Tiananmen 20-Year Anniversary
4 Jun 2009
Forgetting Tank Man Costs China Dearly
China's Government has been amazingly successful at deleting the 4 June "incident" from history, but forgetting comes at a terrible price, writes Dan Edwards in Beijing
Last night two friends and I were turned back as we tried to get into Tiananmen Square. The authorities had closed the square to the public, leaving a vast empty space in the heart of the capital, surrounded by uniformed and plain-clothed security personnel of every description.Like many Australians roughly my age, my first distinct memories of China are images of blood-soaked civilians rushing along Beijing's darkened streets as distressed television journalists describe the slaughter taking place around them. And then, a day or two later, came one of modern history's most indelible images: a lone man armed only with plastic shopping bags defiantly staring down a line of tanks on a deserted Beijing avenue.
My 16-year-old self had no idea that I would one day come to know those Beijing streets well. Nearly two decades later, in April 2007, I walked down Chang'an Avenue for the first time and watched the traffic flow over the spot where "Tank Man" once stood. I pointed out the site and explained its significance to a young woman who would later become my wife.
It took a lot of explaining. Even though my wife was born and raised in China, she was only eight when the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations were bloodily suppressed in Beijing on the night of 3-4 June. She had never seen the pictures and no-one had ever told her what happened. All she remembers are whispers about one local man from her hometown in west China, who was in Beijing in June 1989 and mysteriously never returned.
When my wife learned something of the truth about the events that unfolded in and around Tiananmen Square 20 years ago, she asked her mother if she knew that hundreds, possibly thousands of Chinese civilians had been gunned down in the street by the People's Liberation Army. "That's not true," her mother replied quickly, "nobody was killed" — and refused to discuss the matter further.
Even some youngsters who were in Beijing in 1989 have no memory of the massacre that took place in their city. One of my good friends grew up in Qianmen, literally a stone's throw from Tiananmen Square. She, like my wife, was eight in 1989, but recalls nothing of the protests or the subsequent crackdown, despite the fact she later learned her mother was among those demonstrating on the Square.
I've lived in China for two years now, and have never encountered a country so obsessed with history, while at the same time being so completely in denial about its recent past. Many young graduates I've met can reel off the names of emperors stretching back over millennia, and will proudly tell you their civilisation has a history of 5000 years. Yet they have very little knowledge of what happened in their country between 1949 and the turn of this decade. From the Anti-Rightist Movement of the late 1950s to the details of the Cultural Revolution, from China's invasion of Vietnam in 1979 to the events of 4 June 1989, many young Chinese people's knowledge of contemporary history is punctuated by huge, gaping holes.
At times it feels like the China we read about in Western history books, that is recalled in the memoirs of Chinese people living outside the PRC, the China that we saw on television in 1989 — existed in some parallel universe. It seems impossible that a country of 1.3 billion people could be made to forget so successfully. Then an older man you are drinking with begins recalling his time as a Red Guard, or you find out people were beaten to death in your place of work in the late 1960s, or you interview a protester who saw the army march onto Tiananmen Square, and you realise it is all true — the history and the amnesia.
In this sense, the legacy of 4 June is both everywhere and nowhere in contemporary China. Nowhere in that it is the great unmentionable trauma at the heart of the so-called "reform period" that commenced in 1978. Everywhere because it set in stone the kind of nation the "reformist" leader Deng Xiaoping was to bequeath to the 21st century.
Above all Deng was a nationalist who longed to see China become a powerful player on the world stage. But like all ardent nationalists, Deng idealised his country in the abstract while despising the messy reality of its actual people. Starting with his time as a most enthusiastic persecutor for Mao during the Anti-Rightist Movement, Deng proved himself quite willing to repress, imprison and ultimately murder by the hundreds, if not by the thousands, the people he claimed to love.
