11:12 am HKT May 30, 2014
A “Statue of Liberty” replica is erected in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
June 4 marks the 25th anniversary of the violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square — an event that shocked TV audiences around the world, made global pariahs of the country’s top leaders and set a precedent for decades of iron-fisted reactions to political dissent.
As the protests came to a crescendo, days before the crackdown, students erected a 30-foot-high Statue of Liberty replica made out of white plaster and Styrofoam in the square, facing the portrait of Mao Zedong that continues to hang in the same place today. In response, the government issued a statement demanding that the statue be taken down, calling it an “abomination” and declaring “This is China, not America.”
Below is how The Wall Street Journal reported the erection of the statue, also sometimes known as the “Goddess of Democracy,” a quarter-century ago:
Miss Liberty Lights Her Lamp in Beijing
The Wall Street Journal
By Claudia Rosett
31 May 1989
BEIJING — Facing the portrait of Mao Tse-tung in Tiananmen Square there appeared yesterday a symbol of China’s democratic uprising — a Statue of Liberty. This lady stands about 30 feet high, is made of white plaster and Styrofoam, and holds the torch in both hands — which in a city under martial law may be prudent. But there is no mistaking that smack in the political center of a communist state, China’s people have planted their own version of freedom’s most powerful beacon.
It comes as one of the strongest signs yet of how deeply the Chinese desire to join the democratic world. Demonstrators in Shanghai produced their own Statue of Liberty earlier this month. That this feat has now been repeated under the nose of senior leader Deng Xiaoping, and just across the square from the Mao mausoleum, sends the message that China’s people not only want freedom, they have a pretty specific idea of what kind of system would grant it. Having come this far, they are risking their lives to hold their ground. Yesterday the government issued an official statement ordering the statue taken down, calling it an “abomination,” and saying “this is China, not America.”
Just this past weekend, China’s democratic uprising seemed to be straggling to an end. Protests were dying down across the country. The 10,000 students still occupying Tiananmen Square had been preparing to decamp today. Citizens of the capital were turning out in declining numbers, and a march Sunday was billed by some of its participants as the denouement.
Instead, the demonstrators have seized on new rallying points. Several thousand students voted Sunday to stay in the square until the June 20 meeting of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. They hope there might be some chance of a sympathetic hearing for their democratic demands.
Small things have also lifted people’s spirits. A shipment of bright red and blue nylon zip-flap tents arrived over the weekend, donated by the democratic movement in Hong Kong. By Monday morning these tents had been pitched in neat rows near the Mao mausoleum and on the Monument to Revolutionary Martyrs, giving a more cheerful cast to the grimy square. Demonstrators tidied their bedding, swept away some of the rubbish, and dug in.
Meantime, 10 students from Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts were working around the clock to finish their Statue of Liberty. They shipped it over on Monday night, in three huge segments loaded onto tricycle carts. A crowd of 150,000 turned out to welcome the statue. These people clapped and cheered, and pressed around the high scaffold used to set it up — a process that took more than 12 hours.
At 3:30 in the morning, several thousand people from all walks of life still sat rapt before the statue. A fat elderly man kicked off his rubber sandals and sat back to watch. An office worker in a striped shirt climbed on the back of his bike to get a better view. A matron in a frilly dress held her sleeping child, unwilling to leave the scene.
Among those who kept this vigil was a young Chinese doctor, who said he was the son of peasants from a rural province. He asked that his name not be used here, for fear he might lose his job. But he talked at length about what the statue meant to him. He began by saying “it stands for democracy. Liberty. That is the most important thing.”
It is too easy to dismiss such statements as mere slogans. The point has been made many times these past few weeks that China’s demonstrators have only a vague idea of how they might institute democracy should they ever get the chance. But the comments of this doctor, typical of many since the protests began, suggest there are solid foundations to the slogans, the protests, and the choice of such distinctly Western symbols as the Statue of Liberty. Asked why the Chinese would rally around a replica, he said, “because we know America is a democratic nation. That’s why we like Americans.”
