CCP power struggle Beijing

Deng Xiaoping is the most powerful leader in China. Deng, Yang Shangkun and Li Peng appear to be mainly responsible for the massacre.

The wake of the Tiananmen massacre left an apparent power struggle in the Chinese Communist Party heirarchy. Jiang Zemin, a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo --the highest committee in the Communist Party --who is little known to Western China-watchers emerged as the new Communist Party leader called General Secretary to replace Zhao Ziyang, who received blame as a "splittest" in the party who broke party discipline and bore responsibility for China's economic problems. Like Hu before him, Zhao appeared soft on the student demonstrators and met with students in the square when his purge was already imminent. After taking over Zhao's job, Jiang issued the formal opinion of the CCP that the Tiananmen rebellion was a " counterrevolutionary rebellion aimed at negating the leadership of the Communist Party of China and overthrowing the socialist system." (AP in Ann Arbor News, 9/26/89, 1) Scaring Westerners even more, Jiang said China was having "a serious class struggle." (New York Times, 9/30/89, 5) He said the rebellions "aimed at overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party's leadership and subverting the socialist system, at (sic.) turning China into a bourgeois republic and reducing it once again to a dependency of the Western capitalist powers." (Ibid.) This is the most radical rhetoric out of the CCP in over ten years. It does not mean much in terms of the economy though; it's just a new type of justification for repression.

Jiang also admitted some problems have become worse in recent years including "abuse of power for personal gains, corruption and degeneration, which result in alienation from the masses of people." (Ibid.) Despite the tough talk, Jiang is one of the parents of children studying in the United States. 70,000 have taken the privilege and failed to return to China. (Ibid.)

For being replaced by Jiang, Zhao receives a higher salary and better treatment than Jiang Zemin. (Ibid., 7) Such is admittedly crude evidence, but it supports the theory that Jiang, Zhao, Li and Deng are all part of the same state capitalist class. They don't imprison or kill each other for their disagreements, just students.