There is no hope the Communist Party can reform — Q&A with Frank Dikötter

Frank Dikötter is the author of many books about China, including The People’s Trilogy, which documents the often awful lives and sometimes brutal deaths of ordinary Chinese people living under Communist Party rule from the 1949 revolution until the end of the Cultural Revolution.

His new book, China After Mao, takes us from 1976 to 2012. These were much happier times, to be sure, but he argues that the essential nature of China’s government did not change during this period despite the economic opening up, and that the repressive nature of the country under Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 should not have surprised anyone.

We chatted by video call on October 25. This is a lightly edited, abridged transcript of our chat.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

Your book, China After Mao, came out at a very timely moment, around the 20th Party Congress, which one might think of as the bad-tasting fruit of the era that you describe in the book. What did you make of the Party Congress, the Politburo composition, and the Hú Jǐntāo 胡锦涛 episode?

This may come as a surprise to you, but I didn’t make much of it.

The main reason is that I didn’t really follow it very carefully. I have learned, from the moment I set foot in China in 1985, not to pay too much attention to what may or may not be happening in the corridors of power in Beijing, simply because it’s not possible to know. It is a one-party state.

I’m not saying that you can’t read things, if you observe very carefully how many times the name of Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 is mentioned, or how long his speech is, or who goes from position number four to position number eight. I’m sure that’s possible, but I’m not one of those China watchers. I’d much rather look back, at history, on the basis of some sort of documentation.

But if you want me to tell you what I think of the Hu Jintao incident, which is, of course, all the rage right now, I would think that it… I have the same principle that comes through my book, do not ascribe to malice what can be attributed to sheer stupidity. In other words, I think the book shows you that there is no great master plan. There’s not a determined bunch of leaders who have a very clear vision of what it is they want to do. It’s pretty much one cock up after another. And I think that’s what we saw in action again. On a different note, I would say that Xi Jinping is certainly one of the people who helps me promote the book more than anyone else…

Well, he’s good for something, Frank!

Yeah, exactly. I would say the point of the book is also to show that, whether it is with the 20th Congress, or whether it is 10 years ago in 2012, this is not some great turning moment. This was all very much there in the background. It is, if you wish, a harshening of the tone and a hardening of the approach. It is tightening up all the screws. But the machinery was very much in place.

I mean, don’t tell me that 1989 was a great success. Don’t tell me that it is not Jiāng Zémín 江泽民 who started establishing Party cells in private enterprises. Don’t tell me that none of these leaders ever hesitated one second to put lawyers, intellectuals, and scholars in jail. Anyone who has been watching human rights in China since the 1970s, will know that there are a great number of constants there.

And the constants, well, you know what they are: Commitment to the Leninist principle of a monopoly of the power, commitment to the state ownership of the means of production, which is a very good Marxist principle. At no point has any one of these leaders said that there should be departure from that.

I first went to China in 1995 and I lived there for 20 years. For at least the first half of that time I drank the Kool-Aid that things were changing and that China was going to become a more open society.

The question I ask myself, and I’d like to ask you, is: Could things have been any different? If in the last 20 years — or take it back even further if you like — with the Communist Party in charge, do you see that there would have been any possibility for a different outcome? Or is it just the very nature that the Chinese Communist Party means that we’re always going to go back to repression, even though it sometimes lightens up a bit?

Well, so is it in the DNA of the Party, or is it not?

Yeah.

Yes. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Geneva I read a lot of stuff from French Sinologists. They were, and still are very good on human rights, unlike many of our Sinological colleagues in the United States and Britain. In other words, France has a tradition on the left which is critical of communism. And that included a lot of translations of all those who participated in the Democracy Wall [1978–79]. So, I became aware of the “four cardinal principles” at a very early stage, the moment they were written into the Chinese Constitution in 1982.

