In 1978 and 1979, the leader of the Chinese regime, Deng Xiaoping, was consolidating his power at the same time the Shah of Iran was losing his. The Shah’s fall led to important lessons well heeded by Deng and his successors to Xi Jinping today.
However, the 1979 overthrow of the Pahlavi regime of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in Iran shows how an exile movement can undermine a regime before causing its downfall. Hence, the Shah’s overthrow reveals the role emigres and the Chinese diaspora may play in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) demise.
The Shah’s Imperial State of Iran was overthrown by the Islamic Republic of Iran under the rule of theocrat Ruhollah Khomeini, a major Islamic cleric and leader of Islamic opposition to the Shah. It is notable because it was absent of the typical causes of revolution. There was no financial collapse, war, rebellious military coup, or class revolution. Far from being unstable, the country was prosperous. Nevertheless, a pro-Western, prosperous, modern state and regional pillar for U.S. foreign policy was replaced with a fundamentalist Islamic government. That is notable as it demonstrates that pro-Western regimes may be rapidly replaced by hostile governments.
The Shah’s fall also has four important lessons for the study of the CCP’s demise.
First, it underscores a fundamental law of political power. The Shah failed to crush dissent. Unlike the Shah, the CCP will fight to crush dissent early and ensure that no movement could grow into a threat to the regime. This has been a staple of the Party since it came to power in 1949 and is repeated whenever the Party has faced serious challenges. That is a lesson well heeded by Xi.
As Deng Xiaoping stated in the days after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the CCP would pay attention to movements and not allow them to spread. Nascent rebellious movements would be crushed. This was the intent and spirit that animated the suppression of the Tibetan minority, the Muslim peoples of Xinjiang, and religious movements like Falun Gong from the 1990s.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline involving meditative exercises and moral teachings. The CCP perceived it as a “cult” that was promoting separatism and “anti-Party” sentiment. As a result, the Party initiated a sweeping campaign on July 20, 1999, aimed at eradicating Falun Gong, as authorities perceived its growing popularity as a threat to its authoritarian control. Since then, millions have been detained in prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated.
Second, political, economic, and social modernization should never jeopardize political control. Deng’s economic reforms were always calculated so that wealth increased and property ownership spread so that individuals had a stake in the success of the reforms, which were tied to Deng’s position and the maintenance of his power. Deng was able to accomplish this, as economic reform was hugely popular among the population. There might be the promise of some political reform many decades into a nebulous future. Still, there could not be any in the near term as the Party was the navigator of economic reform and wealth creation.
In reality, of course, the Party did not create wealth; the West did because Western decision-makers permitted China to enter the economic ecosystem of the West. The CCP allowed Western trade and investment, which generated wealth and lifted hundreds of millions from poverty, and most importantly, helped the Party remain in power in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the end of the Cold War when the United States might have placed considerable pressure on the regime to introduce major political reforms or to be ejected from power.
Third, the Iranian revolution demonstrates for the CCP the vulnerability of social reforms and the importance of a leader who will withstand the trials generated by rapid change without flagging. Xi’s lesson from the Shah is to never waver and never yield power but to fight through the difficulty and master it as Mao Zedong and Deng did.
Fourth, the Shah’s demise shows that emigres and the diaspora population can inspire and direct protests. For example, while the 1905 Russian Revolution was a shock to the Tsar, the Russian government, the people, and the revolutionaries, the Shah’s overthrow was designed by a coalition of revolutionaries, from Communists to Islamists. Khomeini’s Islamic revolution won the day. Upon reflection, the revolutionaries were amazed at how willingly the Shah surrendered power. In this, they were like the Bolsheviks, who did not seize power so much as they merely picked up the crown the Tsar had abandoned in the gutter.
Either option is a possible outcome for the Chinese regime, but it shows the key role emigres and the diaspora may play in the CCP’s demise.
