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Feature
Tiananmen Twenty Years Later
In this year of awkward anniversaries, the Chinese Communist regime is finding it impossible to suppress the memory of the massacre of June 4, 1989.
June 4, 1989. I had grabbed a few hours’ sleep after reporting the ominous buildup of PLA infantry units around the back of the Great Hall of the People all the previous day. It had been obvious to me since that afternoon that the crackdown would begin that evening. By the time I made my way back to Changan Avenue and as close as I could get to Tiananmen Square, Beijing was incredibly noisy. Shortly after 3:00 a.m. I counted signs of tracer fire or the crack of automatic weapons in at least eight different sectors of the city as I rotated in place. Now, around 5:30 a.m., I was crouched down behind a pile of bricks on a side street near the Beijing Hotel and perpendicular to Changan Avenue, which led straight into the square. Tanks and trucks filled with troops were roaring by, completing from the eastern side of the city the army’s assault on the square that had started around 10:00 p.m. the previous evening in the western suburbs. From a location that sounded as though it were inside the Forbidden City itself, came several- second bursts of automatic rifle fire. There would be a few intermittent shootings from dawn until the early afternoon of Sunday, June 4. But by 6:00 a.m., the styrofoam statue of the Goddess of Democracy had been knocked down, the last remaining students had left the square, and the Chinese government’s suppression of one of the most dramatic spontaneous upsurges in support of democracy by any national movement in the 20th century was complete. It looked as though it might take several more weeks before the stunned world could absorb what had happened.
In fact, the world absorbed it all too quickly. Before the end of June 1989 President George H. W. Bush dispatched his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to Beijing “to keep open the lines of communication,” as Scowcroft later said. A photograph of Scowcroft raising a glass to toast the Beijing leadership understandably offended many people. Quite rapidly, however, governments decided it wasn’t in their long-term interests to sulk indefinitely over the Tiananmen Massacre.
China cracked down hard on the student leaders of the democracy movement, arresting some immediately, putting others on a “most-wanted” list, and endlessly showing on national TV grainy mug shots of those it was still trying to arrest. Several managed to slip out of China on Western passports subversively provided them by diplomats or by availing themselves of an underground railroad of sympathizers within Chinese officialdom on the way to smugglers’ speedboats to Hong Kong.
As for the Chinese people, the Tiananmen Massacre was first dubbed by the regime a “counterrevolutionary incident,” and then, by degrees, crammed down the memory hole of things that—in the official view—simply never happened. In recent years, new students arriving from China have often stunned their American college hosts by refusing to believe that the video news footage of Tiananmen they could now freely watch was authentic.
FOR MUCH OF THE 1990s, China rode the crest of a wave of economic growth—14 percent in some years—that caused both domestic living standards and national pride to soar. Through successful economic management China’s leaders somehow succeeded in quickly distracting national attention from political might-have-beens to financial yes-we-cans. Chinese billionaires began to pop up in Forbes. By the end of the decade, the regime had also stoked up nationalist and anti-foreign sentiment after the election of a president on Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian, who threatened to declare it independent, and the inadvertent American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo war. The annual candlelight June 4 protest vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park continued year after year, even after Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997. But the numbers seemed to dwindle each year. Some observers wondered if Tiananmen—the massacre—had indeed been made to disappear from the Chinese national memory, as the government earnestly wished.
Anxiety that the Tiananmen Massacre had indeed suffered an Orwellian fate was heightened by the regime’s apparent success in curbing any dissent as the 1990s gave way to the 2000. China demonstrated a suffocatingly effective control of Internet information through “The Great Chinese Firewall,” as it became known, a filtering system reportedly policed by tens of thousands of diligent URL-watchers. The French organization Reporters Without Borders estimated that the authorities had blocked at least 2,500 Internet sites from being viewed in China. Beijing also slapped 10-year jail sentences on bloggers who dared to mention Tiananmen. In one tragicomic incident, it fired three editors of a Chengdu newspaper that had run a classified ad from the “mothers of 6-4.” The young female clerk who took the ad apparently hadn’t the slightest idea what “6-4” meant—i.e., June 4, 1989.