The four cardinal principles are quite clear: Uphold the socialist way, uphold Marxism-Leninism and Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 thought, uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, and uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

To me, that was always there. Now, of course, you might say, “Well, that doesn’t mean that in the ’80s [there was no hope of reform].” I was there from ’85 to ’87. I was also there from ’88 to ’89. Not to say that these were not absolutely terrific years. An awful lot was happening, not to mention the contrast with the three decades of Maoism. Yet the question really is, how would anyone of those leaders, in the 1980s, never mind the ’90s or beyond, have been able to go against these four cardinal principles? Which one of these leaders actually in private or openly pronounced a commitment to the separation of powers? Because that’s really what we are talking about.

There’s only two possible systems. One is separation of powers, checks and balances, independent judicial system, freedom of speech. It can be very shaky, very uneven as we have seen throughout the whole history of the last two centuries. Yet, it is a system that is still with us.

The other one is monopoly over power with a commitment to avoiding any of these presumed weaknesses, and having a very strong hand of the state to achieve the proclaimed goals of equity and justice and distribution. How can you get around that? Which leader would’ve been committed to the separation of powers?

Even if we assume that Zhào Zǐyáng 赵紫阳 was in favor [of reform], and I do not, you will have noticed that he did speak against the separation of powers. You will have noticed that he was also one of those to actively help in the removal of Hú Yàobāng 胡耀邦.

And you will have noticed from my book that Zhao was really not much of a politician. He surrounded himself with advisors, but lacked a very basic political skill, which is to create alliances and build up your own faction, which he did not do. But let us assume that he was in favor secretly of a separation of powers and a shift towards, let’s call it social democracy, how would he have done that? How would he have gotten around, not just Dèng Xiǎopíng 邓小平, but the eight elders who were there, not just to hem in Zhao Ziyang, but also to hem in Deng Xiaoping? How would they have done that? How do you get around those many elderly party members who are firmly committed to the four cardinal principles and the Leninist principle of monopoly of power? What does it mean for them to abandon a monopoly of power?

It means the enemy — capitalism. It means lack of control. It means being taken over by subversive powers inside and outside of the country. This is not just a doctrine or an ideology. It’s a really firmly established worldview shared by a great many people.

Now, I am not one to say there’s nobody there who was a true reformer. I do mention Lǐ Ruì 李锐, I’ve great admiration for him. If you read his diaries, you will know that this is a man who truly understood why it was important. And there were people around him. There was Rén Zhòngyí 任仲夷, who was in charge of Guangdong province in the early 1980s, who was also a true democrat. There were also those in Guangdong Province who, when Chris Patten made his speeches in the 1990s, actually secretly applauded as they were broadcast across the border into the mainland from Hong Kong.

It’s the very people at the top who know how badly this works. The most heterodox people will be at the very top of the church. There’s no doubt that there are other individuals, but the question is always, how would they do this? How would they manage that? Surely, first of all, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then secondly, after having observed what happened, not just with Gorbachev, but also in Taiwan with Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國 Jiǎng Jīngguó), that it’s best to make sure that no one man can change the regime.

This goes back to de-Stalinization. What was the Cultural Revolution? In 1956 Khrushchev starts de-Stalinization, criticizes his old master Stalin. Mao is taken aback. He wonders, how can we prevent one man from coming in and changing the entire machinery from top to bottom? In other words, what he calls going back onto the capitalist road, becoming a revisionist.

So, a great deal of the Cultural Revolution is about preventing that from happening. And that is, of course, an issue that remains very much at the forefront of any one leader after Mao, whether it’s Deng, Jiang Zemin, or Hu Jintao, or the chap in control today. So, I’m not trying to say it would’ve been impossible. I’m trying to say that statistically, it would’ve been rather implausible.

Highly unlikely. Highly unlikely.

If, in 1989, a faction of the army or others would’ve stepped forward, then something might have happened. Not Zhao Ziyang, who I think played a poor hand very badly during Tiananmen Square, and really created an impossible situation by making promises he could not possibly keep to the students, and most of all, to the independent student unions established in Beijing.

