June 4th Around the World: Notes from One Week After the Anniversary

A week (or so) after the anniversary of the "May 35th" events (as some Chinese netizens put it to circumvent automatic blocks on mention of a highly charged date), we got several more responses to our request to Friends of the Blog for word on how June 4th was commemorated, discussed, or ignored in various parts of the world. The most substantial (reproduced in full below) is a second contribution to the series (click here for her first) by Paola Voci (an Italian-born, American-trained, New Zealand-based specialist in Chinese visual culture whose book, China on Video: Small Screen Realities, is due out later this year). [Her post explains the eye-catching image we are running here, which she sent to us along with her e-mail.]

We also heard from a couple of people regularly or temporarily based in Central or Eastern Europe, both of whom noted how relatively little interest there was in looking back to Tiananmen and connecting China's 1989 to the upheavals that took place in that same year in the region.

Grabriella Ivacs, a Budapest-based archivist at Central European University's extraordinary Open Society Archive (it has holdings on human rights, the history of Communism in Europe in particular, and other topics that are too special to try to summarize, so we'll just encourage readers to make the jump and explore their website, where they'll also find information on the innovative exhibitions OSA has mounted, some of which have dealt at least in part with China) wrote to say that "Hungarian papers and online news portals were not particularly interested in Beijing events" last week. She stressed that "Hungary is going through a serious political crisis, and [the press in] early June was focused on [the] EU election campaign." She notes that there were occasional articles on the anniversary, including one in a "left wing daily," Nepszabadsag, that placed the Massacre "in the context of 1989...the symbolic year of Transition in Eastern and Central Europe," but, "(i)nterestingly," claimed that the "1989 changes in Europe had no direct connection" to the contemporaneous "Beijing events."

A. Tom Grunfeld, an American scholar spending the year in Romania (and a two-time past contributor to this site before), confirmed this sense of relative lack of interest: "Apart from CNN and a single article in every Romanian and Hungarian paper on the appropriate day (edits from the wire services as best as I can make out) there is no interest here."

Here's Paola's comment in full:

Yesterday I got my copy of The New Zealand Listener (the 13-19 July issue) in the mail and, to my surprise, "Has China learnt from the Tiananmen Massacre?" was included as part of a much longer feature story on "Wealth: How Chinese consumers could drive our recovery? " While NZ seemed uninterested to remember June 4th when most other countries' media were covering the anniversary (i.e., just before or on that very day), one of NZ most popular national magazines chose to have a reflection on those events 10 days later, when almost every other national media had moved to different topics. But maybe, rather than reading this choice as a belated answer, one can interpret it as an attempt to look at the event outside the specific temporality of the 20 year anniversary and frame it instead in the on-going economic and political engagement of NZ with China. Tiananmen becomes a provocative footnote to the economic partnership that is both needed and feared by many in NZ.

The Tiananmen anniversary was discussed from two main critical angles: firstly, the issue of forced memory loss imposed by the Chinese government and how, despite the government's efforts, many are still remembering; secondly, much more interestingly (I think), June 4th was remembered with a piece on Zhao Ziyang's Secret Journal (an edited extract from the book's preface (by one of the three co-editors, Adi Ignatius).

But, possibly even more interestingly, the magazine's cover itself was particularly surprising as the image (attached) clearly evokes the visual rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution posters; one wonders how familiar this visual metaphor is to the Kiwi readership. I personally find the cross-cultural mix (or mess?) that the image conveys is really intriguing and open to quite contradictory readings. See and judge for yourself.

June 4 Around the World: California

We wrote to the peripatetic Pico Iyer, a Friend of the Blog, to see how June 4th was marked wherever he happened to be this year on the anniversary date. He sent us the following ruminations, in which he alludes to the mid-1980s when he first went to Beijing and first saw Lhasa, at a time when each, in ways he's described elsewhere, was a very different place than it is now:

On the Fourth of June--the great annual feast-day at my old English school, the very opposite of its associations for modern Chinese--I was, as I so often am, at my regular Benedictine monastery on the coast of California. The bells tolled for vigils before the light had come up and wisps of fog ran up the eucalyptus-shaded hillside. Then there was silence and more silence until the next tolling of the bells.

Steller's jays landed on my wooden fence. Rabbits scurried off into the undergrowth. The sun rose over a hill to the south, making the ocean below sparkle and recasting us all in a golden light. Thoughts of Beijing in 1985 and Lhasa in the same year came back. Everything changes and turns and goes round and nothing much seems to move at all.

The monastery and the daybreak singing of the white-hooded monks seemed, in certain regards, the perfect way to think and ask questions about modern China's irresistible rise.

Looking Backwards: From 1989 to Han Times and from 2008 to 1964

There have been many efforts during the last month, on this site and elsewhere, to bring history into discussions of the twentieth anniversary of June 4th (particularly via allusions the May 4th Movement of 1919), just as a year ago there were many efforts to bring history into discussions of the Beijing Games (especially via allusions to the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and Seoul Olympics of 1988). But there's still room for this Top Five list of historically minded pieces on 1989 or 2008 that have just appeared and stand out as especially worth checking out, due to either how deeply they delve into parallels with earlier times or the novelty of their strategies for bringing together past and present.

1) On June 1, Alan Baumler of the estimable Frog-In-A-Well blog, which has separate sections devoted to the histories of different East Asian countries, offered up a very thoughtful look at a precedent for the 1989 student-led protests that pre-dated (by many centuries) the founding of the first modern Chinese university in 1898.

Here's a snippet that we hope will encourage you to make the jump to read all of his "Student Protests in Han China":

"Like most university students, [those of Later Han times, circa 160] were in an anomalous position in society. Imperial University students were members of the elite, but not elite enough to get government jobs just based on their family. Like later students they were also frustrated by their prospects. By the Later Han the curriculum at the University was considered hopelessly out of date and attending was no longer a reliable route to office. Students were deeply concerned with the problems of the state, which is not surprising, and they were particularly concerned with the problem of corruption and favoritism in official appointments, which is also not surprising, given that they were the ones most likely to be passed over if jobs were not given on merit. During this period the student’s enemies were not the Communist Party, but the eunuchs and their faction, who were rivals of the great aristocratic families."

2) On June 2, Duncan Hewitt, the Shanghai-based author of China: Getting Rich First: A Modern Social History, weighed in on the meaning of the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen protests on a Newsweek blog. He has many things of interest to say in this piece, which is well worth reading in its entirety, but one notable point is that the it is not just the details about 1989 but also those about the Democracy Wall Movement that preceded it by roughly a decade that have been fading.

3) On June 5, Evan Osnos ran an insightful piece on his "Letter from China" blog called "The Other Tiananmen Moment," which stressed the importance of thinking about the complex ties between the events of the mid-to-late 1960s and the late 1980s in the minds of some Chinese. (And for more about the Cultural Revolution-era photographs he discusses and shows, see this guest post by Jean Loh we ran in April.)

