Changing China
Giant on the move
Tightening screws on Tiananmen
Security on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square is always tight. But I knew that today it was going to be particularly so when, upon emerging from the subway station, I was faced with three police vans and literally hundreds of security personnel, all on guard against any kind of disturbance ahead of the 20th anniversary of 1989′s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. Nervously I made my way to one of the square’s entrances, wondering if I would even be allowed to enter. I put my bag on the X-ray machine, was briefly frisked by police with metal detectors, and cleared to go on my way. The square was full of tourists, as usual. What was different was the hordes of uniformed police, military police and plainclothes security every few metres. The plainclothes officers were painfully obvious, shuffling awkwardly in T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms, their crew cut hairstyles and poorly hidden walkie-talkies distinguishing them from ordinary visitors. They were also all carrying the same brand of bottled water. Everytime I tried talking to someone, a police officer or one of the guards began hovering behind me. Finally I was able to chat with a trinket seller, who, talking in a low voice, complained that the security was ruining her business. “June 4 is tomorrow,” she said simply. At that point one of the crew-cut men marched over and told the lady to stop talking to me. By this stage. I had had enough and began heading back towards the subway station, passing on my way a foreign television crew. A policeman was telling them in no uncertain terms that they could not film in the square. I felt lucky that nobody had stopped me. I’m sure the police knew I was there though, and why I had gone.
Photo caption: Chinese security personnel try to stop pictures from being taken as they check the documents of the photographer at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 3, 2009. Chinese security forces blanketed Tiananmen Square on Wednesday ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause
The war that changed China
Thirty years ago today, China invaded its one-time Communist ally Vietnam to “teach it a lesson”, to the delight of Beijing’s newfound friend, Uncle Sam, which was still smarting from having lost its own Vietnam War. The attack came on the heels of Washington switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing and a closed-door meeting between China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and U.S. President Jimmy Carter in Washington. Three decades on, it remains unclear just how much Deng told Carter about the incursion and whether Washington offered any assistance such as satellite imagery of Vietnamese troops and military bases. Until the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the U.S. State Department declassify minutes of the meeting, the world will not know for sure whether the United States offered to back China in the event the Soviet Union rushed to Vietnam’s rescue. Now the great wheel of history has turned again, and 30 years on, the United States is seeking China’s help in applying pressure on another Communist neighbour, North Korea. China’s foray into Vietnam was brief yet in some ways disastrous. Its troops suffered terribly against the battle-hardened Vietnamese who were fighting on their home soil. But there is no arguing that the invasion was a watershed event that smoothed the way for China to mend fences with the West. American investors, tourists and students flocked to China. Western and Japanese aid and loans flowed in, while trade and investment mushroomed, helping to transform the world’s most populous nation from an economic backwater into an export powerhouse and the world’s third-biggest economy. In an apparent quid pro quo, China abandoned its longstanding policy of “liberating” Taiwan and offered “peaceful reunification” in an overture to the self-ruled island it has claimed as its own since their split in 1949 amid civil war. Also in 1979, Deng invited Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to visit, prompting the latter to renounce advocacy of Tibetan independence, beseech CIA-armed and -trained Tibetan guerrillas to end their struggle and send his older brother to China on fact-finding trips. The United States softened its criticism of human rights abuse in China, including the imprisonment of dissident Wei Jingsheng for challenging Deng at the height of the Democracy Wall movement. American Sinologist David Shambaugh described as a “marriage of convenience” the teaming up of the United States and China to curb Soviet expansionism. (http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/06/opinion/edshambaugh.php) On a lighter note, American culture invaded China. Many Chinese traded their Mao suits for jeans or business suits and dined at McDonald’s and KFC outlets. Hollywood movies and rock ‘n’ roll — once considered decadent by China’s ideologues — swept many Chinese off their feet. The honeymoon abruptly ended on June 4, 1989, when Chinese troops crushed student-led demonstrations for democracy centred on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. China slipped into diplomatic isolation in the face of U.S. sanctions. China broke out of isolation and forced the United States to deal with it after menacing Taiwan with war games in the run-up to the island’s first direct presidential elections in 1996. Bilateral relations see-sawed in the ensuing years, hitting low points when NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter over Chinese airspace. Fast forward to February 2009. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits on Friday, she will be dealing with a richer, more confident and assertive China. Again, but now in peacetime, it will be a China that needs the United States as much as the United States needs China. The United States needs China to help rein in a nuclear North Korea and help nurse the global economy back to health. But China’s abrupt slowdown in growth and exports shows that it remains yoked to U.S. fortunes.
