Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s

by Julian Gewirtz

A BBC History Magazine Best Book of the Year
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year

The history the Chinese Communist Party has tried to the dramatic political debates of the 1980s that could have put China on a path to greater openness.

On a hike in Guangdong Province in January 1984, Deng Xiaoping was warned that his path was a steep and treacherous one. “Never turn back,” the Chinese leader replied. That became a mantra as the government forged ahead with reforms in the face of heated contestation over the nation’s future. For a time, everything was on the table, including democratization and China’s version of socialism. But deliberation came to a sudden halt in spring 1989, with protests and purges, massacre and repression. Since then, Beijing has worked intensively to suppress the memory of this era of openness.

Julian Gewirtz recovers the debates of the 1980s, tracing the Communist Party’s diverse attitudes toward markets, state control, and sweeping technological change, as well as freewheeling public argument over political liberalization. The administration considered bold proposals from within the party and without, including separation between the party and the state, empowering the private sector, and establishing an independent judiciary. After Tiananmen, however, Beijing systematically erased these discussions of alternative directions. Using newly available Chinese sources, Gewirtz details how the leadership purged the key reformist politician Zhao Ziyang, quashed the student movement, recast the transformations of the 1980s as the inevitable products of consensus, and indoctrinated China and the international community in the new official narrative.

Never Turn Back offers a revelatory look at how different China’s rise might have been and at the foundations of strongman rule under Xi Jinping, who has intensified the policing of history to bolster his own authority.

Genres: China, History, Politics, Nonfiction, Asia, International Relations

432 pages, Hardcover

Published October 18, 2022

About the author

Julian Gewirtz is an American diplomat, historian, and poet currently serving as Deputy Coordinator for Global China Affairs at the U.S. Department of State in the Biden administration. He was previously Director for China at the White House National Security Council (NSC).

Gerwirtz attended Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut, and later earned a PhD in modern Chinese history from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2018 and a BA from Harvard College in 2013.

Prior to joining the NSC, Gewirtz was a Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a Wilson China Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in 2020.

Reviews

[Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really excellent history of the vibrant debates on economic and political reform within the Chinese Communist Party leadership between the 1978 Third Plenum and Deng Xiaoping's 1992 Southern Tour. Gewirtz shows that the CCP leaders were open to a wide range of economic and political reforms and that leaders held a variety of positions during these debates. The CCP was open to not only marketization of the economy, but also liberalization of the political system. The Tiananmen Square Massacre closes this period of semi-open debate, keeping economic reform and marketization but decisively shutting down any discussion of political liberalization.

Gewirtz props up Zhao Ziyang as the real brains of the reform period while dispeling the myth of Deng as "the architect of reform and opening up." With the exception of his last moments as general secretary, Zhao isn't idealized as a bleeding heart liberal who martyred himself for the cause of the protestors. He supported political liberalization not for moral reasons, but rather as a means to his overriding goal of China's economic development. The elevation of Deng as the one true father of the reform period actually happened after the Tiananmen Square Massacre as a way of erasing Zhao's involvement and consolidating the CCP.

My main disappointment with this book is that its content is not as new or original as it was marketed. Zhao is mentioned frequently in the Anglophone literature on the economic reforms and Deng's hands-off approach is known. This history of the 1980s might be forbidden in China, but the broad facts have been available in English before this book. Nonetheless, this book is undoubtedly well worth reading even for those familiar with the literature.

For further reading, I'd suggest "Deng Xiaoping: The Economist" by Barry Naughton for Deng's involvement in the economic reforms, and How China Escaped Shock Therapy by Isabella Weber for a history specifically focused on the economic debates on price reform.

[Victor Wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an eye-opening history, one that anyone interested in modern China should read. It reveals the diversity of thought about reform within the CCP top leadership that has been masked by post-1989 historical revisionism and accepted uncritically by many Western scholars. In particular, Gewirtz documents a near-total erasure of the pivotal role played by General Secretary Zhao Ziyang in China's modernization in favor of a constructed cult of personality around Deng Xiaoping as the "chief architect of reform and opening up". During Tiananmen and after, the CCP elite, led by Deng, made a deliberate choice to depose Zhao, shut down debate about political reform, and aggressively reshape the historical narrative to make a CCP-led "China model" seem like the only legitimate or possible outcome. Never Turn Back vividly shows the complexity and contingency hidden beneath this official narrative of China's rise.

[Hadrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of China in the reform era, largely told though elite politics, public statements, and academic debates. This book is concentrated on the period shortly after Mao's death in 1976 and ends with the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. Gewirtz, who received a history PhD at Harvard and is now a China Director at the National Security Council, has previously written on the reform era, in Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China.

China after the death of Mao was in a dire state - the long legacy of the Cultural Revolution saw a country with bombed out educational institutes, impoverished cities, and a crisis of faith. The early years of reform, in Chinese Communist Party circles, were circled by two questions: How should China modernize? and How will the party retain control?