4) Regular readers of this site have seen many pieces by frequent contributor Susan Brownell exploring different aspects of the Beijing Games, including its parallels to and differences from past Olympics. (And material from those posts is also showcased in China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance.) But there's still much new to be learned from her latest publication on the topic, which she has just done for the excellent and wide-ranging Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. She offers her most detailed and sophisticated look to date at the connections between the Beijing Olympics and both of the previous Asian Summer Games, those that took place in Tokyo in 1964 and Seoul in 1988.

5) The same online journal has two other good pieces about Asia and the Olympics. The one with the most historical bent is a fascinating essay on the Tokyo Games by Christian Tagsold, which though focusing on Japan should be of interest to many people more concerned with China. Called "The 1964 Tokyo Olympics as Political Games," it argues, as its title indicates, that the tendency to treat the Japanese Games as more "apolitical" than the Korean and Chinese ones that followed is misleading. (Those in a mood for looking forward rather than backward should be sure to check out as well William W. Kelly's smart companion piece on the prospects for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, another essay that concentrates on Japan but has relevance for other parts of East Asia as well.)

June 4 Around the World: A Letter from Lima and a Hong Kong Perspective

In this third offering in our series, we limit ourselves to one short post, from a Friend of the Blog who recently moved from Shanghai to Peru, and a brief description of and link to what one of China Beat's longtime contributors, Angilee Shah, has been up to lately: a podcast series on "Global Lives," the most recent of which offers a perspective on Tiananmen from the former Crown Colony turned PRC SAR. For additional reading on June 4 from a perspective that takes you into a different part of the world, check out this piece on France's special connection to the Tiananmen protesters back in 1989 (when the country was celebrating the 200th anniversary of its Revolution). Anyone intrigued to learn more about the long history of Chinese migration to Lima, alluded to in the post, should turn to Adam McKeown's important book comparing and contrasting the histories of Chinese communities in Hawaii, Chicago, and Peru. And for some stunning images of and a report about the large rallies commemorating June 4th held in Hong Kong last week, go here.

Tom Pellman, Lima

Peru's leading newspaper El Comercio printed a brief dispatch from its Beijing correspondent Patricia Castro describing this year's measures by Beijing to pre-empt protests on Tiananmen. Castro's piece mentions the government's banning this year of then-student leader Wu'er Kaixi (exiled to Taiwan after 1989) from re-entering the mainland ahead of the anniversary. Other dissidents and activists in Beijing were also forced to leave the capital, the newspaper reports.

Aside from minor coverage in El Comercio, Peru.com, from Peru's blogosphere, adds a report on Beijing's efforts to censor popular websites like hotmail and twitter in addition to controling the capitol's main square. Interestingly, in a city with more than one hundred years of Chinese immigration and tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants living in Lima, there has been less attention paid to the Tiananment anniversary than might be expected.

Angilee Shah (introducing her latest podcast, taken from her blog):

It’s June 4th today. 20 years ago, in Tiananmen Square in Beijing a huge protest movement was violently suppressed. The numbers are disputed, but hundreds, if not thousands were killed in clashes with the military...the event had a big impact on Anka Lee. He was just a kid then, but he remembers the day well. He was born in Hong Kong and was nine years old that summer in 1989. He talks about his memories and the city where he was born in this episode of Global Lives.

Tom Pellman is a freelance writer and former journalist for China Economic Review. He currently follows China-Latin America affairs at DoubleHandshake.com.

Angilee Shah is a freelance writer and past contributor to China Beat.

6/4 Around the World: The First Sequel

In our second installment of the series (for part one click here), we return to Japan (via a follow-up post by James Farrer on coverage in Tokyo) and offer a view from Hanoi (where long-time Reuters China correspondent John Ruwitch is now based and sometimes writes on themes that link or divide the two countries).

John Ruwitch, Hanoi

Six-four didn't make its way into the official Vietnamese media, of course, but reports about it on CNN, which is widely available in Hanoi, were not censored. When I told a Vietnamese friend I found that mildly surprising, given the somewhat similar positions that the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist Parties find themselves in, plus their much-trumpeted friendship, she laughed and said: "But we hate the Chinese". Long history there, obviously.

I did not scour the VN blogosphere for info on six-four. I did notice, however, that a seasoned journalist/blogger called Huy Duc wrote a blog quoting from the newly published memoirs of one deposed and deceased CCP gen-sec whose name in Vietnamese is "Trieu Tu Duong". Huy Duc discusses how DXP ultimately sided with Li Peng, leading to the crackdown, and comments: "There are men like Li Peng everywhere, but only in places where the fate of a nation lies in the hands of a few individuals could could a network of people be ground up by tanks like that." At the end of the piece, the author concludes: "The aspirations of a people can never be crushed with tanks and bullets." I thought that was fairly strong stuff coming from inside a country where the leadership, again, is engaged in a juggling act similar to that of its giant neighbour and freedom of speech is limited. Then again, the longer I'm in Vietnam, the more I wonder if the differences between the two out number the similarities.

James Farrer, Tokyo

The June 5th Asahi Shinbum provided the final installment of the week long series on the "Tiananmen Incident." As did some of the earlier reports, this half-page feature provides portaits of participants in the 1989 protests and their current situations. The rhetorical emphasis of the articles is on the resilience of their views, despite the repression that immediately followed June 4 and the 20 years of imposed silence. One interview was with the former CCTV announcer Xue Fei who had displayed a notably tragic demeanor during his official announcement of martial law on May 20, and was subsequently fired. He later left China for Hungary in 1992, and returned in 2001 to teach television announcing skills in Beijing. According to the article this Asahi interview was the first time he had agreed to be interviewed in 20 years, but he has "no regrets" about his decision to support the protestors. Other interviews focused on protest participants who have continued as activists in China, including Pu Zhiqiang, a lawyer who defends dissidents, Liang Xiaoyan, who leads an environment NGO, and Fu Guoyong, the dissident historian. The message and tone of the final installment of the series thus emphasizes the determination of a very small group of individuals to continue the fight for human rights despite their small numbers and the huge obstacles they face. The Japanese media, including the Asahi, present a generally pessimistic assessment of the possibilities of systemmic political change in China (as in Japan, actually), but these stories of personal "resilience" seem to appeal to Japanese readers.

Note to my earlier post: the chart of protest leaders in the article I described referred only to students, not workers, and included the university affiliations of each individual.

John Ruwitch is the Reuters bureau chief in Vietnam; prior to moving to Hanoi, he lived in Beijing and Hong Kong for seven years covering China.

James Farrer is Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University.

A 6/4 Reader

1. Su Yang has never written anything for China Beat, but a few of us get to have lunch with him occasionally as he is a professor (of sociology) at UCI. The Orange County Register profiled Su, discussing his experiences in 1989 and after.

2. Jeff Wasserstrom’s most recent piece at the Huffington Post points out some of the good coverage on China in recent weeks (and sketches some of what was missing or wrong).

3. Friend of the blog and former student leader Wang Chaohua has completed her Ph.D. at UCLA and is graduating this weekend. UCLA Today has a nice profile of Wang that tells her personal story from 1989 to the present.

