It was twenty years ago today that events occurred in China which caused me as much anger and grief as any political event that I can recall, and which had a similar effect on virtually everyone I knew who was old enough to know what was going on.
Plese feel welcome to post your thoughts about the Tiananmen Square massacre and related issues, your recollections of that time, and anything else which is relevant to this theme.
An account of the massacre, the preceding protests and the aftermath is provided on Wikipedia. A report on the extraordinary steps being taken by the Chinese government to prevent its citizens knowing about or discussing those events is provided in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. Video imagery of the protests and the massacre can be viewed here and here.
Update: Sinclair Davidson has posted, with links, at Catallaxy. Stephen McDonnell is reporting from Beijing for the ABC, under difficult conditions.
Slightly OT but does anyone know whats the story behind the Ads on SBS about the sale of Rio to Chinese interests?
The spectre of Tienanmen is used in that ad as well.
I remember being quite astounded they acted so openly in crushing the protests, but not suprised it was crushed. I was thinking a media blackout and family “pressures” would be used by the Chinese regime. I suppose the blokes in charge must have wanted heads on sticks to cow others. A sad episode.
Tiananmen.
THanks, MH. Now corrected.
I was curious to know whether the mysterious and iconic Tank Man had ever been identified. It seems he hasn’t:
Helen
A Chinese woman who was a protestor in Beijing at that time said (on RN this morning) she thought a reasonable estimate of the death toll was around 3,000. Although the students instigated the protests which continued for over a month, on the night of the massacre many workers and citizens joined in the attempt to block the tanks and soldiers from entering the Square. Foolhardy students were joined by thousands of brave, reckless citizens.
Apparently some tank officers were dragged from their machines by the angry crowd and murdered in the street.
This was a huge event for China and the world. Later that year, in East Germany (for example), protesting citizens wondered if the creaking regime would “do a Tiananmen” on their surging crowds. Honecker held back.
Some Aussies decried Prime Minister Hawke’s public tears later as he described the sequence of events. I did not. In politics, there are many terrible acts to witness and remember. This too.
I’m convinced that the reverberations from 1989 are still rumbling below the surface in China. [I prefer not to use the ridiculous term "People's Republic". At least the German "Democratic" Republic has disappeared.....]
Sad. Little seems to have changed. Including the old neoliberal idea that economic growth would lead inevitably to other ‘liberal’ improvements.
We are now left wondering how it might have been different if the other improvements were made a precondition of all that investment.
If I recall correctly, Linda Jaivin has spoken and written about her experiences of the protests and massacre. I forget the details, but somehow somebody negotiated an escape route for most of the students from the square. Without it, the death toll would have been tens of thousands, rather than the estimated 3,000-odd.
I’m not convinced that the reverberations from 1989 still rumble in the attitudes of young Chinese. Frankly, I suspect most of them know a lot less about it than we do. The biggest change may well have been that the Chinese government has since chosen to concentrate so hard on delivering economic growth, because it knows that without it protests will happen again.
That said, the Chinese system of governance remains inherently fragile.
“Rumbling on” amongst all those city-dwellers 35+ years old I meant. We’ll see.
In China, there are elliptical ways of carrying a story.
A friend visited China in 1977, when the big public campaign was against the dastardly “Gang of Four”. A Chinese said to him, “Yes, we had a lot of trouble in China when the Gang of Four was in power!”. As he uttered the word ‘four’ he held up five fingers. This gesture included Mao (who had been allied with the “Gang”).
Evidently he felt he couldn’t say the name out loud but conveyed his meaning without doing so.
Thank you Paul. I duly eat humble pie for speculating on another thread recently that Tiananmen raised sensitive issues for a progressive blog, and would be unlikely to get coverage here.
I was in Beijing when it happened. Not near the Square on the night – it was obvious that the government had reached the end of its patience and a probably violent crackdown which it would be wise to avoid being caught up in was imminent. Few expected tanks and machineguns though.
Recollections?
Driving round a couple of days later – no traffic, no people on the streets, an eerie silence. The streets had been cleaned up, but it was impossible to clean up the enormous amount of bullet scarring on walls and buildings, at head and body height. The PLA had been firing to kill, and kill in volume.