While the broad narrative of the story is familiar, Gewirtz's contribution comes from intriguing details - for example, plans to invest in scientific research and modern information technology may have been driven by elite readings of Alvin Toffler and Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives.

The book also concentrates on the life and views of Zhao Ziyang, Premier of the People's Republic of China and briefly General Secretary of the Communist Party, and suggests that the course of Chinese reforms in the 1980s could have gone on a different path. However, Gewirtz is not sure to cast this entirely as a contest between party conservatives and liberalizing reforms - Zhao sees economic reform as a means to an end. A major point of contention between different wings of the party in the late 1980s is due to high inflation, bank runs, and panic buying. After the tragic events of 1989, however, Zhao had been almost entirely expunged from the Chinese Communist Party's portrayal of events, and Deng Xiaoping's importance had again been emphasized.

[Susie Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I encountered this book on my teacher's office desk, and after recommending it, he agreeably lend the book to me. At first, I thought the book would be directly criticizing the leadership in the 1980s, knowing the inevitable mention of the Tian'anmen square event. However, I appreciate the way this book is written that although have a certain bias implicitly and in the selection of what to include, the author did an overall good job in narrating the complex history, which makes the book available for people who have different political opinions.
I especially enjoyed reading about the economic policy in the 1980s, and how the leadership is trying to figure a new path out. It is a process of trial and error, and people like Hu and Zhao became the spike that bears the responsibility of error. I enjoyed reading how economic theories in the west, like Alvin Toffler's The Third Waves and Future Shock, and also Milton Freedman's monetarism had the ear of some leadership members, intellectuals, and even the public.
There is much content mentioned in the book I had known since childhood, but reading how those ways of thinking are part of the propaganda was eye-opening. For example, the peaceful revolution that we were afraid of was framed in the book as part of the political agenda to face external upheaval in the world. Other details like the combination merging patriotism and nationalism into the official ideology, the difference between core leadership (Deng, Jiang) and mere successor (Hu, Zhao), the relationship between state and party, economic reform and political reform, and the national condition to appreciate Chinese characteristic socialism path.
Gewirtz's opinion, which one could infer from his language and his conclusion, favors reform and opening and more liberty and independence of media like the policy under Zhao (unsurprisingly western perspective).
I do think the book is a valuable read, thinking about the writing and framing of current history and seeing the interior of the Politburo. It also reminded many forgotten names like Chen Yun, Hu Qiaomu, Deng Liqun, etc. The language is easily accessible and highly engaging.

[Tian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Gewirtz's other writings on China, this one did not disappoint. Deng Xiaoping is widely praised for his legacy as a reformist; yet his rewriting of history was, in fact, far more literal than he is given credit for. I especially enjoyed the inclusion of Gewirtz's 2019 paper on Toffler, "Third Wave," and Zhao Ziyang, "The Futurists of Beijing," as a chapter.

If Deng's legacy in the Chinese economic reform was predicated on the erasure of pre-1989 political debates, was Zhao Ziyang a "real" reformer? I remain skeptical of the notion that ideologies—not power struggles or maneuvers—play a central role in post-Mao politics.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Timely. Well-written. Hopeful. A must read for anyone interested in China and, especially, in Chinese history.

[Jared Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s by Julian Gewirtz is an excellent read, one I recommend to anyone looking for an immersive account of the defining decade of Reform and Opening. Gewirtz combines scholarly research with journalistic flair to provide an inside account of the country’s political and economic modernization from Hua Guofeng to Jiang Zemin, with vivid portraits of key figures such as Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Li Peng, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, and of course Deng Xiaoping.

Gewirtz’s case is that the particular shape of what we know today as Reform and Opening was far more contingent politically (not just pragmatically) than Deng’s phrase “crossing the river by feeling the stones” might suggest. Ideological controls remained tighter than one might rosily recall from the historical distance of the 2020s, affecting everything from sexual mores to the circulation of Alvin Toffler’s futurist writing. At the same time, the marriage of economic reform and authoritarian rule, later termed “market Leninism” by Nicolas Kristof, was not fixed until as late as the 1989 Tian’anmen protests. Zhao, for example, proposed a significant reworking of the civil service that would have removed part influence from the everyday work of government, and he was not alone in seeing direct village elections as a potential beginning for wider-scale political liberalization.

It is often Deng Xiaoping rather than Hu Yaobang or Zhao Ziyang that sits at the center of accounts of Reform and Opening—both in China and abroad. Gewirtz highlights both how important both of the latter men were in shaping policy and how their roles were systematically erased after each was ousted from power. At several key moments, Gewirtz emphasizes how distant Deng was from everyday decisionmaking as well as how conservative his ideological impulses were—insisting on campaigns against “bourgeois liberalization” and even acceding to economic retrenchment when Zhao would lose the confidence of the party elders in the wake of the inflationary spikes of 1988. Still, for a critical stretch of the 1980s, it was Zhao as much as anyone else who was both a key policy driver and an impressively agile politician.

