"Democracy Wall" - by CWP alum Andrew Chubb
Democracy Wall is arguably the starting point of the Chinese democracy movement after 1949, though the political goals of its participants varied greatly and generally remained within the frameworks of Marxism and socialism. From November 1978 to April 1979, ordinary citizens engaged in unprecedentedly wide-ranging public debates on previously taboo topics such as Cultural Revolution injustices, the relationship between socialism and democracy, official malfeasance, elite politics, and Mao Zedong’s legacy. Triggered by the official reversal of the ‘counterrevolutionary’ verdict on the 1976 Tiananmen Incident, the discussions initially took the form of thousands of handwritten posters pasted on a 200-metre stretch of brick wall in Beijing’s Xidan area in mid-November 1978. This ‘Democracy Wall’ attracted crowds of readers, who began holding impromptu street forums, leading to the formation of dozens of grassroots groups that published hand-produced unofficial journals. Such activities spread from Beijing throughout the country over the winter, until a succession of arrests in March and April 1979 signalled the end of CCP tolerance of independent publishing and activism.
The nature of the movement defies simple description. On the one hand, Democracy Wall generated the PRC’s first independent political organisations and activists, many of whom became key figures in the Chinese democracy movement. But on the other hand, most participants were far from radical in their political orientation, and the broader movement pursued a diverse array of goals. A large volume of wall posters were personal in nature, appealing for redress over injustices suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Many expressed support for the rise of Deng Xiaoping within the party elite, or attacked his opponents. Some groups were focussed on opening up forums for artistic expression rather than explicitly addressing politics. A handful of poster-writers broke new ground by criticising Mao and exploring political reforms within the framework of Marxism and the socialist system. But only a handful argued for radical political changes such as the introduction of electoral democracy or individualist concepts of human rights. Overall, then, rather than a democracy movement in the sense suggested by the English-language term, Democracy Wall is better defined by a shared purpose of widening the scope of sociopolitical and artistic expression in China.
By Andrew Chubb - Edited By Chris Shei, Jie Chen - Published Online 29 May 2022 - First Published 2023 - DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4324/9780367565152-RECHS99-1 - https://www.taylorfrancis.com/entries/10.4324/9780367565152-RECHS99-1/democracy-wall-andrew-chubb-chris-shei-jie-chen?context=rrocs
Andrew Chubb is Foreign Policy and National Security Fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis where he analyzes global views of China among citizens and foreign policy elites, along with China’s maritime and territorial disputes. Andrew is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. A graduate of the University of Western Australia, his work examines the linkages between Chinese domestic politics and international relations. More broadly, Andrew's interests include maritime and territorial disputes, strategic communication, political propaganda, and Chinese Communist Party history. Recent publications include Chinese Nationalism and the Gray Zone: Case Analyses of Public Opinion and PRC Maritime Policy (Naval War College Press, 2021), PRC Overseas Political Activities: Risk, Reaction and the Case of Australia (Routledge and Royal United Services Institute, 2021), Rights Protection: How the UK Should Respond to the PRC’s Overseas Influence (Lau China Institute, 2022) and Dynamics of Assertiveness in the South China Sea: China, the Philippines and Vietnam, 1970-2015 (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2022).
Photo Credit: By Unknown author - This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118539852 (Deng Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter at the arrival ceremony for the Vice Premier of China.)
