China and Tiananmen Anniversary: How Do You Balance?
Wendy Liu
June 03, 2007
June Fourth of Tiananmen is upon us again, for the eighteenth time since that day in 1989 when the Chinese government crushed the student demonstration with tanks and gunfire. Time may or may not heal, it certainly adds weight. For me, the anniversary is always a time of high mental pressure. No matter where one might live and how small a “potato” one might be, being a mainland Chinese once means carrying the weight of China on one’s conscience always, especially for a tragedy like June 4th.
The pressure may be partly due to the fact that I am not a radical revolutionary like those student leaders in Tiananmen Square or Chinese dissidents in exile in the West. Despite the violence of 1989 as well as my own less than pleasant experience with the Chinese authorities in the past, I heartily embraced Deng Xiaoping’s socialist-capitalist-combination approach for China.
I cheer for the ever increasing personal freedom of the Chinese citizens in terms of jobs, education, housing, travel, doing business, etc.; the unprecedented scale and rate of poverty reduction in rural China; the widely practiced direct elections from village committees to township and county people’s congress; the unbelievable growth of China’s economy and wealth; the brand new law protecting private properties; the less and less talk of Mao and more and more talk of Confucius, etc.
The anniversary of June 4th, however, brings back the other side of China: the dead and wounded in Tiananmen never accounted for; the suppressed memory of the crackdown; the repeated but ignored pleas of the Tiananmen Mothers for a redress of the demonstration; the news blackout of the passing of Zhao Ziyang, the party leader who advocated political reforms and opposed the use of force in Tiananmen; a new string of jailing or harassment of activist journalists and lawyers, etc.
How does one balance the positive and thriving China on one hand and the negative and censuring China on the other? That is my question. That is my June 4th pressure.
But I wonder if my pressure is not related to that of China’s rooted in the nation’s eternal and often chaotic quest for its balance in the world.
In the 1860s, following the defeat in two wars with Britain, China began a reform movement called “Self-Strengthening.” It was aimed at strengthening China’s defense by learning the technology of the West and restoring the feudal power of the Qing dynasty with Confucianism. The leaders of the reform had a famous slogan that perhaps best captured China’s effort to find the balance between itself and an ever modern world: “Chinese learning is the fundamental structure; Western learning is for practical use.” With that, they implemented a series of educational, diplomatic, commercial, industrial, and military reforms, but not social and political ones. The Qing did last some more years, but China did not become strong.
Some 100 years later, in the late 1970s, after the self-defeat with the ultra-left proletarian revolution, China launched its “Four Modernizations” plan for its industry, agriculture, science & technology and defense as well as the “Reform and Opening” program to introduce market economy. However, just like its 19th century predecessors, the Chinese reformers of the 20th century tried again to strike a balance: this time to develop a market economy but retain its political system. Echoing the Qing slogan of using Western technology to strengthen Chinese institution, they called the new mixture of socialism and capitalism “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The June 4th crackdown was simply a last-ditch effort by the Chinese leaders to keep China from being out-balanced by Western ideas, especially those of political liberalization.
Now living in a different century and a different country, I seem still trapped in the age-old Chinese dilemma, although in my own version: I condemn the brutal suppression of June 4th. But I do not favor any radical political change or copying of Western-style democracy in China. I mourn the dead in Tiananman and their failed battle for free speech. But I also hurray for all the newfound rights of the Chinese citizens: consumer rights, property rights, labor rights, investor rights, medical rights, marital rights, on and on, and all the new “rights defenders.”
I hope the Chinese government redresses the 1989 Tiananmen demonstration. I hope China finds its balance between Confucianism and democracy, between Chineseness and modernization. But before that, the pressure is on, especially around June 4th.
The pressure may be partly due to the fact that I am not a radical revolutionary like those student leaders in Tiananmen Square or Chinese dissidents in exile in the West. Despite the violence of 1989 as well as my own less than pleasant experience with the Chinese authorities in the past, I heartily embraced Deng Xiaoping’s socialist-capitalist-combination approach for China.
I cheer for the ever increasing personal freedom of the Chinese citizens in terms of jobs, education, housing, travel, doing business, etc.; the unprecedented scale and rate of poverty reduction in rural China; the widely practiced direct elections from village committees to township and county people’s congress; the unbelievable growth of China’s economy and wealth; the brand new law protecting private properties; the less and less talk of Mao and more and more talk of Confucius, etc.
The anniversary of June 4th, however, brings back the other side of China: the dead and wounded in Tiananmen never accounted for; the suppressed memory of the crackdown; the repeated but ignored pleas of the Tiananmen Mothers for a redress of the demonstration; the news blackout of the passing of Zhao Ziyang, the party leader who advocated political reforms and opposed the use of force in Tiananmen; a new string of jailing or harassment of activist journalists and lawyers, etc.
How does one balance the positive and thriving China on one hand and the negative and censuring China on the other? That is my question. That is my June 4th pressure.
But I wonder if my pressure is not related to that of China’s rooted in the nation’s eternal and often chaotic quest for its balance in the world.
In the 1860s, following the defeat in two wars with Britain, China began a reform movement called “Self-Strengthening.” It was aimed at strengthening China’s defense by learning the technology of the West and restoring the feudal power of the Qing dynasty with Confucianism. The leaders of the reform had a famous slogan that perhaps best captured China’s effort to find the balance between itself and an ever modern world: “Chinese learning is the fundamental structure; Western learning is for practical use.” With that, they implemented a series of educational, diplomatic, commercial, industrial, and military reforms, but not social and political ones. The Qing did last some more years, but China did not become strong.
Some 100 years later, in the late 1970s, after the self-defeat with the ultra-left proletarian revolution, China launched its “Four Modernizations” plan for its industry, agriculture, science & technology and defense as well as the “Reform and Opening” program to introduce market economy. However, just like its 19th century predecessors, the Chinese reformers of the 20th century tried again to strike a balance: this time to develop a market economy but retain its political system. Echoing the Qing slogan of using Western technology to strengthen Chinese institution, they called the new mixture of socialism and capitalism “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The June 4th crackdown was simply a last-ditch effort by the Chinese leaders to keep China from being out-balanced by Western ideas, especially those of political liberalization.
Now living in a different century and a different country, I seem still trapped in the age-old Chinese dilemma, although in my own version: I condemn the brutal suppression of June 4th. But I do not favor any radical political change or copying of Western-style democracy in China. I mourn the dead in Tiananman and their failed battle for free speech. But I also hurray for all the newfound rights of the Chinese citizens: consumer rights, property rights, labor rights, investor rights, medical rights, marital rights, on and on, and all the new “rights defenders.”
I hope the Chinese government redresses the 1989 Tiananmen demonstration. I hope China finds its balance between Confucianism and democracy, between Chineseness and modernization. But before that, the pressure is on, especially around June 4th.
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