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  • Tiananmen Square and Two Chinas -- A debate

    Tiananmen Square and Two Chinas


    Tiananmen Square and Two Chinas - Council on Foreign Relations

    Interviewer:
    Jayshree Bajoria, Staff Writer, CFR.org

    June 2, 2009

    June 4, 1989 marks the anniversary of the Chinese government's brutal crackdown on the largest protests for political reform since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Widely known as the Tiananmen Square massacre, the event remains a stain on Chinese history. But twenty years on, China has experienced two decades of 10 percent annual economic growth, lifting millions out of poverty and propelling it into the forefront of global economic power. Six experts--CFR's Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal, Perry Link, Cheng Li, Orville Schell, and Michael Anti--reflect on China's evolution since the spring of 1989 and prospects for democratic reform.


    Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations


    Tiananmen and the China of today seem worlds apart. The images of Tiananmen are tragic and iconic--the thirty-three-foot tall Goddess of Democracy statue, the young students with their bullhorns proclaiming the need for political reform, and the lone man facing down the army tank on Beijing's Chang'an Avenue. The China of today possesses its own set of indelible images--the glittering grandeur of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, futuristic skyscrapers, and millions of new cars jostling for position on clogged city streets.

    Most of the time, today's images crowd out the memories of two decades ago. But the reality is that the events of June 1989 and the spring before it remain firmly embedded in China's political fabric. Though China has changed in many ways for the better, Tiananmen continues to haunt and inspire the country.

    "The failure of China's leaders to embrace the ideals embodied by the Tiananmen demonstrations has had far-reaching and often devastating consequences."- CFR's Elizabeth Economy

    The failure of China's leaders to embrace the ideals embodied by the Tiananmen demonstrations has had far-reaching and often devastating consequences. Without political reform, corruption has flourished and contributed to the melamine poisoning of tens of thousands of Chinese children, the collapse of shoddily built schools in the Sichuan earthquake, and more than one hundred thousand protests annually.

    At the same time, the ideals of Tiananmen continue to inspire many in China today, whether or not they are aware of the events of 1989. Thousands of Chinese from every walk of life have signed the online petition Charter 08 that calls for democratic reform. The bold voices of AIDS and environmental activist Hu Jia, the artist Ai Weiwei, and the lawyer Wang Canfa, among many others, insist that China is ready for transparency, official accountability, and the rule of law.

    Before China can move on from Tiananmen, China's leaders will have to provide a public accounting of this tragedy. The United States has certainly had its fair share of such tragedies, whether single events or ongoing abuses of power, from racism to McCarthyism to Abu Ghraib. Every case has required a public airing and debate for healing and reconciliation to begin and for lessons to be learned. China's leaders thus far have denied this accounting to their people, and they pay the price in terms of their own legitimacy. As the country assumes a greater role on the international stage, its credibility as a world leader may also be questioned. The world will likely wonder, as my twelve-year-old son does, "If they're so great, what are they so afraid of?"

    Perry Link, Chancellorial Chair for Innovative Teaching, University of California, Riverside. Coeditor of "The Tiananmen Papers"

    The 1989 demonstrations--which were nationwide, not only in Beijing--sprang not just from students at elite universities who were attracted to Western political ideals but from discontent that was deep and broad in Chinese society. The protests were fueled by revulsion at corruption and special privilege and by a desire to move out of the autocratic "work unit" system of state socialism. The goal was called "political reform."

    The Beijing massacre was a watershed. Soon after it, [Chinese Communist] Party leaders offered the Chinese people a new bargain: You can make money, and we will also allow you more personal freedoms in your daily lives, but you may not challenge party power in public and may not form organizations--political, religious, or otherwise--that the party cannot control. In short: Money, yes; politics no.

    The Chinese people, recognizing that freedom in one sphere of life is better than freedom in no sphere, basically accepted this bargain. They have worked hard, and have greatly improved their material lives. Calorie intake, housing, and life expectancy are all, on average, better than twenty years ago.

    But the "politics, no" part of the bargain has created problems that haunt the soul of the society. It is a deep assumption in Chinese culture that a society needs ethical values that are publicly shared, and in the mid-1990s Chinese intellectuals began to speak of a "values vacuum." Recent popular fiction and television reveal a strong attraction among the Chinese public for characters who--as if in contradiction to the surrounding society--are sincere, decent, and ready to do what is right, not just what is expedient. Religions have had revivals, but the project of letting religions lead the way to shared public values has been frustrated by government repression whenever a religious organization is seen to be wandering outside party control. Chinese people today feel far less secure, inside, than a bustling sidewalk in Shanghai might lead one to believe.

    Adam Segal, Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies, Council on Foreign Relations


    Twenty years after the crackdown, it is remarkable how the Chinese Communist Party managed to rebound from the violence and build such a resilient model for governing the country. In the shadow of China's Olympic success, we forget how isolated and fragile China seemed in the early 1990s. The model--rapid economic growth, nationalism, decentralization and depoliticization--seems obvious now, but at the time few suspected that China's leaders would be able to reestablish such broad legitimacy. Social disturbances are widespread, but most of the anger is directed at local governments, not at Beijing.

