China is often reckoned as the beacon of political and economic stability. Political stability has laid a robust foundation for the economic and financial stability of China. Bereft of a history of dissent and wide protests in the contemporary history of the People’s Republic of China, the single-party state controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is widely believed to be monolithic. Further with the country's return to Mao Zedong’s days under Xi Jinping, the existence of liberal views in CCP appears to be implausible. After the fall of the Gang of Four in 1976 and the concomitant return of Deng Xiaoping as the Supreme Leader, China entered into a new phase. Deng steered a devastated Chinese economy onto the path of recovery registering at least an annual growth rate of 7% through the policy of Four Modernisations.
The making
of modern China was set forth by the 1976 Tiananmen Protest instigated by Deng,
which set the course for the country's economic trajectory. Deemed a moderate
government official, Deng shifted the emphasis away from class struggle and
embarked on the cause of ‘social modernisation’. Thirteen years later, similar
protests set off at Tiananmen Square shaped the future course of the Communist
State that deeply acknowledged the paramountcy of ideological preservation
above everything else. Thirty-five years after the June 4th
Tiananmen Square protests, revisionist China continues to tread on the same
path.
As a young
diplomat posted in China around the same period, Vijay Gokhale, former Foreign
Secretary and India’s ambassador to China provides a ringside view and a
diplomat’s perspective of these protests through his book- “Tiananmen Square:
The Making of a Protest”. Laid out in ten compact chapters, the book provides
vivid commentary about the ‘untold details’ and the day-to-day developments
that culminated in the largest student protests ever in China. The opaque
Chinese administration has literally whitewashed the “Tiananmen Square”
incident from the annals of Chinese history as an inconvenient past.
Sprang up
amid tectonic geopolitical events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the
imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, the protests failed to garner much international
attention. The ideologically predisposed Western narrative described the
protests as a ‘pro-democracy movement’. Illustrating that the protest was an
unfinished agenda of 1986 student protests fuelled by liberal intellectual Fang
Lizhli, who wanted to hold an academic conference on reforms, the author
enlists the four demands of students. The protests indeed had nothing to do
with democracy, but in fact, the focus has been on – better education and job
opportunities, elimination of entitlement, empathy towards citizens' needs and
some personal freedoms. However, press freedom became another plank for the
protests after the liberal newspaper World Economic Herald was taken over by
the party and the editor Qin Benli was dismissed.
But by and
large the liberal proclivities of Hu Yaobang, one of the trusted lieutenants of
Deng and his idea of giving freedom to intellectuals had ignited a churn. His
death on April 15, 1989, triggered a storm. Further, the inept handling of the
crisis by General Secretary Zhao Ziyang turned the protests into a massive
movement. The faction infighting among the students, a lack of a conciliatory
approach from the party leadership led to radicals gaining ground in the
protests. Steady escalation through massive hunger strikes and the eventual
unveiling of a statue of the ‘Goddess of Democracy’ by students on May 30th
proved to be the final nail in the coffin.
After
announcing martial law on May 21, the party which was in relative disarray,
quickly got back on its feet by first unifying the central and state party
committees, then reorganising and reassigning the role, and finally announcing
a new leader Jiang Zemin at the helm. In a move to clamp down on any kind of
dissent, the state completely took over the media. Instead of placation, taking
the bull by its horns, the party ordered the march of Armoured Personnel
Carriers (APC) on Tiananmen Square Avenue to clear the arena. APC and PLA
troops were stationed in the area to deter further protests. Thus, by June 5th
morning, Tiananmen Square was stripped clean of student protestors.
With the
press under state control, even now the final trail of events, the whereabouts
of thousands of student protestors is completely hazy. But the State Version
declared that- a ‘very small number of people’ who caused counter-revolutionary
turmoil with the motive of overthrowing the party and People’s Republic
warranted an action’. Hence the steps taken by the Central Committee were both
‘necessary’ and ‘correct’. The details of the crackdown have never seen the
light of the day. Till date, the party hasn’t disclosed the number of
casualties. There was never a mention of the blood spilled. As the author
rightly puts it,- “For the majority of young Chinese, the Tiananmen Square
incident is an aberration, a distant fact that they know nothing about beyond
the Party line”. Instructively, the party last spoke about the incident on
24 June, 1989 and a then ‘blanket of silence has descended over the matter’.
Ever since,
any discussion on the protests is a taboo. Exercising its immense economic
clout, China besides physically stalling any kind of commemorations has ensured
internet censorship on this event. Obliterating any reference to the protest
even in the public domain, China is wiping it out of the public memory. Even
now, the number of casualties is unknown. Declassified US government documents
in the final briefing paper put up a casualty figure of 500-2600 with a
whopping 10,000 injured.
In the
aftermath of the incident, the US announced sanctions- no World Bank loans, a moratorium
on arms sales and military exchanges. But barely a year later, it was business
as usual with the Wall Street helming America’s China policy. The US’s
perfunctory advocacy of human rights confirmed Deng’s assessment of the West’s
preference for profits over principles. Buoyed by the West’s hypocrisy,
throwing the concerns of isolation, if any to the wind, Deng strengthened the
idea of collective leadership and built the idea of a leadership core with the
general secretary of the CCP as the anchor. Further, the disintegration of the Soviet
Union reinforced Deng’s focus on building a stable party line that could serve
as bedrock for the social and political stability of China.
The last
chapter “Dousing the Flames” summarily packs the nuggets of wisdom underscoring
how Tiananmen Protests served as a watershed in potentially strengthening the
CCP’s commitment to core party ideology. Being the only major communist power post-1990,
the Chinese leadership regarded the US as ‘the primary existential threat to
survival’ and was ‘apparently number one’ enemy. But outwardly, China continued
the delicate balancing act until it grew economically and militarily as per
Deng’s strategy of ‘taoguang yanghui, youso zuowei’, meaning biding time
by keeping a low profile.
For long
China played along Deng’s advice-“Observe calmly; secure our position; cope
with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide out time; be good at
maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership”. He adds, “They (Chinese)
are convinced that the ultimate aim of the Americans- to subvert the Communist
Party of China by introducing ideas about Western Capitalism and democracy into
China, until it erodes the ideological foundations of the regime. They know it
as ‘peaceful evolution’, first articulated by Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles in the 1950s.”.
China all
along distrusted the Americans and now that they are in a position to challenge
them, they are no longer circumspect about staking claims for global
leadership.
Being a
closed country with scant details about the party functioning coupled with a
paucity of authentic Indian scholarship on China, a diplomat’s perspective can
serve as an important primer to understand the Dragon. As the author concludes,
“It has taken the West thirty years after the Tiananmen Square incident to
realise the errors of their ways”. The book which offers an account of
Sino-Soviet normalisation, Deng-Gorbachev's evocative meeting, China’s signal
to President J.H. Bush on interference in internal matters, should have
included the Indian government’s response to the Tiananmen incident.
Knowing an
inveterate adversary and their ways is extremely crucial for India moreover at
a time when two armies are standing against each other across the LAC. Staying
true to foundational values and political preservation doctrine enunciated by
Deng in letter and spirit, Xi has essentially maintained the same trend. Objectively
there is no difference between Deng and Xi. Gokhale’s memoir replete with a nuanced
account of the party’s response to the protests on a day-to-day basis can help
discern the responses of the supreme leader at the helm. As an astute Chinese
observer, Gokhale’s insights are invaluable. Finally, the book clinically
invalidates West’s illusion of a democratic future for China.
Pages: 183
Publishers:
Harper Collins
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