4. Initially, this page at China Digital Times was blank. Now it has been updated…a little bit…

5. Evan Osnos’s fittingly brief and somber reflection on the day.

6. We’ve been running regular installments from Phil Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon. Here is the first (that we’ve seen) review of it (at the Wall Street Journal).

7. Many of you have already seen this collection of writings at the New York Times, but in case you haven’t it’s worth reading. It includes pieces by Xiao Qiang, Woeser, Persian Xiaozhao, Jeff Wasserstrom, and others.

8. At The Guardian’s “comment is free,” Timothy Garton Ash discusses the divergent paths captured in 1989’s big historical moments.

9. And, on a related note, lest we think that 6/4 is the only news of the moment, The Times, has a list of June’s “six world-altering anniversaries.”

6/4 Around the World

Last August, we called on contributors and friends of the blog around the world to send in short reports on how the Olympics were being covered and received in their neck of the woods. Recently, we sent out a similar call regarding today’s anniversary. Here are a few of the responses we’ve received so far, pulled together into a piece that we think would make for interesting reading beside the very different "around the world" survey that David Flumenbaum has done and will keep updated over at the Huffington Post. Included here are some comments by people who contributed to our "Olympics Around the World" feature or have written for China Beat on other things before. We'll link to those earlier pieces when listing their names below, and are also pleased to welcome a couple of newcomers to the mix, people whose writings have been mentioned on the site, but who have not written for us before.

James Farrer, Tokyo
My daily paper in Tokyo, the Asahi Shimbun (Japanese language version), has been running a series of very prominent articles all week on June 4th. One article that caught my eye on June 1 was an attempt to systematically track down and account for the most prominent leaders of the 1989 student movement. The article featured an informative chart with names and summary accounts of 21 former student leaders, seven of whom stayed in China and 14 of whom left the country. With the exception of Wuerkaixi, who lives in Taiwan, it seems all the others are in the US. None seem to have any connection to Japan or significant stays in Japan.

The article on June 1, as well as the article today (June 4), features interviews with Wuerkaixi, who lives in Taiwan with his Taiwanese wife, and works for a US company. Today, it is reported that he was refused entry to Macau, and was held up at the Macau airport before returning to Taiwan. He was travelling on a Taiwanese travel document. He reported that he had not seen his family in twenty years. Otherwise, there was a first-hand report about a group of former student leaders and some current activists who meet regularly in Beijing to discuss reforms, a story about the Tiananmen Mothers, and a story about Zhao Ziyang's book. I have not noticed any large public events or ceremonies involving June 4th here in Japan, but it may be that I am not following the right news. (I don't regularly watch TV....)

In general the coverage in the Asahi Shimbun is similar in tone to a liberal US paper, with articles primarily focusing on the voices of former activists. There is a wistful tone, a sense not only of lost possibilities but of a lost era of political hopefulness and, on a more personal level, of lost youth. The event is slipping into history much faster than we imagined it would.

Paola Voci, New Zealand
I will be watching for anything more in the news tonight, but so far very little in the mainstream media here in New Zealand. The largest newspapers obviously have some coverage of the 20th anniversary, but they are AP Reuters pieces ; TVNZ broadcast a BBC video on this topic. Even when included, it is never the first item in the world news (the AirFrance plane gets much more coverage). I am not sure whether something might be going on now in Auckland and Wellington. We will know tomorrow if any public event has taken place in these larger cities.

Here in Dunedin, 4 June is a day like all others.

Because today was my last lecture, I decided that at least I had to check how many of my students knew about what happened 20 years ago (of course many students were not even born then!). To my relief, only a couple had no idea about what 4 June and the Tiananmen Square protest meant. Most had some sort of knowledge that "a protest took place and people died". We took some time in class to just go over some of the basic facts, some of the issues and the relevance that they still have in today's China. That was my very small contribution to keep the memory of this tragic event alive and stimulate some discussion on its significance...

Chinese students associations on campus (either from mainland or Taiwan) do not seem to have organized anything to commemorate the event. At least nothing visible. But, the day is not over yet...

Since I came to live here, I felt that for NZ, China has a rather strange proximity and remoteness. Yet, I was expecting a little more discussion about China in the media today...to match at least some of the interest that the Olympics were able to inspire. But, at least so far, it seems as though, even without any CCP intervention, June 4 has been forgotten in NZ.

Steve Smith, Italy
In today’s La Repubblica, Italy’s second largest national newspaper and one with a left-of-centre bent, there is an interesting article by the award-winning journalist, Federico Rampini, who heads the Beijing bureau of the newspaper. It’s entitled ‘The Mystery of the Youth who Challenged the Tanks at Tiananmen’ and begins with a vivid description of the iconic footage, taken by photographers in the Beijing Hotel, in which a young man, jacket dangling from his left hand and clutching two plastic bags of shopping in his right, holds up the tanks rolling down Chang’an Avenue.

“The scene”, Rampini writes, “seems unreal. The tanks are stopped one after the other in Indian file by this slender figure who seems to dominate them. The driver of the first armoured tank makes a manoeuvre, trying to drive around the young man from the right. But he appears in front of them once more, extending his arms as if he is taming a wild beast. The young man then takes a leap and climbs on to the tank to talk to the soldier who is visible through the tank grille. ‘Turn back! Stop killing our people!’ is the cry that witnesses remember him exclaiming. Then it is over in a flash: the young man gets down from the tank and friends surround him in order to allow him to escape.”

Rampini begins his reflections by asking what happened to this youth. He talks to Xu Youyu徐友漁, liberal dissident and a signatory of Charter 08 (零八宪章) who explains that many feared he had been arrested or killed, but that in the twenty years since the event legends of all kinds have grown up around him, notably one that he had plastic surgery to avoid discovery. If Xu knows more than this, and Rampini implies that he does, he is not telling.

This, however, is just a spur for Rampini to go on to reflect on how the incident shed light on the strategy of repression pursued by the authorities both during and after the Tiananmen events, in respect of whom they targeted and how they targeted them. The young man was lucky to escape because he was close to Tiananmen, the sacred centre of Communist power. According to Xu, heaps of bodies crushed by tanks could be seen in districts further from the centre such as Fuxingmen and Muxidi, giving a certain ironic half-truth to the claim of the authorities that “no one was killed in Tiananmen.”

The crucial point made, however, is that repression came about not only in the form of 700 to 3000 killings that occurred during the suppression of the insurgency, but also in the form of arrests, condemnations and deportations during the months that followed. Lists of those most wanted and those who must be blacklisted from employment circulated in all work units. Zhang Boshu 张博树, another signatory of Charter 08, recalls that he was lucky because he was not a member of the CCP, since party branches were under particular pressure to turn over members who had been involved in the protests to the security organs. Zhang believes that party members sympathetic to Zhao Ziyang were a particular object of detestation for Deng Xiaoping, who accused him of having split the party in two.

