Harsh security on the anniversary of the pro-democracy protest suggests deep official concern about any potential unrest. But many Chinese don’t know what happened \u2013 and may not care.<\/p>\n
By Peter Ford, Staff writer \/ June 4, 2014<\/p>\n
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\nTiananmen Square in Beijing was under close guard to short-circuit any possibility of demonstrations marking the 25th anniversary of bloody pro-democracy protests there. One group of visitors in the square today was most preoccupied with taking a selfie.Ng Han Guan<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years after Chinese Army troops crushed student pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, and with them a generation\u2019s hope of political reform, how likely is it that Chinese citizens might once again rise up in revolt?<\/p>\n
To most observers, few prospects look less probable. So why is the government behaving as if any mention of the Tiananmen massacre might spark a revolution?<\/p>\n
Plenty of sporadic protests flare up around China every year \u2013 expressions of anger against local authorities because of land grabs or unpaid wages or polluted water or corruption. But nothing resembling an organized movement to challenge the ruling Communist party is on the horizon.<\/p>\n
Yet the police are using extraordinarily harsh measures this year to erase all memory of the events of June 4, 1989, arresting anyone of note who dares to commemorate the massacre. The Chinese government, it seems, is still frightened by the potential power of historical memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat terrifies them,\u201d says one political researcher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of official retribution, \u201cis that the small number of people who keep the flame alive in their minds might someday use that fire to kindle new unrest.\u201d<\/p>\n
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There are few signs, however, that many among the general populace in China care much about the 25th anniversary of the Army assault on Tiananmen square in which several hundred people, perhaps thousands, died.<\/p>\n
Even the Internet, normally abuzz with political comment, is quiet amid heightened censorship. \u201cThe people making trouble are being locked up and everybody else is keeping quiet,\u201d says Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of \u201cDanwei,\u201d a website that monitors the Chinese Internet. \u201cIt does not seem to me that there is a huge desire to talk about [the anniversary] that is not being met.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many Chinese under 35 are unaware of the Tiananmen protests, echoed in cities around the country, or of the way they were snuffed out by Army tanks. The government at the time deemed the weeks-long demonstration a \u201ccounter-revolutionary riot;\u201d all mentions of the protest and resulting crackdown have since been scrubbed from the history books.<\/p>\n
The strictest taboo<\/p>\n
Even those citizens who remember 1989, or who have learned since what happened, know that it would be foolhardy to talk about the subject in public. The topic is China\u2019s strictest taboo.<\/p>\n
It stays that way partly because of an unofficial \u201cgrand bargain\u201d that the ruling Communist party has struck with the Chinese people, based on Deng Xiaoping\u2019s conviction that nothing should be allowed to impede economic growth: You stay out of politics and we will help you grow richer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost Chinese have accepted that bargain because they know it is the only bargain on offer,\u201d says Steven Levine, a former professor of Chinese politics who launched the Tiananmen Initiative Project to commemorate the 1989 events internationally. \u201cOnly a very few brave dissidents go public because the costs can be very high.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government has been very sophisticated in dealing with memory inside China,\u201d says Rowena He, author of the just published \u201cTiananmen Exiles,\u201d based on interviews with leaders of the 1989 protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe general population doesn\u2019t know anything about it, and if they do, the younger ones say \u2018so what?\u2019 The lack of empathy and understanding of the event\u2019s historical significance is profoundly concerning,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
The government has reinforced official amnesia with repression. International human rights groups say scores of writers, artists, journalists, lawyers, and civil society activists have been arrested, \u201cdisappeared,\u201d or put under house arrest in recent weeks. Hundreds of others have been warned by police not to say anything in public.<\/p>\n
The Tiananmen Mothers have, as always, been banned from mourning their dead children in public. And five intellectuals have been arrested on charges of \u201ccreating a public disturbance,\u201d even though the seminar to commemorate the 1989 crackdown that they attended was held in a private place.<\/p>\n
No choice but to react harshly to pressure for reform?<\/p>\n
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United States, and the European Union have called for the detainees\u2019 release, but \u201cChina doesn\u2019t care what anyone thinks anymore,\u201d says Geremie Barme, head of the \u201cAustralian Centre on China in the World\u201d at the Australian National University in Canberra.<\/p>\n
Nor, he says, does the Chinese government have any choice but to react ferociously to any flutter of unofficial thinking.<\/p>\n
The triumph of the hardliners within the Communist party in 1989 set the party \u201cso firmly against serious political reform that it recognizes any moves towards\u201d such changes, such as a freer media or a more independent judiciary \u201ccould be fatal to it,\u201d argues Dr. Barme.<\/p>\n
But the issues that the demonstrators raised a generation ago such as democratic rights, the role of a single party and the importance of the Constitution \u201care still unresolved \u2026 and they won\u2019t go away,\u201d says Barme. \u201cUnless the government appraises the events of 1989 in a more rational fashion the issues will keep coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Chinese citizens do not need to know much about what happened and why in 1989 to have gotten the government\u2019s message, says Dr. He: Nothing \u2013 not even human life \u2013 trumps the imperative of economic development.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crackdown said that any principle can be compromised, that there is no bottom line, when it comes to ensuring stability and prosperity,\u201d says He.<\/p>\n
And the results, she adds, are evident in today\u2019s China, richer than ever before but also rife with corruption, environmental disaster, arbitrary official injustice, and a growing wealth gap.<\/p>\n
Those shortcomings, He believes, are feeding \u201caccumulated grievances, frustration, and anger.\u201d If the authorities cannot keep a lid on such dissatisfaction, it could boil over into widespread protests, she predicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would not be like Tiananmen, though,\u201d she says. The students then were not trying to overthrow the regime, but to improve it. \u201cNext time,\u201d He predicts, \u201canother social movement would not be so constrained in its language or its behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n
From:http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/World\/Asia-Pacific\/2014\/0604\/Tiananmen-protests-Could-they-happen-again-video<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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