The city crematorium chimneys belching smoke continuously day and night for days afterwards
Curfew and road blocks for weeks afterwards, with almost nightly gunfire. The killing didn’t stop after 4 June.
Ambigulous’ 3000 dead is probably about right. Early estimates in the foreign community in Beijing were nearer 6000-7000, though there wasn’t much to base that on other than the known capacity of the crematorium, and the Chinese certainly weren’t talking to us, about that or anything else.
In the end I think the authorities, in ordering the troops in, acted more out of humiliation than out of a sense of genuine threat posed by the students. Being seen to have lost control of the centre of the capital city was a huge loss of face, and that the scene acted out in front Mikhael Gorbachev visiting in mid-May made it worse. To the extent that likely general international reaction to a massacre came into their decision-making, the calculation seemed to be that western fascination with, and increasing economic interdependence with, China, combined with foreigners’ notorious short attention spans, would ensure no lasting damage to China’s international interests. They were exactly right.
Make of all that what you will. Direct experience of an event of that sort is never the best aid to perspective and accuracy.
“Thank you Paul. I duly eat humble pie for speculating on another thread recently that Tiananmen raised sensitive issues for a progressive blog, and would be unlikely to get coverage here.”
Oh really? I thought your main concern was that the people around here pick on the Liberals too much and not enough on the Chinese.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/06/01/detainees-and-protestors/#comment-764964
I did find your above anecdote most interesting, nevertheless.
Some tidbits from a US archive
I was once on another discussion board where we were discussing what a hero was. Someone posted a picture of Tank Man. There was no more discussion. An extraordinary man, who left us with an unforgettable image of courage and sacrifice.
I’m glad Bob Hawke cried. I’m not sure why he gets such derision for being moved on occasion in public. I was listening to the record of him speaking about the massacre on ABC RN this morning. He described how people were killed – all ages, sexes etc. – then their bodies pulped by running the tanks repeatedly over them, then piled up, then burnt with flame-throwers. I think that deserves tears.
Some folks are easily convinced.
Twenty years is a generation ago.
I perceive co-optation, marginalisation, distraction, and intelligent oppression. The eclipse of Pax Americana can only serve to dishearten further liberal Chinese hold-outs.
But on the other hand, as Chou En-lai said, it’s still too soon to measure the significance of the French Revolution.
“..I remember being quite astounded they acted so openly in crushing the protests, but not suprised it was crushed. I was thinking a media blackout and family “pressures” would be used by the Chinese regime. I suppose the blokes in charge must have wanted heads on sticks to cow others…. ”
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Obviously written by someone with little knowledge of the People’s Republic of China, post 1949. Try Googling the Cultural Revolution. and that would be just a start.
As for Bob Hawke’s blubbering, I remember feeling as though I wanted to throw something at the television, and thinking “This is your precious communism in action…”
It was such a timely validation of all those Soviet socialist hellholes who were at that time shaking off the violence and inhumanity of socialism. Tiananmen Square only hardened their resolve. That event is a constant reminder to us all, of the inevitable horror of us ever handing over too much power, especially economic power, to the state.
Hawke played the politics beautifully. He lunged at the opportunity to finally kill off Labor’s perceived anti-Asian racism, and suggested to our existing Asian immigrants that the ALP might not be a tyrannical socialist party after all.
It was Tiananmen Square, and Hawke’s decision to allow all the Chinese students to stay – that finally saw some Asian votes going Labor’s way, and was the nail in the coffin of the Fitzgerald Report.
Of course, in true politically sublime, but sleazy, ALP style, the desert camps were built to hold Chinese and Vietnamese boat people. Hawke, Keating, and Gerry Hand quietly brought in indefinite mandatory detention of Asians, still kept the Asian immigration numbers low in favour of Sunni Arab family reunions, which was still perceived at the better ethnic branch stacking strategy.
@15
Good lord, what an elaborate conspiracy on the part of the ALP! No wonder the Libs have problems, their misuse of power pales when compared to this sinister manipulation of administrative power. And all to gain the votes of a small minority. And then to throw it all away because they wanted to stack branches with another minority.