    China, in the words of Mao Zedong [Chinese Communist leader from 1943-1975], has "stood up," and is now expected to play a critical role in everything from solving the global financial crisis to rolling back North Korea's nuclear program to battling pirates in the Gulf of Aden. While there has been little progress on political reforms and civil rights (see, for example, the recent threats to disbar human rights lawyers), daily life for average Chinese has improved dramatically-materially and in their control over their own personal lives. This is key; the vast majority of everyday Chinese think their government is doing a good job.

    Of course, the question is--can this model last another twenty years? Already, with the explosion of the Internet in China, we can see a proliferation of ideas that, if not pushing the country toward liberal democracy, create real constraints for China's leaders. As the country develops and the middle class expands, demands on the government are sure to increase. The old model may not completely disappear, but it will have to become more transparent and responsive.

    Cheng Li, Director of Research and Senior Fellow, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution

    Many in the West believe that since the 1989 Tiananmen incident China has made progress only in the realm of the economy. Their rationale is that despite (or because of) China's ongoing economic transformation, the Communist regime has been able to resist genuine political change. This belief, however, overlooks several significant social and political developments that are building momentum for more political openness.

    To a great extent, economic reform paves the way for political reform. A distinct socioeconomic middle class, for example, was virtually nonexistent in China fifteen to twenty years ago, but today there are a sizable number of Chinese citizens with private property units, cars, financial assets, and money to spend on travel. A recent report by McKinsey estimates that by 2025 China's middle class will consist of about 520 million people. This growing and economically empowered group is now better equipped to seek greater political participation.

    "Chinese leaders have begun using the term 'inner-party democracy' to describe the idea that the party should institutionalize checks and balances within its leadership."- Cheng Li, Brookings Institution

    The commercialization of the media has also contributed to increasing pluralism in political discourse. As of 2007, there were over 2,000 newspapers, more than 9,000 magazines, 273 radio stations, and 352 TV stations in the country. Although still subject to a certain level of government interference, they do not all tell the same stories. Even official media outlets have begun to report negative news.

    Another important trend in Chinese politics is the rise of civil society groups and lawyers. There are some 280,000 registered civil society groups in the country today, including some 6,000 foreign NGOs. Two decades ago, such figures would have been unimaginable. The number of registered lawyers and law school students has also increased dramatically. For example, the number of enrolled students at the Law School of Beijing University in 2004 equaled the total number of law students trained at the school for the past fifty years.

    Finally, the ruling party is no longer led by one strongman, like Mao or Deng. Instead, the top leadership consists of factions and coalitions that compete against each other for power, influence, and policy initiatives. Chinese leaders have begun using the term "inner-party democracy" to describe the idea that the party should institutionalize checks and balances within its leadership.

    Yes, the Chinese political system is still constrained by its one-party monopoly on power, the lack of an independent judiciary, and media censorship. Political participation through institutional means remains very limited. Yet, the factors listed above are all important contributors to democratic change in any given society. In all these aspects, China is making significant progress.

    Orville Schell, Director, Center on U.S.-China Relations, Asia Society

    Few of us who were in Beijing in 1989 to watch the events of that spring unfold could have imagined that twenty years later China would be where it is today.

    [Chinese leader] Deng Xiaoping's tragic flaw, evinced in declaring martial law and suppressing that spring's demonstrations through the use of force, was quickly matched by an equal and opposite demonstration of acumen in understanding that, despite the disruptions of 1989, the only way forward for China was still through economic convergence with the outside world and the liberation of individual initiative--at least in the marketplace, if not also in the political arena. The correctness of Deng's post-June 4th bold judgment and then his epic 1992 Nanxun trip [tour of south China] to reinvigorate China's market economy was largely responsible for writing the script for the People's Republic of China's sensational next act. It also assured that the Chinese Communist Party's one-party rule would gain a new base of legitimacy.

    So, it was the next decade and a half of dynamic growth that made it possible for many Chinese to imagine that 1989 was really just "the past," an epiphenomenon, and hopefully an aberrant moment in contemporary Chinese history that should best be forgotten.

    "So, it was the next decade and a half of dynamic growth that made it possible for many Chinese to imagine that 1989 was really just 'the past,' an epiphenomenon, and hopefully an aberrant moment in contemporary Chinese history that should best be forgotten." – Orville Schell, Asia Society

    But, of course, history rarely forgets its past as readily as a single generation--especially one so preoccupied with reestablishing China's fuqiang, its "wealth and power"--might hope. And as we have seen with the recent publication of former Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's recorded memoirs, new historical evaluations have a way of endlessly intruding on even the best-written and most successful scripts or counter-narratives.

    While it may have been submerged beneath one of the most successful economic development stories of all time, the tragedy of 1989 has still not been completely erased from the hard disk of history. As the Germans and Japanese have amply learned, "the deeds that men do" are not so easily "interred with their bones," even by a decade of 10 percent growth and the deepest yearnings of leaders to forget.

    Michael Anti (Zhao Jing), Freelance journalist and blogger in China

    June 4, 1989 did not stop economic reforms in China and the country finally became a normalized international community member after she was welcomed into the World Trade Organization in 2001, rising as a new economic and political power in the world. In this process, the Chinese people gained enormous economic, personal, and social freedoms. However, they were also forced to regard this release of non-political rights as a quid pro quo for their deprived political rights such as freedom of speech and the pursuit for democracy.

