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Echoes of Tiananmen
By
Gary LaMoshi
HONG KONG - The 14th anniversary of
the Tiananmen Square massacre this Wednesday, June 4, may
not seem terribly notable. Fourteen isn't an auspicious
number, even though Chinese numerology links the number
four with death, appropriately in this case. Even less
meaningful but more likely to be cited, this year's
anniversary finds new leadership in Beijing, a lineup
relatively untainted by the brutality in the heart of
their capital.
After 14 years, addressing the
key, albeit obscure issue Tiananmen Square raised is
increasingly crucial: Participatory politics is a hard
sport for beginners. In Asia, there are more beginners
than ever before, but most remain as clueless as their
1989 counterparts.
For students of the Tiananmen
Square slaughter, Chinese history and political science,
there is no finer document than the film Tiananmen:
The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Filmmakers Carma Hinton
and Richard Gordon combine footage from the Square with
interviews of the principal players during and after the
drama to create a compelling portrait of the simmering
revolt.
Cinderella liberty
I was never
more proud to be an American than when the Goddess of
Democracy statue, with its stunning resemblance to Lady
Liberty from the harbor in my native New York City, made
its way through Tiananmen Square. That tableau made it
all the more frustrating to see and hear the protest
leaders bungle the principles for which they presumably
stood.
The 1995 documentary film makes
abundantly clear that the leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) had no idea how to handle the
demonstrators. It also indicates that the student
demonstrators were equally clueless both about their
demands and strategies and the very nature of the
political process. Tiananmen student leader turned
dot-com entrepreneur Chai Ling illustrates how
profoundly its principles may be misunderstood.
Part of the problem for the students was the
same one that afflicts modern advocates of corporate
governance reform or civic do-gooders. Lack of
familiarity with the political process and the art of
compromise often results in the perfect becoming the
enemy of the good.
Reformers often don't know
when to take yes for an answer. In the case of
Tiananmen, the reform hardliners rejected half-loaves
long enough to allow opponents of any compromise to oust
the moderates in the CCP and close the window for
meaningful reform.
Back to the
future
But the disconnect went well beyond
negotiating tactics. For those raised in societies where
the political process fails, it's difficult to
understand the elements required to make it succeed. For
someone whose political education emanates from the
communist Chinese experience, all politics is melodrama.
This statement from Chai Ling seems reasonable, at least
in the context of, say, that revolutionary ballet
favorite, The Red Brigade of Women:
The students keep asking, "What should we
do next? What can we accomplish?" I feel so sad,
because how can I tell them that what we are actually
hoping for is bloodshed, for the moment when the
government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the
people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will
the people of China open their eyes. Only then will
they really be united. But how can I explain any of
this to my fellow students? In the
Philippines, perhaps politics is an exercise of moral
authority to redeem society from its darkest instincts.
In other Asian societies, politics may be less
melodramatic but no less divorced from dictionary
definitions. In Singapore or Japan, for example,
politics may be about individual sacrifice for the
common good.
That notion of a shared destiny and
collective action would seem to be central to politics.
However, moments later in that same 1989 interview, Chai
Ling explained that she wasn't ready to spill her own
blood:
My name is on the government's hit list.
I'm not going to let myself be destroyed by this
government. I want to live. Anyway, that's how I feel
about it. I don't know if people will say I'm selfish.
I believe that others have to continue the work I have
started. A democracy movement can't succeed with only
one person! There's something deliciously
and perversely appropriate to politics of the People's
Republic of China to hear a citizen evoke the spirit of
collective sacrifice, then hold themselves above it. But
the notion was hardly unique. In Indonesia, for example,
political participation in 1989 was creating consensus
to put yourself in a better position to reap the
benefits rulers could provide.
Shaft
Politics has still another level
of collective action. When through elections, consensus
building or the declaration of a dictator, a conclusion
for action emerges, it's up to everyone to who's
participated in the process to go along with its
conclusion. With the protesters in Tiananmen, on May 27,
a week before the crackdown, the leadership unanimously
voted to ask students to withdraw from the Square and
take the protest back to their campuses.
However, Chai Ling changed her mind, publicly,
and then used her position as the elected leader of
protesters to quash the decision to vacate Tiananmen,
leading to the bloody crackdown she'd hoped for
(butchery that did nothing to promote human rights in
China, at least in these14 years since that brutality).
Chai Ling, like any good student of Chinese politics,
concluded that politics is a means for leaders to get
their way, and, as a leader, she was exercising her
proper prerogative by changing her mind and the course
of the protest.
Elsewhere in Asia, the paradigms
differ, but the notion of politics as self-help remains
strong. In several countries, the aim of politics is to
increase wealth, either for the politicians themselves
and their families, or their constituencies. In other
places, politics is a tool to promote our group -
ethnic, religious, regional, or even, albeit rarely
ideological, or some combination thereof - over others.
In these 14 years since Tiananmen Square, only
South Korea and Taiwan have changed the paradigm for one
that allows political progress and transition toward
democracy. Given the amount of the change needed in the
region, that's hardly enough. It's likely to take
another 14 years for the Goddess of Democracy to play a
starring role in Asia again, and the political economy
suffers with each day we wait.
As we remember
the tragedy of Tiananmen, all who believe Asia deserves
responsive and responsible government should think less
about the sins of the past and more about how to give
politics and participation a meaningful present and
future. The students of Tiananmen in 1989, not the
Beijing government and its wholly predictable crackdown,
demonstrated what needs to change most profoundly to
bring human rights to the region.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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