Tiananmen Square Anniversary Crackdown

[Gandalf]

Security is tight on the streets of Beijing this morning for the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Authorities deployed hundreds of police, many armed with rifles, to patrol the area as the anniversary of the bloody repression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square approached yesterday.

The government has never released a death toll from the violence on the night of June 3-4, 1989, but estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.

In China this week public discussion of these events remains prohibited. Newspapers, television and radio will simply ignore the anniversary, while social media sites are being strictly censored.

The ABC's China correspondent, Stephen McDonell, told AM that the security crackdown around Tiananmen Square is unprecedented.

"I've seen a few of these anniversaries here but the security this time is just amazing. You can't get out of a car anywhere near the square. I'm talking like for kilometres around the square without seeing police, without seeing the People's Armed Police," he said.

"When we drove around there last night, we were photographed, followed. Just anybody who looks they're even having a look at the square is being monitored."

Despite the crackdown in Beijing, McDonell said hundreds of thousands are expected to turn out for a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong.

"They're expecting a record turnout - I mean, seriously, they're talking hundreds of thousands of people for the candlelight vigil in Hong Kong," he said.

"But elsewhere on mainland China there'll be absolutely nothing - nothing on television, nothing on the radio, nothing in the newspapers, no spin from government, not a mention from anybody in public life about this anniversary - just a very big void."

United States urges China to free activists

Many professors, lawyers, journalists and church leaders have been detained for fear they may speak out. So have artists, including Australian Guo Jian.

Rights group Amnesty International said at least 66 people have been detained in connection with the anniversary.

US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said China was a growing country and should allow more space for political discussion about the authorities' suppression of the mass sit-in.

"We've very clearly called on the Chinese authorities to release all the activists, journalists and lawyers who have been detained ahead of the 25th anniversary," Ms Harf told reporters.

"I think it's time to allow some more space, quite frankly, for discussion in their own country, particularly around this kind of anniversary," she added.

A monitoring service said several Google websites have also been blocked in China as authorities stepped up arrests and censorship before the anniversary.

After initially tolerating the student-led demonstrations in the spring of 1989, the Communist Party sent in troops to crush a rare display of public defiance.

Stunned by the government's harsh response to the Tiananmen movement that officials have termed "counter-revolutionary", and tired of decades of turmoil under Communist rule, many Chinese people now balk at the idea of mass revolution.

Instead, they chase new opportunities offered by the country's booming economic growth.

And while the authorities have moved swiftly to squash criticism of the one-party system, people are enjoying the kind of individual freedoms never accorded them before.

They can report on corrupt officials, sue the government for pollution and miscarriages of justice, and stage protests for labour and environmental rights.

The Chinese government has also loosened the one-child policy, allowing many urban couples to have two children.

It has been effective, too, in scrubbing out memories of the 1989 protests. Many young people, indoctrinated by years of "patriotic education", have no inkling of the movement.

Beijing has forced many of the student leaders into exile in the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where they are effectively neutralised, being barred from the mainland.

"Once we leave China, we've left the battlefield," said Wu'er Kaixi, a leading figure in the pro-democracy movement who now lives in Taiwan. "We are no longer the main actors on the stage."

Wang Dan, who was one of the most visible leaders in the movement and is also in exile in Taiwan, said he was able to hold a "democracy salon" - an open forum for intellectuals to discuss political problems - at Peking University 25 years ago.

"Everyone knows that anyone who dares to do anything like that these days will be detained. This is a clear regression from where we were back then."

For me, the most interesting thing in this article is that "public discussion of these events remains prohibited," does this include things like webforums hosted in China?

[mr friendly guy]

Unlikely to stop webforum discussion. People will just use euphemisms.

The funny thing about propaganda, is that the protests initially started out as a complaint against corruption by certain members of the CCP. Its just that over here we focus in on the democracy part.

[Gandalf]

Unlikely to stop webforum discussion. People will just use euphemisms.

I've been reading about those, and how some Chinese artists have found ways around the censors. My favourite remains the currently censored "big yellow duck".

I find myself wondering if this policy will ever change. Are they just hoping that given enough time and gaoled dissidents, people will stop caring?