Rampini stresses the very different fates that awaited worker and student protestors. As early as 8 June, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau arrested 13 workers, three of whom were immediately shot by a firing squad. Of the 48 public executions that took place in Beijing in succeeding days not a single one was a student. According to Rampini, “the grand operation to bring about the recovery of the elite had got underway, the long march to coopt intellectuals and students had begun.” The lesson that Communist leaders learned, he suggests, was that they must never again find themselves opposed to the most educated and modern section of society. He ends by quoting Zhang to the effect that twenty years on, there is no alternative force to the CCP on the horizon: “There does not exist a movement that could lead a peaceful transition to democracy. It is from within the Communist party that this push for change must come.”

Prasenjit Duara, Singapore
Straits Times, June 4, 2009 has an op-ed by Goh Sui Noi --"Legacy of June 4 leaves grounds for optimism"--which argues that June 4 has left a good legacy for development of democracy in China--both from supply side of ex-activists and demand from the ignorant young students. [Editor’s note: You must be a subscriber to the Straits Times to access this piece, but here is the synopsis from the website: “Professor Huang Jing's class of 17 students at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy swelled to more than 30 earlier this year on the day he taught about the June 4th incident.”]

Mark Magnier, India
There was relatively little coverage or evident interest in the Tiananmen anniversary in India. Television largely ignored it, preferring to focus instead on Obama’s speech to the Islamic world and a local medical school scandal. A few newspapers ran op-eds by China specialists and a couple of publications with China correspondents had articles buried well back in the paper on how China was battening down its hatches for the 20^th . But that was about all I saw.

One of the more interesting pieces I saw was an editorial in Mint, a progressive business paper. In an item entitled “Tiananmen: 20 years later,” the paper discussed the link between political and economic freedom, concluding that, while China may be hoping to create a new model of the latter without the former, in the end they must go hand in hand. “The Communist Party, it would seem, is now trying to delay the day when these contradictory elements are forced into a synthesis,” it wrote. “But without the vent democracy offers citizen grouses, this synthesis can only be a violently unstable one.”

James Farrer is Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University.

Paola Voci is a senior lecturer in the Chinese programme at the University of Otago.

Steve Smith is a professor of history at the University of Essex and is currently teaching at the European University Institute in Florence.

Prasenjit Duara is Director of Research for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore.

Mark Magnier is the former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and is now bureau chief for the Times in New Delhi.

Notes from a Non-anniversary

By Jeremiah Jenne

I woke up this morning and took a short walk to a big square. As expected, it was pretty calm in the kind of jittery, strained, composed way one usually associates with a dinner party where one of the hosts is having an extramarital affair with one of the guests. The square looked relatively normal but with a beefed-up security detail that included a ring of young slack-jawed crew cut types in tracksuits and matching gray badges worn on unmatching t-shirts. Reports of visitors being asked to produce passports, to weed out foreign journalists, appear to be overstated. I walked into the square from two different directions today and wasn't once asked for my passport. To read some of the other dispatches from this morning (Reuters/AP) you'd think the square was under martial law, and that's not really the case. That said, don't pull out a camera or try to film a dispatch unless you want an umbrella stuck in your face. (Yes, the latest in Chinese counter-surveillance equipment can be purchased at any subway kiosk for 5 RMB, or maybe 10 if it's raining.)

There are many reasons for the non-events of today's anniversary. While the square is open, the extra security is clearly ready to pounce on anybody who looks like trouble. Launching a spontaneous protest today would be like robbing a casino in Vegas; sure you might get your hands on the money but you're going to get your teeth knocked in before you set a single foot outside to spend it. Whatever you do better be worth it. And frankly, people in Beijing don't really seem to care very much, or maybe just aren't that interested in big public displays of dissent. The majority of urbanites in China's capital long ago traded away their political pottage for the right to buy knock-off handbags and a decent compact car, and they are reasonably happy with the deal they've made.

There are a few cracks in the facade. There will be a memorial service at Victoria Park in Hong Kong tonight. The new English-language edition of the Global Times has run two pieces this week, including a long article in today's (June 4) edition looking at the Tiananmen crackdown in historical perspective. To be sure, the piece does so from the perspective of the CCP, but that the subject is broached at all, even in a relatively new English-language paper, is still noteworthy.

For the most part, however, the chances of something major happening in Beijing today are slim.

In late May, Wang Dan, a notable figure in the 1989 movement, called on Chinese to show their support by "wearing white," a traditional color of mourning, on June 4. This was either the smartest or the dumbest idea in the history of protesting. It's summer in Beijing. EVERYBODY wears white. A white, button down short sleeve shirt is almost a uniform among a certain class of Beijinger this time of year. I have one myself, made of such unnatural fabric that I've washed and worn it years after several overpriced dress shirts from Brooks Brothers have been reduced to "sleepwear for the Mrs." I wore it today. I'd like to say it was out of solidarity with the movement, but I probably would have worn it anyway. It's 90 degrees outside and it's the only shirt I own that wouldn't make me look like Chris Farley after a two-day bender in Mexico.

Half the town on any given day is wearing white. While Wang Dan may have been going for a 'subtle gesture of protest,' it's possible the 'wear white day' idea was a little too subtle. Kind of like: "If you wish to honor the memory of the Tiananmen dead, don't shave your left eyebrow completely off on Thursday morning."

Finally, there has been a lot made about the Chinese government's knee-jerk blocking of foreign social media sites like YouTube and Twitter as well as the 'temporary closure for maintenance' of their Chinese counterparts. Nothing makes the CCP look more like a bunch of ninnies than when they let the Net Nanny go nuts. When YouTube was blocked in March, presumably because of a video purporting to show Chinese police beating unarmed Tibetan monks, most people had never seen the offending clip. Within a day everybody (outside of China or those who had a proxy server) had checked it out. Why? Because with not much going on in Tibet this past March, and with nobody able to go there to file anyway, it was something to write about. On Tuesday it was Twitter. During a week with very little substantive news to cover in connection with the anniversary, the Chinese government's ham-handed attempts to erase the memory of June 4 and stifle any attempts for dissenting groups to organize became the story.

Blocking Twitter, a site that almost every correspondent in town uses to some degree, fantastically inconveniences the one group desperate to write something bad about the government. Censoring sites is such an easy story - such a gift to the foreign correspondent community in Beijing - that I'm surprised it doesn't come wrapped in pretty paper with a bow and a card saying "Love, Hu!"

In the end, whatever one's views are on the demonstrations, the way they were suppressed, or the aftermath, as a historian I am always disturbed by official attempts to erase past events. As Orwell once wrote: "He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past." The CCP has changed in may ways - much of it for the good - over the past twenty years. It is times like these however, when the worst of the Party's instincts for self-preservation take over, that remind us of how far there still is to go.

This piece was cross-posted at Jenne's personal blog, Jottings from the Granite Studio.

6/4/89: The Night of No Moon

This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website.

