16
years after Tiananmen Square
will democracy be another 30 years
in coming?
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
June 1, 2005
LONDON - Deng Xiaoping, the former
paramount leader, once promised that China would be a
democracy by the year 2035. (See his officially published
'Collected Works'.) Then 16 years ago came the massacre
of the protesting students in Tiananmen Square and the
world-wide reputation of Deng, until then regarded as the
great reformer of the moribund, Chinese command economy,
took a dip downward from which he has never truly
recovered despite the onward march of the Chinese
economy.
The big question remains topical:
when will democracy arrive in China? There have been, and
are, a significant number of would-be reformers in the
higher ranks- from the recently deceased, former party
chief, Zhao Ziyang who appeared in Tiananmen Square at
the height of the protests to tell the students he had
come "too late", to the current premier, Wen Jiabao, who
two years' ago, in a supposedly secret speech, but one
widely disseminated in liberal newspapers, appeared to be
emulating Gorbachev's appeal for glasnost when he said,
"our first step should to open the flow of information-
only then can we enable the public to supervise the
government and prevent social instability", to Zeng
Quinghong, appointed to the politburo's standing
committee in 2002, who has made private speeches in which
he has reportedly made clear that he is in favor of
direct elections at all local levels and the introduction
of new political parties. But these voices, scattered
among the Chinese leadership, are only one
factor.
Democracy in China will not arrive
until the Chinese people themselves push. Civil society
in China is still weak. Karl Marx explained that the
stagnation of imperial China owed much to the lack of a
strong bourgeoisie.
There is nothing like the Catholic
Church of Poland which was the prime force in catalyzing
the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe. Nor is
there anything resembling the old democratic parties of
Hungary, or the large dissident intellectual circles of
Czechoslovakia.
China does have a revolutionary
heritage rooted in its intellectual class, dating back at
least to Sun Yat-sen, founder of the post-imperial
Chinese republic, but that class still has to find a way
to spread its message. The lesson of Tiananmen Square,
which becomes clearer with the passing of time, was that
the students failed, not so much because of the
ruthlessness of Deng's repression, but because they
refused to make alliances with other social groups.
During their protest the students
linked arms to prevent outsiders joining the
demonstrations. Even after 40 years of communism, the old
Confucian values rating mental labor above manual
remained intact. Not until the final week in May did the
students, aware that the army was likely to be brought
in, seek support in the factories.
Despite the airs and graces of the
students, sections of the working class did mobilize. The
official newspaper, "Workers' Daily", reported that
"so-called 'workers' organizations' sprouted up
everywhere in various disguises".
More surprisingly, entrepreneurial
groups also mobilized, able to engage in action without
fear of losing jobs and grants. They even bought the
students fax machines. They too were given the brush off
by the students who, doubtlessly unconsciously, fused
Confucian prejudice against business people with
communist claptrap on capitalist exploitation.
Taiwan, where democracy has
advanced so successfully the last two decades, shows that
the Confucian heritage does not have to be a barrier to
modern cross-class alliances. But Tianamen Square showed
us what a lot of hard work lies ahead to develop China's
civil society in a similar way. It has certainly not got
to the point where, as one of China's leading dissidents,
Wei Jingsheng, optimistically told me, that "every
ordinary Chinese now recognizes the need for a complete
change in the dictatorship inside China".
The danger today, as the
extraordinary economic growth of China continues and with
it the rapid growth of a materially-focused bourgeoisie,
is that the cause of democracy, free speech and human
rights will not be given the focused energy that is
needed to push them along. It is a telling indictment of
China's top heavy system that reform is more talked about
by people who hold, or who have held, high positions than
the students and young educated professionals
themselves.
It would be ironic if Deng's
timetable is about right and we have to sit and wait for
a new generation to grow up - the one only just being
born - that like second generation middle classes
elsewhere, thinks more politically and humanistically
than materially and one that is broadminded enough to
forge alliances, especially with the working class. The
year of democracy in China might well be 2035.
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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