Tiananmen Seems Distant to China’s Students
Was the democracy movement in vain?
Beijing blocks Yanhuang Chunqiu website
Tiananmen Mothers: Public Statement on the 20th Anniversary
Spare me the lecture
Tiananmen Square leader arrested
See also
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the Tiananmen Square Massacre (referred to in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident, to avoid confusion with two other Tiananmen Square protests) were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China (PRC) beginning on April 14. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world
Tiananmen Now Seems Distant to China’s Students
By
Sharon LaFraniere May 21, 2009
On April 30, the cellphones of the 32,630 students at Peking University, a genteel institution widely regarded as one of China’s top universities, buzzed with a text message from the school administration. It warned students to “pay attention to your speech and behavior” on Youth Day because of a “particularly complex” situation.
Today’s Chinese students seem uninterested in protest or ideology. “You know where the line is drawn,” one student said.
Few students had to puzzle over the meaning. Youth Day, on May 4, commemorates a 1919 student protest against foreign imperialism and China’s weakness in resisting it. Seventy years later, in 1989, students from Peking University were again massing in the center of Beijing, demanding democracy. The student movement shook the ruling Communist Party to its core and ended with a military crackdown and hundreds of deaths.
And if a student today proposed a pro-democracy protest?
“People would think he was insane,” said one Peking University history major in a recent interview. “You know where the line is drawn. You can think, maybe talk, think about the events of 1989. You just cannot do something that will have any public influence. Everybody knows that.”
Most students also appear to accept it. For 20 years, China’s government has made it abundantly clear that students and professors should stick to the books and stay out of the streets. Students today describe 1989 as almost a historical blip, a moment too extreme and traumatic ever to repeat.
But whether democracy still inspires them is a more complex question.
Interviews with students and teachers at Peking University, as with experts on China here and abroad, draw a layered portrait of today’s students: disinclined to protest, but also lacking the economic grievances that helped ignite protests in 1989; proud of China’s achievements and flocking to the Communist Party, but seldom driven by ideology.
They are disturbed by government corruption and censorship and are eager to study in the West, especially the United States. And despite the government’s attempts to wipe the 1989 protests from Chinese history, some have learned what happened. All but one of eight Peking University students interviewed for this article, for instance, said they had managed to download an acclaimed — and banned — documentary on the Tiananmen protests and view it in their dorm rooms.
“There is a stereotypical view that students are not interested in democracy. I don’t buy it,” Cheng Li, research director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview. “At the very least, they have a mixed opinion of the Communist Party.”
Xia Yeliang, a Peking University professor, said many students supported democracy in theory but did not want to risk their futures to fight for it. Students joke that they will get involved once pro-democracy forces gather steam, he said. “A rather high percentage of students are not interested in politics,” he said. “They say, ‘We know this is a good thing, but what relation does it have to us?’ They think about their personal affairs, how to get a job, how to go abroad.”
Even the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, People’s Daily, laments a general lack of idealism on campus. “Many university students are clearly very utilitarian in their thinking,” People’s Forum, a magazine published by People’s Daily, complained this month after a conducting a student survey. “Everything is based on ‘whether or not it is useful to me,’ ” the magazine said.
In fact, today’s students have more to lose than did protesters 20 years ago. Then, university students believed that their futures were endangered by a soaring inflation rate of 28 percent, rampant government corruption and shrinking job prospects, according to a 2001 book on the Tiananmen movement by Dingxin Zhao, a University of Chicago sociology professor. Many had lost hope in the government’s economic reforms.
Today, even students who criticize Communist rule are gratified by China’s great strides. “Sometimes we don’t like the policies of our government,” said Wang Yongli, a fourth-year physics major. “But on the other hand, nowadays we are proud of the country and the government because they have moved so many people to a better life.”
The Communist Party is careful to cultivate this image, while seeking to defuse longings for democracy by vowing to govern “democratically.”
Officials say they oppose Western-style multiparty democracy as wrong for China, but embrace the idea of consultation, public review and balloting under party rule. China will open up the political system, step by step, as the country becomes wealthier and more stable, officials promise.
Some China analysts suggest that student discontent could rise if the current economic crisis clouds their futures. China sends nine times as many students to institutions of higher education now as it did in 1989, and competition for good jobs is fierce. Nearly one in four graduates last year could not find work, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported.
But since 1989, Communist Party leaders have realized that they ignore youth at their peril. The government is now trying to ease job anxieties with training programs and incentives for graduates to work in rural areas. “If you are worried, then I am more worried than you,” Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told one student group in December.
