Tiananmen Square and what it says about China and all of us
I've gotten a little tired, in the last 5-10 years or so, listening to people romanticize the economic and political power of China, especially many liberals who perpetually rationalize left-wing dictatorships in Cuba, China and anywhere where they think they can find comfort in their self-righteous notion that liberal economic policies might just be worth a little bloodshed.
Well this is what that kind of thinking looks like in reality when we're not just playing politics as a hobby or a high-stakes game of chicken.
Tiananmen Square survivors seek reform
Today is the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989 when millions of students bravely arrived at the Square to protest the political repression of this totalitarian regime only to face it and, for many of them, to face their deaths. This is not the sacrafice of a few people to the greater good or to a cause worth more than any individual. This is what it looks like to sacrafice people and individual liberty - especially the freedom to criticize a government - to the political ambitions of those who will use the rhetoric of collective welfare to enslave and violently and forcefully repress a people.
Many liberals, especially, in the West, romanticize this regime because they feel that it's aims are worthy even if they think their ends are extreme. Many Americans, like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh felt the same about the Nazis. All of them are wrong. I don't care what foolish notions that people have of power and its proper use, individual liberty - especially the freedom to criticize one's government - is the most fundamental value of a decent society. And Tiananmen Square is a valuable reminder of what such romanticism of totalitarianism keeps in place.
At a time when the Chinese economy has rightly captured the imaginations of those in the West - since free exchange - economically, culturally, diplomatically, educationally, personally, etc. - is the most important key to sustainable democratization of the culture and attitudes of the Chinese people and, from that, the culture and government, it is good to remember why such fascination with this booming Chinese economy should not ever lead us to romanticize it's ugly political legacy.
Most liberals in the West who do this do so to romanticize their own quest for power and to parallel those self-righteous pursuits to the self-righteous and repressive pursuits of the left-wing dictatorship in the Peoples' Republic. Liberals who do so are not as dangerous in the West, largely because we enjoy a democracy that both checks such aspirations, politically, and encourages an open and critically-thinking, independent-minded culture which constructively challenges such folks to face the honest consequences and legacy of regimes that they romanticize, and the honest consequences and legacies of their own rule in Western democracies.
As much as party and ideological die-hards would like to believe that they and their governments have always been right, it is exactly this tendency which necessitates the democratic system of government that democratic parties celebrate rhetorically but secretly and openly despise as a reality that keeps their parties and ideologies from monopolizing power which they are always sure is rightly their's if only the world understood how they have monopolized wisdom that legitimizes their rule. Monopolized wisdom or enlightened autocracy are the mainstays of all leaders and groups who wish to romanticize their own thought and abilities and power to know what unenlightened masses and unenlightened critics do not recognize as wisdom that cannot afford to be challenged or uprooted. Conservatives in liberal democracies generally and too often think this. Liberals in liberal democracies generally and too often think this. All sorts of political, religious, scholarly, media, educational, business, military, social services, law enforcement, and so many other groups, in liberal democratic and totalitarian regimes think this. Really, almost all people at almost every point in humanity's history have likely thought this, at some level. And we and they have perpetually romanticized power in the name of that supposedly monopolized wisdom.
The brilliance of democracy is not that it has removed this tendency. It has and perpetually does moderate it, substantially, since parties and groups are subject to democratic discussion and debate which both challenges their monopoly on wisdom and creates the political space for challenges to their power.
The brilliance of democracy is that it has created all of this space for liberal values and the multitude of different experiences, perspectives, thoughts, wisdom, political orientations, religious orientations, groups, individuals, newspapers and media sources, movies, television programming, radio, internet, music, theater, universities and university departments, disciplines and scholarly orientations, businesses and commercial, professional and personal choices, and a whole host of freedoms and choices and opportunities which enrich, or at least offer the opportunity to enrich, the lives of average and not-so-average citizens of liberal democratic nation-states and members of the broader liberal democratic culture locally, nationally, internationally and at every other level and kind of organization of liberal democratic people and, increasingly, and sometimes to their chagrin, people of illiberal cultures, societies, and citizens of illiberal nation-states.
China and Vietnam were two famous totalitarian nation-states which have significantly liberalized and opened their economies following much substantial economic failure of their communist - offically both are socialist republics, which speaks ill of socialism rather than improving the image of these repressive, inefficient, and corrupt regimes - and later were explicitly constructively engaged, as internationally policy thinkers often call it, by the American Administration of Bill Clinton, to open up their societies to trade and political, cultural, and economic exchange with the United States, specifically, given the historical enmities between such Communist regimes and America, the West, and the democratic world.
But their trade and internal economic liberalization should not be confused with political legitimacy or the legitimatization of a repressive economic or political ideology or its wing of ideologies simply because liberalization has yielded benefits despite an illiberal regime (certainly not because of it, no matter what credit the Chinese government and too many liberal veterans of the Cold War or their radical progency might claim).
And Tiananmen is a healthy and important reminder of what more genuine courage looks like in the form of young liberal democratically-committed students challening our rationalizations and the rationalizations of the Chinese Communist Party in its will to power.