    The Internet has pushed the cost of this new social contract higher since 1998. Civil society emerged based on, but not limited to, online activities. It has become harder and harder for the government authorities to totally filter the information flow on the Internet. Citizen protests take place everywhere, every day, online or offline. Cyberspace has become the new Tiananmen Square. Text messages, blogs, and tweets have been transforming any local discontent into a nationwide concern.

    The Internet has liberalized the Chinese people in the past decade and will continue this process; however any substantial political reform has yet to come. The political future of China depends on not only the maturity of civil society, but also whether the Chinese ruling party is willing to offer reconciliation to its own people, who still think the June 4, 1989 event was an unforgivable mistake made by the authorities. This wound of history has made politics in China immoral, and will prevent this nation and her people from achieving greatness.

    Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
    “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

  • #2
    Another debate, this time from FT, again, both camps using similar arguments.




    How Beijing kept its grip on power

    By Minxin Pei

    Published: June 2 2009 20:19 | Last updated: June 2 2009 20:19

    It is hard to miss the self-congratulatory mood in Beijing’s corridors of power these days. The Chinese Communist party was practically written off after its army crushed the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square on June 4 1989. At home, it faced a shocked and resentful population. Internationally, it was isolated. The fall of communism in the former Soviet bloc further demoralised its members. A sense of impending doom permeated Beijing.

    Twenty years later, things could hardly be more different. China is riding high as a new economic and geopolitical giant. The party’s rule has never felt more secure.

    Chinese leaders appear to believe that they have discovered the magic formula for political survival: a one-party regime that embraces capitalism and globalisation. Abroad, the party’s success raises fears that it has established a viable new model for autocratic rule.

    As the world commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen tragedy, it is time to reflect on how the party has held on to power against seemingly impossible odds and whether the strategy it has pursued since Tiananmen will continue to sustain its political monopoly.

    Clearly, the most important explanation for the party’s apparent resilience is its ability to deliver consistently high growth. However, largely through trial and error, the party has also developed a complementary and quite sophisticated political strategy to strengthen its power base.

    A lesson taken from the Tiananmen debacle by the party’s leaders is that elite unity is critical to its survival. The political necessity of launching China’s economic reforms in the late 1970s required the party to form a grand alliance of liberals, technocrats and conservatives. But the liberals and the conservatives constantly clashed during the 1980s, over both the speed and direction of reform.

    Disunity at the top sent out mixed signals to Chinese society and, during Tiananmen, paralysed the decision-making process. After Tiananmen, the party purged liberals from its top echelon and formed a technocratic/conservative coalition that has unleashed capitalism but suppressed democracy.

    An additional lesson learnt from the party’s near-death experience in Tiananmen was that it must co-opt social elites to expand its base. The pro-democracy movement was led and organised by China’s intelligentsia and college students. The most effective strategy for preventing another Tiananmen, the party apparently reasoned, was to win over elite elements from Chinese society, thus depriving potential opposition of leadership and organisational capacity.

    So in the post-Tiananmen era, the party courted the intelligentsia, professionals and entrepreneurs, showering them with perks and political status. The strategy has been so successful that today’s party consists mostly of well-educated bureaucrats, professionals and intellectuals.

    Of course, when it comes to those daring to challenge its rule, the party is ruthless. But even in applying its repressive instruments it has learnt how to use them more efficiently. It targets a relatively small group of dissidents but no longer interferes with ordinary people’s private lives. In today’s China, open dissent is stifled but personal freedom flourishes.

    On the surface, the collapse of the Soviet Union reduced China’s strategic value to the west. But after overcoming its initial shock, the party adroitly exploited the situation by using the turmoil in the former Soviet bloc to instil in the Chinese public the fear that any political change would bring national calamity. Rising Chinese nationalism, stoked by official propaganda, allowed the party to burnish its image as the defender of China’s national honour.

    The wave of globalisation that followed the cold war offered another golden opportunity. Capitalising on the lure of the Chinese market, the party befriended the western business community. In turn, western businessmen found a natural partner in the Chinese Communist party, its name notwithstanding.

    With any self-respecting multinational rushing into the Middle Kingdom, those who refused to recognise the new reality risked being outcompeted. In China, they also found undreamt-of freedom in doing business: no demanding labour unions or strict environmental standards. Wittingly or otherwise, western business has become the most powerful advocate for engagement with China. Its endorsement, along with the pragmatic policy pursued by western governments, has lent a legitimising gloss to the party’s rule.

    Ironically, this political strategy has worked so well that the party is now paying a price for its success. With the technocratic/conservative alliance at the top and the coalition of bureaucrats, professionals, intelligentsia and private businessmen in the middle, the party has evolved into a self-serving elite. Conspicuously, it has no base among the masses.

    There is already a backlash against the party’s post-Tiananmen pro-elite policies, which have resulted in inadequate social services, rising inequality and growing tensions between the state and society. Externally, the alliance with western business is also fraying, as China’s bureaucratic capitalism – anchored by state-owned monopolies and mercantilist trade policies – begins to alienate the party’s (genuinely) capitalist friends.