Gewirtz ends with a concluding chapter that perfectly illustrates his key points about contingency and the malleability of the “Great Man” narrative, pointing out how much of an (unexpected) departure Xi’s new authoritarianism was in the context of the preceding decades as well as how his search for a “usable past” has freshly ruptured the neat image of Deng Xiaoping as China’s preeminent post-1978 leader. A key lesson from this book is never to be too swept up by the self-confident, choreographed picture of party uniformity, infallibility, and historical inevitability.

[Austin Barselau · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this revealing historical reassessment, Julian Gewirtz contests the prevailing linear, resolute, and triumphalist narrative of China’s modernization during the post-Mao era. Using leaked internal Chinese political documents, as well as propaganda and censorship directives, Gewirtz argues that China’s “reform and opening” in the 1980s was instead a contentious period marked by tumult and existential indecisiveness – a process of “crossing the river by feeling for stones” – among CCP officials.

Gewirtz devotes most of this book to assessing Zhao Ziyang, Premier of the Republic of China and shortly the CCP General Secretary, for his overlooked contributions to promoting China’s modernization and economic development. While Deng Xiaoping, known in China “chief architect of reform and opening up,” received much of the credit for China’s economic resurgence, Gewirtz argues that Zhao was rightfully responsible for the period of economic transition in the 1980s, especially for his pro-market interpretation of the “planned commodity economy,” but was later scapegoated for the excesses it created by the end of the decade.

As concerns among the Chinese populace over economic reform and inflation spiraled to panic buying, bank runs, and later into political demonstrations, the CCP sought to clamp down and restore order and retrench some of the economic progress over the decade. Accused of being sympathetic to protestors’ demands during the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989, as well as his political opportunism in promoting his own position, Zhao became a persona non grata and was expunged from the party, placed under house arrest, and scrubbed from party records. In attempting to foster both economic development and political liberalization from his post, Zhao had overreached by ignoring their distinction, which the CCP had long sought to keep separate.

“Never Turn Back” sheds light on this transitional period in Chinese history by probing and dispelling prevailing assumptions about matters of economic, ideological, social, and political importance. Rather than destiny, Gewirtz shows how 1980s China was “a period of extraordinary open-ended debate, contestation, and imagination” about the country’s future, spearheaded by figures now lost to history during the tumult of the period, especially Zhao Ziyang.

[Rajiv Chopra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book by Julian Gewirtz demands close reading, targeted at those who follow China, such as myself. I believe that the book does not serve the needs of those who do not wish to understand China and its journey to becoming the powerhouse it is today. The 1980s were clearly a turbulent decade for China.
Mao’s era was over, and the Gang of Four disappeared from the national scene. The time had begun for China to chart a new future. Julian Gewirtz used internal CCP documents to piece this narrative together, and we must rely on him as a reliable narrator of the events of the decade.
Most of us today regard Deng Xiaoping as the architect of China’s first reforms, but, as we learn from the book, he was one of several key players who charted China’s initial steps towards becoming a powerhouse.
The CCP revised – or, it seems, has rewritten the official narrative – of the events of the 1980s, and Julian Gewirtz indirectly challenges the official narrative. Those of us who have followed China are familiar with individuals like Zhao Ziyang and how the CCP has written him out of history. Those who love and follow history will do well to read widely – many authoritarian leaders today attempt to rewrite history.
The book is a fascinating read, providing rare insight into the primacy that early policymakers gave to science and technology, including fields such as cybernetics and machine learning, in addition to more traditional areas of science and technology.
The decade reveals that fate did not guarantee China’s success, but upon reading the book, it is easy to appreciate that Chinese success is well-deserved. The country’s leaders followed a consistent path, even when excluding some key players from history.
He began and ended the book with reference to Xi Jinping, reminding us how Xi Jinping does not give great importance to Deng’s legacy. Does Deng Xiaoping’s legacy face the same fate as Zhao Ziyang’s fate? Time will tell.
This book has been well written, deeply researched, and will fascinate anyone sincerely interested in modern Chinese history.