Photo Credit: A Vietnamese border guard stands next to a border marker between China’s Guangxi and Vietnam’s Lang Son provinces on Jan. 13, 2009. REUTERS/Kham
two chinas is akin to two irelands; the people of northern ireland consider themselves to be british and want no rule from dublin. political intrigue and chamberlainesque pieces of paper aside, the people of taiwan want no rule from beijing; have these people no say in their future? do those leaders who call for freedom in tibet and uyghurstan have no sympathy left for the taiwanese?
The one-month countdown begins
It’s a month to go! So, we sent our reporters out onto the street to speak to ordinary Beijingers to find out how they and the city are coping.
”I didn’t have much interest in the Olympics before the Tibet riots. After that I became to think: All right. If you guys are so keen to make us look bad, we’ll have to get things done even better. After the earthquake, I felt really sad and at one point even thought that it might be good not to hold the Games any more. But the reality is the country has poured in so much manpower, materials and money to prepare for the Games. As the Chinese saying goes, ‘there can be no turning back once the arrow is on the bowstring’.” – Zhao Qian, 26, a public relations officer for a European company
“The Olympic Games is a national glory. I really look forward to it. Beijing has changed a lot in the past few years. The roads have become wider and the city cleaner. Terrorist attacks? I am not worried about that. Our country is strong enough and those who operate in the dark for bad things will be scared.” – Zhang Quanyi, 45, taxi driver
”I am not going to watch the Games in the stadiums and I am not able to. What can I do with the 700 yuan ($102) I make every month? I also have to pay for my daughter’s education.” – A female street cleaner in her 40s on her morning shift to clean a street outside the Chaoyang Park in eastern Beijing, where Olympic beach volleyball matches will be held.
“It might be inconvenient during the Games as I cannot drive my car everyday, but I am happy and excited about the approaching Olympics.”- Zhou Wenjin, 46, a government worker
More on China’s ’08 generation
The Beijing bureau today continued its look at China’s ’08 generation, 19 years after the crushing of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and 64 days before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Read Lucy Hornby’s piece about the challenges facing China’s college graduates here
Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang were Chinese Communist party leaders who wanted freedom for all citizens of China-including the Tibetans, and the people who demonstrated in Tianenmen Square and who were killed or jailed for it. They were kicked out of their leadership roles by the hardliners, kept incommunicado, and placed under house arrest for the remainder of their lives. To this list, we must now add Hu Jia, prominent Chinese human rights activist, who has recently been sentenced to 3 1/2 years for advocating freedom, equality under the law, human rights, and environmental justice.
Young adults in China today know nothing of this, because the Chinese government propaganda machine has vilified the hundred thousand patriots who demonstrated for freedom that day, and dismissed them as a few anti-social hooligans. This process is, of course, taking place today in China, only it is currently directed against the Tibetan demonstrators and the Dalai Lama. If the Tiananmen Square demonstrators had been successful in reforming the Chinese government, I doubt if there would have been the demonstrations in Tibet, because the people of Tibet would probably have had far fewer grievances.
Having deposed party officials who favored truth and justice, the Chinese communist party is promulgating lies that justify their repressive policies.
Chinese nationalists all seem to believe their government’s big lie-that Tibet is an historical part of China. Tibet is no more a part of China than France was a traditional part of Germany when the Nazis invaded it.
“The so-called Czecho-Slovakia ceased to exist. In a single night a nation vanished that in reality had never been a nation.” -Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Does it remind you of the Chinese government discussing Tibet? It should!
This is normal, it happens in all countries…
It arrived.
Some 5,000 VIPs, cheering workers and media gathered on Tiananmen Square on Monday to welcome the Beijing Olympic flame and launch the 137,000-km torch relay.
Many westerners just feel threatened by the development of China, the China they can’t control. Human right and Tibet are just convenient tools for them to bashing China. Many of these guys make a living by trying to bring down China.
To the crowd of “if china is so great, why so many people leave china…., has any one claimed that china in general is greater than US and West europe? Even in the greatest country in this world, people still leave for whatever reason. I am glad so many Chinese spreaded to the rest of the world, so they can see the true face of the western countries and fight against all the injustice against chinese.
China has a lot of problems, you can bash China or make fun of China all the way you want, but at the end of the day China is geting better and better.