    So when the Chinese Communist party toasts its post-Tiananmen success, it should be under no illusion that the good times are here to stay.

    The writer is the author of ‘China’s Trapped Transition’ and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington

    Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
    FT.com / In depth - How Beijing kept its grip on power
    “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

    Comment


    • #3
      Little leaps forward?

      By Geoff Dyer
      FT.com / In depth - Little leaps forward?

      Published: May 27 2009 20:02 | Last updated: May 27 2009 20:02

      Children playing in front of portrait of late Chairman Mao Zedong
      Faded supremacy: Shanghai children beneath a mural depicting Mao Zedong. Since his time, decisions are made more by consensus among party leaders

      Ever since China’s leaders sent in tanks and soldiers to mow down pro-democracy protesters in Beijing 20 years ago, the Chinese Communist party has faced a constant stream of predictions about its imminent demise. American President Bill Clinton was one of the most pointed critics, telling Jiang Zemin, Chinese president, in 1997 that China’s authoritarian system “was on the wrong side of history”.

      This year has been no different. The global economic crisis has led to at least 20m factory workers losing their jobs, and would, according to some forecasts, undermine the legitimacy of the Communist party.

      Yet 20 years after the Beijing massacre, the Communist leaders remain firmly in control. There is no coherent challenge to their rule and, although grassroots protests are widespread, the simmering discontent of 1989 is less evident today, especially in the main cities. Even the economy appears to have begun to recover more quickly than that of any other major country.

      Opinion polls have to be viewed cautiously as respondents might be afraid to criticise the government openly, but they generally show a level of optimism that few nations can match.


      “There is a lot of unhappiness, but surveys tend to show that hope is rising and people generally think the country is going in the right direction,” says Cheng Li, a Chinese politics expert at the Brookings Institution.

      The apologetic tone that leaders once adopted on political issues has gradually been replaced by more confident claims about the benefits of a “China model”. Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the central bank, recently said indications China was recovering from the crisis demonstrated “its superior system” when it came to making important decisions.

      From Russia to Venezuela, other countries have trumpeted a more authoritarian, statist approach in recent years, but it is China with its steamroller economy and rising international influence that poses the biggest challenge to the postwar march of democracy. Indeed, the fate of the Communist party – whether it maintains its tight grip on power or is forced to give way to more democratic forms of government – will be one of the defining stories of the century.

      Just how has China managed to disarm the democracy movement? The basic outline of the approach is well understood – a mixture of wealth from a dynamic economy and repression. The state clamps down on signs of organised opposition and boasts an increasingly sophisticated propaganda machine, skilled at fanning the flames of nationalist sentiment.



      Yet there are other explanations for the durability of the one-party state. Beneath its Leninist surface, the CCP has introduced a string of reforms aimed at boosting its ability to govern and adapt to a changing society.

      Training for officials has been improved, including the opening of MBA-style colleges for party members. The CCP’s all-powerful personnel department has imposed rotation of officials to reduce scope for corruption and broaden experience, as well as enforcing retirement for older officials. In 2007 alone, about 200,000 local government officials changed positions.

      Since 2002, private entrepreneurs – a potential source of opposition – have been allowed to join the party; in one recent list of the country’s richest people, one-third were CCP members. Although public debate on sensitive topics is still closely curtailed, the CCP has established stronger ties with intellectuals and professionals to solicit expert advice. New labour laws to strengthen workers’ rights, for example, were drafted with the help of academics. Some intellectuals were motivated to advise the Tiananmen protesters by their anger at being ignored: now, their successors give regular private briefings to top leaders.



      Liu Xiaobo is China’s latest democracy martyr. Late last year, he helped write Charter 08, a pro-democracy manifesto that organisers say has been signed by 8,000 people. He has been in jail since December 8, write Geoff Dyer and Jamil Anderlini.

      The fate of Charter 08 illustrates the way China smothers its democracy movement to avoid any repetition of the Tiananmen protests. Promoting democracy is not illegal, at least within a circle of approved academics. Beijing University’s Yu Keping, an occasional adviser to President Hu Jintao, published Democracy is a Good Thing last year. But the state cracks down on sensitive discussions outside its control. Mr Liu was charged with “inciting subversion of state power”.

      “There can never be harmony when there is a constant crackdown under way,” says Bao Tong, a prominent dissident. “China is stable but turbulent at all times under this government.”

      Repression can be subtle. Tang Xiaozhao, a blogger, describes how after signing the charter she was invited to “have a cup of tea” by the police, who told her off for being naive. “What can you change by signing a document? It’s no use. It could only bring you trouble. I think you are not mature enough in politics,” she says she was told. A blocked promotion or a word with relatives are other methods of marginalising persistent critics.

      Charter 08 has an impressive number of signatories given the risks. But some liberal academics declined to sign it because they thought it too foreign, modelled as it was on Charter 77, the anti-Soviet manifesto issued in what was Czechoslovakia by intellectuals such as Vaclav Havel.

      Qin Hui, a historian at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says he approved of a lot of the ideas in the document but it did not “suit the characteristics of China’s special situation”. The implication is that future reformers must present their ideas as continuous with Chinese traditions and history rather than adopting an occidental blueprint.