(June 4, 1989 excerpt from Tiananmen Moon)

You didn't have to be a fortune-teller to know Tiananmen was the target, but what were they going to hit it with and when? The long anticipated crackdown had been postponed so long, getting it over with might resolve the political impasse, but it wouldn't bring justice, it wouldn't buy back the mandate of heaven.

Being part of the teeming mass as the army approached, I had little choice but move in tandem. It was well nigh impossible to stand still, to move against the flow would beg injury. Only when I reached the concrete and steel divider in the middle of Chang’an Boulevard, guided by those in front, pushed by those behind me, could I pause and wring myself free of the seething throng long enough to climb on top of a cement road barrier to get a better view of what was going on.

A military vehicle that looked like a tank came careening recklessly through the sea of people like an icebreaker cracking through thin ice. Tanks on Tiananmen Square! It was crazy, what was the PLA doing, what did they think this could achieve? The armored vehicle roared down thickly people Chang’an Boulevard as fast as its heavy treads would permit, not as a peacekeeper, but provocateur. Then there appeared another metallic monster, begging for a clash, beckoning blood.

The reckless charging of two heavy vehicles in the middle of a crowd of thousands shocked me; the rules of engagement had changed. The military’s admirable discipline and restraint had been abandoned, giving way to reckless, violent acts. The armored vehicle was so unforgiving, so heavy, so hard, the bodies it bolted past so vulnerable and soft.

So far, no one had been hit or run over but it could happen any second now. It was a deadly game of "chicken" in which the winner was the last one to flinch, but the rules were supremely unfair, pitting tank against man. I shuddered in dread of seeing people mowed over, but amazingly the men and women around me seemed emboldened by the prospect of conflict.

It was as if the daredevils possessed a belief in mind-over-matter, like the martial arts warriors of the late Qing Boxer Rebellion who convinced themselves they were invulnerable to bullets. I’d seen plenty of people tempt fate crossing streets in busy traffic, but never did I dream it possible to slow a tank's advance by jumping in front of it!

Numb and immobilized I watched the vanguard dart back and forth in front of the armored vehicle, taunting the unseen driver. The armored continued to penetrate the crowd, slowing to turn around, speeding up on the straightaway, heading directly at the flag and banner-waving provocateurs like a mad bull aiming for a matador. With each sweep, the crowd parted, some running for their lives, others, tempting fate, holding their ground.

The passionate insanity of the moment was contagious, after a second silent signal, which caused the people immediately around me to snap into action, I stumbled, and then without really thinking about it, joined the fray.

The heavy concrete and steel road divider that I had been standing jerked sharply and suddenly lurched into the air. I lost balance fell hard, the shock of my tumble softened by the unfortunate people I landed on. I tried to right myself, feeling like a surfer who had just wiped out only to get caught in the undertow. My first reaction was annoyance at having the ground pulled out from under my feet, and being at the mercy of agitated strangers.

I was floundering below a turbulent crowd that was attempting to yank a heavy road divider from its moorings. A lengthy section of the concrete and iron barrier, once broken free, was rotated 90 degrees, from its original east-west mooring to block traffic on the boulevard. The heavy railing, momentarily made featherlight by hundreds of hands, was dropped to the ground with a thud.

Once I regained my footing, with the unexpectedly attentive assistance of the two young men closest to me, I joined the crowd in its tug of war with the barrier. We rotated it in slow increments, like the jerking second hand on an old clock, lift, drop, lift, drop. Whose idea it had been was impossible to say, for nobody was really in charge. No one had told me what to do either, for that matter, rather it was instinctive, a collective move to slow the arrival of hostile invaders. I doubted it would seriously deter the movement of army vehicles such as the ones we saw buzzing the crowd, but taking fate into one’s hands and doing something felt better than doing nothing.

By the time we had the concrete barrier in place, the offending vehicle had moved on. The men around me breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Only after the intense and immediate sense of danger had subsided did anyone realize, or have the time to react to the unusual fact that there was a foreigner on the team. Several sweaty men in T-shirts, arms and wrists no doubt aching after the sudden bout of weightlifting, offered trembling hands. One man welcomed me, the other called me friend.

“Huanying ni!”

“Pengyou!”

Their words moved me, almost to tears. The verbal embrace was at once formulaic and reassuringly real.

…

Meng, who had been separated from me by the erratic movement of bodies when the APC came streaming through, had closely observed the roadblock incident from the other side of the divider.

"I saw that. They are taunting us,” he muttered bitterly. “They are trying to break our will. They are trying to incite violence."

"So, what's next?" I ask, wanting to know, wanting him to have the answer.

"Nothing will happen, I think. The government is just trying to scare the people."

We backed away from the crew, scanning the swarming multitude for some indication of what might happen next. Suddenly Meng’s face lit up in recognition of some familiar faces coming our way.

Two women were walking their bicycles, weaving through the jumpy crowd in front of Tiananmen Gate. After negotiating the uppity throng gracefully, they parked their bikes next to the BBC's tripod as if it were a parking meter.

Soon they were deep in a whispery conversation with Meng, pouring out words too fast for me to keep up with. I stood back, content to watch the beautiful, expressive faces of three people who knew each other well, baring their souls in the subdued lamplight on the Square.

"Jin Peili," Meng said, pulling me over, trying to include me. "These are my classmates. They study acting at the Central Drama Academy."

We all shook hands, exchanging smiles. Despite the unsettled if frightening outlook of the evening so far, time was had become malleable and that fleeting but somehow poignant encounter was imbued with an enduring beauty. Ordinary life, as we had come to know it, was slipping away by the minute. Nothing would be the same, nothing could be taken for granted. Win or lose, the final showdown was at hand. I observed the drama school comrades as they huddled close, the pale outlines of the Goddess of Democracy glowing behind the trio in the darkness. The night sky was absolutely black –no moon, no stars.

…

Here on the northern periphery of the square, there were no workers manning barricades, or students urging restraint or marchers singing the Internationale, not even the usual idle onlookers.

The unsung, unseen heroes who had kept the peace for over a month could retroactively be appreciated by their absence. Student types were in scant evidence this night. Instead there were warriors with agendas unknown pressing in on us. No overt hostility was directed at the crew, but the seething anger and lust for violence was palpable.

The May Fourth spirit was gone, replaced by something murky and malevolent. There was a new element I hadn't noticed much of before, young punks decidedly less than student-like in appearance. In the place of headbands and signed shirts with university pins they wore cheap, ill-fitting polyester clothes and loose windbreakers. Under our lights, their eyes gleaming with mischief, they brazenly revealed hidden Molotov cocktails.

The camera lights, in this dark and troubling hour, seemed to attract all species of insect.

"Turn off the lights!" I yelled at Wang Li. "This isn't working, turn off the lights! We better get out of here!"

Who were these punks in shorts and sandals, carrying petrol bombs?

Gasoline is tightly rationed, they could not come up with these things spontaneously. Who taught them to make bottle bombs and for whom were the incendiary devices intended?

Lights still blazing, Ingo started shooting from the hip to capture some pictures of the provocateurs. The noose of spectators tightened.

