Indelible Interregnum
A new book that highlights the policies that led to the rise of China after the Tiananmen Square incident.
Ambassador Vijay Gokhale is a former foreign secretary of India who spent almost four decades in the Indian Foreign Service. His new book “After Tiananmen: The Rise of China”, focuses on the policies of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, successors of Deng Xiaoping, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989.
If you have studied post world war Chinese history you must be familiar with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Those two people played a pivotal role in the development of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the Chinese revolution of 1949. Mao was responsible for the creation of foundational structures and institutions of the PRC. Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor, on the other hand, after the fall of the Soviet Union realized the gaps in socialist structures that he inherited from Mao.
Deng in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union realized the need to reform the existing Chinese system, especially on the economic front. Deng followed the unique system that strategists called, “State Capitalism”. CCP (Chinese Communist Party) calls it the policy of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”.
As of 2022 China has a GDP of $18 trillion in nominal terms and $30 trillion in PPP terms. It is widely believed that this is because of the policy decisions taken by Deng in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s. Many people even today think that After Deng it is Xi Jinping who played an important role in shaping modern China. They are not entirely wrong but assuming that the stark growth of China today is only because of Deng’s policy decisions, will be a grave error.
Interregnum in politics refers to a period between two successive governments (or two successive leaders). While studying China, we often forget to look at the contribution of two people, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Ambassador Gokhale in this book focused on the changes that Jiang Zemin (President of China from 1993 to 2003) and Hu Jintao (President of China from 2003 to 2013), made in those 20 years. China in these 20 years focused heavily on infrastructure. They even made sure that western countries do not realize the potentiality of the threat of rising China. Jiang and Hu both followed Deng’s famous doctrine of “Hide your strength and bide time”. This is similar to what Sun Tzu said, “Appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak”.
Jiang Zemin focused more on the economic front. Political consolidation was also difficult for him in the initial years of his reign. China was traditionally a socialist country and Deng’s reforms which were to be continued by Jiang were capitalists in nature. Jiang gathered enough political support and made a consensus on the reforms. As Ambassador Gokhale writes, “Jiang Zemin declared that it was not necessary to put a label on reform by terming it as either capitalist or socialist. He coined the phrase ‘socialist market economy’ to define the direction of Deng’s reforms.” Socialist market economy, which in a way similar to India’s LPG (Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization) reforms. The main difference between India’s LPG and China’s Socialist Market Economy was that India emphasized more on ‘openness and privatization’ while the Chinese were keener on ‘Marketization’ in which the limits of industrial freedom were to be determined by the Chinese State.
While Jiang prioritized economic reforms, Hu on the other hand realized the centrality of the military might to gain hegemony in the global balance of power and work to make China a military superpower. It was the time when China extensively focused on strategic issues, recognizing China’s Malacca dilemma by President Hu, is one such example.
For many people, those 20 years of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, could be an interregnum but as the title of this review suggest it will be an indelible interregnum. Ambassador Gokhle presented tremendous scholarly wisdom in the articulation of the book. It is a must-read for every student and analyst of international affairs.
The book is available on Amazon as well as on Flipkart and is priced at ₹399.
By Darshan Gajjar
The author is a student of the National Security, Political Science, and International Relations