China refuses to be blown by the winds of change

Ten years ago, Indonesia, South Africa and China were all stuck in a similar authoritarian mould. As South Africa and Indonesia demonstrate that they have moved on, The Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports that they only sharpened the contrast with a China that declines to change. This is the first of two articles.

HONG KONG (JP): China's Middle Kingdom complex cuts both ways. It is not merely that many Chinese think of their country as unique and somehow separate from the world. Far too many foreigners go along with this, implicitly accepting that China is different from the rest of the world and is therefore to be judged by separate standards.

This duality has been on display amid the tenth anniversary of the 1989 Beijing Massacre. On the one hand, the Beijing authorities reiterated once again that the massive student-led demonstrations were "counter-revolutionary turmoil" due to the activities of "a very small number of trouble-makers." This year a new angle was added as, amid growing Americanphobia, the National People's Congress issued a statement insisting that the 1989 demonstrations in 80-odd Chinese cities were also part of a devious plot orchestrated by the Americans.

On the other hand, there has not been any lack of foreign commentators articulating the questionable thesis that the brutal suppression of the nationwide peaceful demonstrations in 1989 was for the best. Some even swallow the (generally unspoken) Beijing party line that the very brutality of the Massacre provided China with the "stability" which has enabled it to grow economically in the last 10 years.

The Chinese government and these foreign commentators have this in common: they both see Chinese developments in isolation from the real world. In the real world, China's stunted political development has been pointedly illustrated by current developments in the most developed and powerful nation in the African continent, South Africa, in Southeast Asia's largest nation, and the world's fourth largest nation in population, Indonesia, and in the world's largest nation in population, China.

Way back in 1989, these three nations were all plainly partners in tyranny. In a way, China was better off then than either Indonesia or South Africa.

In the 10 years following Deng Xiaoping's 1979 suppression of China's Democracy Wall movement in 1979, China had been edging backwards toward a little more freedom of expression, a little more political openness to go with its economic reforms, and perhaps towards another Beijing Spring.

At the very least, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary- General Hu Yaobang (before he was sacked in 1987) and then his successor as party leader, Zhao Ziyang, were both aware that political reform had to complement a faster pace of economic development. Since Deng had endorsed them as his proteges, it was assumed that he understood this too. Yet when the 1989 Beijing Spring arrived in full bloom, from April onwards with the huge demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Deng reacted even more ruthlessly in 1989 than he had done in 1979.

Meanwhile in 1989, the thought that political and economic reform went hand-in-hand remained completely alien to Indonesia's long-reigning president Soeharto, and it remained alien until he was ejected from office in 1998. In 1988, Soeharto had passed an important though generally unnoticed milestone. He chose to seek a fifth term as president -- instead of stepping into the background after 21 years in office and letting the constitutional processes which he had crafted actually work in practice. Soeharto chose instead to go on using the constitution as if it was his personal instrument.

In 1989 too, the South African government, led by President F.W. de Klerk, had yet to fully recognize that the days of apartheid were done, that authoritarian rule by a white minority over a black majority had to end in one way or another.

The contrast between then and now is almost total.

Last Wednesday, June 2, South Africans of all races had the opportunity to vote for their national leadership for the second time. The fact that a massive 85 percent of them turned up at the polls -- with some even insisting that polling booths stay open longer than intended so that their vote could be registered -- followed from the decision eventually taken by De Klerk to release longtime political prisoner Nelson Mandela from his prison on Robert Island on Feb. 11, 1990.

It is frequently assumed that foreign pressure on South Africa in the form of economic and political sanctions had a great deal to do with this. Another form of indirect political pressure almost certainly helped bring it about.

The white minority rulers could see the "people power" writing on the Asian wall. They chose to avoid the "solutions" to popular discontent adopted in Rangoon in 1988 and Beijing in 1989. Brutal suppression in one form or another had, of course, long been the name of the game in South Africa. There had already been several massacres in an effort to sustain apartheid. They had got the nation nowhere. Belatedly, more violence was not seen as a way out.

As it happens, South Africa today points up another contrast. In a few days' time, President Nelson Mandela steps down after a single term in office. Of course he is 80 years old. If it had not been for his 27 years in political detention, things might have been different. The fact remains that he is not clinging on to power, as 80-year-olds did in China in 1989, as they pressured Deng Xiaoping to go against his previous inclinations and appointments.

Mandela will be handing over to President Thabo Mbeki, a spry 56-year-old, on June 16. Additionally, Mandela has tried to make sure that after he goes, the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) will not be riven by a divisive succession struggle. ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa has been persuaded to pursue his career in the private sector, while Thabo Mbeki remains in charge politically.

Ex-President Soeharto, of course, never attained the wisdom of knowing when to step down, but at least on June 7, as a result of Soeharto being forced to resign last year, Indonesia goes to the polls in what promises to be a freer and fairer election than any the nation has experienced since the 1950s.

There were times when Soeharto and the military structure which had been created under his long rule threatened to adopt a Yangoon or Beijing-style "solution." In the end, Soeharto bowed to the massive demonstrations of 1998, though not before he had manipulated a seventh term for himself.

Yet the fact that he clung on to power too long could cloud this general election. Simply because it retains much of the money and organization built up throughout the Soeharto era, his political party, Golkar, could end winning quite a few seats. But the more seats Golkar wins, the less inclined many Indonesians will be to feel that the past is now past and that the election signifies they really are in a new political era.

Window: Simply because it retains much of the money and organization built up throughout the Soeharto era, his political party, Golkar, could end winning quite a few seats.