The ghost of Tiananmen still haunts
However big China’s economy grows, its blemished Communist past still hangs around its neck.
However high China’s skyscrapers soar, however huge the economy grows, however hurriedly the belt and road girdle the earth, the blemished history of the country’s Communist Party still hangs heavily around its neck. Hidden, unresolved shadows from the past continue to haunt China’s leaders and people — and none more so than the events of 30 years ago that culminated in the deployment of the People’s Liberation Army against students, workers and others on and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4.
These events retain their significance for the rest of the world, including Australia, since they highlight how often and how easily the Chinese party-state — distinguished by its single-mindedness, its ruthlessness, its focus on survival — has been, and continues to be, underestimated.
After the military actions of 1989 had been followed by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s renewed advocacy of economic growth measures, the Western world — seeking business opportunities for itself and believing that it could somehow help change China — soon re-engaged with Beijing.
A decade ago, American author James Mann wrote in his seminal book The China Fantasy: “American and European business and government leaders … foster an elaborate set of illusions about China, centred on the belief that commerce will lead inevitably to political change and democracy”. Such illusions — and the genuine commercial opportunities that emerged alongside them — began in 1976 with the death of Mao Zedong, the great dictator of the People’s Republic. The party-state had then taken the economy-opening route that much of the party elite had urged on Mao before — driving him to counter-attack via the Cultural Revolution.
This post-Mao reformism spread steadily into social life, too. The 1980s thus saw China regain some of the sprightliness in debates and public expression, that it last saw a half-century earlier, before the Japanese invasion.
But the party was not minded to reflect this intellectual querulousness in formal structural change. Its elite families were already benefiting materially from the reforms without conceding political ground.
Growing student and worker impatience spurred demonstrations, with concerns about how China was run compounded by nationwide anger about inflation and by rumours of corruption. Then — almost before the puzzled party establishment had started to consider whether it might indeed have serious questions to answer — student leaders found themselves in the Great Hall of the People, smoking, feet on tables, challenging Premier Li Peng himself. This had to stop.
Principles betrayed
When Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, visited Beijing from May 15 to 18, he met Deng in the Great Hall and could see clearly the agitation in the square outside. He drew the opposite conclusion from his Chinese comrades about how to respond to such popular movements, strengthening his commitment to perestroika and glasnost — reform and opening.
The Chinese party elite soon drew its own conclusion about what went wrong in the Soviet Union too, blaming Gorbachev for betraying party principles and for besmirching the great leader Joseph Stalin. The Chinese party jettisoned its general secretary Zhao Ziyang — who had begun to consider pulling party committees out of their oversight role in some government ministries — as a weak compromiser and decided that granting any further room for debate would trigger an existential crisis. It was time for the party to play its trump card, deploying its own army in Beijing itself.
Seven retired generals, including former defence minister Zhang Aiping, who heard about the move dispatched an urgent letter to the party leadership on May 21: “We as old soldiers make the following request: since the People’s Army belongs to the people, it cannot stand against the people, much less kill the people, and must not be permitted to fire on the people and cause bloodshed; to prevent the situation from escalating, the army must not enter the city.”
They were brushed aside. Many of the young soldiers who entered Beijing had never been to the capital before and expected to be welcomed by the residents as they confronted those who, they were told, were enemies of China. Troops entered Beijing from each direction towards Tiananmen Square, while thousands were also secreted within the Great Hall itself. Adrenalin was understandably pumping, shots were fired prematurely and members of loyal party families living in elite apartments west of the square were among those killed in this atmosphere of deadly confusion.
The first contingent of troops entered the square at about 1am on June 4. Live rounds were shot at civilians there and at other areas of central Beijing. No official death toll has been released but estimates range from several hundred to several thousand. Following the military engagement, up to 10,000 people were arrested — including most of the leaders of the protests who had refused to or were unable to flee China. Several dozen were later executed.
The most famous, and poignant, incident to reach world attention featured “tank man” — a lone, bespectacled figure carrying a shopping bag who walked in front of a contingent of 13 tanks that were driving west from the square on June 5. He moved sideways to try to halt the convoy and boarded a tank to speak to the soldiers inside before being pulled away by young men who emerged from the watching crowd — whether to rescue him or to arrest him after emerging from the nearby Public Security Ministry remains unknown, as is his fate.
Six days after the army cleared Tiananmen, Australian prime minister Bob Hawke shook with uncontrollable emotion, weeping as he addressed the huge crowd, including hundreds of Chinese students, gathered in Parliament House for a memorial service. Live on TV, without prior consultation, he announced that all Chinese students then in Australia could stay. The numbers had recently ratcheted up to 40,000. Almost all took up the offer.
Cultural influx
Renowned Sinologist John Fitzgerald, China specialist at Swinburne University, tells The Weekend Australian that while the students had an immediate impact on Australia’s cities, their long-term contributions were probably more important: “They brought Shanghai and Beijing dialects on to city streets, swelled the congregations in Pentecostal churches, opened computer repair shops and spicy-food restaurants in inner suburbs, revived local Chinese language schools and newspapers, introduced Chinese folk music to multicultural festivals, and much else besides.”
Many of the men wanted to return to China and make their fortunes in that country’s incredible growth spurt, he says, while sometimes their wives and partners held them back. “In Australia they could raise their children with clear air and clean food and without the strict conformity of Chinese school life.”
Most important, they raised and educated the first large cohort of young Australians whose parents came from China. “This really was a first,” says Fitzgerald. “This first generation of Australian-made Australians from China now design office towers, fix dentures, fly planes, account for cashflows, and keep us safe. They are very grateful to Bob Hawke — and Australia has much to be thankful for as well.”