It is Deng's nationalism and vision that live on in today's PRC — a consumerist society with a vast gap between the rich and poor, in which critical thought and historical enquiry are rigorously suppressed, presided over by a corrupt oligarchy who have made sure they have benefited most from China's conversion into the world's factory. As the former Tiananmen protester and current Beijing bookstore proprietor Liu Suli put it when I interviewed him a few days ago, "What's the meaning of China's so-called economic success? It's just converted 1.3 billion people into an animal — a beast."
This, it seems, is the legacy of 4 June. It's a legacy I see in my young colleagues when they calmly explain to me that peasants who travel to Beijing to petition the Government with trifling problems like kidnapped children need to be locked up in unofficial detention centres and beaten by police, because "they cause trouble for officials".
It's a legacy I see in the words of the doctors who, at a party recently, informed my wife that an operation she endured last year under local anaesthetic was particularly painful because we neglected to bribe the anaesthetist to ensure he administered the full dose of anaesthetic.
It's a legacy I see in the downcast eyes of another doctor who, when I asked if it was true that organs are forcibly harvested from executed prisoners in China, replied, "Of course, and everyone in the medical profession knows it".
It's a legacy I hear in the story of a Shanghai family I interviewed several months ago whose entire neighbourhood had been terrorised by migrant workers in the pay of developers working hand-in-glove with local police. Their homes were smashed up, their possessions stolen, and one neighbour was beaten so badly he was hospitalised. Finally the family acquiesced and moved to a faraway suburb so their neighbourhood could be flattened and the developer grow rich building high-rise apartments around the Shanghai Expo site.
And it's a legacy I see in China's so-called "patriotic youth" who, if they read this article, will angrily deny everything I have said — even though they have seen and heard many similar stories — and say I am trying to make their country look bad because I am scared of a powerful China.
But finally, it's a legacy I also see in the small numbers of Chinese who speak out against the brutality of the regime, who keep the memory of 4 June alive despite blacklisting, harassment and imprisonment, who are ignored and forsaken by the vast majority of their compatriots.
It's the legacy of 4 June inside China that makes the memorialisation of the event in the outside world so important. But remembering 4 June is not just about China. Every government on the planet needs to be constantly reminded that slaughtering civilians, repressing your own people, and entrenching minority rule, can never, ever be justified.
This is why the annual vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park, and projects like the Tank Man Tango — initiated by Australian Deborah Kelly this year to mark the massacre's 20th anniversary — are so important. Political leaders of all stripes need to know that when they attempt to rewrite history, to erase their crimes, to make people forget, there will always be someone, somewhere who will remember and say, "This was wrong".
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The laundering of ‘uncomfortable history’ is a habit shared between China and Japan. The latter country is much attacked in China over its avoidance of the facts about the Nanjing ‘incident’ and other parts of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War - and yet China applies similar standards of obliqueness to and denial of pages in its own history since 1949, such as (but not only) the 1989 massacre in Beijing.
I don’t expect any progress about this in the foreseeable future, from the leadership of either country. In issues of face-saving like this they are True Neighbours !
Thanks Dan, a great piece! It also brings to mind the umpteen bus loads of people of Chinese origin who lined the route of the Olympic torch relay in Canberra to prevent any demonstrators from expressing their opinions. That was a sorry sight to see in Australia. Eventually, if those people stay here long enough, they or their children will realise that you can love your country but still think critically, still acknowledge that all is not perfect. The irony of that occasion, of course, was that it exposed to the gaze of all Australia how undemocratic and controlling China still is.
If China is to become the economic super power of the near future, then it’s crucial for a mutually respectful interaction with the rest of the world that it grows up and acknowledges its own recent history. Not unlike what Australia has had to go through with its Stolen Generations past, and Reconciliation.
peacenow
Most countries try to forget/deny any unpleasant acts they may have committed.
The USA, Canada and Australia managed to kill off large numbers of the indiginous populations of the countries which they coveted.
Spain, Portugal and many other european countries would like to forget the misery they inflicted on the inhabitants of the countries which they colonised.
China and Japan are no different.
Hi Geoffdb,
Yes, it’s interesting to compare Japan and China on the issue of historical amnesia. All countries have their historical blind spots of course, Australia’s history of relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people being a good case in point. China and Japan are both pretty extreme examples of how far nations can go at erasing their history though.
