WI: No Deng Xiaoping?

[Time Enough]

So basic idea, just pondering what happens if Deng during or just after the Cultural Revolution and the effects of this.

Now, I do see Hua Guofeng being forced out in time anyway, given it was a broad coalition of elders from the Left and Right of the party that got rid of him. The main thing is who takes over afterwards?

Additionally, I think some kind of reform would occur, indeed even Guofeng started opening China to the World Economy but there is a difference between the policies.

Whilst not reformist, the Oil Clique of Wang Dongxing were believers in Stalinist style economics with a side of technology modernisation funded by selling oil to Japan.

Meanwhile you would have individuals like Zhao Ziyang who would probably still push for a more Economically Liberal Chinese and all that came with it.

 

[Conster]

Ye Jianying becomes paramount leader-- OTL he was one of the greatest ringleaders behind pushing the Gang of Four and then Hua Guofeng out, and he also persuaded Deng Xiaoping to make his second comeback. If Deng is unavailable he might feel the need to take the job for himself. He also has sufficient street cred within the party as one of the ten marshals.

Hu Yaobang's career was largely dependent on Deng's, so he probably doesn't get to be Premier. That job might go to Chen Yun, OTL involved in managing the economy since the 50s and critic of the Great Leap Forward. He'd find Zhao Ziyang to be too much of a free marketeer to be handed the reigns over the economy. Li Xiannian is another possibility.

China's economic growth ITTL probably ends up slower than OTL in the 80s, and SEZs don't exist (Shenzhen is just this small town Hongkongers get their cheap goods from). I also feel that the US is less likely to turn a blind eye if anything like Tiananmen happens here, which either means a) China is knocked back into autarky or b) the government falls apart and a reformist local politician takes over, maybe Li Ruihuan.

 

[Makemakean]

Ye Jianying becomes paramount leader-- OTL he was one of the greatest ringleaders behind pushing the Gang of Four and then Hua Guofeng out, and he also persuaded Deng Xiaoping to make his second comeback. If Deng is unavailable he might feel the need to take the job for himself. He also has sufficient street cred within the party as one of the ten marshals.

Well, yes and no. Marshal Ye definitely was the one who had most 'street cred within the party' as you put it, but by 1978, he was not in good health and he knew it, to the extent that he got involved in Deng's machinations they came because he felt first, very strongly that the Gang of Four was outright dangerous for China's future (which, in fairness, they were), and then that Hua Goufeng was just a weak leader lacking a concrete vision for what to do with his position, and lacking any base in the party to be able to make any meaningful use of it (which in fairness was also true). But he consistently declined to take a more active role. If Marshal Ye takes the job, it's going to be on a purely symbolic basis as a stop-gap.

My money would be on Chen Yun becoming Paramount Leader. His street cred in the party goes back just as far as Deng's, he was there as a loyal member long before the Long March, and he stood loyally by throughout. As an administrator he had established himself as highly competent and pragmatic, and ideologically, much like Deng and Zhou before him, he was very good at saying what he needed to say at times when it was necessary, to shut up most of the time, and indeed, at not saying things that at the time would have been advantageous, but which in the long run would be more of a liability than an asset to have on one's permanent record.

Hu Yaobang's career was largely dependent on Deng's, so he probably doesn't get to be Premier. That job might go to Chen Yun, OTL involved in managing the economy since the 50s and critic of the Great Leap Forward. He'd find Zhao Ziyang to be too much of a free marketeer to be handed the reigns over the economy. Li Xiannian is another possibility.

China's economic growth ITTL probably ends up slower than OTL in the 80s, and SEZs don't exist (Shenzhen is just this small town Hongkongers get their cheap goods from). I also feel that the US is less likely to turn a blind eye if anything like Tiananmen happens here, which either means a) China is knocked back into autarky or b) the government falls apart and a reformist local politician takes over, maybe Li Ruihuan.

You're definitely right that Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang's careers are going nowhere. They were both far too dependent on Deng to get anywhere meaningful, and Chen Yun, who regardless of what his precise position will be will still be one of the major players, absolutely detested both of them, and without Deng being there to shield them, yeah, their careers are dead in the water. They won't get purged or sent to any labour camps or anything, there just wasn't an appetite for that any more. They'll just no longer be relevant politically.

