ABSTRACT
The Polish crisis exploded in July 1980, six months after Leonid Brezhnev ordered Soviet troops into Afghanistan. All the Chinese leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, supported the struggle of the Polish people, who they figured constituted an important challenge to Soviet hegemony. Deng basically stood with the Chen Yun clique and thus committed himself to a road well removed from the forces of democratic reform in the Party. The democratic reform forces in the Party were violently attacked. Deng and Hu Yaobang were confident that things could never happen in China. Having analyzed the domestic and international factors that had caused the Polish crisis, they pointed out several fundamental differences between China and Poland. Deng's power struggle against Hua Guofeng ended with Deng's absolute victory. This outcome was not necessarily a victory for China's reform. Henceforth, the politics of reform and opening up to the outside world had to reckon with adversaries much tougher than Guofeng: Chen Yun and his clique.