Lights out, the shoving match subsided. But the troublemakers lingered, smiling inappropriately as they stared at us. Frustrated, I led the crew to the most obscure and least crowded spot I could find, aiming for the massive outer wall of the Forbidden City. Not surprisingly, we were jeered for making an apparent retreat.

"Look, foreigners! Ha ha!"

"What are they doing there?"

"The foreigners are scared!"

"Hel-lo? Where are you going?"

"They don't care about China!"

"Cowards!"

"They are running away!"

Some of the comments sounded like veiled threats. I pretended not to understand in order not to have to react. We were not running away, but I didn't owe them an explanation. The technical requirements for a well-lit interview were hard to meet under such agitated conditions.

Could the mass yet turn on us? Were we dealing with rational individuals or an irrational collective? How could one possibly distinguish good from bad in such a vast gathering of people?

We walked with our heads down in silence, a solemn file of five Caucasians and two Chinese. Finally we set up tripod and camera next to some trees along side the majestic vermilion wall lining Worker's Park on the northeast corner of the Square. On the other side of the wall was a potential sanctuary, the entrance courtyard to the Forbidden City.

The relatively secluded location gave us about a minute to tape before things got out of control again. There were ogling onlookers as before, but the random mix of townspeople in our new location was less implicitly threatening than the Molotov cocktail gang. When things got tight, merely switching the lights off sufficed to relax the stranglehold of the instant gaggle that coalesced around us.

Looking at the indecision and fear on the strange faces watching us, I felt we were much alike in our unspoken desperation, looking to one another for cues on how to act, grasping at straws in the wind, trying to figure out what was going on. Given the communal uncertainty, it was easy to understand how an incandescent circle of light on a dark plaza might be mistaken for a meaningful vortex of activity.

While Simpson brushed his hair, Clayton made notations on her producer’s sheet, Ingo unwrapped his camera, Wang Li fumbled with the lights and Mark readied the sound gear, I would try to explain to the usual knot of people closing in on us what we were doing in order not to excite too much attention.

"We are the BBC, English television, we’re just doing a random interview, please step back, we appreciate your cooperation, thank you."

In no time at all, interviewer became interviewee.

"What do you think will happen?"

"What information do you have?"

"How many killed at Muxudi?"

While I was trying to cope with such questions, Simpson shouted that another APC was heading our way. Everyone dropped what they were doing, immobilized by fright as the green monster bore down upon us.

As before, the horde parted only reluctantly from the path of the careening vehicle, and usually not a second too soon, leaping away left and right, defiantly till the last possible moment. The BBC crew swiftly backed onto the sidewalk, wisely regrouping behind some trees that offered a modicum of protection. The threatening vehicle then lurched to the left, veering away.

…

My pace quickened as I approached the stalled vehicle, infected by the toxic glee of the mob, but then I caught myself. Why was I rushing towards trouble? Because everyone else was? I slowed down to a trot in the wake of a thundering herd of one mass mind.

Breaking with the pack, I stopped running, exerting the effort necessary to free myself from the unspoken imperative to follow others forward.

Someone tossed a Molotov cocktail, setting the APC on fire. Flames spread quickly over the top of the vehicle and spilled onto the pavement. The throng roared victoriously and moved in closer, enraged faces illuminated in the orange glow.

But wait! I thought, there's somebody still inside of that, it's not just a machine! There must be people inside. This is not man against dinosaur, but man against man!

Meng protectively pulled me away to join a handful of head-banded students who sought to exert some control. Expending what little moral capital his hunger strike signature saturated shirt still exerted, he spoke up for the soldier.

"Let the man out," he cried. "Help the soldier, help him get out!"

The agitated congregation was in no mood for mercy. Angry, blood-curdling voices ricocheted around us.

"Kill the mother fucker!" one said. Then another voice, even more chilling than the first screamed, "He is not human, he is a thing."

“Kill it, kill it!" shouted bystanders, bloody enthusiasm now whipped up to a high pitch.

"Stop! Don't hurt him!" Meng pleaded, leaving me behind as he tried to reason with the vigilantes. "Stop, he is just a soldier!"

"He is not human, kill him, kill him!" said a voice.

"Get back, get back!" Meng started screaming on the top of his lungs.

"Leave him alone, the soldiers are not our enemy, the government is the enemy!"

The former hunger striker howled until his lungs failed him, his voice weak, raspy and hoarse. Meng’s head-banded comrades descended on the stricken vehicle but were unable to placate vigilantes keyed up for action.

"Make room for the ambulance," one of the students yelled. "Please cooperate, please step back!"

I watched from 20-30 feet away as the students tried to extract from the burning vehicle the driver who had nearly killed them. He had trouble walking, he appeared to be injured and in serious pain, but the quality of crowd mercy was uneven.

"He's not a person, he's a thing, kill him!" voices continued to shout out. Hotheads were deliberately instigating violence, putting them at odds with conscientious demonstrators who had no intention of hurting anyone.

The assembly surrounding the armored vehicle shared a paroxysm of joy in stopping it, but was of more than one mind about what to do next. At least one surrendering soldier was safely evacuated to a waiting ambulance, but then the ambulance itself was attacked, the back door almost ripped off by protesters determined to punish the man in uniform.

Up until now, the volunteer ambulances were symbols of the movement’s caring side, carting collapsed hunger strikers away from Tiananmen to hospitals for physical restoration. Until this night, city ambulances, plying slowly through the pack with that familiar, almost reassuring up-and-down wail, had been sacrosanct and untouchable.

A man with a metal pipe smashed the rear of the ambulance, breaking the tail-light. Two or three other men pounded on the back door demanding that the limp body of the soldier be handed over. The driver desperately begged the vigilantes to leave the injured man alone, to let him be taken to the hospital.

The back door of the ambulance swung open and the injured soldier was about to be extracted for a bout of “people’s” justice when the vehicle lurched forward, and raced off in the direction of the Beijing Hotel. Student traffic directors trying to impose a semblance of order did their best to hold back those seeking blood long enough for the ambulance to escape.

So it had come to this. The dream was over, people were killing each other. The mutual restraint, one of the things I admired so much about all parties in this monumental conflict of wills, was breaking down.

The students lost control, the crowd started cracking, and the movement was breaking up into splintered mobs. There were calls for cooperation and shouts for vengeance, the blood thirst made me nauseous.

Meng was distraught. "Don't use violence!" he yelled, straining his voice to persuade anyone who would listen. "Don't fight!" he cried hoarsely, over and over. But whipped up into a state of true turmoil, few cared to listen.

The ambulance was gone, the APC was now a flaming hulk, billowing black smoke that masked the sky. The ghoulish glow of distant fires – one could only imagine what might be going on --reinforced the gloom of this moonless night.

The BBC crew reassembled, shaken but unhurt. Before we could gather our wits, however, the sky was suddenly pierced with red shooting stars.

"What in the world?" I had never seen anything like it before.

"Tracer bullets," shouted Simpson. "We better get out of here!"