The party has also ratcheted up recruitment and political education, making college students the party’s fastest-growing segment, said Susan L. Shirk, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. More than 8 percent of all students were party members in 2007, compared with fewer than 1 percent in 1989. At elite institutions like Peking University, percentages are much higher.
Some of those students echo the party’s line that Western-style democracy does not suit China. “China has a large population, and education has a long way to go,” said Song Chao, a Peking University ecology major. “Considering that, we need to put some regulations on people. The major task for China now is development.”
Others hope to nudge the party toward reform. “Of course, if we could become a democratic society, we would like that,” said another history major and party aspirant. “But this is not something you can achieve by radical means. What if there is chaos?”
But a majority of students seek party membership not as an ideological statement but rather as a means to a better job, the survey published by People’s Forum concluded. At Peking University, many students say they nap through the university’s much mocked, though mandatory, political thought classes. “Even the teachers know they are teaching rubbish,” one senior said.
Most students will make such statements only anonymously because government control of campus speech remains tight. Professors say some students are assigned to report to administrators if they hear teachers adopting antigovernment lines. Most students interviewed for this article did not want to be identified, saying their comments might be negatively noted in their files.
Five years ago, the university shut down a computer bulletin board — a vibrant hub of information for 300,000 users — after the central government’s education minister complained that it did not always reflect “the right view.” Students say they are careful about what they write on the new, restricted and monitored board because their identities can be traced.
Surveys show that four of five university students still rely on China’s heavily censored media for their news. But in a digital age when nearly 70,000 Chinese students are studying in the United States and roughly 163,000 foreign students study at Chinese universities, walls against information are porous.
One senior recalled an excruciating roundtable discussion with foreign journalists who visited Peking University in 2007 and asked about the government crackdown on student demonstrators in 1989. “They always ask about this June 4 incident, and we just keep silent,” she said. “It is not because we don’t want to talk. It is because we have no idea what exactly happened!
“I felt a little bit humiliated because we don’t know our own history,” she said. “So I went to the library and I read about June 4. Basically, everything was written by foreign journalists.”
The curbs on public debate can reduce even political controversies on campus to the status of rumors. Two Peking University professors were among the first to sign Charter 08, an online pro-democracy manifesto released in December and backed by many intellectuals.
After signing, Professor Xia, the economist, said he was forced to resign from positions at two research institutes. His fellow signer, He Weifang, a celebrated law professor, was transferred to an obscure college in China’s far west. Professor He’s exile was news overseas. But much like the coming anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, it drew little notice from students.
One student defended the professor with an anonymous post on the campus’s computer bulletin board. “The day will come,” he wrote, “when Professor He can go where he wants.”
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The ghosts of Tiananmen
Two decades after the student uprising was crushed, China’s rulers have more to fear from the economic crisis than they do from democratic dissidents. So was the democracy movement in vain?
Ian Buruma June 2009
Ten years after the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 I wrote a book, Bad Elements, about the fate of the protesters, dissidents and free-spirited Chinese who had wanted to change their country. Much had changed in those ten years, and even more has changed since. New buildings, ever taller, ever bigger, have made cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing virtually unrecognisable to anyone who has been away for longer than six months. Old neighbourhoods disappear overnight, to be replaced by high rises, shopping malls and theme parks, sometimes replicating in miniature, or in painted concrete, razed ancient landmarks. This isn’t just a matter of economic growth; it is a transformation.
So was I wrong to detect a whiff of decay in the authoritarian one-party state when I travelled in the People’s Republic of China ten years ago? Was I misguided in my belief that the dissident “bad elements” still mattered? It is not hard to find educated, prosperous citizens in the wealthier coastal regions who will say so. The foreign traveller in China today will often be told, sometimes in excellent English, that the country is not yet ready for the freedoms my dissidents demanded. China is too big, one hears, too large, too old, the Chinese masses are too uneducated, in fact, China is just too damned complicated for democracy to take root. The whip-hand of authoritarian rule is still essential to keep chaos at bay and enable prosperity. Democracy is a luxury to be enjoyed after wealth and education; first food and shelter, then, possibly, freedom.
An alternative argument comes down to pretty much the same thing, but has a more patriotic ring. It claims that China already has a kind of democracy; a Chinese democracy in line with native traditions, a quasi-Confucian system where wise and benevolent rulers act, as if by osmosis, according to the wishes of the people. And the people, instead of indulging in selfish demands for rights—which suit the westerner, but are alien to the Chinese—sacrifice their private interests for the good of a great nation with 6,000 years of history.
