Chen Yun and the Economic Experts: An Explanation of Conservative Failure (1989-1992)

Abstract

From the Tiananmen crackdown in June 1989 to the launch of a “socialist market economy” in October 1992, conservative politicians dominated Chinese politics. Since economic growth fell and conservatives did not succeed in implementing their economic program, these three years are usuallyconsidered as a failure, or at least as a pause in the process of Chinese economic development. Beyond this teleological interpretation of economic reforms, which reduces the 1989-1992 moment to a parenthesis in the longer process of Chinese modernization, this article interprets this period as one of questionings, a moment when several alternatives appeared as possible.
Led by Chen Yun, conservatives must be understood as the promoters of their own alternative, with a real economic program and an original vision of modernity. In order to explain their failure to implement this program, one should study them alongside the rise of new economic experts in Chinese politics. Thus, a new explanation of conservatives’ failure emerges: their decreasing legitimacy in the political field must be linked to the redefinition of the meaning of economic expertise in China, throughout the whole 1980s.