It is not particularly surprising that just as the Soviet leadership is thinking in terms of the revolutionary concept of the right to information for its citizens, the Chinese leadership has decided to tighten control on its media. Indeed, the two news items in the press on the same day (Wednesday) illustrate the two different roads the two communist giants are taking in pursuit of the same goal of coping with the problems of modernization forced on them by the failures of their own system, the remarkable successes of many of the un-controlled economies and unprecedented growth of technology in recent years. Thus while Mr Gorbachov regards easing of political controls on the people as the key to a truly modern society, Mr Deng Xiaoping is convinced that the Communist leadership must remain fully in command in order to be able to push its programme to modernize the economy which, in his view, alone can serve as the foundation of a modern Chinese society.
This total divergence in the two approaches must come as a surprise to those who are not acquainted with the history of the two countries. Such people will debate endlessly whether the Soviet approach will turn out to be more effective or the Chinese one. But such debates are futile. Mr Gorbachov and Mr Deng Xiaoping are guided by their appreciation of the realities in their country. Russian people love debate; the Chinese tend to be pragmatic. Communist China has known few great dissident writers; in Russia they have been too numerous to count. Communist Chins has not witnessed anything like the Samidzat literature in the Soviet Union in the last three decades. Trade, including foreign trade, and enterprise are as old in China as the Chinese civilization; the Russians have never been known as great traders and entrepreneurs. Czarist Russia achieved considerable progress in industrialisation in the later part of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century but mostly as a result of foreign collaboration. The successes of Chinese entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are too well known to need to be rehearsed here. Indeed, the world must shiver at the prospect of the Chinese entrepreneurial skills being unleashed in China itself with its one billion people. Finally, while the Chinese Communist party’s organisation, authority and morale were thoroughly undermined by Mao, especially in the last 12 years of his life, the Soviet Communist party consolidated its power, position and privileges after Stalin’s death in 1953. Unlike the Chinese party, the Soviet party needs to be shaken if it is to allow any movement forward.