These arguments will be expressed, usually with great conviction, while one’s attention is drawn to those tall, glitzy buildings, and those malls stuffed with the luxuries of the modern world. Look at what China has achieved in 20 years! Don’t the figures speak for themselves? So why should it matter what such voices in the wilderness as Wei Jingsheng, who spent 14 years in prison before being exiled to the US, still say about the lack of democracy in China? Or former student leaders of the Tiananmen demonstrations, some of whom now have business careers in the west. After all, their voices are no longer much heard in China. Those born around 1989 have barely heard of the protests, let alone of people who played prominent roles back then. Parents won’t talk about it lest their children get into trouble. And the children have other things to worry about, like getting ahead in the exciting but often brutal world of authoritarian capitalism.
Critics point out that the exiled dissidents are out of touch with contemporary China. Since they no longer live there, and most are not even allowed to go back for family visits, memories are all they have left of the country they once sought to change. It is true that China has moved on since Tiananmen. But this doesn’t mean that dissidents have disappeared. New people have emerged, lawyers who bravely take on sensitive cases of corruption, environmental damage, or workers’ rights. There is even some room on the internet, or in scholarly journals, for serious discussions about democratic theory, as long as the supremacy of the Communist party is not directly challenged. Commercial newspapers report on scandals, news of which travels fast through cyberspace. In a one-party state, such scandals can be the closest thing to political reporting, since crime and politics are sometimes close relations.
Moreover, personal freedoms, in terms of sexual and romantic desires, private consumption, artistic expression, and religious practices, have been expanded. The deal made by the ruling party and the urban middle class is politically astute. Individuals are free to do or say a great deal more than they could in the past. They can own their houses. Up to a point, they can choose their jobs. But organised activity, by and large, is still subject to state control, even if such control is not always enforced. In short, for the sake of getting rich, people have agreed to stay out of politics.
The majority of educated Chinese, who are the kind of people who protested in Beijing and other cities in 1989, accept the deal. So it is hardly surprising that they are often the ones to tell enquiring foreigners that democracy doesn’t matter, or doesn’t fit the Chinese way. Worldly sophisticates are often first to dismiss dissident voices, or those who argue, at great risk to themselves, that China could be different, that political freedoms must match economic freedoms, and that a one-party state is unworthy of a civilised people. Such voices are dismissed with particular contempt when they come from abroad, from exiled protesters grown “out of touch.” And the foreigner who points out China’s political shortcomings can often count on a blast of sometimes peevish nationalism: who is he to comment on Chinese affairs, of which the meddling foreigner is bound to be as ignorant as he is arrogant?
Such a reaction is not always without foundation. Many foreigners are indeed arrogant, as well as ignorant, and far too prone to adopt the preaching tone of the missionary in colonial times. Yet I suspect that the hostility is not entirely divorced from moral unease about having accepted a political deal that is not entirely honourable. Many Chinese who have gone for the money after the tragic failures of 1989 cannot really have forgotten their earlier idealism. As is true everywhere, of course, idealism fades as people grow older. But the spirit of 1989, the desire for a freer, more open, less corrupt society, where citizens have rights and don’t have to lie to stay out of trouble, is surely not dead. It could be revived very swiftly if circumstances change, as they surely will; no society, certainly not China, stays the same for ever.
In fact, circumstances are changing quite rapidly. China has not escaped from the world economic crisis. Newly unemployed workers are returning in huge numbers from the urban industrial zones and construction sites to their villages, where they won’t find much work either. The poor, often cheated by corrupt bosses backed by local party officials, are not going to get richer soon. Their anger often explodes in riots. But these violent eruptions are local and can still be contained with force.
And what about the middle-class pact? The consequences of that unravelling are perhaps far greater, for it is hard to see how the Communist party can stay in power without the backing of the educated class. Even authoritarian governments need legitimacy to survive. Ideological legitimacy, already fading after the horrors of the cultural revolution, was lost in the Tiananmen crackdown. The promise of order and growth was the only legitimacy the party had left. Now this promise, too, is being lost, and the middle-class may not stick to its part of the bargain. They may not stay out of politics for much longer.