The red traces of speeding projectiles crisscrossed Chang’an Boulevard. The cracking sound of gunfire was steadily audible in the distance. The now seething mass was not easily intimidated, and became only further enraged. Empty-handed civilians cursed the government, venting violent epithets.

I looked at the anguish in Meng’s face, tears welling in his eyes.

"This is no longer a student movement, he said. “This is. . ." He paused, fists clenched with rage, face lined with resignation. "This is a people's uprising.”

As the fighting worsened, with gunfire close by, I had to physically drag Meng; so reluctant was he to leave the street, towards the Beijing Hotel for shelter. There he joined the BBC crew, along with Wang Li and myself, in room 1413 to sit out the lethal madness. Patricia, the Hong Kong journalist, joined us shortly afterwards.

But the Beijing Hotel was no longer a safe haven. "What are you doing here?" one of the guards had barked at Meng as we crossed the threshold. In our haste we had failed to notice the gatekeepers were in place again, guard posts fully operational.

"He's with me!" I answered firmly. Not wanting to get stuck at the guarded elevators, I took Meng by the arm and led him away from the heavily monitored entrance into the long central corridor ringed with dimly-lit lounges. The guards did not follow us, so we first lingered there, taking comfort in the incongruous fact that the deserted coffee lounge was still operational.

We gathered up an armful of yogurts and soft drinks for the crew and went up to 1413 by a less guarded passage. From my balcony high above Chang’an Boulevard, we surveyed the horizon. It looked like nothing less than war as I had imagined it as a child; fire and flares in every direction. Burning vehicles emitted an oily smoke that funneled upward, linking with its long black columns the murky sky and the ground.

Screams and gunfire could be heard almost directly below, more distant cries and rumbles intermittently carried by the breeze. Tracer bullets fired from somewhere across the street arched upwards along a parabolic path and fell behind the hotel. The frequency of gunfire intensified.

We watched in stunned silence as the tanks rolled in. As bodies were rolled out on carts. As the once defiant crowd was bent, then broken. Sporadic gunfire could be heard all night long.

China’s Growing Cage: The Legacy of Tiananmen

A much shorter version of this piece originally appeared in the New York Times, part of a series there on "Tiananmen Square, 20 Years Later," which also features pieces by Ha Jin, Yu Hua and others.

By Zhang Lijia

Whenever “1989” is mentioned, people in the West instantly think about the protesting students in Tiananmen Square. In fact, although it started in Beijing and was led by the students there, the democratic movement was a nationwide event, drawing together people from all walks of life.

Twenty years on, I remember vividly every detail of that day when I organized a demonstration among the workers from my Nanjing factory in support of the movement. It was Sunday, May 28, a week before the crackdown in Beijing.

The death of Hu Yaobang had triggered the spontaneous democratic movement. The popular former Communist Party secretary-general had been ousted, in part for his sympathetic view towards students’ protests. When the government rejected their request for his rehabilitation, Beijing students marched towards Tiananmen, demanding greater freedom and democracy. Like a match thrown onto kindling, students from all over the country took to the streets. They were soon joined by ordinary citizens who were disgusted by widespread corruption, rising inflation, and lack of personal freedom.

By then I had been working for a factory, a missile producer, for nine years in Nanjing, my hometown. The factory was a mini-Communist state, housing us in identical block buildings, feeding us at dining halls, indoctrinating us at meeting rooms and controlling our lives with strict rules: no lipsticks; no high heel shoes or flared trousers; no dating for the first three years at the factory. Every month, all women had to go to the hygiene room to show blood to the so-called ‘period police’ to prove that we were not pregnant.

To escape, I decided to teach myself English in the hope of getting a job as an interpreter outside the factory with one of the foreign companies. What I learnt, of course, wasn’t just the ABCs but the whole cultural package. I dared to be different: wearing short skirts and having boyfriends. After I mastered enough English I became obsessed with listening to the BBC, which broadcast news very different from our propaganda. I attended politically-charged lectures at Nanjing University, debating if Western-style democracy was the answer for China.

On that Sunday in May, after watching televised images of workers in Guangzhou marching in the rain, I decided to organize a protest. I telephoned all my friends at the factory, and some of them informed their friends. We got the banners and placards ready in just a few hours.

Under the wary eyes of our factory leaders, about 300 of us set off, as if for battle, defending a noble cause. Walking at the very front, I held a red flag and felt a sense of liberation that I had never experienced before. Behind me two workers carried a cloth banner that read, “Here come the workers!” The little strips of bright red cloth tied to our arms and heads flamed in the wind.

We marched toward the Drum Tower, Nanjing’s version of Tiananmen. On the main street, our group melted into a flow of marchers. Before us walked students from a technical school; at our tail were several dozen workers from a glass-making factory. We chanted slogans like “Long live democracy!” “Down with the repressive government!” “Anyone who dares to crack down on the democracy movement will be condemned for 10,000 years!” Onlookers cheered us on. Along the way, hundreds more workers from our factory joined in, which made ours the largest demonstrations among workers in Nanjing during the movement.

During that time, my ear was glued to my shortwave radio, and I learned about the crackdown at Tiananmen from foreign broadcasts. The following year, I left for England, feeling defeated and pessimistic about my country’s future. In 1993, when I returned, I was surprise by China’s booming economy. Many commentators had predicted that the authoritarian regime would have collapsed, especially after the massacre. It lacked political legitimacy and had an over-centralized power structure.

Over the past twenty years, apart from short spells living abroad, I have been more or less based in Beijing. I’ve witnessed and reported, as a freelance journalist and writer, China’s remarkable transformation: the economy has charged ahead like a steed without a reign; foreign trade and investment have expanded greatly; and China, with its successful foreign policy, has become a more important player on the world stage.

One might argue that China still has no real democracy or it has not made fundamental improvements in civil or political rights. Many topics are off-limits, such as the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. Of course, discussion of ‘June 4 Movement’ remains a taboo. But that doesn’t mean the Party has not learnt some lessons from those events two decades past.

Over the years, amid overwhelming economic and social changes, it has navigated its way forward, proving to be more flexible and adaptive than ever before and very resilient.
The leaders make it clear to citizens that that it is futile to pursue political reforms. Political debates that once buzzed at university campus in the 80s and excited me and my fellow idealistic youth are nowhere to be found.

The country’s paternalistic rulers consciously channel people’s energy into making money. The Chinese people have indeed embraced the consumer culture whole-heartedly.

The authority has been crushing hard on potential threats: Falungong was outlawed and dissidents were thrown in jail. On the other hand, it has loosened certain controls and granted people more personal freedom. We can now choose our own life styles. Lipsticks, high heel shoes, the width of trousers, and one’s period, dating and sex life all fall into a place called ‘privacy’ which didn’t really existed before.

These improvements shouldn’t be lightly dismissed. Personal freedoms and the emergence of an urban middle class can potentially lead to democratic processes, as seen in other Asian countries.

