China with Nazis Germany and militarist Imperial Japan in the same breadth in development is a bad idea and it will confuse people that they are the same. Aside from persistent goals by the three govs, there are no similarities. Imperal Japan and Nazis Germany were fascist countries and were dictated by their military in much sense and China is a socialist country.

 

[kankan326]

Two men, Gorbachev and Mandela, are very similar. Both are overpraised by the west. Both are Nobel Peace Prize winners. And both destroyed their own countries.

When your country or your political leader is being praised by the west, beware there are traitors who are selling your country. The newest example is Ukraine.

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