I am as loath to predict what might happen now as I was in 1999, but one can imagine certain possibilities. One is an old Chinese pattern of local rulers replacing a crumbling central power. Provincial bosses, like the warlords of 100 years ago, may take control of their regions. They are unlikely to be friends of democracy. Or extreme nationalism might be stirred by a fearful government, keen to deflect the middle-class resentment onto foreign targets. But this, too, is a tactic full of risk, as radical nationalism could be turned against the government itself, as a punishment for its weakness. Then again, China’s army, anxious to restore order in the unruly empire, might step in and crush all dissent.
There is a more positive alternative to these routes of violence and oppression. It was expressed with great eloquence in a remarkable document, first signed by more than 300 Chinese citizens—law professors, businessmen, farmers and even some party officials. The 300 signatories of Charter 08, launched at the end of 2008 on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were soon joined by thousands more. It was drawn up as a conscious echo of an earlier charter by Czechoslovakian dissidents in 1977, seeking human rights in a stagnant satellite of the Soviet empire. It is not radical. The signatories demand free elections, an independent judiciary, free speech and basic human rights. But of course, in a one-party dictatorship, these demands are radical. And so one of the “bad elements” I wrote about 20 years ago, a quiet-spoken intellectual named Liu Xiaobo, who organised the charter, was promptly arrested and jailed. Others, too, were harassed, and interrogated. One thing is clear: dissidents clearly do matter to the rulers of the People’s Republic of China.
To dismiss their ideas as merely “western” is wrong. There is no need for China to imitate the west. All the signatories to the charter want is to follow the examples of South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan; all of which have functioning democracies. The Communist party rulers might yet block the route to political freedom, but after Charter 08 (or the republican revolution of 1911, or the May 4th Movement of 1919, or Tiananmen in 1989) it can never be denied that many Chinese ardently wish for it.
Considering the alternatives, all of which mean more violence and oppression, this desire is not only justified, but the recipe most likely to result in long-term social stability, which is in the interest of all of us, in China and outside. This is why the “bad elements” still matter more than ever
A new edition of Ian Buruma’s “Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing” (Atlantic) is published on 1st June
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Beijing blocks Yanhuang Chunqiu website days before Tiananmen anniversary
Jane Macartney May 26, 2009
The online version of one of China's most radical magazines has been closed by the censors who patrol the Great Firewall of China. The move comes days before the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The editors of Yanhuang Chunqiu (China Through the Ages), a liberal monthly, received no warning of the shutdown. Nor have they received any explanation for their disappearance from cyberspace.
The publisher, Du Daozheng, 86, revealed last week that he was one of the four Communist Party veterans who helped Zhao Ziyang, the General Secretary of the Communist Party who was sacked for his soft line towards the Tiananmen protesters, to write his memoirs.
Mr Du is a former head of the General Administration for Press and Publications, one of China’s main censorship bodies.
Since last year, Yanhuang Chunqiu has put out barely a single issue that does not contain a positive reference to Mr Zhao, whose name is still taboo in China four years after his death.
The most recent edition carries an article by the longest-serving major political prisoner from the 1989 crackdown. The piece by Chen Ziming, who is banned from publishing in China, is published under Mr Chen’s personal name – not even a pseudonym.
Yang Jisheng, the deputy publisher, told the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong that pressure had been applied by the authorities since the early days of the magazine. "But we will by no means succumb to the pressure because what we have been doing was done out of justice, let alone the support of many like-minded fellow countrymen," he said.
Journalists for mainstream publications and news websites say they have received orders to steer clear of politically sensitive or negative news in the run-up to the June 4 anniversary, as well as to the 60th anniversary of the founding of Communist China on October1.
A directive from the party's propaganda department said that the media should be mindful of the national interest and focus on "positive guidance to ensure social stability".
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Tiananmen Mothers:
Public Statement on the 20th Anniversary of the June Fourth Massacre
hrichina.org May 27, 2009
This year is the 20th anniversary of the June Fourth Massacre. As a group of Chinese citizens who have lost loved ones in this tragedy, and with profound grief buried in our hearts, we are releasing the following statement to our countrymen at home and abroad, and to all righteous people of good conscience worldwide:
1. Between June 3 and June 4, 1989, a large-scale massacre of peaceful demonstrators and city residents, ordered by the government and carried out by the army, took place in China’s capital, Beijing. Thousands of civilians were injured and lost their lives in the bloodbath. Chiefly responsible for this bloody tragedy are: former Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Deng Xiaoping; former Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Li Peng; former President of the People’s Republic of China, Yang Shangkun; former Mayor of Beijing, Chen Xitong; and former Beijing Municipal Party Committee Secretary, Li Ximing. Some of them have already passed away. Some of them have stepped down. But Li Peng, who is still alive, took part in decision-making on the highest level that led to this massacre and was, moreover, directly in charge of carrying it out. It was the martial law that Li Peng signed as the country’s Premier that directly led to the large-scale massacre of the capital’s peaceful residents by the special martial law emergency troops.
