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Modernization and Democracy
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16731 |
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SPECIAL SECTION
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10 / 1989 |
4,593 Words |
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Gilbert Rozman
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June 4, the day the People's army first turned their firepower against students and by standers in the streets of Beijing, will live on as a day of infamy. The popular appeal of two adjacent anniversaries--May 4 and July 4--only serves to intensify the symbolism.
May 4, the date that has lent its name to the May Fourth Movement and to the highest ideals for modernizing China, annually nourishes hopes for a new approach to politics and learning. In 1989, the timing of the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement proved propitious for enlarging the demonstrations that had followed Hu Yaobang's death on April 15 and for forging the impression that this year's fortieth anniversary of the People's Republic on October 1 will be overshadowed. To Chinese intellectuals the message is clear: October 1 is not the successor to May 4, but its repudiation.
July 4, once exclusively the symbol of American independence, has now come to represent broader, though not universal, aspirations for genuine democratic rights. Provoking the authorities, Chinese protestors erected a "Goddess of Democracy" modeled after the Statue of Liberty to associate themselves with these aspirations. Now authorities seek turn that association against the protestors by reviving the stereotype of the enemy used to justify dictatorship in China--a tactic employed almost continuously since 1949.
Caught between the unrealized ideals of the past and the newly articulated hopes for the future, peaceful but determined demonstrators could not withstand the brute force of military power unleashed upon them. They could only take solace in the conviction that for the sake of economic modernization, if not because of opposition within the Chinese army and society, communist leader would eventually be obliged to reverse their harsh stand against democratization.
As graphically exposed in June, the linkage between political reform and economic development depends, in the short run, on power politics among a small set of leaders. But over the long run it is subject to more predictable forces. Chinese history and the major developments in the history of socialism can help us to better understand the decisive nature of these forces for the future and to see how they continue to build even when their expression is temporarily thwarted. To fully appreciate what is happening in China, we need to reexamine modernization theory--a subject of much controversy both in the West since the 1960s and in China over the past decade of ideological uncertainty. Chinese students are counting on this theory to defeat the hard-liners--not by inspiring revolution but by demonstrating the futility of the state's policies.
Intellectuals Versus Leaders in Modern China
For nearly a century, the demand from at least some intellectuals for democratic reforms to further modernization has reverberated in power struggles among Chinese officials at the top. Zhao Ziyang, the pragmatic defender of entrepreneurial interests, is but the latest casualty. The decades of communist rule produced additional victims, including Peng Dehuai, the defender of military modernization, Liu Shaoqi, the defender of bureaucratic interests, and Hu Yaobang, the defender of intellectual interests. The scenario has been repeated over and over. Powerful leaders insist on ruthless measures to sweep away dissent, a
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