Meanwhile, the Beijing security services relentlessly harassed the handful of brave activists trying to keep the memory of Tiananmen alive. Surely one of the bravest of such groups is the Mothers of Tiananmen, made up of some 155 parents of young people killed and wounded in the massacre. Despite police surveillance and threats, the group has somehow managed to survive on the Internet and in Beijing. In a letter to the authorities this past February, Ding Zilin, founder of the group and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, called on them to “break the taboo” against discussion of Tiananmen and to conduct an open and thorough investigation of what happened in Beijing that June night 20 years ago. “China has become an air-tight iron chamber,” she wrote, “and all the demands of the people about June 4, all the anguish, lament, and moaning of the victims’ relatives and the wounded, has been sealed off.”
BUT NOT QUITE. Of all the nations in the world, perhaps none has a greater sense of its own history than China. Chinese routinely refer to great historical incidents of the past century by employing numerals to designate the month and the day on which they occurred. There is “5-4,” which refers to the historic May 4, 1919, student demonstrations in Beijing to protest the decision at the Versailles Peace Conference to transfer the China enclaves of defeated Germany to Japan. Then there is “4-5,” the demonstrations of April 5, 1976, in Beijing against Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, and her Cultural Revolution leftist acolytes (later to be called, officially, the Gang of Four). Thus there was at least the possibility that such a traumatic event in China’s past as “6-4” could never be permanently erased from China’s historical memory.
In late December of last year, a Chinese Politburo member, Li Yuanchao, expressed in public the idea that 2009 might be a difficult year for China when the country would have to undergo a stringent test. He was clearly alluding to the crop of awkward anniversaries scheduled to occur this year: the May 4, 1919 student demonstrations, the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising in 1959, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and of course the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre itself. Eighteen days before Li’s speech, however, a remarkable document, calculated to embody Li’s worst nightmares, had already been released in Beijing. Called Charter 08, and consciously modeled on the Charter 77 dissident document released by Czech intellectuals in 1977, it offered a ringing declaration of democratic principles.
Amazingly, on the day of its release over the Internet, it was signed by 300 well-known intellectuals. Despite immediate regime attempts to suppress it, and to arrest some signatories, the Charter suddenly took off in private e-mails and within the briefest time had accumulated 8,000 brave signatures. These came from a surprisingly varied collection of “ordinary” Chinese, businessmen and professionals, as well as intellectuals. Boston University Sinologist and emerita history professor Merle Goldman, a veteran scholar of Chinese dissent, described the signatories as “a multi-class movement.”
The document itself was worthy of the thousands who signed it. Noting that a century had passed since the writing of China’s first constitution in 1908, Charter 08 ringingly declared, “The Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles across these same years, now include many who see clear that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.” It denounced the Communist Party for having “produced a long trail of human rights disasters,” and specifically mentioned the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), the Cultural Revolution (1966– 1969), and June Fourth (the Tiananmen Massacre). It also blasted “endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law,” and everything from “crony capitalism” to “pillage of the natural environment.” Charter 08 itemized the “fundamental principles” of freedom, human rights, equality, republicanism (meaning the balance of powers in society), democracy, and constitutional rule. It laid out 19 specific features of a completely transformed China, ranging from a new constitution, the separation of powers, and an independent judiciary to freedom of expression and religion, a federated republic, and a Truth Investigation Committee to right all the political wrongs committed since Communism came to China. The document is certainly the most sensational restatement of democratic aspirations for China since the Tiananmen Massacre.
The document’s creator is unknown, although a prominent Beijing scholar and democratic activist, Liu Xiaobo, was believed to have been closely involved with its composition and was arrested two days before Charter 08 was released. Liu was himself a signatory of the charter. He had been intermittently in prison in the wake of June Fourth, and had served three years of re-education through labor during 1996–1999. A president of the Chinese branch of PEN, an international association of writers, Liu has been a gadfly to the regime for the past two decades. Currently there is a worldwide campaign of internationally known writers, including Salman Rushdie, working for his release.