As everyone knows, there was no armed rebellion or rioting in the Beijing district between April and June 1989, and yet the government mobilized several hundred thousand troops to enter the city and massacre peaceful demonstrators and residents—an action that was clearly an illegal use of the country’s armed forces. Based on the provisions against violation of the citizens’ personal freedoms in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China; based on the fundamental human rights, the dignity and worth of the human person reaffirmed by the Charter of the United Nations; and in accordance with the international human rights standards confirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other United Nations conventions, we believe that this military action taken by the government authorities not only severely violates our nation’s constitution and the international commitments it has made as a sovereign state to safeguard humanity, but that its persistent contempt for human rights and civil liberties constitutes an outrage against humanity.
In the recently published memoir based on audiotapes recorded by the former General Secretary of the CPC, Zhao Ziyang, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang, he says that he “didn’t want to be a General Secretary who opens fire on the people.” This shows that at the time Zhao differed in opinion from Deng and Li on how to handle the student movement, on whether to pursue a peaceful or a military solution. In the end, Zhao went down in defeat.
Nowadays, different people from various levels of society have all kinds of interpretations of this tragedy. But the basic facts of what happened at that time have not changed. The nature of this tragedy has not changed either. It remains a bloody massacre of peaceful civilians.
2. As a community of victims of the June Fourth tragedy, we have devoted all our energy and spared no effort during the past twenty years to, one by one, look for every single person who died in the massacre. As of this day, we have found 195 people. We have already publicly released lists of names four times: 96 individuals in 1994, 155 individuals in 1999, 185 individuals in 2004, 195 individuals in 2009. The number of people we have uncovered thus far cannot be either the majority or the total number of victims. To those victims whom we have not yet found, we offer our heartfelt apologies and remorse. We are especially troubled knowing that for twenty years their relatives have been suffering in torment, pain, and solitude, unable to receive humanitarian care and assistance from people at home and from overseas.
We hereby earnestly appeal to all those who have information about the tragedy: Please, provide us with clues about the victims, even if they be just the slightest traces of clues. Do not let a temporary oversight result in a lifetime of regret.
3. It has been almost twenty years since the June Fourth Massacre. During the first few years following the massacre, Secretary General of the CPC Jiang Zemin categorically declared: “If we had not taken absolute measures at the time, we would not have the stability we enjoy today. A bad thing has turned out to be good.” It is now more than ten years later, and today’s top leaders have stopped mentioning the words “June Fourth,” classifying ”June Fourth” as a taboo topic. That is to say, today’s China is monopolized by a social stratum born of the conspiracy between capital and power-based privilege. They control all the national resources and allocate the entire nation’s opportunities and lifelines. They only care for profit, and categorically refuse to discuss “June Fourth.” Through twenty years of cover-up and deceit, the government authorities have turned the entire society into an exquisitely beautiful empty shell filled with ostentation, indifference, instant gratification, and depravity, and devoid of fairness, justice, honesty, shame, reverence, remorse, tolerance, responsibility, compassion, and affection . . . All this has distorted the history of June Fourth beyond recognition, to the point that it has become a blank.
There is only one core matter the CPC cares to uphold, and that is its determination not to lose absolute power. They can confidently talk about human rights, freedom, democracy, and legal institutions, but, like illusionists, they are only switching bait, while taking undeserved credit. As for the western democratic system, namely the parliamentary democracy and multi-party competition adopted by most states, they are not prepared to make even the smallest concession. They will especially never let the political opposition around them challenge the power of the Communist Party. For the past twenty years, Chinese leaders, from the second generation to the third and now to the fourth, have grown increasingly confident in this solid “hidden rule,” and more unshakable than ever. The severe purge of the signers of Charter 08, issued by civil society last year, is but a loathsome example.
Over the past twenty years, the June Fourth Incident has become the watershed of China’s contemporary history and politics. Will control be loosened or tightened? The people are waiting to see.
4. On the basis of the above considerations, we have repeatedly sent letters to the National People’s Congress in the course of the past ten and some years to express the following views:
The bloody 1989 Tiananmen tragedy was not a result of the government’s inappropriate action, but the government’s crime against the people. Consequently, the June Fourth Incident must be re-evaluated. The issue of the June Fourth legacy cannot be handled according to the will of individual leaders, regardless of who they may be, and it cannot be handled in the manner of the so-called “rehabilitations” and “exonerations” that followed each successive political movement in the past.
