When China’s Communist leaders under Deng Xiaoping launched their assault on the Tiananmen Square protesters in 25 years ago, they were supposedly following the socialist road and Marxist principles of proletarian rule. “Workers of all lands, unite!” declared Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto.
But the vast expansion of the world’s workforce unleashed by Deng following the crackdown on the pro-democracy protesters led to the opposite. The opening up of China through economic reform and foreign direct investment has, instead of uniting the proletariat, divided it.
This was not the revolution Marx envisaged but it was the outcome of Deng’s 1992 southern tour, on which the Chinese leader supported reform in cities such as Shenzhen, trying to strengthen party rule by offering the people opportunity. The fact that few Chinese now mark June 4, 1989 is a tribute both to party censorship and to Deng’s gambit.