It’s even less plausible now, would you say, than in 1989 that anything could change?

Yes and no in the sense that, of course, at this point in time, there must be a very large proportion of the population who are pretty seriously fed up, if only with the lockdowns. But then again, which particular sector is upset? The people in the countryside have always been treated as second-rate citizens, as subjects in an almost apartheid system, with the household registration system. In the year 2000, you still had great numbers of people in the countryside who lived in misery. But that, of course, to the regime does not matter.

What is so different today is that you find this discontent in the cities. I cannot see how somebody in Shanghai would be pleased being locked up for several months. So, then the question is, how far will this continue? How much bottled resentment is there? So, I would say, to some extent, if I were to advise Xi Jinping, I would probably tell them to do more of the same. I would be very afraid indeed.

They can’t let go now? They’re riding the tiger, and if they loosen their grip, they’re going to be in big trouble?

There’s no going back at this point in time. Maybe in the future very gradually, but right now would be very difficult. And of course, you got to bear in mind that the man has alienated, not just city dwellers with these lockdowns, he’s alienated a great many Party members with constant purges.

I mean, you’re supposed to get rid of your enemies and purge for a couple of years. That’s the standup textbook approach. Deng did it, Jiang Zemin did it, Hu Jintao did it, but this man started in 2012 and it is still going on. So, there too, there must be some resentment among the ranks of the Party. So, I would say it is a sign of weakness and fear of pretty much any one but his closest allies on the standing committee.

When did you last try to go back to China?

I love going to China. I know this sounds odd, but one of the reasons why I live in Hong Kong is I can go up and down all the time.

It’s easy for you?

It’s wonderful. I was literally still flying up and down to use archives in both Wuhan and Wenzhou in December of 2019.

Oh, wow.

I can tell you, I could hear a lot of people with a very bad cough on some of those planes. This was December, 2019. Then, of course, the whole thing closed down, and I haven’t been back. And to be honest, I wouldn’t want to go back until you can have some certainty about traveling. I wouldn’t want to end up somewhere in a lockdown. That would be the fear for me.

Absolutely. Are you in Hong Kong, though, you’re still at the university in Hong Kong?

Right now, I’m traveling with my wife, but we do live in Hong Kong, and in an odd kind of way, Hong Kong is now the place to be since it’s so much more difficult to be in the mainland, even Shanghai and Beijing.

And I don’t think I need to spell out what has happened in Hong Kong over the last two years, But let’s put it this way, Hong Kong is closer to the PRC, to the mainland than any other place.

Except probably North Korea.

It’s been really remarkable just in the last two or three years to have people who used to write for us or offer comments to us now not be willing to have anything to do with the media because they don’t want to say anything. Westerners, not just Hong Kong Chinese. Quite chilling.

May I just say that in the trilogy starting with Mao’s Great Famine, I published in 2010, I specifically explained that I do not wish to mention anyone who has helped me in the mainland by name, and I was criticized for that for being overly cautious. Well, guess what? I’m glad I did.

What do you say to critics who complain that your new book is too dark and that you failed to highlight the accomplishments of the Party?

I think what you have to bear in mind, if you take issue with a particular example I have, then you must bear in mind that frequently I do say that it’s part of a systemic issue, not an isolated problem. There are systemic issues with corruption, systemic issues with one-party states. It is not that there aren’t positive developments. Of course, nobody wants to go back to the China of the 1950s or ‘60s, except possibly some leaders of the Communist Party, but you have to bear in mind that whatever isolated development that may have been here or there, the overall direction is what you have to look at. And the overall direction was made pretty clear, again, with the four cardinal principles.

And to readers who might think that there was a great diversity in the early 1980s or that the economic reforms were quite successful, I would suggest that sending 100,000 troops and 200 tanks to converge on the center of Beijing and crush the population is not exactly a mark of success.