It’s not at all uncommon to meet students in China who will become very agitated, understandably, about Japan’s refusal to acknowledge horrific war crimes committed in China, and then without a hint of irony ask you why Westerners are so obsessed with the Cultural Revolution and June 4, when those things happened so long ago.
Cheers, Dan
Hi peacenow,
Sorry, I have to disagree with you. China is different. Australia of course has many blind spots and its own issues with censorship, but it’s a matter of degree. And believe me, it’s a big difference.
In Australia you can write a book or create a website detailing Indigenous massacres, or openly slag off the government of the day in print. You may cop flack from certain sectors, you may even be attacked by certain figures in the media, but the police will not come and detain you, you will not be put in jail, you will not be exiled from your country, and your book will not be banned or your website removed or blocked. That is a big difference.
Regards, Dan
Since our Mandarin speaking Labor Prime Minister has come to power I have noticed an increase in the number of anti-Chinese articles printed in the right wing press. Where were they, I ask, when Australian manufacturing jobs were being shifted to China because they knew how to keep their workers from unionising? They cry that cheap labour has given them an unfair advantage and are now becoming a sinister rich super-power. Well durrr… you sent them the jobs that have enriched the coffers of the ‘communist’ elite and now you cry foul. The hypocracy knows no ends. The crimes of any regime can be overlooked if the right people make money out of their brutal control. Just ask Rupert.
Excellent and upsetting article. Thanks.
What continues to upset me is that now the whole world is beating a path to China’s door, begging bowls in hand, because now China is holding so much of the world’s liquid assets, and for the Capitalist system to survive, the Western world has to depend on them for financial support. Like the USA! Obama/Clinton have to be nice to the Chinese butchers or the USA will become officially bankrupt!
Wonderful of GWBush to be so blinded by his multiple Wars on behalf of israel and World Jewry as to hand control of his own countries finances to China.
Consequently, all criticism of the human rights record of this absolute dictatorship is constrained if not totally absent, witness the visit of Clinton and Geithner for reassurance.
It is not only China that has selective amnesia, other than relating to our own previous, and continuing, nasty activities with the indigenous peoples. The NT Intervention is still being used by the Rudd Government for very gross purposes.
In Australia, we have a PM and various Ministers lapping at the Chinese boots, just begging them to invest money in Australia by purchasing our coal, iron ore, gas etc. plus Rio Tinto and now in Queensland, Capt’n Bligh is Hell bent in selling the State ( Public) Crown Jewels to China for a pittance, because she has got Queensland into a financial mess. She well knows that no one else will have the money to to able to afford the billions of dollars to purchase OUR assets at this time.
At the same time, I can see that she is being utterly cunning by trying to sell off Coal assets, including Coal mines, Railway lines, Coal loading facilities, seeing the writing on the wall in regard to Global Warming and the attempted Rudd Carbon Reduction
schemes. Sooner or later, coal is going to become un-sellable to anyone, for any price, and she knows it is going to lose a lot of value in the next 20 years or so, maybe a lot earlier if we can get any Fed. Government to do anything realistic in regard to Carbon Pollution. If she can flog it off now to the Chinese, she can make a quick buck! They will then have vertical integration from the mine to their own mills.
But then, flagging flogging off of the rest of the Railway system, as well as other State (Public) assets, and increasing our fuel bills by about 9 cents per litre in one chop, has really got me MAD!
I can see the sense of getting rid of the fuel subsidy, in one way, never mind that it is going to drive up the cost of living in regional Queensland very quickly at a bad time, but surely it could have been done in stages and eased the pain a little.
Bligh is an arrogant BULLY! Dissatisfaction with her is growing, pity that there is no real alternative.
I would love to know how she reckons she has ANY mandate to sell what does not belong to her. None of this was taken to an election!
I reckon though that this idea originated with Treasurer Fraser, he is a real Right Wing thug. Lots of rumors of him being great mates, dining companion, to Corporate knaves, over the years. He also wants Bligh’s job.