One might also believe that there were other reasons why Hawke shed tears. Ockhams razor would probably indicate that he found the massacre upseting.
Phillip, Steven Yen, thanks for the classy comments. 3000 students were murdered and all you can think (if that’s the right word) to do is sledge the Australian PM’s response at the time. Hawke’s response, and the concrete action Australia took to protect the victims, were honourable, humane and an example to other nations of how to stand up to the Chinese government on their human rights abuses. Tell me, what would you have done differently?
# 17 Mercurius Jun 4th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I would have moved in immediately to disperse the protesters, rather than dither as the CCP did for weeks. Finally, having no alternative, it had to crush the nascent uprising using main force.
No government in the world, either democratic or dictatorial, can afford to tolerate unruly mobs, no matter how well-intentioned, taking over the city centre for weeks on end. Still less a movement that openly avows revolution. I go with geo-political realist Charles Freeman on this:
Of course there is plenty of evidence that the CCP went on to engage in wantonly repressive acts throughout the country in the aftermath of this incident. I dont necessarily go along with that. My guess is that they sometime use a little too much force.
More generally, in the post-Mao era, the CCP has aimed to achieve legitimacy through increasing prosperity, not enlarging democracy. And, as I pointed out in an earlier thread, “results speak for themselves”:
So I dont have a great deal of time for the oft-made liberal claim that the democracy-promoting students had an ideological right to try and topple the sovereign government. Most political scientists have argued that democracy evolves best out of appropriate civic and economic conditions.
FOr the appropriate counter-factual one need do no more than observe the progress of civil rights in democracy-embracing CIS. In this case they embraced liberal democracy pell-mell and the result was pandemonium.
The polity collapsed. A series of coups occurred, resulting in Yeltsin using tanks to bombard the Parliament. Then the economy was heisted by oligarchs. Then the Russian Mob moved into take over the streets. Result: catastrophic demographic colllapse.
If the PRC had taken the democracy revolution road its not hard to imagine the same scenario playing out. Just fill in “Triads” for “Russian Mob”. So we can all be grateful that the CCP finally bit the bullet and took back control of the streets and squares.
I very much remember this sentiment:
“What do we want?” Wu’er Kaixi, another of the movement’s leaders, asked of his generation in the 1995 documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace. “Nike shoes. Lots of free time to take our girlfriends to a bar. The freedom to discuss an issue with someone.”
From here:
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i38/38b00601.htm
They don’t.
@7, 13, 19. June 4 and it politics of its forgetting have strong similarities to the February 28 Incident, or 2-28, which I am sure most readers of this blog have never even heard of. 2-28 was a much larger event with a far higher death toll, but it too was erased from a nation’s memory by an authoritarian government. In the decades after, the same things were still said about it, that young people didn’t care anymore, they they were more concerned with material life than democracy. But when the time came in the late 1980s, people did remember and went through a painful process of memorialisation for its victims. Ironically, the memories of 2-28 erased most effectively in the end were those of the international community, and on that, June 4 is remarkably different. June 4 is part of global memory, and its reverberations are all the greater for that.
# 7 Robert Merkel <a href=”http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/06/04/tienanmen-square-4-june-1989-20th-anniversary-open-thread/#comment-767448″?Jun 4th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
The typical Chinese knows not much about civil rights and cares less. They are predominantly interested in personal contentment and professional advancement. Getting a nice mate, a good job and apartment in a booming city.
That goes double for the so-called revolutionary students who are now fairly apolitical.
Robert Merkel says:
It was doing that well before the Tianemen protests. Deng introduced his reforms in 1979. GDP started to grow by 10% pa compounding from the early eighties onwards and has not stopped doing this for near on thirty years.
Robert Merkel says:
Its true that, under cultural conditions of modernity and post-modernity, democracy is more robust than dictatorship. But these conditions do not pertain through out large parts of the PRC. So more authoritarian methods are acceptable for the time being.
The CCP’s legitimacy in the PRC depends on the growth of economic prosperity relative to OECD. Analogous to the CPSU’s legitimacy in the USSR, which depended on its military parity relative to NATO. Once these advantages are lost then the Party cannot claim the more foundational legitimacy of popular democracy.