To this end, we are reiterating the following three demands:
That the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress form a dedicated June Fourth investigation committee and conduct an independent and fair investigation on the entire incident, and that it furthermore make public the results of the investigation to the entire nation, including the names and numbers of those who died in the incident;
That the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress instruct the departments in charge to issue individual explanations to the relatives of each deceased person in accordance with the statutory procedures; the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress should also draft and adopt a “June Fourth Incident Victim Compensation Bill” and give the victims and their relatives appropriate compensation in accordance with the law;
That the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress order the Procuratorial Bureau to file the case and investigate the June Fourth tragedy, and to affix legal responsibility and prosecute those responsible in accordance with the statutory procedures.
The above can be summarized in three words: Truth, Compensation, Accountability. The reason we did not mention “rehabilitation” of June Fourth victims in our three demands is because as a citizen group, we have learned through painful experience: we want justice for the dead, but we do not beg those in power. The so-called “rehabilitation” and “exoneration” used by the Communist authorities in the past are merely a throwback to the methods of the imperial era. For several decades the CPC has repeatedly carried out political campaigns and purges, followed by “rehabilitation” and “exoneration,” managing to get those who had been “rehabilitated” to later even thank the “brilliant” and “mighty” CPC, as though they were bowing to the imperial throne. For several decades, the common people have been paying an enormous price for this kind of hypocrisy of the authorities and for their own ignorance. How can we let this type of history go on! We have come to the realization that we must rely on ourselves to fight for and protect the rights and dignity that belong to us, as well as for the rights and dignity of our dead relatives. We cannot depend on the charity of others.
5. For the fair and reasonable solution of the June Fourth issue, we have always believed that we must uphold the principles of peace and rationality and follow the tracks of democracy and rule of law. The National People’s Congress should follow legal procedures and make a special motion to hand the June Fourth issue to the General Assembly for discussion and deliberation, and come to a decision on matters concerned. Using one sentence to summarize this position: Use legal means to resolve political problems. We believe that using legislation and judicial procedures is the only way to solve the issue of June Fourth. However, this matter cannot be resolved in a day.
To break the impasse in resolving the June Fourth Incident, and so that the matter can develop positively and smoothly, we suggested a guideline in 2006: Tackle simple problems first, then gradually move on to harder questions. Following this guideline, the issues on which consensus cannot be reached easily because of serious differences of opinion can be set aside temporarily, and the issues involving the basic rights of the victims and their personal interests be resolved first. These issues include: 1) removing all monitoring of and personal restrictions imposed on the “June Fourth” victims and their families; 2) allowing families of the dead to openly mourn their loved ones; 3) ending interceptions and seizures of domestic and international humanitarian aid donations, and returning all the aid money that has been frozen; 4) having government departments in charge, in the spirit of humanitarianism, help the victims who are living in straitened circumstances find employment and guarantee them a basic livelihood, without attaching any political conditions to the assistance; 5) eliminating political discrimination against the disabled victims of “June Fourth” and treating them the same as all other disabled individuals in matters such as communal participation, social safeguards, etc. The settlement of the aforementioned issues ultimately depends on the soundness of the entire legal process.
6. Since 1997, we have been imploring the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress to change its attitude of ignoring public opinion and turning a deaf ear to popular demand, and to engage in a direct, sincere dialogue about the problems of the June Fourth victims with their families. On the 10th anniversary of June Fourth, we formed the “June Fourth Victims Dialogue Group” and put forth an appeal for a just and impartial resolution of the June Fourth issue by way of negotiation and dialogue based on democratic principles and rule of law. In 2006, we put forth that this should be an open dialogue among equals, without preconditions, and that we do not endorse the so-called “administrative resolutions” and private settlements that violate the principles of the rule of law. In 2008, we specifically suggested to the government to establish a communication mechanism. In an open letter titled “An Appeal from the Tiananmen Mothers to the Government: Set a Timetable for Dialogue on the June Fourth Massacre,” we explicitly pointed out:
The world has entered the age of dialogue, yet mainland China remains behind, stagnant, in the age of resistance. This embarrassing and intolerable situation, which no one is willing to face, must end as soon as possible. We note that the Chinese government advocates the use of dialogue to solve differences and disputes in international affairs. We therefore have even stronger ground for our request that the government solve domestic differences and disputes through a similar method. If China, with its historical tradition of despotic rule, can strive to replace hostility with dialogue, it would benefit the entire nation and be a blessing to all people. As this country enters into more dialogue, it will manifest more civility and legal order and less ignorance and despotism. Dialogue should not lead society into opposition and hatred, but rather, into tolerance and reconciliation. Using dialogue to solve the June Fourth issue is the only way to achieve social reconciliation.