      While a small group of scholars openly supports democracy, other academics are trying to find ways to gauge public opinion without elections. Experiments are being conducted with focus groups, opinion polls and public hearings. The objective is not to pave the way slowly towards a more democratic system but to make the one-party state more effective and durable.

      The CCP also seems to have established a more stable process for leadership transitions – the Achilles heel of so many authoritarian regimes. Hu Jintao was anointed the next leader a decade before he took over in 2002, which helped avoid a destabilising power struggle when he took office. For the next generation, the leadership has been selected five years ahead of time, with Xi Jinping expected to become president and CCP boss in 2012, with Li Keqiang as premier. Most importantly, these decisions were the result of consensus among senior party members, not the word of one dominant figure such as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping.

      In his book, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, David Shambaugh of George Washington University described the 10-year effort by the CCP to study the decline of the Soviet Union and learn survival lessons. Some conclusions were obvious, such as the need to avoid economic stagnation and military adventures overseas. But the CCP also decided to make its officials more professional and allow for dissent and debate within the party. “The lesson [from the Soviet experience] is clear: adapt and change or atrophy and die,” Mr Shambaugh concluded. “The CCP has clearly chosen the former option.”

      None of this is to deny that there are clear limits on political discussion and activity – the CCP does not allow debate about its own legitimacy or any potential challengers. But the capacity for flexibility helps explain how the party has avoided becoming an ossified oligarchy in the eyes of many Chinese.

      If the CCP has stifled calls for democracy by adapting, the other reason for its resilience has been the important changes in peoples’ lives that go well beyond the expansion in incomes.

      Society can still seem highly controlled to many westerners, but petty interference by the state has diminished dramatically – especially for the urban middle class. The young have grown up hearing about how the authorities decided the length of hair and clothes to be worn. Even in the 1980s, getting married required the approval of officials from the “work unit”, the employer-based bureaucracy that controlled many aspects of private life. Getting tickets to the theatre or to travel often required official stamps. Large parts of that supervision, one of the underlying complaints of the Tiananmen generation, have disappeared.

      Academic debate in elite circles has become much more open. The internet is another important part of that sense of liberation. Whether it really does allow a wide discussion of sensitive issues or whether, actually, the government’s extensive censorship efforts restrict discussions to safer topics is open to question. But young internet-savvy people genuinely believe their access to information has been greatly enhanced.

      Foxshuo, a 22-year-old blogger from Wuhan in central China, says the government’s propaganda tactics – which range from blocking sites to paying students to make pro-CCP comments in chatrooms – are often fruitless. “Even though we have to use proxies or encryption tools, which can be a complicated process, we eventually get to find out what we want,” he says. “The internet environment is harsher than in many western countries, but westerners would be wrong to think that China has no freedom at all.” In other words, whatever the reality, the flow of information feels free to the young.

      As a result of the effective combination of governance reforms and co-opting the rich and the middle class, few analysts believe the party will face a serious threat over the next decade.

      Yet there are also plenty of reasons for thinking that the party will come under greater pressure to introduce deeper political reforms. For all the resilience the party has shown, its support at the level of ideas is shallow.

      When asked if they support multiparty elections, the young will often sound sceptical but they are also quite likely to express strong support for much greater freedom for media and for civil society organisations. Opinion surveys bear some of this out. A study of youth attitudes prepared by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found 61 per cent said they identified with “liberalism”. Surveys also indicate that most of the bright young people who apply for membership are mostly interested in the job opportunities that party membership might bring.

      The youth are gradually shedding their image as an apolitical, materialistic “me generation”. The Sichuan earthquake last year exposed a deep vein of idealism that is not otherwise being channelled. On the campuses of the leading universities, environmental protection is becoming as important an issue as it is in the west.

      Chart comparing China GDP and freedom criteria to other Bric countriesThe sense that the CCP has yet to win the political argument is reinforced by the frequency with which leaders use the word “democracy”. In his speech to the National Peoples’ Congress this year, Premier Wen Jiabao said: “We need to improve democratic institutions, enrich the forms of democracy, expand its channels, and carry out democratic elections.”

      What they mean by “democracy” is different from what reformers seek or how it is practised elsewhere – usually some modest form of inner-party vote on specific CCP posts. But the fact that leaders feel the need to couch their words in the language of democratic reform is not indicative of a regime with solid intellectual foundations.

      The country is a long way from creating the sort of institution that can channel legitimate complaints from citizens and counterbalance unaccountable political power. Important court decisions are still referred to party officials and the centuries-old petitioning system, where people lodge complaints to the authorities, is known for corruption and abuse.

      For all the party’s success in blunting any challenge from the new middle class, it has been helped by the fact that the number of people whose income makes them genuinely comfortable is still relatively small. Car ownership in China – an important badge of middle-class status – is only 2-3 per cent. One popular idea among political scientists is that pressure for democracy really starts to build when gross domestic product per capita reaches $5,000-$6,000. Based on purchasing power parity China has reached this, although in nominal terms it is still barely half that level. This means the theory that a flourishing middle class will challenge the CCP is only just starting to be tested in China.

