Abstract
The rapidly changing political, economic, and security policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in late 1989 and 1990 have added to the complications faced by Chinese leaders since they decided to suppress the unprecedented large-scale pro-democracy demonstrations in Chinese cities in spring 1989. These changes had an obvious “ripple effect” in China, encouraging prodemocracy forces and alarming Chinese leaders. They attracted strong positive attention from the developed countries of the West and Japan, and international financial institutions and businesses. This came at the indirect expense of China. And they accelerated changes in world politics (especially in U.S.-Soviet relations) and in the politics of government decision making in the West that promised to reduce China’s relative influence in world affairs in the 1990s.
The prospect of reduced influence abroad and curbed economic contacts did not appear to be sufficient cause for Beijing leaders to markedly change existing policies. Chinese leaders in mid-1990 appeared focused on issues of internal political power at a time of leadership transition. Significant changes in policy appeared most likely to await leadership changes as Deng Xiaoping and other aged leaders die or are incapacitated.
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Robert G. Sutter is chief of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, and senior specialist in international politics at the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.
This article will appear as a chapter inAsia and the Decline of Communism coedited by Young C. Kim and Gaston J. Sigur (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, forthcoming in 1991).
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress.
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Sutter, R.G. Changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: The effects on China. Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 9, 33–45 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03025122
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03025122