[LadyTevar]

National Geographic

25 Years Later, Lessons From Tiananmen Square Crackdown
A quarter century after democracy protests ended in bloodshed, Chinese still clamor for clean government and courts.

Last night I drove through a rain-swept Tiananmen Square. It was dark, silent, eerily deserted—a vast contrast to the unruly scene 25 years ago when I witnessed disheveled hunger-striking protesters sacked out in tents, creating a pro-democracy shantytown.

There was guitar music, and there were banners proclaiming: "I NEED FOOD BUT I'D RATHER DIE FOR DEMOCRACY," and a 33-foot-tall Goddess of Democracy statue erected defiantly at the north end of Tiananmen, staring down a gigantic portrait of Chairman Mao.

"We were so peaceful, so honest," recalled former student leader Wuer Kaixi last week. "So naive." (Related: "Tiananmen Haunts Photographer Brothers After 25 Years.")

Just off the square, I recall marveling at the colonial-style Bank of China building where I did my banking back then; from its roof hung a vast white vertical sign that warned: "Don't be a vault for corruption."

A quarter century later, Chinese are still not allowed to debate publicly what happened June 4, when soldiers gunned down pro-democracy protesters and tanks rolled through the square, their treads chewing up the paving stones stained red with blood. I and many others vividly recall the hot, zinging sound of bullets, the gut-wrenching sight of crumpled bodies.

A Rebellion Suppressed

But the regime's Tiananmen taboo cloaks in mystery the exact death toll even now. (Hospital records, albeit incomplete, indicated more than a thousand died). In advance of this year's anniversary, authorities detained activists, a lawyer, media workers, some Buddhists; most have been held in places unknown. (Related: Photographer Stuart Franklin Remembers Tiananmen Square.)

And yet, one thing remains very clear: Many Chinese still smolder with anger at injustices spawned by corrupt Communist Party cadres and tainted courts.

Just before the June 1989 crackdown, Tiananmen was a raucous festival of idealism and naïiveté. "I don't know what democracy is," one Beijing woman admitted to me as she marveled at the scene, "but China needs more of it." In the crowds, I saw a Qinghua University student holding a poster with lyrics from a Joan Baez song scribbled on it; another's T-shirt read, "We shall overcome."

But the roots of the protest movement were also economic; inflation had surged in the mid-1980s. Sons of senior leaders such as Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang were seen to have benefited unfairly from the rewards of Deng's free-market reforms.

"Without corruption, prices wouldn't rise," read the banners of protesters marching toward the square, passing long-haired student marshals wearing headbands who directed traffic alongside white-gloved police.

That innocence was shattered late on the evening of June 3. Walking at the edge of Tiananmen Square in darkness, I heard disembodied shouts, unseen bullets whizzing past my head. I saw a man near me sag, a red stain blossoming across his white shirt; he was tossed onto a three-wheeled cart by some rescuers who quickly dashed away.

People beat on the sides of an armored vehicle with clubs and metal rods. The grainy-gray light of dawn the next morning revealed rows of soldiers lying on their bellies on the ground, pointing machine guns toward yelling civilians. They fired. I ducked low. Loudspeakers mounted on streetlamps droned, "The rebellion has been suppressed."

Going After Corruption

President Xi Jinping himself has warned that corruption threatens the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party. His team is well aware that popular unrest has toppled authoritarian regimes all over the developing world—or in some cases set them wobbling precariously. Xi seems determined to avoid a similar fate.

Since becoming China's president in March 2013, he's kicked off an unusually intense anti-corruption drive and seems poised to put criminal courts on a more solid legal footing. Officials requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic reveal Xi will seek to improve rule of law and the court system at a major Communist Party gathering later this year.

"Xi wants to focus on the judicial system, especially in anti-corruption cases, so the public won't just think it all depends on party whim," says Chris Johnson, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

The first high-ranking official to be convicted of corruption under Xi's watch was former railways minister Liu Zhijun, who received a suspended death sentence for accepting bribes worth more than ten million dollars (almost certainly a conservative figure).