They knew from experience how brutal China’s communist party could be, “yet they grew to recognise its achievements. Over the years they oiled the wheels of commercial and academic exchanges, helping partners in China get to know Australia a little better and helping Australians to find working partners in China.
“And yet every year they commemorate June 4 to pay their respects to those who died, and remind Australians of the darker side of the party’s achievements.”
If ever it may have been tempted to take for granted the army that delivered it power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party can no longer do so following 1989. After the role of party general secretary, the most important and powerful for a Chinese leader is chairman of the central military commission. President Xi Jinping has immersed himself in this role, remaking the military and boosting its modernisation program while restructuring its command and replacing old leaders who have been charged with corruption.
Realising the reputational and other risks of again deploying soldiers domestically, the party has extended greatly the role of the People’s Armed Police in enforcing domestic security, and 18 months ago placed it under the direct control also of the CMC.
But Xi has successfully deployed even more resources into achieving control through ubiquitous surveillance — with cameras on almost every street, with groundbreaking facial recognition technology, through what he calls “cyber sovereignty” including the emerging social credit program and monitoring of the entire online realm.
Nevertheless, no chances are being taken in the real world as well as the virtual world. Tiananmen Square — where Mao’s remains can still be viewed, reverently but briskly — can now be entered only from a couple of access points, with all visitors and their bags scanned.
Patriotic domestic tourists flock to the dawn flag-raising on the square, but the days when tots and their grandads went there to fly kites, celebrating the great space surrounded by grand historic buildings, have long gone. The square will be especially locked down next Tuesday. Such anniversaries carry great weight in China.
History buried
This October 1 marks the 70th anniversary of the declaration by Mao of the People’s Republic of China, from the Tiananmen Gate — the Gate of Heavenly Peace — following the communists’ victory in the civil war against the Kuomintang or Nationalists. On July 23, 2021, the party will celebrate the centenary of its founding.
But the authorities in Beijing, while scrupulously noting such anniversaries, are ambivalent about them all. As well as underlining the remarkable longevity and success of the party and the state that it established, recalling great events of the past also may prompt some in the present population to make unwelcome comparisons, dredge up old issues that remain unsettled. The party still harbours fears about the people it rules. So it is most unlikely, based on previous significant anniversaries, that China will even allow any popular “mass events” to celebrate these occasions.
How much less does it tolerate any acknowledgment, even any level of information, about the turbulent and traumatic events that culminated in the killing of thousands of people in and around the 600-year-old Tiananmen Square that stands at the heart of Beijing, and thus of China, 30 years ago.
Control of China’s history is one of the party’s top priorities. During the past week, and with increasing intensity in the remaining days before the anniversary, “stability maintenance” has been a key concern around the country — where demonstrations against corruption and for greater openness were widespread in 1989 — but especially in the capital.
Those who have form in posting remarks or attempting commemorations about Tiananmen — or other events disconcerting to the authorities — are being detained and watched ever more closely in a form of house arrest, or are being forcibly “travelled” or “vacationed”. They are escorted by police to a remote destination until the anniversary has passed.
References in any internet post or utterance that contains the numbers 4 and 6 — the date and month of the attack — are carefully scanned for subversive intent and in most cases simply barred.
Reuters cites four censors working at Chinese internet companies Bytedance, Weibo Corp and Baidu as confirming that their tools to detect and block references to the 1989 events robotically have reached unprecedented levels of accuracy via voice and image recognition technology — with artificial intelligence greatly enhancing their efficiency. They claim that they are now able to censor up to seven posts a minute.
An official from the Cyberspace Administration of China, which has been set up and officially led by Xi, says: “There is constant communication with (China’s internet) companies during this time.”
Turning point
Louisa Lim, author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia; Tiananmen Revisited and a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, tells The Weekend Australian: “Tiananmen was a turning point for China in so many ways — it marked an end to political liberalisation while indirectly serving to kickstart the country’s rapid economic growth.”
The massive protests were a motivating factor for the recent growth of the “stability maintenance” apparatus, and for today’s huge ideological campaign of patriotic education.
Lim says the fact “it continues to be a festering wound for the leadership is evidenced in the extraordinary dedication of resources to muzzling discussion of the events of June 4” and shows “just how nervous the Communist Party itself is of the power of those events 30 years ago”.
Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, says democratisation was never seriously on China’s agenda, although “it was not unreasonable for China watchers of the 1980s to have hoped that this might happen”.
He says Hu Yaobang, as party general secretary from 1982 to 1987, “toyed with changes Deng did not approve of. This optimism also underpinned the rise of the protest movement and the excitement of the Beijing protesters that fateful (northern) spring”, their emotions intensified by Hu’s death in April.
“The massacre set the party-state firmly on its post-Mao path, which was to move beyond Maoist totalitarianism and on to the consultative Leninist model which remains essentially in place even under Xi Jinping today.”
Tsang says Xi has “both pushed this system to its limits and has weakened its ‘consultative’ side in policymaking by asserting himself as a strongman. This may well reduce the resilience of this system, but it remains in place. To me this is the most important legacy of Tiananmen 1989 — it resulted in the party-state finding a more resilient way forward to sustain itself as an authoritarian system.
“For all the dehumanising effect of the Maoist era, the human spirit was not fully destroyed, even less eradicated. Despite the resilience of the consultative Leninist system, the day may yet come when a movement emerges among the people of China to demand rights that citizens in democracies routinely enjoy.”
Rowan Callick was China correspondent for The Australian.
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