We believe that the time for dialogue is gradually ripening and that the government leaders should facilitate the dialogue about the June Fourth Incident by tolerantly keeping an open mind and daring to accept the consequences.
7. In the course of the past twenty years, the manner in which western democratic countries dealt with China’s June Fourth Massacre was at first sanctions and boycott, but later became “private” negotiations with Chinese leaders. During the most recent few years, as China’s economy boomed and its role on the international stage grew in importance, many countries, especially some dominant nations, have been seeking China’s support in dealing with important global issues, including its support in extricating themselves from the current financial crisis. Under these circumstances, there have also been subtle shifts in their attitude towards the June Fourth Incident.
During the past twenty years, we have not given up a single opportunity, despite facing the dangers of intimidation and oppression by the authorities, to turn to the overseas media without hesitation and keep talking, keep writing, to do all we can to reveal the truth about the June Fourth Massacre to the world, to appeal to the international community to show concern for the victims of the tragedy and their relatives, and to take practical action to pressure the Chinese government into fulfilling [its commitment] to universal human values. This type of advocacy has had positive effects in the past.
Still, the past 20 years have been very long and challenging for those of us who have suffered the loss of loved ones. As the time went on and seasons gradually changed, things remain but people are no longer the same. What was once the truth that couldn’t be clearer has become so blurred as to be almost turned upside down. Utilitarianism and pragmatism have replaced the idealism and passion of former days. China is not getting closer to freedom, democracy, and human rights, but rather drifting farther away. We deeply regret that the Chinese people have once again missed a historical opportunity for peaceful transformation in the course towards democracy. Why is China still bitterly struggling in this age-old morass?
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Spare me the lecture
I was a student protestor in 1989, but China’s youth has moved on
Diane Wei Liang June 2009
On 4th June 1989, many of my fellow students at Beijing University had already left the campus to join the thousands of peaceful protestors who had been gathering for several weeks in Tiananmen Square. Messengers on bicycles and students with loudhailers kept those of us still on the campus up to date with what was happening. We were young, naive, and fighting for democracy and a better China. When we heard that tanks had rolled down the Boulevard of Eternal Peace, crushing a freedom movement that was only seven weeks old, we were traumatised. When the soldiers opened fire, killing hundreds of students, our main concern was to track down friends who had joined the protest.
In the weeks afterwards Beijing was a dangerous place. Martial law was introduced and the borders were closed. Fearful of arrest, I fled to the countryside. Fortunately, I already had a scholarship to study abroad and was given permission to leave. On 2nd August I left for the US to build a new life outside China.
Tiananmen took place in full view of the international media and the world has refused to forget it—with as much determination, it seems, as China has refused to remember it. If anything, the political significance of Tiananmen outside China has grown over the years, and it is almost universally assumed that China will never be whole as a modern country until it faces up to the truth of these events. I believed this myself for years.
Seven years later I returned to Beijing. By then I was a professor in the US and I had been invited to teach China’s first MBA students. When I arrived, I saw that Beijing had changed beyond recognition. The streets of my childhood, surrounded by fields and lined with small shops, had disappeared to be replaced by new freeways, supermarkets and high rises. [Diane Wei Lang is pictured, right]
My students had grown up after Tiananmen, and knew only the official version of events: the protestors were anarchists who wanted to overthrow the government, and the crackdown had been necessary. Economic progress was so great that even in the late 1990s, my students wanted to talk not about democracy but about achieving success and wealth. Diary of a Harvard MBA, written by a Chinese graduate on the famed programme, was a bestseller. To them Tiananmen was irrelevant.
I have visited China every year since. The further it has lifted the living standards of its citizens, the more remote the memory of Tiananmen has become. The generation born since the protest are not only unaware of what really happened in 1989, they are not interested. They live in a new China. They have the freedom to speak their minds, if not in print, certainly in private. They can travel anywhere and get jobs without having to wait for government quotas. They no longer have to live with secret files, or hukou, the tight system of residence permits that made it easier for the authorities to control movement.
