Author: Wang Dan
Publication: The Newsweek
Date: June 7-14, 2004
Did the 1989 uprising matter? A
student leader answers that question.
Fifteen years later people are still
trying to divine the significance of the events that led to the Chinese
government's brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square. As one of the student
leaders of that protest, I am frequently asked to recall those days and
speculate on what might have been. Why did we assemble when we did? Did
the students press for too much? Could the bloodshed have been avoided?
Did the leadership learn any lessons? They are all important questions,
and they are probably beyond what any one person even someone who was there
can answer. But in retrospect, lurking in the background there is
perhaps a bigger question: did the protests at Tiananmen Square matter?
To consider this, it's important
to remember the rationale behind the uprising. Nowadays all people
seem to recall is that the students were in favor of democracy. Who can
forget that 10-meter-high plaster-and-Styrofoam statue of Lady Liberty?
But, in fact, we raised the issue of democracy because of a more fundamental
demand at the time - that is, the eradication of corruption. Students
and intellectuals believed that the only way to root out government corruption
would be through the establishment of democratic institutions.
Of course, the scale of corruption
in 1989 looks absolutely petty against the massive looting of the state
that goes on today. In the intervening years citizens have been unable
to establish independent anticorruption institutions, and public
pressure has diminished because of fears of retribution. Indeed, any enforcement
measures have remained the prerogative of the political establishment -
only the party polices the party. But the issue is probably the greatest
obstacle to the country's continued development. I still remember friend's
saying, at the time, that reforms would not be enough - that if the party
didn't make some room for the people to govern themselves, economic growth
would mean only that authorities had even greater spoils to divvy up. Their
concerns now seem prophetic.
But if that was our basis rationale,
what were we actually asking for? When we embarked on our hunger strike,
we had only two demands. One was that the government emends an April
26 editorial that referred to the student movement as dong luan,
or "turmoil". The second was simply to open up a public dialogue with us
to discuss reform. Can anyone say that these were radical demands? In fact,
when we were planning the hunger strike, I suggested a third condition:
that we ask that He Dongchang, the minister of the State Education Commission
step down. But the other student leader reject this idea, fearing that
it might be pushing officials too far. In retrospect, compared with the
democratic movements in Eastern Europe or, for that matter, Taiwan,
we were hardly calling for radical change. Sure, we may have scared the
wits out the Chinese Communist Party, but this reflects its deep insecurities
more than the feverishness of our cause. It missed a golden opportunity
to work alongside the people it professes to care for, and it along must
shoulder the responsibility for the lives that were lost.
In 1989 many put their hopes in
Zhao Ziyang, the soon-to-be purged Communist Party chief. After 1992 those
hopes rested with Premier Zhu Rongji. And now we pin our hopes on the leadership
of President Hu Jintao Wen Jiabao, who incidentally was in Tiananmen
Square at Zhao's side the last time he was seen in public. But if the events
in Tiananmen Square 15 years ago matter at all, it's because of what they've
taught us about the Communist Party. When forced to choose between
its own future and the best interests of the nation, the party will choose
itself every time. It doesn't matter how rational the demand or how
reasonably it's put to the party. Tiananmen taught us that the party lives
for itself.
WANG is a Ph.D. candidate
in history at Harvad University
