Hu Yaobang: New Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party
AT THE SIXTH PLENUM of the Eleventh Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in June 1981, Hua Guofeng, Mao Zedong's designated successor, was forced to resign his posts as party chairman and chairman of its Military Affairs Commission. Hua was replaced as party chairman by Hu Yaobang, a protege of Deng Xiaoping, China's de facto leader and party general secretary, and as Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission by Deng himself. Meanwhile, Hua was demoted to a junior party vice-chairman, and Zhao Ziyang, another Deng protege and Premier of the State Council, was promoted to party vice-chairman. In ranking order, the changes have created the following lineup in the powerful Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP Central Committee: Hu Yaobang, He Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Li Xiannian, Chen Yun, and Hua Guofeng.1 Thus, Hua was dropped from first to seventh in the party hierarchy. Hua's demotion and Hu's promotion were the products of a compromise between the Deng faction and the Maoists. It is still unknown whether Hua retains some sort of residual power; probably his party vice-chairmanship like his former party chairmanship is a nominal position. The results of this plenum are: a tripartite leadership with Hu running the party, Zhao running the government, and Deng running the army; the formal end of the Maoist era; abolition of lifetime tenure for the party chairmanship; and the discontinuance of the concentration of party and military power in the hands of one man. Now Hu, as Deng's heir apparent, plays a leading role in China's decision-making process, although Beijing continues to emphasize collective leadership.
The Problem of Cadres in China
only hinders their moclcr-niration programme, but also threatens their consolidation of power. In consideration of these dangers, they have repeatedly criticize theshort-comingsof both the cadre system and the bureaucracy, and have decided to change the status quo by following Deng’s dictum : ’Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth.’ In order to understand this point, this article will examine the origin of the cadre problem and analyse the validity of the reforms on the basis of the
Arab Uprisings and the Outstanding Return to Democracy: Tunisia as a Model
In the wake of the Middle Eastern crises, the Tunisian case in focus has been doted as a unique phenomenon being that it was the Genesis of the revolution that ultimately spread across the Middle East like wild fire, but has eventually heralded a new dawn as democracy has incidentally returned to the Empire. This literature therefore looks closely at the extent to which the ‘DignityRevolution’ has been instrumental in the Middle East uprisings, which have brought an end to dynastic autocracies. The literature zeros in on the Tunisian uprising which has attracted global concerns, sympathy and has sparked interests in the international arena. The literature finds that the people hold colossal prospect in the uprising and its resultant effect, as it paved the way for the revolutionist to generate, gather and disseminate information on the condition of the entire region to the international community. The people in this context were of utmost importance and played a very crucial role in the creation of awareness, mobilization of protesters and utmost determining the direction of the uprising and also ensuring a speedy return to democratic rule. The paper submits that the role of the people in ensuring that the ruins of the uprising is not left littering around and democracy restored is highly commendable and should be a model for all other Arab countries involved in the revolution.