But the history of China’s human rights atrocious record has no effect on our Governments. As far as they are concerned, it has no relevance whatsoever. Business is Business! Money is Money!
Just as States slaughtering their own people all over the world, including China, has no effect on any of them, nor the gross interference by China in the affairs of various smelly administrations, selling them arms and ammunition to kill off their minorities, as in Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Sudan.
We live in a damned sick world! And it is getting sicker every day! Dazza.
Dan, you are correct.
We do things in a more subtle way, by not including things in our history books and not reporting things in the press. Peacenow
This morning I posted a request on Twitter, Myspace & Facebook to everyone, asking them to Post a note to China. As their government has banned the Internet, it would be nice to read a world input of notes reminding them we haven’t forgotten & still support their plight. Shame it wasn’t taken much notice of.
My theory about the logic of the Chinese government is this: we need to remember that the Chinese Communist Party is still just that - communist at heart in its ideology. I really believe that the CCP is trying to take on the full journey to socialism (with "Chinese" characteristics), and sees its task as being to carefully oversee and tightly control the roadmap from feudalism to capitalism to socialism and finally to communism. In this sense there’s no contradiction in a Communist Party engineering what is more or less a capitalist market. In fact, they’re going stictly by the book (Das Kapital).
However, the biggest threat to turning this roadmap into reality is the masses getting ideas about going democratic and expressing their grievances by way of public demonstration and protest. Not only are the Chinese loathe of anything that could even remotely threaten the carefully constructed facade of civil order and a harmonious society, but democracy and free speech directly threaten the authority of the CCP - whose power is absolutely necessary as it is the only machine qualified to execute the socialist program.
Mind you the CCP looks more powerful than it is. In practice, its authority doesn’t even extend all that far out of Beijing and this makes it even more essential to quell any public uprising.
But they’re not doing it just to be mean and nasty totalitarian types - when they do crazy things like the Tiananmen Square Massacre, they’re doing it to preserve and protect the socialist goals and program.
The Chinese people I’m not so sure about. Many (not all by any means of course, but still, worryingly many) of them give unwavering support and refuse to criticise their government in any way. Criticism of the Party is seen as an insult to Chinese national identity itself. The media’s job (in their view) is to laud and praise, not to critique and make ugly noises. If you do dare talk about blatant human rights abuses you tend to get three responses: 1) outright denial 2) extreme offence that you, a lowly foreigner, would dare criticize almighty China or 3) the belated excuse that such conditions are necessary because the Chinese are somehow different, in need of control and that democracy would cause Chinese society to collapse.
In my experience it’s rare to find a Chinese person - even when they are really widely read and very exposed to the reality of China - who will say, like we are quite used to doing about our own politicians: "the CCP’s shite, the PM and President are buffoons and we should kick the lot of them out and start over." But then, maybe after all I am just a dumb foreigner who doesn’t get it…
http://zielwolf.blogspot.com
zielwolf, one good reason why Chinese people do not do much complaining about their Government is that they know no better.
No experience of what we term ‘democracy’. In feudalistic days, any complaints would have resulted in a quick execution. These days, they just disappear for a few years of ‘re-education’.
This is well known to citizens, and they also know that talking to any foreigner may get them ‘re-educated’ quick smart.
But also, when a very poor people, who do know a little about capitalistic values and what it can get them in material goods, are allowed a small taste of these goodies, they are likely to not bite the hand that feeds them the scraps.
But the wider and ever widening disparity between the real rich, and the millions of real poor is going to cause great disruption to Chinese society sooner or later, and the leaders well know it.
But they (the leaders) are well buried in the Capitalist trough by now, feeding well from the spoils. I doubt very much that ‘socialism’, which seems to be a bug-bear of zielwolf, ever enters their minds. They have no intention of sharing their new goodies with the masses, NO thank you, very much! They like well what Capitalism brings them, they just will have no truck with such a thing as Democracy.
