SPEAKING
FREELY The many truths of
Tiananmen By Todd Crowell
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The 1950
Japanese film Rashomon owes its enduring appeal
to director Akira Kurosawa's superb treatment of an
ancient and universal theme: What is the truth? In the
film, a samurai and his bride come upon a bandit in a
forest grove, where the traveler dies and his wife is
ravished. The only witness is a woodcutter. The story
then turns on the magistrate's efforts to extract the
facts from completely different, yet equally plausible
perceptions of what occurred. A similar conundrum awaits
anyone looking to unravel the meaning of events that
occurred in China's capital on the night of June 3-4,
1989.
Most Americans think they already know the
truth about Tiananmen: The communist rulers of China,
determined to crush a pro-democracy movement, sent the
soldiers and tanks of the People's Liberation Army
(PLA), guns blazing, into Beijing's massive central
square, mowing students down by the hundreds. But 15
years on, questions still surround what really occurred,
how many died - even whether anyone was actually killed
in Tiananmen Square itself - and precisely what the
students were demonstrating about. So, what is the truth
of Tiananmen?
Here is what my own, now defunct
newsmagazine, Asiaweek, wrote in a retrospective six
months after Tiananmen: "Beyond question, a paroxysm of
killing took place that night. What has never been clear
was how many died. On June 4, the Chinese Red Cross
allegedly issued an estimate of 2,600 dead. The figure
was soon disavowed, but the June 5 edition of Hong
Kong's South China Morning Post cited 'diplomatic
sources' reckoning a death toll of 1,400. Next day it
rose to 4,000. Two days later, 7,000."
But for
years many publications in Asia have shown an extreme
reluctance to put the words "Tiananmen" and "massacre"
together. My own magazine pussyfooted around the subject
by calling it a "crackdown". Even last week, the South
China Morning Post used the term "Tiananmen crackdown"
in its headline reporting on the large crowds that
attended the candlelight vigil honoring the dead that
takes place every year in Victoria Park, Hong Kong's
smaller version of Tiananmen Square.
In part,
this reflects an uncertainty as to how many people were
actually killed on that fateful night and whether anyone
was killed within the boundaries of Tiananmen Square,
literally and narrowly defined. The Chinese government
has always maintained that the death toll was "around
200", including many soldiers, and that no student was
actually slain in the square itself. Tiananmen is to the
Chinese what the Mall in Washington is to Americans, so
it is more than academic to the Chinese whether blood
was actually spilled inside its sacred boundaries.
It also reflects a typically Asian penchant to
soften traumatic events with euphemisms. On February 2,
1947, for instance, the Nationalist government of Chiang
Kai-shek suppressed rioting across Taiwan, killing
thousands, many more, probably, than died in 1989 in
Beijing. It is known today even in Taiwan simply as the
"2/28 Incident". Japanese refer to the bloody coup
attempt in Tokyo in 1936 as the "2/36 Incident". For
that matter, they refer to the years the Japanese army
rampaged through China, killing millions, as the "China
Incident".
In a way it is irrelevant whether
anyone was actually killed in Tiananmen Square itself.
There is no question that a bloodletting took place in
Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989. There is also no
question that Tiananmen Square was the objective of the
Chinese army. Beijing was a city on the edge of
insurrection that night. The PLA converged on the city
center from all sides, smashing and shooting its way
through improvised street barriers. But by the time it
reached the Square, the students were already filing
out.
Demonstrating for
democracy? Similar questions still surround
precisely what the students were demonstrating about. It
is an axiom that the students were agitating for
democracy in China, and that the enduring symbol of
their protest is the statue of the Goddess of Democracy
that they erected in the Square. Yet it is a curious
democracy movement that began with the death of Hu
Yaoban, who as secretary general of the Chinese
Communist Party was certainly no democrat but was
reputed to be a man of rectitude, and ended with the
students singing the anthem of international communism
as they exited the Square.
For many years my
Chinese colleagues argued strenuously that it was wrong
to say the demonstrators were agitating for democracy.
The students were really against growing corruption that
was becoming increasingly evident 10 years after China
introduced market reforms. Of course, insisting that the
issue was corruption puts a more tolerable light on the
student motivations from the government's point of view.
Being against corruption is very politically correct.
The Chinese Communist Party conducts periodic crackdowns
- that word again - on corruption. High-ranking
officials are caught, tried and sometimes executed. Oh
yes, being against corruption is fine.
But
China's rulers can never admit that Chinese people might
actually want greater democracy. One could see that last
year in Beijing's reaction to the massive demonstration
in Hong Kong, which was the largest expression of
peaceful discontent in China since the massing of the
student demonstrators on Tiananmen Square. Half a
million people turned out ostensibly to protest proposed
new "national security" regulations that would have
restricted personal freedoms, but the motivation was
clearly directed against the government of Tung
Chee-hwa, China's hand-picked ruler of Hong Kong.
Perhaps it is a lingering Marxist world view,
but Beijing explains all such disturbances in purely
economic terms. People are upset? It must be about the
economy. The solution is to find ways to give them more
prosperity. If people are busy making money they will be
happy and not agitate for political reforms. This was in
essence how Beijing responded to Tiananmen, and it was
how it read the mood of Hong Kong after last year's
demonstration. In quick succession came a new free-trade
agreement and a relaxation of restrictions on Chinese
tourists visiting Hong Kong to give the retail trade a
boost.
This approach can work for a while, but
inevitably it will lead to further blow-ups. It may be
true that the demonstrators 15 years ago did not debate
the fine points of Westminster-style parliamentary
democracy for China, yet the Tiananmen demonstration was
fundamentally and profoundly democratic. Yes, the
demonstrators may have been angry about their leaders'
growing corruption, but the people who say the revolt
was against corruption are only half right. The
underlying message was this: Our leaders are corrupt and
we can't do anything to get rid of them. And that is the
truth of Tiananmen.
Todd Crowell
worked for 14 years as a writer for Asiaweek, the
leading English-language newsmagazine in Asia before its
demise in December 2001. He served as the magazine's
chief of correspondents during Tiananmen.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