      Moreover, the very flexibility that has helped the party survive means that the status quo is unlikely to hold. “If the CCP really is so resilient, it will have to adapt into something fundamentally different as society changes,” says Cheng Li at Brookings. China’s dissidents hope social changes will eventually propel political reform. “For now, the attempts to protect individual rights are dissipated and fractured,” says Bao Tong, a former senior official whose reformist views led him to be imprisoned after Tiananmen. “But if all those pieces can be gathered together, they will create a power that will influence China’s leaders.”

      Additional reporting by Yang Jie
      Last edited by xinhui; 05 Jun 09,, 01:18.
      “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

      Comment


      • #4
        quite a lot to read and not much time on my hands at the moment but i personally believe its the defeat of counter-revolutionary activities.

        Comment


        • #5
          I agree there is too much to read and digest.

          Anyway, China's successful economic growth and strength requires internal and external stability. This is their highest priority that cannot be compromised. And this is why they are very sensitive to any revival of interest in the 1989 Tiamanmen protest incident and memory of their previous PM Zhao.

          In terms of democratic elections, perhaps in 10 more years, China is sufficient confident of its internal stability to allow some of this at the lower levels. Then, after gaining some experience, they'll very gradually introduce this at higher levels.

          Ideal is ideal. This absolutely cannot be a big-bang introduction to 1.3 billion people, like that after the breakup of the USSR.
          Last edited by Merlin; 05 Jun 09,, 07:28.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by NoMatter View Post
            quite a lot to read and not much time on my hands at the moment but i personally believe its the defeat of counter-revolutionary activities.
            Your definition reflects the government stance then. From historic perspective, the movement was revolutionary, the government was counter-revolutionary. There are good revolutions, there are bad revolutions, so what's the name is not so important. There is no crime named counter-revolutionary in China today, the corresponding name is subversion of government.

            The core issue is what China we want and wanted, I don't know, many people don't know, what we can do now is to lodge people's legitimate demands and complaints with the government, anti-corruption, restriction of officials' powers, social equality and justice, rule of law, let things take their own course.

            Comment


            • #7
              Their reliance on trade and globalization, which is a result from their metamorphoses after 1989, also influences their defence strategy. The ancient practice of 'fight the neighbours, treat the afar' (近战远交) would not apply in contemporary times, for a stable and co-operative economic neighbourhood is important for them to stay in power -- and benefits the people under their rule. This is where I find their nationalist education troublesome, as the youth that are deeply influenced by such education might form a right wing in future political arena and might push China towards isolation if they would have power, and thus internally and externally harm the political and social stability that the people now cherish.
              Last edited by snowhole; 08 Jun 09,, 01:34.
              夫唯不爭,故天下莫能與之爭。

              Comment


              • #8
                Banyan
                The party goes on

                May 28th 2009
                From The Economist print edition
                Who, 20 years ago, would have thought that the Communist Party could come to this?

                Illustration by M. Morgenstern

                WHEN the tanks departed Beijing after the crackdown of June 1989, no one with an interest in China thought the matter ended. The Chinese Communist Party had won its battle for survival, but the war seemed unwinnable. All the more so after communism collapsed in Eastern Europe later that year, followed by the Soviet Union. Even China’s lunge for breakneck growth from 1992 looked set to accelerate forces the party might not control. As the party’s ideological and moral foundations crumbled, it was no longer clear what on earth it stood for.

                China-watchers’ scenarios ran from party collapse to a democratising path. As late as 1998 Bill Clinton was able to tell his Chinese host, President Jiang Zemin, that suppressing dissent put China “on the wrong side of history”. Banyan was in the audience that day, his Flying Pigeon (state-made bicycle) outside. Mr Clinton’s words seemed self-evident. But with hindsight, much of where the West said China was going was wishful thinking.

                What nearly no one predicted has transpired. Today, the party is as strong at home as at any time since it seized power in 1949. Though still authoritarian, it rules largely by consent, preferring persuasion to violence and intimidation—though these remain handy, as during the crushing of Tibetan riots last year.

                Abroad, its prestige is as high: some believe China’s economy is about to save the world. Mr Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao, has been welcomed at the top table of world leaders. On her first trip to Beijing as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was as blunt as her husband had been a decade earlier, but with a different message: the United States would not let China’s human-rights abuses obstruct the history being made between these two great states.

                It is a commonplace that the party’s legitimacy is built on economic growth. Yet China’s leaders have long considered that to be merely the (simplistic) half of it. After the massacre, the Communist Party set about transforming itself. It launched a vast historical investigation into how political parties fall, and how they stay in power. Everyone was scrutinised, from Saddam Hussein to Scandinavian social democrats. The conclusion: adapt or die.

                The outcome is a wholesale reinvention of the party, a process accelerated after Mr Hu stepped up as paramount leader in 2004. Shortcomings that were identified included corruption (a chief complaint of the Tiananmen students), lack of accountability in decision-making, no convincing ideology, and an ossified structure. In a recent book (“China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation”), David Shambaugh describes how the 74m-strong party has fired whole armies of time-servers. Bright technocrats and entrepreneurs have been recruited. Retirement rules have been revamped (the Soviet Union’s gerontocracy was noted). Party members have gone back to school: three weeks a year and three months for every three years of mid-career training. More appointments are open to peer scrutiny before they are filled. The Communist Party is vastly more able to govern.

