Tiananmen Square, 20 years on

June 3, 2009 at 9:01 pm (China, democracy, history, Human rights, Jim D, stalinism)

My partner, a reasonably intelligent and aware person, glanced at the picture (below) on the front of today’s Guardian G2 and exclaimed something like, “Christ! All those dead bodies! Was that Tiananmen Square? I never remember that it all ended in a bloodbath.”

She has a point: maybe it’s because sections of the left still retain some residual loyalty to the so-called People’s Republic and/or just aren’t that bothered about massacres not carried out by the “west” or Israel; maybe it’s because the ruling class of the “west” don’t want to embarrass their trading partners, the Chinese ruling class; maybe it’s because the Chinese ruling class has done such an effective job of erasing the events of 20 years ago from history…

For whatever reason, a lot of people have sort-of forgotten that thousands of unarmed pro-democracy protesters died in a bloody massacre on 4 June 1989.

We must not, ever, forget.

From 1989 to 2009: 20 Years of Evolution in Chinese Thought (conference paper for “2009, Beijing, and the June Fourth Democracy Movement.”)

The events of June 4th, 1989 shocked China and the world. It was a watershed within Chinese history and politics, as well as a watershed for thought. June 4th did not change the Chinese political system, but it changed the basic conditions for thought, and it was a foundational starting point for changing the political system.

Advocating “people’s democratic dictatorship,” China’s political system have already been comprehensively exposed as anti-citizen, anti-humanity and fundamentally out of sync with human civilization. This is evident in the so-called “land reform” and “anti-counterrevolutionary movement” of the 1950s; the anti-rightist movement, the Great Leap Forward, and the commune movement. It reached its peak in the Cultural Revolution. But the Chinese people are a people accustomed to suffering through authoritarianism and hardship. On top of that, the regime in charge has created a seamless trap of fantastic ideology. Over the years, with the exception of those with foresight such as Lin Zhao, few have reflected critically on the level of system and understood the necessity for a fundamental change. The June 4th incident (at Tiananmen Square) caused the situation to change. The knives, bullets and spilled blood cultivated a tragedy that awakened and educated the people to much more effect than any Enlightenment movement, a hundred Enlightenment thinkers or ten thousand Enlightenment books.

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