Whose Perestroika? Czechoslovak Communists, Deng Xiaoping’s Economic Reforms, and Late 1980s Sino-Czechoslovak Relations

This chapter discusses the context of bilateral relations between Czechoslovakia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) following their normalization of relations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It focuses primarily on several Sino-Czechoslovak encounters in the later 1980s. The aim of this chapter is to “reconstruct” how the Czechoslovak leadership perceived Chinese reforms and the PRC’s economic performance in the late 1980s. What did Czechoslovak leaders think of the reforms? Were they inspired by them, or even determined to implement similar measures at least partially in their own country? Or did they consider what they learned during their novel encounters with Deng’s regime as inappropriate for Czechoslovakia? Did any competition exist between the Soviet and Chinese versions of perestroika in the minds and plans of the Czechoslovak communists? Or did the Czechoslovak conservative leadership perceive both perestroikas as unsuitable for and potentially even harmful to the Czechoslovak system? The chapter draws primarily on archival evidence from the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party stored in the National Archive of the Czech Republic.