Liu received kickbacks for contracts that had a negative impact on testing and safety procedures in China's multibillion-dollar high-speed rail network. The system was plagued by safety scandals, including the crash of a high-speed train near Wenzhou in 2011 that killed 40 people and triggered a national outcry.

Will Xi's reforms be too little, too late? Public anger has not exploded openly on the scale of 1989, but China still sees thousands of localized protests every year. They tend to focus on two main targets: official abuses and China's elite "princelings." These are younger relatives of revolutionary elders who helped Mao Zedong claw his way to power in 1949.

With their "red pedigrees," princelings have enjoyed more than their fair share of China's economic miracle, openly flaunting their wealth and defying the law.

Critics often focus on princelings driving flashy imported cars—ten years ago they were BMWs, more recently Ferraris—and invoking their powerful fathers' names to get out of trouble. (Trouble, as in running over a pedestrian.)

President Xi—himself a princeling—has tried to remedy that image by targeting what he calls "tigers and flies"—meaning both high- and low-level officials—in the drive against official abuses. Sources inside the party say Xi also has set his sights on the unholy alliance between princelings and bosses of China's vast state-owned enterprises—fiefdoms such as the key energy sector—which oppose some of the economic reforms that Xi deems necessary to keep China's slowing economy ticking along.

Politburo Power Play?

By publicly targeting crooked cadres, high and low, Xi has several aims: shore up public confidence in the system, consolidate his own power, and silence critics who might derail anticipated economic, judicial, and military reforms.

Is Xi's campaign real or just part of another Politburo power play? "It's both," concludes exile Wang Juntao, now based in New Jersey. "Xi knows he needs a serious anti-corruption campaign to save the Communist Party. But he also wants to defend some high-ranking families' interests and crush his political rivals."

In 1989 Wang was a prominent activist-scholar who sympathized with the student protesters. After the bloodbath, Chinese officials accused him of being a mastermind behind the Tiananmen unrest. In 1991 he was sentenced to 13 years—an unusually harsh jail term—on charges of intent to overthrow the government and spreading "counterrevolutionary propaganda." Wang was released in 1994 and allowed to travel to the U.S. on medical parole.

China's economy has surged at double-digit rates over most of the past three decades, lifting millions out of poverty but also making a lot of the rich even richer.

During the tragic Beijing spring of 1989, many citizens and bureaucrats alike yearned for clean government out of "a sense of morality," says Wang. "But now it involves powerful vested interests. Today people hate corruption if it hurts their interests. It's interest-based—not idea-based the way it was back then."

Money as a Core Value

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping declared, "To get rich is glorious" nearly a quarter century ago, overturning communist orthodoxy. Over the years, money took over from Marxism as a motivating force.

"People's mind-set changed. Their value system got twisted," explains Hou Xiaotian, who after June 4 was detained four times for seeking to improve the plight of Chinese political prisoners, including then husband Wang Juntao.

She continued her lobbying after emigrating to the United States. But after Wang was released in 1994, she began focusing on her job as a Wall Street financial analyst. She formed her own company and in 2012 returned to Beijing to open its office there. Hou was saddened by what she describes as a moral vacuum in Chinese society, and she welcomes the current anti-graft drive. "Money had become the core value," she recalls. "People were bragging about how corrupt they were."

The dynamics of Chinese corruption are often misunderstood, insists former student leader Wuer Kaixi. A charismatic and impassioned speaker, Wuer was named number two on Beijing's "most wanted" list after the June 4 bloodletting. He escaped from China and now lives in exile in Taiwan.

Before the crackdown, Wuer and other student leaders shot to fame when the motley group—with jeans, headbands, and long hair—met Li Peng, then China's prime minister, in the Great Hall of the People on May 18, 1989, for a rare televised dialogue. They were supposed to negotiate an end to the protests. Dressed in hospital pajamas, Wuer chided Li for being late. ("Thousands of hunger strikers are waiting," he famously told him.) The talks fizzled when neither side would budge.

Wuer says he's frustrated by the Western perception that official corruption is just bribery committed by crooked high-level individuals. "In China, the whole system is corrupt," he insists.