[Marcelo Muzzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 4.5 rounded down. Great book walking through the 1980s in China through a primary lens of showing the fluidity and diversity of thoughts and potential paths that were being discussed in the CCP and society. A few highlights:

- This book does a great job at showing how the CCP defines and propagates a version of history retroactively — which happens on both bookends of the decade: namely, Deng’s 1981 Resolution about Mao’s legacy, and in 1989’s reassessment of Zhao Ziyang
- The intensity and breadth of possibilities discussed in the economic and political arena in the 1980s is impressive, particularly so given how history played out after. The fact that “democratic” elections happened locally and within the core of the party is very interesting
- It was also surprising how free the ‘front-line’ of CCP leaders were in their day to day action before the CCP united around the formulation of a party core. Zhao Ziyang mostly chartered his own path and pushed forward on a number of topics with only loose alignment / dialogue with Party Elders, in particular Deng (e.g., Zhao’s use of the “initial stage of socialism” concept)
- Also interesting was the depiction of how ‘democratic centralism’ worked in practice, with senior CCP leaders each working with their acolytes to formulate concepts / frameworks, gather feedback, negotiate arrangements with each other, until one is able to gather overwhelming support either from Party Elders or other sources. Only then after the party is united around a formulation will the mid- to low-level party members work to define in detail what the concept or policy entailed
- One final thought: one wonders how China would have fared if Zhao remained in power after 1989 — would the country liberalize like the USSR and fall into instability or transition peacefully to a Western-style democracy? Something that is also interesting to note is — despite the success the CCP had over the last 30 years, many of the economic arrangements (e.g., SEZs, international cycle, ascension to GATT / WTO) were already in place by the late 80s

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a stream of facts that badly needed more editing. The way “contestation” was overused drove me up the wall.

It’s unclear which pieces of research are new or particularly important, and there is little in the way of storytelling. It’s probably great as a reference work, but it’s underwhelming as a book.

[May · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly tedious opening and middle, but the end was strongest as it concluded the events of the 80s. The author was slightly too repetitive in his points but I still found his arguments about how significant this decade was in reshaping China’s historical narrative and future message very compelling - albeit done a bit heavy handedly

[Michael G. Zink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Valuable insight into all the tension throbbing through mainland China during the 1980s, building towards the tragedy on Tiananmen Square in 1989. Some of this history has been airbrushed away by the CCP.

[Jocelyn Zhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

irradiate purple sun。这个当代大多数中国人都不是很熟悉的名字。是江core的前任。为什么很多人不知道他呢，因为历史书上没写，为什么没写呢，因为他的思想里有要改革politics的一面，间接被party除名了。他为改革开放的努力，也被转移到一位个子不高的同志身上了。作者是现在拜登政府对华政策的主要官员，他对八十年代的中国的认识和描述，真的事无巨细。我们都知道那个十年最后的最后发生了8的平方。整本书的大部分，我们都在等待那个可怕的结果。对比当今就要倒流的水系们，整本书的大部分，我都沉浸在一种回不去了的伤感情绪下。但是最后的最后，作者提到了5年前，改革开放四十年庆祝遍地几乎找不到个子不高的同志，这种间接的除名（cancel），多么令人熟悉。作者看到的不是悲观，而是乐观：三十年河东 三十年河西。曾经cancel别人的人，今天也中招了么。也许很多情况下，某party都做到了奥威尔所言：谁控制过去就控制未来；谁控制现在就控制过去！比如我们学到的“跳过了”资本主义这个“历史”，正是80年代，一堆御用文人的思想糟粕。但是，正如个子不高的同志可以说不提就不提，这个逻辑也是可以推延到所有的恶人身上的。真相一直都在，正义不会缺席。

[Rabbit]

Well written but nothing new if you have read Zhao's memoir and other non-party-approved works on the 1980s China

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

"THE FORBIDDEN HISTORY" is a rather melodramatic subtitle for an otherwise sober and well-constructed history.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.5/10

[Peter Timperman · Rating 4 out of 5]

academic but approachable

[令威 Ling-Wei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly pure descriptions without much analysis. This book can get you familiar with the circumstances and the historical realities of 1980s China, but it is beyond the scope of the book to provide an understanding of the dynamics and mechanisms behind the facts.

[Justin Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive and refreshing chronicle of China’s reform and opening in 1980s, including various characters and aspects of reform, the contestations, the different approaches and ideologies that leads to the tragedy of the 1989.
The consequences of the 1989 and the subsequent erasure of this period of history proved to be far-reaching. It remains a haunting ghost for China’s leaders, thus shuttered tightly the door of political reform, even to entrench their position to the extent of retrenchment, till the day of now.
But as the author said, the history still continues, and there will be hope for other changes. Whatever happens now in China, it still remains a single part of history, no means we could conclude that could be the future of it.

[Mary Agnes Joens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really remarkable book challenging the prevailing narrative of the 1980s in China. In particular, it questions the centering of Deng Xiaoping as the "architect of reform and opening" at the expense of purged party leader Zhao Ziyang, whose proposals for political reform have been totally expunged from the historical record in China.

My only critique (if we could call it that) is that it would have been interesting (though I understand very difficult) to get more of the perspective of the common people or generally those outside the political elite during this time.