Of this, there can be no doubt. To be an American reporter in Beijing this past month has been an instant passport through barricades, into the cordoned-off areas of demonstrations, and sometimes into the confidences of people who risk their jobs for telling their tales to foreigners. People seeing a Western face often smile and hold up two fingers in a V for victory. Sometimes they applaud. China has for the moment embraced members of the Western press as walking symbols of freedom and conduits to the democratic world. “Tell them what we are doing,” demonstrators have requested again and again. “Tell them we want democracy.”
How do the Chinese know what democracy entails? Tens of thousands have studied in the West these past 10 years, and bring home reports of what China has missed. Beyond that, said the doctor, “I read books about America.” He added that he had read a history of the U.S., from which he was impressed to learn that American presidents step down after two terms. The doctor was also intrigued by the idea of an independent legislature.
Books have been one of the potent forces behind the protests this spring. Since Mr. Deng began introducing economic reforms in 1978, China has opened enough for hundreds of Western books to appear in Chinese translation. These have included such classics as the works of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.
For a population long stuffed mainly with the words of Chairman Mao, this has been a feast. Some of the results show up in protest banners, such as one Sunday that said, “by the people, of the people, for the people.” They also show up in conversations with demonstrators who suggest that the competition of a multi-party system might produce better government.
There are disagreements among China’s student protesters, to be sure. But most seem clear on two types of goals. In the short term, they say, they want the government to retract an April 26 People’s Daily article attacking the students, and they want a televised open dialogue with the Communist Party rulers. But in the long term, they say, they aim for nothing less than democracy. “We must go step by step,” is the common phrase.
Whether a slow pace will now satisfy China’s people has become a big question, however. This movement has spread far beyond the students who ignited it last month. Their demands have drawn millions of sympathizers who, like many Americans, may not know all the details of a democratic system, but are certainly sharp enough to see that it works better than anything else.
One 26-year-old worker who visited the square yesterday, when asked whether he preferred the Liberty statue or the Mao portrait, looked around cautiously, then pointed to the statue. A Chinese journalist from the southern city of Guangzhou, who also made his way to the square yesterday, said the statue stands for “democracy, like in America.” Would he write that for his newspaper? “I would write it,” he said. “They wouldn’t publish it.”
For people to be talking that way in China is heroic. Around Beijing the government has now mustered at least 200,000 soldiers. They are standing by for orders to march into the city to enforce martial law. The hugely unpopular premier, Li Peng, who on May 19 announced martial law, seems for now to have won out in the party’s internal feuds. The moderate party chief, Zhao Ziyang, who backed economic reform and expressed some sympathy for the student demonstrators, has been reported under house arrest since last week. There were also reports yesterday that three people preparing to start an independent trade union movement had been arrested. At least 1,000 demonstrators responded by protesting outside the gates of the public security office. They did so knowing that a camera above the building’s door was recording the scene.
With each step toward democracy, China’s people have been upping the ante in this battle with their government. For Mr. Deng and his comrades to order in the army could mean violent riots, perhaps a split in the army — which backed away from civilian barricades last week — and possibly even civil war. For the government to sit still while the demonstrators build monuments to freedom is to slowly concede power. Yesterday came reports that a meeting of the party’s central committee, scheduled to begin in about 10 days, had been postponed — possibly because China’s rulers are recognizing that they have underestimated the people’s demand for freedom.
How this will play out is terrifyingly hard to predict. When I left Tiananmen Square Monday night, I asked the young doctor if we might meet to talk some more, and suggested we look for each other at an appointed time near the Statue of Liberty. He said, “No, it might not be here. Better meet there.” And he pointed toward the portrait of Mao.
From :http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/30/wsj-archives-goddess-of-democracy-is-erected-in-tiananmen-square/