Whatever the label, communism or capitalist, they are very nasty total dictators, well used to getting their way in all things. Which is why they and the Australian Government are going to get very cool in the next little while, unless Rudd kow-tows low and hard. After the Rio Tinto brush off, in which they had great expectations, and now the Chinese Muslims that Obama wants Rudd to accept from Guantanamo, and the Australian delegation going to India to see the Dalai Lama against their expressed wishes and demands to Rudd, they are going to be real pi**ed-off.
Maybe Capt’n Bligh is pitching her big sell-off of Public Assets at the wrong people, at the wrong time. Dazza.
I live in China, I have been here 8 years. There are certainly holes in Chinese peoples history. As a teacher myself, I agree that it’s ultimately not healthy for a society to face some of the less flattering aspects of their history. Japan is another obvious example.
I work with many "foreigners" here in China (The UK, Americans, Australians). A good portion of the Americans I work with, if you ask them about the US governments funding of Osama Bin Laden in the 70’s think I’m mad, and they know very little of various CIA coups that have brought down "leftist" and democratic governments and replaced them with murdering right wing thugs. Most of the Australians I work with have no real knowledge of Australian collusion with Indonesian atrocities. It wasn’t until I started teaching that the white genocide against indigenous Australians was acknowledged widley- a good 200 years later.
So where do we have the right to point the finger only at the Chinese for selective telling of history? We all do it. We need to stop pointing the finger and get our own house in order as well. China should remember, but we all should remember. And that’s not as easy as it sounds.
As to people making over simplistic statements about the Chinese state as a "police state" need to do some reading about what its really like here. Things are changing, and the Chinese are trying to pull together their own way of doing things. There are some good books out there on the complexity of the politic system here available.
The only consolation is that in the current age of the net China will never be allowed to completely forget what happened. And, as others are discovering, the truth will out. It may take time but it is no longer possible to hide the truth or bury memory and events beneath a pile of propaganda.
rosross, if you look at all the junk coming out of the western media, and the way history is re-written, it becomes painfully obvious it is possible to bury history in propaganda. The Chinese will just (and they have) started using more sophisticated western techniques to do it.
gregrb,
I disagree that they will be able to do it. Of course they will try but they will not succeed. The Chinese will be able to control it to some degree, but, as history shows, people remember, people write, people access information, people record information, people process information and eventually the truth comes out.
rosross, I think it would be great if these "secret histories" all came out. But it doesn’t make much of an impact unless ‘regular’ people know about it. Western governments have perfected the art of marginalising historical incidents. Ask the average American about CIA coups that bring right wing dictators to power and they dismiss it as rubbish (and these coups are repsonsible for deaths that make Tianamins square look small). It’s all a matter of historical record, but the propaganda machine in the states is so powerful it overrides the truth. Sure, a small pocket of people know, but they are pushed to the margins, and so it doesn’t really matter so much (not as much as it should).
The Chinese will, I’m sure, get better at marginalising people, less brutal. They are learning about how to do better PR ‘spin’. Sad, but true.
Being 6-years-old in 1989, I had barely any memory of 4 June. It’s such a taboo in China that people would whisper when they have to mention literally just the two words "4 June", not to mention talking about it. The only thing I knew was that the authorities referred to it as a "counter-revolutionary rebellion".
I came to Australia one year ago, where there are no "Golden Shield" or "Green Dam" on the internet. Recently I accidently bumped into a documentary film on Youtube, and I just burst into tears. During the following days, I couldn’t stop watching videos of 4 June and reading articles of those dissenters, some of whom are in prison right now. It was like an earthquake in my mind. I had a feeling that something that had haunted my for about 20 years are now partly explained.
But the feeling of lonelyness followed. My Chinese friends in Australia are just the "patriotic youth" mentioned in this article, even though they already have the free access to information. When I was trying to mention anything to my parents back in China, they replied "do not talk about politics".
I understand. They experienced the Anti-Rightist Movement, the Cultural Revolution, 4 June…They know what a piece of word could possibly cost.
I’m afraid the history will be buried, again.