The nexus of princelings and their wealthy patrons ensures them virtual monopolies in key sectors of the economy. "Imagine the system as a tree that looks healthy and beautiful; Western investors want to nurture it. But actually the whole tree is poisoned," says Wuer. "If someone goes out of their way to loot a little more than the others, the system will cut off that ugly branch. Some might call this an anti-corruption drive. But in fact, it's just trimming."

Some quite large, ugly branches have fallen in recent years. China was rocked by the sensational 2012 purge of then Politburo member Bo Xilai, a charismatic Chongqing party secretary who became famous for inventing Mao-style socialist ditties and ruthlessly cracking down on what he said were underworld gangs.

Today Bo is serving life in prison, accused of corruption and abuses of power. His crackdown turned out to be politically motivated. His wife, Gu Kailai, apparently thought she was untouchable in her excesses; she's also behind bars, convicted of murdering a British businessman.

Using Corruption Charges to Undercut Political Rivals

Now the rumored purge of an even more prominent Politburo power player—domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang—is the talk of the town. An erstwhile defender of now purged Bo, Zhou is believed to be under virtual house arrest.

Reuters has reported more than 300 of his allies and relatives have been detained or questioned as part of China's biggest corruption scandal in six decades. By undermining Zhou's influence, Xi not only shows he is indeed nabbing corrupt "tigers" but also conveniently removes the last important stronghold of high-level support for Bo.

Using corruption charges to undercut political rivals is a familiar tactic. Two years ago, controversial former Beijing mayor Chen Xitong declared in a newly published book that he was made a "scapegoat" for Tiananmen and unjustly sentenced to 16 years on corruption charges. (He was released early on medical parole in 2006.)

Chen is best known as a hardliner who'd exaggerated the threat posed by the 1989 student demonstrations, in order to prod China's aging strongman Deng to crack down. In Conversations with Chen Xitong, authored by Chinese scholar Yao Jianfu, Chen claims his trial was a miscarriage of justice, lays out reams of evidence, and calls for a retrial. The book's Hong Kong publisher, Bao Pu, said one message of the book was that "in these purges—including that of Bo Xilai—the law is not playing a role in the judicial process. It's politics."

Paradoxically, publisher Bao's father is Bao Tong, a former policy adviser to the late Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, who was himself purged 25 years ago for showing sympathy to the demonstrators. (Bao Tong was the first person arrested during the Beijing Spring.)

His boss Zhao had desperately tried to avert a violent crackdown. On May 28, Zhao and other officials had visited convalescing hunger strikers in a hospital. (One patient wanted to debate. "It's your duty to fight corruption!" he told Zhao. "You should start with your own sons!")

The following morning around dawn, Zhao tried to persuade demonstrators to leave. He materialized in Tiananmen Square, gripping a red loudspeaker and pleading with the protesters to go home: "You're still young. Think of the future."

Tearfully, he muttered, "We've come too late," but the respectful students didn't know what Zhao apparently knew already—a crackdown was looming. They asked for Zhao's autograph, and he left after 20 minutes, never to be seen in public again. He died under house arrest in 2005.

Flipping through my tattered notes and yellowing photographs of June 4, I was reminded of a grim joke my Beijing friends had related before the crackdown. It reflected the public's distaste for high-handed princelings and referred to the power struggle that pitted Deng against the more moderate Zhao.

The joke goes like this: Deng says, "All we need to do is kill a few young people, and this unrest will be finished." Zhao is aghast and asks, "How many? Twenty?" Deng shakes his head no. Zhao presses further. "Two hundred?" Again Deng says no. "Two thousand?" asks Zhao, now agitated.

Finally Deng answers, "No, only two." Relieved, Zhao then asks, "Which two?" Deng answers: "Your son and my son."

All of China is now watching to see how well Xi and his team have learned from Tiananmen's bitter lessons—or whether vested interests and political inertia doom them to make the same mistakes all over again.

[montypython]

My old man told me back then that Deng's decisions were necessary for the economic development of China, despite at the time hearing on the evening news over and over about how horrible the CCP was acting etc. While I did feel some sympathy for the protestors in their anti-corruption ideals, at the same time simply rushing through political change didn't make sense with me (I was a big reader of political fiction and books even back then), and the events of the Soviet collapse and the Yugoslav wars made me understand my old man's thinking.