WHATEVER HAPPENS TO LIU, the year of fateful anniversaries, has already opened with a rush of significant protest inside China. Despite the regime’s attempts to suffocate the Chinese people with historical amnesia, despite the Communist Party’s continuing overwhelming domination of cultural and political life in China, there are cracks appearing in the wall of that ancient autocracy. Even among top Communist Party ideologists there are doubts whether a continuation of unchanging totalitarian rule is good, or is even possible. “Anyone can see that China today,” wrote party ideologist Yun Long in the People’s Daily last August, “is a blend and a clash of different stages of development, and of East and West; a chaotically interwoven state of affairs resulting from the jigsaw-like intertwining of the old system and the new productive forces.” Phew. Then he added that people in China who “stick to the ‘bottom line’ and refuse to let it go, are bound to wind up with a battered and bloodied head.” One must hope that this isn’t a result of actions of Chinese soldiers.
But change, ideologist Yun Long made clear, just has to come. When and how, he wouldn’t speculate. But 20 years after that tragic and cacophonous suppression of protest on the streets of Beijing, now might not be a bad time to begin.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (41) | Leave a comment
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Son Of Sam | 6.4.09 @ 8:35AM
The people of China are still oppressed by an iron dictatorship that controls every aspect of their lives. The economic growth that China has achieved has been used by the communist dictatorship there to make the prison more comfortable, but it is a prison nevertheless.
There are two main reasons why this situation will continue:
A) China' government is as ruthless a dictatorship as any the world has ever seen. They may have air conditioned hell, but the devil is still in charge
B) far too many people outside of China won't lift a finger to help the people there achieve democracy because they themselves are heartless soulless assholes who care more about pelicans than they do about human beings
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com
WilliamInWien| 6.4.09 @ 9:11AM
And I thought that the 'hosting" of the Olympic Games was going to 'open up" the PRC to the world allowing the PRC to attain a greater understanding of its neighboring nations and be more "sensitive" to the opinions of the world's nations. As long as the PRC remains the major holder of US debt, it will continue to turn a deaf ear to the US SecState and anyone else who might bring up 'human rights". Well, except for Nancy Pelosi.
Mike| 6.4.09 @ 9:43AM
To TAS,
I've been visiting your site for a week now. I have tried to post rational thoughts and opinions, trying to keep in mind one should be respectful of others in a public forum created for discussion of current events. One of the main reasons I read the comments posted is to see what others have to say about the particular article in question. However, it appears you have allowed a flaming war to override the purpose of these forums that has me questioning whether any useful insight that might be gained worth the exposure to this hate speak. Granted one could just ignore such posts and read the relevant content, but I am only human. This seems to be an every day thing here. I will not post in TAS after this till you have corrected the current enviroment that exist here.
If you cannot responsibly moderate your site, I question your ability to be called a useful community endeavor that I assumed was aimed at bringing forth intelligent insight to a very complex world.
Sincerely, Mike
1Freeman| 6.4.09 @ 9:53AM
The world is a smaller place, not because the circumference of the globe has changed, but because of the speed of travel and communication. Any American with a conscience should take note of these events: under the oppression of the liberal establishment this will be our future. A socialist government with the resources the USA has will be quite a prize for the global socialist movement to convert to communism. It is a small step. The suspension or revision of the constitution must happen first. This must be opposed at all costs. Otherwise our children will fall under the sword of oppression, politically correct speech and punishment for free thought and religious faith (Christian).
Think I am exaggerating? Look at where we are today as compared to last November. Nothing is beyond the threat of the liberal machine tearing at our Nation.
Son Of Sam: I have appreciated your posts for many months now. Keep up the good work and keep faith!
Joe| 6.4.09 @ 10:00AM
Inquiring minds want to know, what org does Davey boy work for. Is it Move on or Acorn. He can't be this stupid. You are all being dupped. He probably works for Obama org or one of the above. Ignore!
1Freeman| 6.4.09 @ 10:07AM
Yesterday's discussion over the idiot Mathews suggested several people were posting using that name.
If the editorial staff tracked the ISP address he could be identified and blocked. I have suggested they require a log-in with the associated registration so abusers like "the Idiot mathews" could be blocked. No word yet. It can't a technology problem. Perhaps it is a funding problem. The patch to make this happen can't be that expensive. Manpower problems? Or, perhaps, just a leadership issue. Either way it has clearly gotten out of control.
