ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relationship with intellectuals suffered a serious rupture during the spring of 1989. Not only had the non-CCP intellectuals become thoroughly alienated by the party’s behavior, even many of the party’s own intellectuals had turned against it. It is significant that the faculty and students of People’s University, the party’s own ideological stalwart, actually played a leading role in the demonstrations. The party’s policy toward intellectuals is inevitably complicated by its strong stand against “bourgeois liberalization.” Since bourgeois liberalization was perceived as being opposed to socialism and the leadership of the CCP, the party was determined to expose all “bad elements” and “counterrevolutionaries” without mercy. Deng Xiaoping confidently estimated that the CCP would win wide support from the people if it could maintain a 6–7 percent growth rate per annum for the remainder of the twentieth century. This view was quickly echoed in the official press.