The thing that bugs me about how the dissidents et al argue about how the anti-corruption protest then was 'morally-focused' and how current CCP anti-corruption efforts are "interest-focused" is how they seem to treat morality in a type of absolute vacuum, which is something I find problematic in Chinese culture both on the mainland and Taiwan. Anti-corruption has always been interest focused, whether it be the King's interest in a European kingdom or the public interest in the Roman Republic, but it is still an interest. A good system works by balancing interests together to work in a integrative constructive fashion much more so than the notion of moral virtuosity. This is something that is affected by resources and development, as the US itself is a good example of.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

My old man told me back then that Deng's decisions were necessary for the economic development of China, despite at the time hearing on the evening news over and over about how horrible the CCP was acting etc. While I did feel some sympathy for the protestors in their anti-corruption ideals, at the same time simply rushing through political change didn't make sense with me (I was a big reader of political fiction and books even back then), and the events of the Soviet collapse and the Yugoslav wars made me understand my old man's thinking.

The thing that bugs me about how the dissidents et al argue about how the anti-corruption protest then was 'morally-focused' and how current CCP anti-corruption efforts are "interest-focused" is how they seem to treat morality in a type of absolute vacuum, which is something I find problematic in Chinese culture both on the mainland and Taiwan. Anti-corruption has always been interest focused, whether it be the King's interest in a European kingdom or the public interest in the Roman Republic, but it is still an interest. A good system works by balancing interests together to work in a integrative constructive fashion much more so than the notion of moral virtuosity. This is something that is affected by resources and development, as the US itself is a good example of.

CCP anti-corruption efforts are either vendetta driven, or some fool was stupid enough to let his misdeeds leak out to public. Which is the point. It's too lobsided to "interest focused", that is, the preservation of the CCP. If people were really the key focus, you wouldn't have farmers getting beaten up just because they wanted to lodge a petition in the capital.

[montypython]

My old man told me back then that Deng's decisions were necessary for the economic development of China, despite at the time hearing on the evening news over and over about how horrible the CCP was acting etc. While I did feel some sympathy for the protestors in their anti-corruption ideals, at the same time simply rushing through political change didn't make sense with me (I was a big reader of political fiction and books even back then), and the events of the Soviet collapse and the Yugoslav wars made me understand my old man's thinking.

The thing that bugs me about how the dissidents et al argue about how the anti-corruption protest then was 'morally-focused' and how current CCP anti-corruption efforts are "interest-focused" is how they seem to treat morality in a type of absolute vacuum, which is something I find problematic in Chinese culture both on the mainland and Taiwan. Anti-corruption has always been interest focused, whether it be the King's interest in a European kingdom or the public interest in the Roman Republic, but it is still an interest. A good system works by balancing interests together to work in a integrative constructive fashion much more so than the notion of moral virtuosity. This is something that is affected by resources and development, as the US itself is a good example of.

CCP anti-corruption efforts are either vendetta driven, or some fool was stupid enough to let his misdeeds leak out to public. Which is the point. It's too lobsided to "interest focused", that is, the preservation of the CCP. If people were really the key focus, you wouldn't have farmers getting beaten up just because they wanted to lodge a petition in the capital.

As I mentioned earlier, the King's Interest in European countries was no less than the CCP's interest in China in terms of underpinning anti-corruption approaches in ways. Even the US in its history was no different, such as Jacksonian era conflicts over political positions or the assassination of the Kentucky governor in 1899. The key thing in the European Kingdoms (or Imperial China for that matter) is to make the monarch's interest coincide with the public's needs, that's what smart leaders/governments do. It is not merely doing the public good out of pure altruism, which does not exist in the sociopolitical system of a state.

[mr friendly guy]

Unlikely to stop webforum discussion. People will just use euphemisms.

I've been reading about those, and how some Chinese artists have found ways around the censors. My favourite remains the currently censored "big yellow duck".

I find myself wondering if this policy will ever change. Are they just hoping that given enough time and gaoled dissidents, people will stop caring?

