The Tiananmen moment

Over on Open Democracy, Kerry Brown has an article on how the crisis of 1989 on Beijing represented a brutal lesson for China's elite in long-term political control.

In some ways, it can be interpreted as the moment when the Communist Party, rather than the government, confronted a play-off between its rhetoric on opening up and what it actually intended to do. For years it had surfed around with the ideas of freeing up civil society, the media, even village elections (which started in early 1988). But when the searching questions were sharply posed in 1989 about how the party (at least for the elder leaders) might respond to proper dissent, there was only one response: the gun. It was a brutal reminder that, for all the warm words and cosmetic changes, the heart of the party was unchanged.

Let it not be forgotten, though, that the events in Beijing were intertwined with the developments in eastern Europe. The movement was sparked in April by the death of pro-market, pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang. If it was not a conscious movement of dissent the protests represented nonetheless a widespread disaffection, the seed bed from which dissent springs. If anything the catalyst for the transformation of disaffection into dissent was the visit to the Chinese capital by Mikhail Gorbachev on 15 May, when huge groups of students occupied Tiananmen Square and started a hunger strike. At the same time, the protests in Beijing were being followed avidly in eastern Europe.

Ironically, as Chinese security forces began moving against the demonstrators on the night of 3-4 June 1989, Dr B and Pastor J (he then not a doctor and she not yet a pastor) were at a conference in Oxford about the social movements in eastern Europe. The Sunday schedule was then rapidly rearranged to allow a panel discussion including Tariq Ali and Dan Smith to discuss the implications of the events in China for the movements in eastern Europe. However, if in May 1989 the movement in Beijing had represented a moment of hope for activists in East Germany, by September 1989, the "Tiananmen moment", the suppression of the democracy movement by armed force, was the threat that hung over the mass demonstrations.

The Tiananmen Square "solution"

Wroclaw, Poland: the memorial of 10th aniversary (1999) of Tian'anmen Sq. (Beijing, China) massacre, June 4th, 1989
The first version of this memorial was "erected" by Polish students a day after the massacre, June 5th 1989 - as a destroyed bicycle and a fragment of tank-track lying nearby.
The version in the photograph was erected ten years later, in 1999, and the symbolism is identical: bicycles against tanks...

I've spent some time this evening reading the Wikipedia article on the Tianenmen Square protests of 1989. It took me back to that Spring in Oxford when I was preparing my third year theology exams, worrying about how I was going to finance my year in East Germany if I got a visa, watching events in China and wondering whether events there would affect my travel to the Eastern Bloc.
I had forgotten how much what happened to the democratic protesters in China affected my mood as I set off for East Germany later in the year. As I read through parts of my diary I understand a little better the fear of violence and an authoritarian crack down that comes through in places. On the surface it may look as if life went on normally and peacefully but underneath there was real fear. The peaceful revolution might not have been so peaceful and earlier in 1989 the world had seen tanks vanquish peaceful protesters for democracy.
In late April 1989 there was still hope that things in China would develop peacefully. Remembering the brutal crushing of those protests makes me realise that those who went to pray in churches and lit candles in town squares in East Germany showed great civil courage.
To say nothing of the courage of the Polish students who in June 1989 set up the first version of the memorial depicted above.

Photo credits here
Posted by Rev J