                Some in the wishful West will see this as a proto-democratisation of a Leninist state. The opposite is the case. Staying in power is the party’s only credo now that revolution has been jettisoned. It is the sole reason for revamping the mechanisms of power.
                China’s other manufacturing industry

                A case in point is the Communists’ approach since 1989 to the crucial field of propaganda. With the end of Maoist mobilisation, the party turned to Western techniques of public relations and mass media, manufacturing consent by guiding public opinion in certain directions while barring it from others. In “Marketing Dictatorship”, Anne-Marie Brady sums up the party’s approach as emphasising achievements, not allowing bad news during holiday periods or around sensitive dates (including June 4th), and not raising problems that can’t be solved (unemployment, inequality). It talks up the economy, regularly demonises the United States and uses Orwellian newspeak to shape the debate about certain subjects (“party-state” is banned in public discourse in favour of “the political party in power”). It presents stories in ways that encourage people to take sides. It turns natural disasters into quasi-religious occasions of national solidarity. And always, always repeat after me: “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.”

                With this approach, the proliferation of channels for media, information and entertainment offers unbounded scope for the party to get its messages across, abetted by commercial operators. The internet has proven a particular boon, since its users are predominantly young, educated males from the cities—just the kind of groups, the party has noted, behind the colour revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Shaping the online debate while using controls and surveillance to block most of what it does not want surfers to see, the internet is an example of how the party has corralled mainland Chinese into what Ms Brady calls “a virtual mind prison”—though one with plenty of fun and games to keep people entertained. In 2000 Mr Clinton said that trying to control the internet in China was “like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall”. The Communist Party seems to have managed it.

                This is little comfort to Westerners projecting their hopes for democratic change on to China. Nor is there any sign that Chinese intellectuals identify with the myriad grievances of their poor countrymen, as they did during the Tiananmen protests. And the growing middle class appears more fearful of the great unwashed than of the depredations of a party that once was at war with the bourgeoisie. So no national movement challenges the party’s monopoly. The state might yet prove unable to meet growing demands for health care and schooling. Leadership splits might threaten the party, as they did in 1989, with China now facing its biggest economic test since then. But for now, the Communist Party glides smoothly upon the tide of history.
                Banyan: The party goes on | The Economist
                “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

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                • #9
                  This article was published on Global Times English (Global Times is a newspaper produced under auspices of the People's Daily. It opened its English version in April 2009 in an attempt to grab a share in the English language market). Although its tone (especially in the last paragraphs) is still a conservative one, it is interesting to see an official newspaper discussing Tian'anmen.

                  Global Times - Prosperity tangible along Chang'an Ave

                  Prosperity tangible along Chang'an Ave

                  * Source: The Global Times
                  * [04:58 June 04 2009]
                  * Comments

                  By Jiang Xueqing

                  Yesterday morning saw the usual crowds at Tiananmen Square. People came out to enjoy the sun, exercise and take pictures. A little girl in a rainbow-colored skirt stood by the Golden Water Bridge and smiled brightly for the camera.

                  Tourists, mostly foreigners, pointed their cameras up at Tiananmen Tower at the heart of Beijing, looking to capture something special.

                  Nearby, uniformed and plain-clothed officers, each wearing a pin of the national flag, stood along the path in front of the tower, watching the crowd closely.

                  “There are more policemen than usual these days,” said a local retiree who jogs around the square daily for exercise. He asked to remain anonymous.

                  By sundown, the crowd was gone. The square closed – blocked off to the public. People were still, however, able to watch the daily flag-lowering ceremony from just beyond the square borders.

                  Twenty years after the June 4 Tiananmen incident, public discussion about what happened that day is almost nonexistent in mainstream society on the Chinese mainland.

                  It’s still a sensitive topic. Scholars, officials and businessmen declined interviews with the Global Times on the subject. And searches for “June 4 incident” on the Chinese versions of Google, Baidu and Yahoo were blocked.

                  When asked to comment on China’s road to development in the last 20 years, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences cautiously responded with his own question, “Why the last 20 years (1989-2009) instead of 30 years?” After all, economic reform started in 1978.

                  People born in the late 1970s and after have little memory and vague ideas of the incident.

                  During a training session for 120 college volunteers before the Olympic Games in Beijing last year, Chen Ping, former deputy venue manager for Media Operations at the Olympic Green Tennis Center, told the volunteers that China failed its first bid for the Olympic Games in 1993 because international society was unfriendly toward China after the turmoil in 1989. He asked the volunteers, mostly sophomores aged 19-20, if they knew what he was talking about. They all looked puzzled.

                  Li Xiang, who worked as a computer programmer for a small IT company in Beijing, was 9 years old in 1989. He lived on Fuxing Road, a west extension of Chang’an Avenue. His memory? The primary school he attended near the China National Radio building complex on Nanlishi Road was closed for a week in June 1989.

                  “I was happy for no school and no homework,” Li said. “My parents watched news broadcasts on CCTV attentively with serious looks. I also took a few glimpses. The pitch-black burnt bodies of soldiers impressed me, but I had no idea what happened.”