Force and the will to power are not a legitimate governing philosophy. Force can be used legitimately. But that is a part of an ongoing, thoughtful, engaged, and deeply considered discussion and debate about the best use of power and force or coercion as a part of that exercise of power that every student of power, worth her/his salt, should know should be presumed against in favor of reason and thoughtful and constructive engagement. Too many of those students in liberal democracies, today, as much as in more repressive regimes and cultures, today, are rationalizing force as a governing philosophy in its own right, today, in an effort to bolster an argument for the morality, credibility, and decency of the rule of law even, as was the case of Tiananmen Square when the Chinese government murdered and repressed Chinese students and citizens in the name of the rule of law, when the rule of law is inherently neither moral nor credible or decent. The rule of law is not at all an adequate or moral or credible or decent governing philosophy. The rule of law has been the basis for all of the most repressive, illiberal, and authoritarian regimes that the world does or has ever known.
All of these philosophies and ideas of governance and liberal democratic culture and life are subject to the one most important and worthy and legitimate basis for a governing philosophy: thoughtful and engaged liberal democratic debate and discussion. It is liberal values which are the moral, credible, decent, thoughtful, and legitimate basis for liberal democratic governance and culture, not the rule of law. The rule of law is subject to every form of manipulation by more repressive, illiberal and authoritarian impulses, groups, and ideologies. And the only genuine and legitimate correction for such manipulations - propaganda and political pressure are two of the terms both used and too often romanticized by even liberal democratic leaders and political participants - is engaged and thoughtful liberal democratic debate and discussion. Liberalism, conservativism, libertarianism, anarchism, socialism, communism, Naziism, facism, and a million other ideological schisms are all philosophies that lay claim on any or total monopoly of wisdom in liberal democratic debate and discussion circles. In fact, no such monopoly does or ever has existed, despite persisent efforts by ideologues and party loyalists to monopolize or carve out substantial monopolies or oligopolies of power.
No monopoly or oligopoly on power, anywhere, is a final and unchallengeable legitimate form of power, except as a means of establishing a power arrangement to best violent competitors which threaten democratic processes, discussion, engagement, education, culture, economies, and life. From there on out, independent thought and, out of that, independent and interdependent participatory and thoughtful engagement are the most legitimate, intelligent, open, sustainable, liberal democratic and effective and wise form of governance. Because they are the basis for the most important, fundamental, and sustainable form of governance by each person and within each culture and within the jurisdiction of each state: liberal democratic self-governance.
China is a long way from such values and such a society, as are America and the West, though closer to that liberal democratic ideal than their Communist and repressive, authoritarian brethren, because of their more liberalized cultural values, not because of their more repressive government policies.
Today is an important day to remember the cost of such romanticism: the lives of between 200 and 3000 Chinese citizens (depending on whether you trust more the Chinese government or Chinese student associations). And that doesn't even count the millions dead and imprisoned leading.
For those romanticizing force, today, perhaps this is a wise moment to reflect on the legacy of force and its capacity to purge the world of liberalized and liberalizing cultural values and the ideas that are the basis for them and which they inspire. As Wikipedia reports:
"In Beijing, the resulting military crackdown on the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or injured. The toll ranges from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 400–800 by The New York Times, and to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross), although the PRC government asserts and most independent observers agree that the majority of these deaths were not in the square itself but rather in the streets leading to the square.[citation needed]...
...Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protestors and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government.[1]
During and after the demonstration, authorities attempted to arrest and prosecute the student leaders of the Chinese democracy movement, notably Wang Dan, Chai Ling, Zhao Changqing and Wuer Kaixi. Wang Dan was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison, then allowed to emigrate to the United States on the grounds of medical parole. As a lesser figure in the demonstrations, Zhao was released after six months in prison. However, he was once again incarcerated for continuing to petition for political reform in China. Wuer Kaixi escaped to the R.O.C. in Taiwan. He is now married and he holds a job as a political commentator on national Taiwan television.[citation needed] Chai Ling escaped to France, and then to the United States.
Smaller protest actions continued in other cities for a few days. Some university staff and students who had witnessed the killings in Beijing organised or spurred commemorative events on their return. However, these were quickly put down, and those responsible were purged.
Chinese authorities summarily tried and executed many of the workers they arrested in Beijing. In contrast, the students - many of whom came from relatively affluent backgrounds and were well-connected - received much lighter sentences. Even Wang Dan, the student leader who topped the most wanted list, spent only seven years in prison. Nevertheless, many of the students and university staff implicated were permanently politically stigmatised, some never to be employed again."
That's what a government and governing philosophy predicated on force really looks like. That's a regime that knows how to use and enforce strictly the rule of law. That's what it looks like to pressure a population into a progressive (and submissive) political posture. That's what aggressive political power and aggressive enforcement of political and cultural laws and norms looks like.
That's what it looks like to use power to rule, for all the fuckin' pussies out there who don't know how to bring down the hammer of political and legal power on a recalcitrant population.
For everyone romanticizing force and power and the rule of law, today: Tiananmen Square is what it looks like to make all of those fantasies of final and complete political victory, rule, and ability to force a rebellious and recalcitrant nation into progress (and submission).
Tiananmen Square is the path of progress. Regress equals progress. Repression equals progress. Force equals progress.
George Orwell would be proud.
But the thousands of people who lost their lives, freedom, jobs, positions of influence, and other imposed consequences of a repressive government predicated upon force as a governing philosophy deserve better.
We all do.
Love,
Ben