How many Americans remember the bonus marches where President Hoover ordered tanks in to evict protesters from Washington DC? That should help answer your question.

My old man told me back then that Deng's decisions were necessary for the economic development of China, despite at the time hearing on the evening news over and over about how horrible the CCP was acting etc. While I did feel some sympathy for the protestors in their anti-corruption ideals, at the same time simply rushing through political change didn't make sense with me (I was a big reader of political fiction and books even back then), and the events of the Soviet collapse and the Yugoslav wars made me understand my old man's thinking.
.

I saw a documentary on that. At the time the CCP was divided by those who wanted to carry out reforms and those who were reluctant to. As these things tend to go, people find it hard to differentiate between the economic reforms and political reforms. Historically the USSR attempted both at the same time, while the PRC focussed on just the former. However they were tarred with the same brush in China, thus the demonstrators weaken Deng's power in the Politburo and there was a real possibility that the reforms would stall. Fortunately Deng got his PLA buddies involved and they push through the reforms China needed.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

As I mentioned earlier, the King's Interest in European countries was no less than the CCP's interest in China in terms of underpinning anti-corruption approaches in ways. Even the US in its history was no different, such as Jacksonian era conflicts over political positions or the assassination of the Kentucky governor in 1899. The key thing in the European Kingdoms (or Imperial China for that matter) is to make the monarch's interest coincide with the public's needs, that's what smart leaders/governments do. It is not merely doing the public good out of pure altruism, which does not exist in the sociopolitical system of a state.

Yet a government can rule so long as it has the moral authority to do so in the eyes of the people. Focus too much on its own interests, and it sooner or later loses that moral authority and it implodes as a result. And China will probably run into the same cyclical dynastic problem that has so plagued its 5000 year existence.

[ray245]

That assumes that modern China is actually still part of the same dynastic cycle if it even exist in the first place. All government will eventually collapse, what matters is whether it collapsed via relatively peaceful reform or violent revolution.

[K. A. Pital]

The richer technocratic East Asian governments are less prone to collapse violently even if they are running into problems. The LDP in Japan has been in power for decades. It is simply wishful thinking on part of the Western nations that somehow Asian governments become less efficient and fail. It is true that they become more liberal after some time, but the country keeps functioning meanwhile.

As for the subject at hand - if the crackdown prevented the disintegration of China by the USSR scenario, then it was necessary to prevent greater bloodshed, as blood still flows in the former USSR even 20 years after its disintegration. If not, then it was not worth it.

[mr friendly guy]

I am not sure if the protests had they succeeded would have caused a split in China no matter how much some hawkish Western sources cough National Endowment for Democracy cough, er I mean pro democracy sources wish it. For one a lot of those Han Chinese are unlikely to favour splitting from Tibet or Xinjiang, even if they hate corruption and want more accountability. Heck, Wu'er Kaixi is a Uyghur and if anything he advocates a reunification with Taiwan (albeit without the CCP in power and under a democratic system). Now if they did succeed, it would depend on whether the new government is strong enough to maintain order, keep services going or we would get a situation like the weakening of ex Soviet economies. I am not sure a new government could maintain all that and keep on with the reforms.

As noted there was a real risk that reform would stall even though it was ultimately suppressed, and that would have caused a bigger tragedy.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The richer technocratic East Asian governments are less prone to collapse violently even if they are running into problems. The LDP in Japan has been in power for decades. It is simply wishful thinking on part of the Western nations that somehow Asian governments become less efficient and fail. It is true that they become more liberal after some time, but the country keeps functioning meanwhile.

As for the subject at hand - if the crackdown prevented the disintegration of China by the USSR scenario, then it was necessary to prevent greater bloodshed, as blood still flows in the former USSR even 20 years after its disintegration. If not, then it was not worth it.

Well, in Japan, the real power is in the Keidaren, or rather, the oligarchic zaibatsu. China on the other hand, has many centers of power.

The only way China will disintegrate is only if there was wide spread unrest throughout the country, and the army is incapable of queling the unrest. Those conditions were not quite met at Tiananmen.