But I see the PRC’s advantage in economic prosperity being far more solidly based than the USSR’s advantage in military technology. There is no institutional reason why the PRC cannot keep growing at much the same rate for at least another generation or so. In which case its political foundation will remain solid.
In short, the PRC made sure it got perestroika right before it jumped into glasnost. Whereas the USSR jumped into glasnost before it completed perestroika, thereby queering the pitch for both.
The one fly in the ointment for the CCP is the ecological costs it has incurred in its pursuit of economic growth. Pretty clearly China is suffering from massive toxic spillover effects of untrammeled industrial growth and has long since passed the point of declining social returns for some forms of industrial activity. Coal generated power being one obvious case in point.
These ecological spillovers are now causing real economic havoc, as this article from Mother Jones lays out. This article from the Washington Monthly suggests that the populus will grab more of a say in the governance of councils and cities if the Party maintains its hard-line stance.
So I predict that the PRC’s democracy-promotion movement will get most of its momentum from…our old friends the Greens! Conservationists are always stirring up trouble in one form or another.
But in this case, as a conservative, I am inclined to sympathize with them.
Mercurius,
Your point is taken, and obviously I did not express myself properly. In 1989 I was, and I remain, horrified at what happened at Tiananmen Square, but except for being so blatant, the slaughter of Chinese citizens in order to enforce the rule of the Chinese Communist Party was hardly extraordinary in the history of China since 1949. That fact certainly does not diminish the horror of it, but the Chinese Communist Party has murdered and imprisoned millions of Chinese people since coming to power, and I regarded Hawke’s actions as hypocritical. Personally, I have the same regard for the Chinese Communist Party as I do for Hitler’s Nazis, and I am wary of the free country in which I was born, becoming closer to China. I have no problem with Chinese as people, so for those who may suspect otherwise, this is not a matter of racism, but simply because I have an abiding hatred for the Chinese Communist Party. I believe that China is a country best kept at arm’s length. In explaining myself here, I know I have gone slightly off topic, but I did not wish anyone to think I regarded the massacre itself as insignificant.
Had a bit of a chat with a (~late 20′s) Chinese colleague today about this. They have been 4-5 years in Aust as student and now working.
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They were surprised (annoyed?) so many people here know about and talk about Tiananmen.
Seemed a bit unsure how to deal with Aussies raising questions about China, and mentioned there was a story in the English and Chinese language media in China, Though the question that story was asking (according to them) was why did the ‘naive’ students go out and protest anyway… counter-revolutionaries? worse corruption then? (but not now)
Only remembers closed schools and his mum keeping him home for a week during/after the main event (they grew up Beijing).
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Raised the Cultural Revolution as a far more costly and bad time for the Chinese people, evidently through family stories. As they weren’t even around then. Tiananmen losses pale in comparison, despite the glare and global knowledge of it.
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My perspective is that the newer wave of Chinese students are fairly quick to jump to defend their country and government. Another Chinese colleague got a bit upset at the Dalai Lama stories here a while ago, defensive and wanting to point people in the direction of Chinese websites extolling how the CIA funded the whole Tibetan/Dalai Lama clique etc.
Upon realising how extremely popular the Dalai Lama is in Australia, there was some acceptance that things are different here. We hopefully have the right and safety to agree to disagree with each other in this country. Currently at least.
Seems the Tiananmen diaspora and the more recent Chinese students/immigrants I’ve run across are fairly different breeds.
I currently share a workspace with three Chinese co-workers (late 20′s). There are some things about it and the cultures/experience that seem hard to cross, but it is certainly interesting at times trying to translate life, beliefs and experience between there and Australia.
Quoll: interesting you raise the Cultural Revolution. My anecdote on this topic was with a dinner with a Chinese professor and his grad student in Beijing. The professor told us a short tale about (part of) his experiences of being sent to a farm as a labourer, and having very little food. Maybe I read it wrong, but I got the distinct impression that this was a bit of a shock to the grad student.