                  As time moved on, many of the protestors at Tiananmen Square became university professors, industrial leaders, executive editors and government officials. Among those who went abroad after the incident, some have returned to China and reincorporated themselves into today’s Chinese society, while some are still sticking to their cause overseas. And, recently, relevant activities have been held in the US and Europe by former participants, according to overseas news services.

                  A Global Times reporter based in the US visited the headquarters for the China Democracy Party in Flushing, New York, a major residential area for the Chinese. The headquarters is located in a small, plain building with a cluster of doorplates hanging at the front gate.

                  Some local Chinese told the Global Times that there are quite a few similar organizations sticking to their old cause, but they have difficulties looking for financial support due to a lack of fame and influence. Many of them do not even have an office. With the economic development of China, these organizations attract much fewer supporters than before.

                  While putting aside debate on the June 4 incident for two decades, most people in China have devoted most of their energy and enthusiasm to economic reform, leading to continuous rapid GDP growth and causing foreign media to call China a “world power.”

                  “Chinese leaders insisted on not debating the June 4 incident or whether China was following a socialist or capitalist model of development,” said He Liangliang, senior political commentator of the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite TV.

                  “They had no intention of challenging the super-power position of the US, but they focused on maintaining stability of internal politics and domestic society, while keeping good relations with other parts of the world. In this way, China set direction and established a solid foundation for today’s peaceful development.”

                  Many other mainstream Chinese scholars share that opinion.

                  “Deng Xiaoping showed his wisdom by saying, ‘Do not debate (on socialism and capitalism)!’” said Liu Jiangyong, a professor of International Relations at the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University.

                  “History proves that we are on the right track,” Liu said. “As a model for development, socialism with Chinese characteristics has satisfied the interests of most Chinese people.”

                  The success of economic reform is widely witnessed and appreciated by the majority of Chinese.

                  “When analyzing an historical event like the June 4 incident, we’ll get lost if we become entangled in details,” said Jiang Lingfei, professor at the Institute for Strategic Studies at the PLA National Defense University. “By putting what happened in a grand background, we’ll get a clearer picture.”

                  After decades of development, socialism was at a low ebb in the late 1980s during its competition with capitalism. Economic laws were violated by the planned economy. Bureaucracy prevailed because of a high degree of centralization. The former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries entered a period of stagnation. Feeling a lot of pressure from within and outside of the State, socialist countries came to a crossroads of deep reform, according to Jiang.

                  “It would have been easy to overturn the boat if the reform was not handled well,” he said.

                  Under such a historical background, the Soviet Union disintegrated and Eastern Europe experienced drastic changes.

                  He Liangliang said that if the same thing happened in China after 1989, China would very likely have fallen apart because of political struggles, racial conflicts, and social and regional discrepancies, just as it did after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, which resulted in the collapse of China’s last dynasty.

                  “China would not have been able to achieve sustained and rapid economic growth, or become the world’s third-largest economy and a major trading partner of the US, Japan and the European Union, not to mention participate in the process of globalization as a WTO member,” He continued.
                  But, as it were, China learned its lesson the hard way from the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).

                  “We know China can’t afford another big social turmoil,” Jiang said. “Ten years of economic reform since 1978 benefited the Chinese people in general and reinforced our faith in socialism” – the Chinese development model.

                  “Based on these factors,” he said, “the Chinese government made a sober and sensible decision to overcome hard times, restore social stability, and enhance economic reform in the 1990s. Thus, China didn’t miss a valuable historic development opportunity once again.”

                  New additions have been made to Tiananmen Square, which used to be the site for frequent political incidents in the old days. A new national flag-raising ceremony was introduced in 1991. Tens of thousands of people across the country make their pilgrimage in the early morning hours every day to catch a glimpse of the flag rising with the sun.

                  Prosperity is tangible along Chang’an Avenue, the capital’s east-west axis, which stretches in front of Tiananmen Square. China’s economic development has gained speed after Deng Xiaoping made his famous tour of Guangdong Province in 1992, in reality using the travels as a method of reasserting his economic policy after his retirement from office.

                  One year after his tour, the first club exclusive to the nouveau rich, Chang’an Club, opened along the avenue, adjacent to the square. Tycoons including Li Ka-shing and late Henry Fok Ying-tung all became members. It is not the big names, however, that grabbed the attention of outsiders, but the respect and tolerance for private assets the club stands for in the once egalitarian society.

                  Now, chic department stores along the avenue are also packed with common urban citizens, who also have a share in the economic boom. The famous Silk Market has become a must-see place for tourists from all over the world.

                  The Chinese people, especially the young, have become much more apathetic about politics than they were decades ago. Education, medical insurance and employment are among their top priorities today.

                  “Since the reform and opening-up, the living standards of the Chinese people have greatly improved, which easily explains their support of the government. But at the same time, we should also notice that the government has become more open and responsive,” University of Utah Associate Professor Tong Yanqi recently wrote for “Observation and Communication,” an academic journal at Peking University.

                  Recognizing the need to get in touch with the grass roots, Tong explained, the government began publicizing policies and legislation online in 2006 to solicit comments from the people. The response to a labor law before it was passed in June 2007, for example, totaled 170 million posts and required almost 30 people to categorize.

                  Twenty years later, “The government is responsive to requests of the people,” Tong said.
                  夫唯不爭,故天下莫能與之爭。

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