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Dying for Democracy
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16720 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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10 / 1989 |
2,477 Words |
| Author
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Stanley Rosen
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The tragic events of June 3-4, 1989, when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Beijing citizens were killed by People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops ordered to retake Tiananmen Square from student protesters, were a grisly confirmation of the utter failure of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) youth policy. The drama leading up to the denouement--which had begun with student demonstrations honoring former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang after his sudden death last year--pitted two divergent approaches to the "youth problem." On one side stood those like Zhao Ziyang, the reformist general secretary of the CCP, who favored negotiation with the student protesters and felt that successful reform required the party to acknowledge and accommodate the changing interests and values of youth. On the other side stood the aging hard-liners who stressed the necessity of control over an unpredictable youth, lest they use their increasing independence to undermine the country's stability and unity. Zhao's sympathy for the students, like Hu Yaobang's before him, cost him his job.
It is no coincidence, but rather a measure of the important role that university students play in Chinese society, that senior party leader Deng Xiaoping has had to cashier his two chosen successors because of their unwillingness to suppress student demonstrations. In the end, the students were crushed--literally and figuratively--under PLA tanks; nevertheless, the student movement will inevitably be revived. In the aftermath of the Beijing massacre, students once again have become the conscience of the nation and have inherited the moral authority which the CCP has steadily squandered.
A Thousand-Year-Old Tradition
The open student challenge to a leadership viewed as ineffective and corrupt represents, in fact, the continuation of a thousand-year-old tradition. Advanced education has always been the preserve of a small minority and has carried with it certain privileges and obligations. Just as the ideal Confucian scholar was expected to withdraw his support in protest against a corrupt state and its officials, university students today likewise recognize their responsibilities to the broader society. Moreover, the Confucian sense of duty has been reinforced by certain key events in the twentieth century. The modern student movement was born on May 4, 1919, when more than 3,000 students demonstrated in Beijing against the decision of the Paris Peace Conference to grant former German territories in China's Shandong province to Japan. Their action was particularly significant because it established the nationalist and revolutionary credentials of the students two years before the founding of the CCP. Thus the party has always been wary of the students, since they are the only social force that can legitimately claim to challenge the party's monopoly in speaking for the national interest.
Ironically, party leaders must bear the primary responsibility for the continuation of the student's political role after the communist victory in 1949. Until 1966, the CCP had been very successful in preventing any independent, nonmediated student political activity; all legitimate political expression was organized through the party and its subordinate Communist Youth League.
But Mao Zedong could not resist mobilizing the students on several occasions in support of his political aims. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao fostered and encouraged the student Red Guards
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