# 6 Garfield Jun 4th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
The PRC is a stading challenge to the liberal conventional wisdom on progress. It is has a dictatorial polity, fairly (though not completely) statist economy and a remarkably un-diverse society.
By liberal notions it should be a stagnant and miserable mess, more or less along the lines of N Korea. Yet it has been the most successful modernising government in recorded history. Taking a nation lagging in the Third World to the forefront of the First World in the space of a generation.
What gives, liberals? Do you ever bother to you know, test your philosophy against the facts?
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MH #21, I googled “February 28 Incident” and got this.
I’m reminded of a Les Tanner cartoon in the Melbourne Age in 1971, around the time of the UN debate on which Chinese government to recognise. It showed a range of world leaders holding up placards reading “The US position on Taiwan”, “The USSR position on Taiwan”, “The Australian position on Taiwan”, “The Communist Chinese position on Taiwan”, “The Nationalist Chinese position on Taiwan”, and struggling out from under their feet was a native Formosan saying “And then, of course, there’s the Taiwanese position on Taiwan”.
#26. I thought it was the conservative position that economic ‘liberalisation’ led to political ‘democracy’?
Chav #28:
Some variant of this position is actually held by many conservatives, liberals and social democrats – Gareth Evans as Foreign Minister in the last Federal Labor Government was a frequent proponent of this view vis-a-vis China. The position is sometimes called “White Marxism” as it assumes a simple correspondence between developments in the mode of production (in the direction of industrialised market capitalism) and developments in the political superstructure (in the direction of liberal democracy), and Evans was quite explicit that some such process of economic determination would be at work in China – notably in one speech in which Evans was misreported as calling China’s leaders “Marxist pricks”.
Thanks, Paul for making me feel young – I love it when people refer to 47 year old Obama as a “young” man. That makes me only slightly maturing
OK, sorry, back on topic…
Here is the text of an article on Gareth Evans “Marxist pricks” speech.
Jack,
I find it difficult to believe that you think that China is now at “…the forefront of the First World…”. Surely you know both China and the First World better than that.
While vast improvements have been made, it is still a place with real poverty and with a GDP per capita less than one quarter of that of Mexico. Perhaps you are the one that should “…test your philosophy against the facts”. The fit, on this score at least, is not a good one.
One thing we all know only too well from horrific experience is that Liberalism’s enemy is Socialism, whether Marxist or Nationalist. Liberalism bitchslapped both National/Marxist Socialism in the 20th century, and we all must continue the fight to make the victory a merciless trouncing.
Green*ield, your experiment with consistent monikerising has failed.
“Liberalism bitchslapped both National/Marxist Socialism in the 20th century, and we all must continue the fight to make the victory a merciless trouncing.”
Ignoring your ‘Hitler was a leftist’ furphy for just a second, where in the real world is liberalism not also nationalist?
p.s. I’m fairly sure it was Stalinism that (ahem) ‘bitchslapped’ Nazism…
Just a brief recollection: I was at UNSW at the time, which had a large number of students from the PRC. I remember the eerie quiet on the campus the next day as we pondered the deaths of people so like ourselves. I suppose it was the same at other Unis.
I also remember being at a protest outside State Parliament later that year, visualising tanks coming up Macquarie Street, and thanking God it was improbable.
It was twenty years ago today that events occurred in China which caused me as much anger and grief as any political event that I can recall, and which had a similar effect on virtually everyone I knew who was old enough to know what was going on.
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Twenty years ago today that they frogmarched Sgt Pepper down the stairs to the cellar where the guy’s always drinking vodka and they have to clean the gun every three hours.
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I was at Uni in a house full of Trots when it happened. I myself was more a Eurocommunist type, tried to be anyway. The joy was sincere when Tiananman filled up. We thought it was Gorby’s influence. It was, perversely. Deng Xiaoping’d adopted economic liberalism but didn’t want what would soon happen in Russia happening there.The traditional political philosopher would eventually conclude that the PRC did the right thing – that is the expedient thing.
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To the rest of us there’s nothing right about it. However it also gave us one of those eternal images that evoke forever the struggle to be free. Kundera says: “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. So let’s not.
