Twenty Years On: More reflections on Tian'anmen

June 9, 2009

THE EVENTS on Tian’anmen Square 20 years ago were a seminal part in my youth, a political awakening that drew me to China in the first place. It seemed so clear-cut, so morally unambiguous. It was beyond dispute that the students were right and the Communist regime was wrong.

And yet, the course of history appears to have other ideas. There have been no conscious political or emotional realignments, no new pieces of evidence to suggest the Chinese Communist Party had done the right thing by cracking down on those students. But the events have been overtaken by a sense of resignation. The Party’s strenuous efforts to suppress any reference to the events of June 4 1989 have been successful.    

We mustn’t forget that it was a genuine revolutionary moment. Scholars say the student leaders were as self-serving as anyone in the Party, and suggest the weeks of turmoil were a combination of disconnected forces all galvanized by a series of quite separate grievances, but it was more than that. Ordinary people were manning roadblocks to protect the protestors from the army. Mobs retaliated and set fire to military vehicles.  And while some suggest that a few policy concessions here and there – wage rises commensurate with inflation, or a commitment to political reform - could have prevented the stand-off from ending in mayhem and bloodshed, the Party was genuinely in danger.  It probably does the protestors a disservice to say that they were only seeking concessions. The momentum had built up so much that it could only end in one of two ways: in a crackdown or a revolution.

Apologists – Ted Heath was one of them - say that China has proved that it made the right decision by the years of economic growth that followed. They say China would have descended into chaos without the Chinese Communist Party. It would revert to its old historical rhythms – its civil wars, its political fragmentation.

But nothing was inevitable. Up until 1991 or so, the Chinese economy stagnated, requiring a bold gesture from “paramount leader” Deng Xiaoping on his “southern tour”. There was enough latent energy, entrepreneurial spirit and untapped greed throughout China to sustain a boom that would last for decades. The Communist Party said that it alone had the experience and authority to channel such energy. By now, that view appears to have prevailed.