ntially gambled that the government could buy popular support by raising living standards and at the same time maintain the CCP's monopoly on political power. The regime came close to admitting that it was purchasing popular support at the cost of suppressing basic individual liberties when President Jiang Zemin at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the PRC in October 1999 defined human rights as the right to food and shelter (2000, July 31, Silencing, p. 20).
When student demonstrations in Tiananman Square in the spring of 1989 began to show signs of spreading throughout China and involving the masses, Deng ordered a brutal crackdown on June 3-4, 1989 which encompassed the massacre of hundreds and the purge and arrest of thousands of pro-democracy individuals. According to Qing & Xue (1996, Winter), the Chinese leadership views "human rights as a product of Western culture, a value system that the West wants to impose on China" (p. 333).
With respect to religion, the CCP exploited the belief
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