Darin| 6.4.09 @ 10:12AM
Mike,
While I concur that mindless rants by individuals like David Mathews are annoying, I would caution on efforts to silence him. Silencing a voice because you don't like their message or how they deliver it is a slippery path.
When he has nothing to say and demonstrates only hate and disdain, TAS admins can and do remove his posts. When he has a valid point to make, I would encourage it (even if I may disagree). I do ask that he make such points in a respectful manner and not engage in pointless babbling. Such rambling shows him to be intellectually challenged and reinforces a perception that he really has nothing to say.
Likewise, conservatives should be respectfuly in making their points and realize that liberals are not necessarily evil.
For this article, the discussion should focus on what happened in China 20 years ago and the current environment in that country. In other articles, comments should focus on the point of the article and discuss other relevant facts.
Son Of Sam | 6.4.09 @ 10:27AM
Hello 1Freeman,
Thank you so much for your remarks, you are too, too kind. I agree with you, the powers that be here at TASonline are simply not doing their due diligence in keeping the digital brownshirts like davey dumbass out of a respectable forum such as this. I have always maintained that as good patriotic American citizens, we should not rest until every single America hating ObamaNazi koolaid drinker is either in the ground, in prison or in a psych ward, where they can get the help they so plainly need.
I also believe that we do not need to wait for help from above, and that as responsible citizens, we can and must resolve this situation quite on our own. My own ideas for this you can find on my website, if you know where to look. I extend this invitation not merely to you, but to all good Americans here who feel that now is the time to begin to act.
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com
Son Of Sam | 6.4.09 @ 10:46AM
Darin,
In the past, I have been asked to teach history, as well as other topics for which I am certified -- if you wanna job, ya gots to be multi-talented! One of the aspects of history I taught was that Neville Chamberlain was indeed a good man for trying to keep the peace; the problem was that he faced an adversary implacably bent on his destruction. Or as Hitler's foreign minister put it when asked "what do you Nazis want?" the reply was "we want war"
The Nazis got their war because like all criminals and lunatics, they kept upping the ante until they got their wish. They made the situation an "either or": either we get war, or we'll keep pimp slapping you until we get war anyway.
Likewise, we see in modern America people who mask themselves as being liberals, but are no more than criminals and haters. That is why I refer to them as ObamaNazis; its also why all attempts at "useful debate" with the likes of them are going to come to nothing. Debating with a koolaid drinker is like playing volleyball with a goldfish: they don't get it, they can't do it, they're not interested, its a waste of your time.
Case in point here is old davey dumbass: he has kept upping the ante. He's not interested in debate: he is a sick evil individual who has no place in civilized society. His idea of the perfect world is one where good patriotic Americans like us simply cease to speak, and allow criminals like him to blabber all day long, while his puppetmasters in Washington shred the Constitution and "remake" America. In other words, he's given everyone here an "either or". The same mistake that every maniac from Hitler to Osama have made.
The Chamberlains gave it their best shot. Time to bring on the Churchhills
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com
Son Of Sam | 6.4.09 @ 10:49AM
PS to Darin, et al,
you may notice that i did after all comment on the actual article here, which is about the lack of democracy and freedom in China
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com
Doctor Right| 6.4.09 @ 12:40PM
In China, they risk life and limb to speak out against the excesses and failures of Communism, and in favor of Democracy, freedom, and federalism.
Meanwhile, here in America, we elect a Marxist idealogue to the nation's highest office, and begin to systematically destroy our economy and our federalist system in the name of "fairness" (Socialism...Marxism...Communism).
2009 truly is an insane year.
Pingback| 6.4.09 @ 3:08PM
Obamarama happens! Let’s enjoy the President’s trip « Jim Blazsik links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Dave mathews| 6.5.09 @ 2:19AM
Joe, you ignorant conservative, I work for no one and only take orders from Zenu . If you want to know how I derive my income then that is a different matter. I sell Obama commemorative plates, autographed tire gauges and Barack's patented white roof paint. If you are interested in any of these items, I take orders via the internet.
My mother works six days a week so I have virtually unlimited computer access for quick responses.
Hydraulic Valves | 6.5.09 @ 4:44AM
Thank you so much for your remarks, you are too, too kind.