Their China is in many ways the China that we wanted at Tiananmen: people living freer and happier lives. Since its defeat by the west in the opium wars during the mid-19th century, China has been trying to restore its self-confidence by importing western ideas. Communism was one of them, but it failed completely, promising dignity but producing collective misery. By the 1980s it was on its deathbed, fatally wounded by Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping—the man who gave the order to crush the students at Tiananmen. By abandoning communism, China has managed to remove the greatest restriction to the liberty of its citizens: lack of money.
The Tiananmen movement was my generation’s quest for a solution to the China problem: an ancient power that had lost its dignity. The country was moving towards a free market without political freedom. We wanted to change this for the better and democracy, borrowed from translated books, was our solution.
China has made such great progress since 1989, both in economic terms and in the liberty of its citizens, that the world we were protesting against 20 years ago is hard for many young Chinese today to recognise or understand. Today China continues its search for national identity, but the mood has shifted away from western ideals. Traditional Chinese teachings, such as Confucianism, are being revived in the quest for a more authentic answer.
Tiananmen should not be forgotten. We must commemorate it for the sake of those who died and for a generation who gave their best years to the pursuit of a better China. And we should remember it as a marker of Chinese people’s desire for liberty and freedom. But we should also recognise that expecting China to collectively atone for the sins of Tiananmen Square is neither realistic, desirable, nor necessary. Above all, we in the west should not use Tiananmen as a stick with which to beat China. We should instead help the country to move forward, improve its human rights, protect its environment, further eliminate poverty and create wealth for its people and, in time, for the world. That is what will truly honour the ideals of the young protestors of 20 years ago.
Diane Wei Liang is a novelist. Her memoir of Tiananmen, “Lake With No Name,” is published by Simon & Schuster in June
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Tiananmen Square leader arrested, family says
Almost 20 years after violent crackdown, US-based Zhou Yongjun is detained in China while visiting father
Tania Branigan 13 May 2009
A prominent former student leader of the 1989 pro-democracy protests is under arrest on charges of fraud, his family said today, weeks before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
Relatives said Chinese authorities had secretly detained Zhou Yongjun for more than six months. He has permanent residence in the United States but had returned to China to see his parents.
"At first he was accused of spying and political crimes, but now they have switched to this financial fraud accusation," Zhou's partner, Zhang Yuewei, told Reuters from the couple's home in California, adding that the charge was unfounded.
"He's been under secret detention for a long time, since he tried to enter China last year. He wanted to see his father, who is old and sick, but I didn't want him to go."
Zhou, a leader of the Beijing Students' Autonomous Union, was jailed for two years following the suppression of the movement. He left for the US in 1993 but was sent to a labour camp after returning to see his family in 1998. He returned to the US in 2002.
Relatives say he was seized in September as he tried to enter mainland China from Hong Kong. Released detainees had confirmed seeing him in the detention centre but officials in Shenzhen denied he was in custody, the family said.
This morning they received a written notice of arrest from police in his hometown of Suining in south-west Sichuan province. He appears to have been transferred there this week.
His brother Zhou Lin told Reuters that he did not know details of the accusation, nor when his brother could have committed fraud in China, given his long residence in the US.
Officers at the Suining public security bureau said they did not know of the case. The US embassy in Beijing had no immediate comment.
As a 21-year-old law undergraduate, Zhou helped organise the mass movement that broke out in China two decades ago. He captured world attention as he knelt on the steps of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square petitioning China's leaders to acknowledge the student demonstrators.
News of his arrest came as a human rights group announced that an estimated 30 men remained in prison over clashes with the Chinese military as it crushed the student movement.
The US-based Dui Hua Foundation revised downwards its previous estimate of 60 prisoners in light of new information about releases from the Chinese government and a Chinese human rights campaigner.
The men were jailed for burning army trucks, stealing equipment or attacking soldiers on 4 June as the military advanced towards the protesters in Tiananmen Square.
In a statement calling for their release, Dui Hua said: "Most of those still imprisoned ... were young workers at the time of the disturbances. This group suffered the most casualties when troops opened fire, and some of these workers responded by setting fires and fighting against police and military forces."
It noted that many were sentenced to death, or life in prison, after being convicted of counter-revolutionary sabotage and hooliganism – charges that were removed from China's criminal code in 1997.
"Today, most of these prisoners are middle-aged men who have benefited from several sentence reductions as testimony to their good behaviour," said John Kamm, Dui Hua's executive director.
See also
Yellow Peril
We Report, We Decide
China unleashes guns and tear gas as Tibet protests turn violent
Potraying China
Europe Empire of Evil
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