As for Tiananmen, well, it's going to be interesting. Bush and Deng knew one another since the 70s, and while it would definitely be a stretch to say that they were friends, they did have an amicable relationship, with both men feeling that the other was someone you could trust and do business with. Indeed, before the blood had even been cleaned up from Tiananmen, Bush called Deng and basically said, 'I'm sorry that we're going to have to put a few sanctions on you, old boy, but people here in the States have gotten rather upset. Still, don't worry too much about it. In a few years, people will have forgotten all about Tiananmen Square, and then we can go back to business as usual.'

So it's not just the fact that Deng was the fellow in charge in China when it happened, it's also the fact that the President of the United States at the time happened to by nature be inclined to look the other way vis-a-vis China.

Of course, without Hu Yaobang being there in the first place, you're not going to get Tiananmen Square, so, well, there's that.

 

[Conster]

Agreed on Chen Yun (although frankly most of the Deng-era leadership wasn't in good health either)-- another interesting angle to this is whether provincial leaders like Zhao + other leaders in coastal provinces (maybe Ye Xuanping in Guangdon with his dad getting him in earlier?) who were more economically liberal than TTL's central government would continue to open up a bit further on their own, adding in some local-vs-central tensions.

So it's not just the fact that Deng was the fellow in charge in China when it happened, it's also the fact that the President of the United States at the time happened to by nature be inclined to look the other way vis-a-vis China.

I've always felt that Deng was pretty lucky that Bush was in charge that year.

Of course, without Hu Yaobang being there in the first place, you're not going to get Tiananmen Square, so, well, there's that.

True, but I do see some protests coming up down the line because of corruption, which has the potential to really scare the government into drastic action because of how an anti-corruption message would strike a chord with the average citizen much more than democratization. Possibly even earlier than 1989.

 

[Makemakean]

True, but I do see some protests coming up down the line because of corruption, which has the potential to really scare the government into drastic action because of how an anti-corruption message would strike a chord with the average citizen much more than democratization. Possibly even earlier than 1989.

Oh, I'm sure you can do an awful lot of stuff that leads to mass protests at some point down the line. It seems almost inevitable that with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, something is going to happen in China around the year 1990 either way. I honestly don't know nearly enough about the extent of corruption during this era of modern Chinese history so I couldn't comment.

Agreed on Chen Yun (although frankly most of the Deng-era leadership wasn't in good health either)-- another interesting angle to this is whether provincial leaders like Zhao + other leaders in coastal provinces (maybe Ye Xuanping in Guangdon with his dad getting him in earlier?) who were more economically liberal than TTL's central government would continue to open up a bit further on their own, adding in some local-vs-central tensions.

Well, as noted, we're beginning to reach the edges of my knowledge on this subject (your knowledge seems to go further), so I speak here with some caution. I know that Deng Xiaoping did not invent the notion of SEZ, those ideas were already beginning to gain popularity down on southeastern coast, and all that Deng really did was give the people down there free reign to try out ideas they already had. As Ezra Vogel notes repeatedly, Deng Xiaoping was very different from communist leaders like Stalin or Mao or Khrushchev or Gorbachev or Tito or many of these fellows in that he never really outlined a great vision or great program, he was much more into letting people on the ground perform experiments, and first waiting to see if they worked before he attached himself to them. This really does make him very different as a leader in general, since we normally associate leaders as being active, leading from the front, taking bold initiatives, whereas Deng was nothing like that, and he is still remembered as one of the most effective and influential national leaders of the twentieth century.

Anyway, I would assume that these fellows would still wish to carry out these ideas (which turned out to be very good ideas) regardless of whether Deng is there on the scene or not. As for the actual dynamics of how this plays out with the people up in Zhongnanhai, I couldn't even begin to speculate properly.

 

[History Learner]

Honestly this has a lot of knock on effects in the Cold War, given the Soviet model of reform being pursued by Gorbachev was directly drawn from observing China. If China is being more cautious, that could definitely impact Gorby's moves; instead of Glasnost and Perestroika, we get more Price Reform first and then more serious efforts later in the 1990s as energy prices leave the late 1980s glut stage. That avoids the Soviet inflation death spiral, thus keeping the Warsaw Pact and USSR around.

If Tienanmen Square still happens or something like it, Sino-Soviet rapprochement seems likely.