Bandari Lei
A 2013 march in Hong Kong commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest for democracy during which many hundreds were injured or killed.
Editor’s Note: In a rare public statement on one of the most notorious incidents in his country’s history, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe told reporters in Singapore Sunday that the decision to crack down on protesters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, was “correct.” He cited China’s prosperity today as a vindication of his government’s actions in using the army to break-up and suppress a peaceful protest.
China does not plan to have any official commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of this bloody event, which has been all but suppressed from memory. The event remains a signpost in the evolution of the right to speak and assembly, not just in China but around the world. Since Tiananmen, the world has experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall; disruption of global trade talks in Seattle, Cancun, and Genoa; and the signature occupation of Egypt’s Tahrir Square during the “Arab Spring”, none of which resulted in as great a loss of life as that Sunday morning in 1989.
The Tiananmen Square protests were inspired in part by the eightieth anniversary of the “May 4th Movement”—an anti-imperialist and pro-democracy movement that began with a Chinese student-led demonstration in 1919. Seven decades later, students gathered to protest corruption and call for greater accountability of government officials, greater freedom of expression for citizens, and a more open media.
At the height of the protests (which lasted about six weeks, beginning April 15), more than one million students and workers occupied the square. Ultimately, the government declared martial law and on June 4 brought in troops and tanks. The number of people killed in the brutal crackdown is not known and estimates vary from 300 (the official Chinese government figure) to 3,000, but Amnesty International places the death toll at close to 1,000.
Erwin Knoll, then editor of The Progressive, and a fierce advocate for free speech and the right to protest, was deeply moved by the reports coming out of Beijing. His “Comment” from the July 1989 issue of the magazine is reprinted here in its entirety.
Can the Billion Prevail?
By Erwin Knoll, July 1989
It was, as is often the case, an unlikely backdrop for a great historic drama. [Tiananmen Square], an imposing expanse on ceremonial occasions, was cluttered with half-dismantled tents and the fetid debris left by tens of thousands of squatters. The few who remained huddled miserably together, weakened by hunger strikes and squalid sanitation, sweltering in the noonday sun or buffeted by the chilly night winds.
The familiar portrait of Mao Zedong gazed down on them impassively, but now Mao had a rival: a makeshift replica of the Statue of Liberty. Still, the protesters bravely sang the Internationale, and when they raised their bullhorns to address each other and the world, they spoke of solidarity between students and workers, of reviving the dream of the revolution their parents and grandparents had made, of putting an end to corruption and privilege, of taking power away from the old men who stubbornly insisted that they—and they alone—knew what was best for all of their compatriots.
The question was, one student said, whether one or one billion would prevail.
The “one” was Deng Xiaoping, at eighty-four still the dominant force in the People’s Republic, and to the students the symbol of everything they were rebelling against. But the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square knew that their problems were not caused by one man and would not be solved by replacing him. What needed to change was a structure, a system, a whole way of looking at the world. What needed to come was a society based on human autonomy and dignity.
That put the Chinese rebels in grand company— the company of those who stormed the Bastille 200 years ago and those who stormed the Czar’s Winter Palace early in this century; the company of those who demonstrated in Seoul even as the protests in Tiananmen Square were happening, and those who debated in the new Soviet legislative body, and those who rallied in Lhasa and in Gaza for the right to govern themselves.
But something special also set the Chinese students apart from many of their predecessors and contemporaries: After weeks of the most fervent protest, not a blow had been struck in anger; not a casualty had been claimed by violence. Perhaps that was the most extraordinary aspect of this momentous episode: Even after martial law had been proclaimed, even after it became clear that the ruling hard-liners had carried the day against those more disposed to recognize the need for change, even after troops had been called out to encircle the great square, the protesters kept the peace.
Something special set the Chinese students apart from many of their predecessors and contemporaries: After weeks of the most fervent protest, not a blow had been struck in anger.
Their weapons were banners and bullhorns, leaflets and posters, slogans and statements to the press. Chinese journalists employed by the government’s official propaganda organs broke ranks to report fully—and sympathetically—on the uprising. People rallied to the rebels' cause, carrying food and clothing and moral support to Tiananmen Square. Even soldiers sided openly with the students, prompting some to exclaim in the exhilaration and exuberance of the moment, “The People’s Liberation Army will never fight against the people.”
One day in May, a Chinese graduate student—a doctoral candidate in engineering at the University of Wisconsin—delivered to The Progressive’s office an article he had translated from the People’s Daily overseas edition. It was an account of the previous day’s activities in Tiananmen Square, “collectively reported by the reporters of the People’s Daily” and it ended this way:
“Associate Professor Wu Xiaochang of the Central Art Institute had intended only to come see his son. But once there, he sat down and joined the hunger strike himself. He said, ‘Poor as we intellectuals are, we still maintain our values and courage. Being here, I feel everything is noble and beautiful.’
“The demonstrations and hunger strike were still going on at midnight. Rain started to drizzle during the night and the temperature on the Square dropped noticeably. Is it so in people’s hearts? A very weak hunger striker uttered, ‘We are still waiting, but we don't have much time . . .’
“Anxiety and reason, anger and waiting, agony and hope. History, remember this day: May 17!”
And perhaps history will. But it will surely remember June 4, the day when many thousands of troops, soldiers of that same people’s army that would—it was said—never fight against the people, smashed their way into Tiananmen Square, directing their submachine-gun fire at crowds of demonstrators and spectators, killing hundreds, thousands—nobody knows how many.
Ultimately, the Chinese rulers behaved the way rulers usually do when their grip on power is threatened: They deployed the full force of the state’s military apparatus against their own subjects. With the whole world watching, the communist chieftains of the People’s Republic availed themselves of the standard tactics of medieval tyrants and fascist dictators.
With the whole world watching, the communist chieftains of the People’s Republic availed themselves of the standard tactics of medieval tyrants and fascist dictators.
It was a stupid and self-defeating response to a hopeful, peaceful protest. Almost everyone involved in the democracy movement agreed that even minimal concessions by the government would have ended the impasse in the Tiananmen Square. It would have taken little more than an admission by the Communist Party that some mistakes had been made and a pledge of openness in the future.
Instead, however, the Chinese rulers chose a course of intransigence and suppression that may have catastrophic consequences in the immediate future, and that will surely exact a heavy price for many decades to come. The impact is likely to be severe on China’s fragile economic experiments as well as on its volatile political system. It’s appropriate to ask whether those who wield power ever learn anything.
Can the billion prevail? Maybe not in the short run, though the issue remains undecided as this magazine goes to press. The hard-liners in charge of China have invoked the brute force at their command and dealt a bloody blow to the hopes of the billion. A savage wave of repression may well be in the offing. That has happened before, in China and elsewhere, and it will doubtless happen again.
For the long run, however, there should be no doubt. Tiananmen Square can be cleared and tidied up, the dead hurriedly carted off for instant and anonymous cremation. New restrictions can be imposed, new punishments inflicted, new barriers raised. But the billion will be back, more determined than ever. The square belongs to them.