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One of my flatmates was a true confirmed Communist. Not some middle-class kid temporarily posing for while it amused. This guy’s roots were in the direst working class and he firmly believed in Marxism-Leninism. He actually resembled Lenin’s disciplined vanguard revolutionary not the bohemian lushes the rest of us were. He went to Tiananmen after the event. Took up smoking again so he could strike up a conversation with a guard. Then he went to Kim Il-Sung’s Festival of Youth and Students.
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I seem to recall, perhaps inaccurately, that he was kind of mute and ambivalent about the whole thing. He was nominally a Trot but I reckon he was more a Mao/Joe Steel kinda guy and didn’t know it. The fact that he could even attend, as a delegate, this N Korean shambolic ritual was telling. Especially considering that he’d read Kim Il-Sung’s books and thought they were only a bit Cult of Personality (A bit? The guy invented the fucking wheel according to himself!).
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I believe he lost sight of something essential in the pursuit of his idea of justice.
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I think all ideologies produce people who can do that. It’s human, we dream. But if you ever get a little lost all you have to do is look at this and ask what side that guy would take.
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No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one [that] has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.
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Hannah Arendt
“We thought it was Gorby’s influence. It was, perversely”
I was in China for a few years, and left just before Tiananmen. These days I often read about the causes and influences of the 1989 revolutions in Europe – Solidarity in Poland, Pope Jean-Paul and Gorby …. but no one mentions the people power revolution in the Philippines. I think it might have been that inspiring example which set off a lot of what followed. My students in China were very impressed by it. For anyone old enough to remember it, it was tremendously inspiring. Nuns stopping tanks!
Hannah Arendt ranks as one of the vilest intellectuals of the 20th century. Of course, numero uno, is Rosa Luxemberg.
Interesting, Russell. Early 1986 wasn’t it? A friend was in the joyous crowd in Manila.
Well, Spinoza: I’ve not heard Hannah described as “vile”. Would you mind giving reasons? Rosa condoned violence. I’m not sure that Hannah did.
I wonder how much coverage next year’s 40th anniversary of the Ohio National Guard shooting four students dead at Kent State University will garner …
Spinoza,
Having read the wiki on her I see little that was objectionable. Her opinion on the origins of Stalinist communism and Nazism appear correct. While she obviously condoned the execution of Eichmann (a position I have a philosophical POV on) her reasoning appears sound. Her opinion that the US revolution was successful but the French one was not also looks about right.
Why was she “vile”?
Spinoza – Hannah Arendt ranks as one of the vilest intellectuals of the 20th century.
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Que?
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Why? Her observation that evil is more often banal than otherwise perchance? There are no monsters, there’s only humans. Those of us who fail to face this and, instead, take refuge in a convenient fiction are condemning all of us to face again these human monstrosities.
I really have no idea why Arendt would rate as ‘vile’. The objection to her observations at the trial of Adolf Eichmann is based on the requirement that everyone subscribe to a Manichean view of the Holocaust without nuance in furtherance, I do suppose, of establishing another Manichean view which vindicates those whom said view categorizes as ‘good’.
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The trouble with such a view is that it creates carte blanche for those ‘good’ agents to do unspeakable evil. Like, um, the Nazis did. They actually thought that they were the good guys y’know.
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Ask me and the most valuable intellectuals are – like Arendt, like Czeslaw Milosz or Vaclev Havel – those who understand that many of the vital distinctions between ‘capitalist’, ‘fascist’, ‘communist’ systems are illusory and that the real problem lies elsewhere. Why do they understand this? Because of the direct experience of two or more of them.
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The Manichean view creates such stuff as Neoconservatism whose agents, in furtherance of supposedly fighting totalitarianism, behave like the bestest little apparatchniks in the world.
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Add to that list above Haruki Murakami. And raise a glass to those who would stand up to the hollow men. They are not our enemy but we are theirs’. That this distinction is lost on most of us is, I think, the reason for the impoverished religious warfare character of political discourse.
Spinoza – I really am interested as to why Hannah Arendt is vile. I simply can’t see the veracity of the description.
There is an article in late May on my blog and another one on 4 June lifted from a UK socialist weekly about Tiananmen Square. I think it is a dress rehearsal for the future.