However, China seems to be different. The urban professionals and the business people have been absorbed by the Party as a new “elite” class. The entrepreneurs are welcomed into the realm of politics, and Party members have flowed to the private sectors. The mixture of power and business makes it hard to distinguish private from state-owned in today’s hybrid economy.

Back in 1989, the educated urban elites enthusiastically took part in the democratic movement not only because they felt that economic change required political relaxation but also because they were bitter about their low salaries, their poor living conditions and lack of opportunities while the children of the high-ranking leaders made easy and vast profits. In a TV interview, when asked what they wanted, Wu’er Kaixi, one of the leading students leaders at the Tiananmen replied, somehow flippantly: “Nike shoes. Lots of free time to take our girlfriends to a bar. The freedom to discuss an issue with someone.”

And it is not just Nike shoes or other designer goods that Chinese have gained. Many urban professionals are now proud owners of cars as well as their own homes. They find themselves the beneficiaries of the government’s strategic generosity policy, enjoying higher salary and other perks. Academics now can travel abroad freely. And most choose to return after their study abroad.

My sworn sister, who works for Nanjing government, has an enviable lifestyle, living in a flat she bought at a knock-down price, enjoying medical care and being driven around everywhere. She was sympathetic to us protesters back in 1989. But why would she want to protest against the government now?

Ever since the “May 4 Movement” in 1919, intellectuals and students have always been the frontrunners of mass demonstrations. In recent years, public protests have occurred all over the country like mushrooms after a spring rain, mostly by victims of land seizure or laid-off workers. With the economic downturn, 2009 will probably see more protests. But without the participants of intellectuals, such outbursts of discontentment are unlikely to grow into a national movement or cause large scale social turmoil. The urban elites are too content with their lives to upset anything, though they’d describe themselves as liberal and pro-democracy if asked.

As for today’s university students, they grew up in an affluent society. China’s growing wealth and rising position in the world have made them assertive and nationalistic. The outburst of nationalism in the wake of ‘Tibetan Unrest’ last March was just an example. At least for the time being, if the students go out to demonstrate, it will more likely be against some foreign power rather than its own government.

There’s still a cage in China. But for many, my fellow marchers from Nanjing included, the cage has grown so big that they can’t feel its limitations. The movement in 1989 didn’t reach its final goal – to bring democracy to China. But I wouldn’t describe it as a total failure. Without the effort by the hot-blooded students and all those who participated, the rulers might not have expanded the cage.

Lijia Zhang is a Beijing-based writer and the author of "Socialism is Great!" A Worker’s Memoir of the New China, which came out in May in paperback.

Another Anniversary

In Taiwan, June 4 marks another anniversary, namely the 185th day of Chen Shuibian's detention without having been convicted of a crime. Chen was first ordered to be held in custody on the night of November 11, 2008, with actual detention beginning on November 12. Taking into account the few days during which he was released in December, Chen's incarceration has lasted almost 200 days now, with no end in sight. In principle, he can be held in detention indefinitely due to the fact that he has been charged with a felony, and because prosecutors have expressed concerns that Chen might flee the country, engage in collusion with other suspects, or tamper with evidence and witnesses. If a judge agrees with these arguments, an extension can be granted every two months. Efforts by Chen and his legal team to challenge prosecutorial evidence in court have also served to lengthen the term of his detention.

Despite the fact that his detention started on November 12, the Supreme Prosecutors' Office did not indict Chen until December 12, charging him with accepting bribes, laundering political donations, and looting public funds. The extent of Chen's corruption (as well as that of his family members) is said to have extended to the tens of millions of U.S. dollars, and lasted throughout his 2000-2008 presidency. Legal proceedings are currently underway to determine the guilt or innocence of those accused. Chen's wife has also been indicted, while just yesterday his son and daughter were listed as defendants and may be charged with perjury.

When the state decides to break an individual, it can draw on an array of weapons in its arsenal, including torture, imprisonment, harassment (often extending to loved ones and friends), confiscation of property, and the denial of citizen's privileges, all of which involve the stripping away of an individual's human rights. Another form of this abrogation is detention, with its resulting loss of freedom and daily humiliations.

This is not to deny the legitimacy of detention in democratic nations. It is certainly justified when suspects are hardened and violent criminals who threaten society, but this is clearly not an issue in Chen's case. Detention can also be viewed as legitimate if it is regularly utilized in certain types of cases (such as corruption and tax-evasion). In Taiwan, however, detention of politicians on such charges is almost unprecedented. Over the years, numerous politicians of all stripes have been accused of corruption. Some have been found guilty and sent to prison, while others have been proven innocent. Only a small percentage has been subjected to detention (most are allowed the right to bail), although many suspects have fled the country and are currently living high on the hog (swine flu notwithstanding) in China and the U.S. Apart from Chen, however, no Taiwanese politician has been detained for such a long period of time on corruption charges without having first been convicted of a crime.

Regardless of whether Chen is found guilty as charged, Taiwan's judiciary has come under considerable criticism for its handling of the detention process, and in particular the decision to change judges during Chen's detention hearings. Following his indictment on December 12, the three-judge district court panel originally presiding over the case decided to order Chen's release (without bail), something that is often allowed once suspects accused of non-violent crimes are indicted. In Chen's case, however, this ruling prompted prosecutors to appeal twice to the Taiwan High Court. During the second appeal, the original panel was replaced (amidst rumors of pressure from ruling KMT lawmakers), and the new panel ruled on December 30 that Chen's detention could continue.

The events described above have prompted questions about the circumstances and motivations underlying Chen's on-going incarceration. Concerns have been raised about other aspects of Chen's case as well, including a skit performed by prosecutors at a Justice Ministry party that appeared to mock Chen's behavior when he was placed under arrest. As President Ma Ying-jeou's Harvard Law School mentor, Professor Jerome Cohen, has observed, ''At what point does the presumption of innocence becoming meaningless and pre-conviction detention morph into punishment for a crime not finally proved?''

And that is the tragedy of the current situation, for having a top-ranking politician found guilty after a trial deemed fair and impartial would constitute an immense boost in prestige for Taiwan's judicial system, while also sending a crystal-clear message to all politicians facing similar forms of temptation. However, a conviction following proceedings that suggest Chen is presumed guilty and likely to be found guilty as well would represent a major step backwards, and risk causing a reversion to traditional views of the law as being simply a tool to enhance state interests.

The other tragedy involves Taiwan's human rights record. The detention of a former president who may have committed at least some of the crimes he stands accused of hardly compares to the violence that took place in Beijing 20 years ago, not to mention the horrific abuses of human rights (and especially those of women and children) that ravage our world every day. Nonetheless, the deprival of any individual's liberty and dignity constitutes a challenge to the values that people hold dear. Understandably, Taiwan's judicial trials rank rather low on most leaders' ''to do'' lists, and after the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo fiascos it is hardly our place to lecture others about human rights. Nonetheless, indifference would not seem to be the answer, for only when people effectively question the state's authority does it grudgingly relinquish the assertion of its might over the rights of its citizens.