Alan Brooks| 6.6.09 @ 11:00AM
Rod Blagojevich says his wife ate a tarantula for money on a reality show ...
“She's making a sacrifice because she loves her kids,” Blagojevich told CNN’s Larry King Wednesday night. “Eating that tarantula like she had to is an act of love. It's a sign that this is a mother who loves her children.”
of COURSE if you're a disgraced governor your wife eating a big hairy spider on national TV is an act of love
Alan Brooks| 6.6.09 @ 11:02AM
at least Patti Blago eats better rhan Chicoms' prisoners.
Alan Brooks| 6.6.09 @ 11:04AM
Patti fares better than Chicom political prisoners because she gets enough protein.
Ming| 3.14.10 @ 6:47AM
I was in high school that year, my parents worked for a local college and they are among those who protested government. I was pretty much pro student that time, but things changed and I've realized how naive I was. I become a 'nationalist' as deemed by the west since an accident called 'yinhe' maybe few western know. My father is always a pretty liberal-leaning person but my generation actually became more conservative. People around my age usually see those student either are naive, used by others or just simply want power themselves by judging their behaviors after the flee to other countries. So in China the fact is that older people tender to be more against government and younger generation is more pro government. I think the reason is that having more experience with other countries we no longer romanticize a system or ideal include democracy and we became suspicious about the motivation of the west after seeing who Russia was treated and how their people suffered. I love my parents more than my own life and I cannot let them go through what Russian did.
pwerty| 4.22.10 @ 12:43AM
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I’ll have a Poptropica full written walkthrough very soon, but in the meantime, here are some answers to some of the frequently asked questions about Mythology Island. Having trouble? Post a question in the comments and I’ll try to answer it!
Getting Hercules to Help You
Hercules won’t help you until you have all five items from Zeus’ quest.Poptropica Once you have the five items, bring them to Athena. Zeus will appear and steal them. The big jerk! Once this happens, talk to Athena and she will tell you that Hercules will help you. You’ll need to have the magic mirror from Aphrodite because Hercules doesn’t want to have to walk. He’s so lazy!
Getting the Hydra Scale
You can see how to do this in thePoptropica videos, but basically you need to jump up when the Hydra is about to strike. He will rear one of his heads back to attack and his eyes will bulge out. When this happens, jump up in the air and then try to land on top of his head. PoptropicaThat head will get knocked out. When all five heads get knocked out, the Hydra will be asleep and you can click on him to get one of the scales. Poptropica I’ll have a Poptropica full written walkthrough very soon, but in the meantime, here are some answers to some of the frequently asked questions about Mythology Island. Having trouble? Post a question in the comments and I’ll try to answer it!Poptropica
Getting Hercules to Help You
Jeff| 5.16.10 @ 9:15PM
"In late December of last year, a Chinese Politburo member, Li Yuanchao, expressed in public the idea that 2009 might be a difficult year for China when the country would have to undergo a stringent test."
Ah, I believe the "stringent test" refers to pulling China out of the global financial crisis caused by Uncle Sam. With the benefit of hindsight, the Chinese have passed this test, with flying colors, so it seems... Meanwhile, Uncle Sam failed the test two years in a row, but at least we did better than 2008. Weeeeee! Time to pat ourselves on the back, we the people of lowered expectations, moderate aspirations, and squanderers of the fruits of our forefathers' labor.
As usual, I am very surprised that a piece of left-leaning, liberal garbage managed to make its way onto the spectator.
Jeff| 5.16.10 @ 9:25PM
"In late December of last year, a Chinese Politburo member, Li Yuanchao, expressed in public the idea that 2009 might be a difficult year for China when the country would have to undergo a stringent test."
Ah, I believe the "stringent test" refers to pulling China out of the global financial crisis caused by Uncle Sam. With the benefit of hindsight, the Chinese have passed this test, with flying colors, so it seems... Meanwhile, Uncle Sam failed the test two years in a row, but at least we did better than 2008. Weeeeee! Time to pat ourselves on the back, we the people of lowered expectations, moderate aspirations, and squanderers of the fruits of our forefathers' labor.
As usual, I am very surprised that a piece of left-leaning, liberal garbage managed to make its way onto the spectator.
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