China refuses to be blown by the winds of change

China refuses to be blown by the winds of change

This is the second of two articles on changes taking place in Indonesia, South Africa and China as reported by The Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin.

HONG KONG (JP): The future economic growth of South Africa and Indonesia is by no means assured. Their political advance may well be chequered. But these two general elections bracketing June 4 symbolize that both South Africa and Indonesia have clearly progressed over the last decade. Their advance stands in stark contrast to China's lack of it.

While China's rapid economic advance has been noteworthy, the exceedingly modest degree of political progress achieved in the 1980s has been reversed in the 1990s. China's future prospects for economic advance are placed in jeopardy as a consequence. Free political expression is still taboo, to such an extent that it distorts politics. CCP statements and policies, the flow of information itself, are all geared to sustaining the party's lockhold on political power.

South Africa and Indonesia are having their elections -- China can only boast of elections at village level. China's apologists see this as the potential democratic wave in the distant future. Since for the most part candidates in these elections are limited to cadres of the Chinese Communist Party, the elections have become, in practice, another means for the further ossification of the Chinese political process, rather than its rejuvenation. Another pointer to China's distant democratic development is the fact that, under Chinese sovereignty, Hongkong's already small degree of electoral politics has been further reduced, as government-appointed members are reintroduced into the Urban and Regional Councils.

China's lack of progress reminds of an argument often heard in the old days from apologists for South African apartheid: "The Africans are simply not ready for the vote." Those Chinese and foreigners who, from a position deep within the Middle Kingdom complex, argue that China's democratic progress must be slow, cannot see that they are voicing the same racially offensive sentiment. More important, China's minuscule democratic progress is a standing insult to all those millions of Chinese -- not just students but people from all walks of life -- who demonstrated across the nation in 1989 for the imperfectly articulated goal of a better, a happier, and a freer China.

It is not simply that South Africa and Indonesia now have general elections. Equally important, their politics and their national life have become more spontaneous. The arrival of open politics, more openly arrived at through open debate, means that their societies are no longer pressure cookers waiting to explode -- though of course Soeharto did not depart until there was a partial explosion in Indonesia. Amidst a greater degree of political and social spontaneity, tensions can drain away, formerly heretical views can be voiced, people can be more relaxed. The same cannot be said of China. The excessive tension aroused by the regime was perfectly illustrated in Tiananmen Square as an old man opened an umbrella on which was inscribed the message "Remember The Student Movement." A posse of police jumped on him and took him away. In the people's democratic dictatorship, you cannot even make an innocuous statement like that.

Perhaps the most damaging sign of China's continuing inner tensions is the fact that, 10 years after the Beijing Massacre, the vast majority of Chinese students abroad -- anywhere between 70 and 90 percent -- prefer to stay overseas rather than return home to share the benefits of their foreign education with their nation. The only group likely to return are those sons and daughters of party cadres whose guangxi (personal connections) guarantees them the freedoms that the majority know they lack. The majority who stay away do so as a result of the implicit 1989-based assumption that a secretive political party, claiming total hegemony in the belief that it can do wrong, is simply not the best vehicle for China's modernization.

Mention of spontaneity in the political process reminds of the fate of former CCP secretary-general Zhao Ziyang, who still lingers within the Chinese leadership compound at Zhongnanhai, his voice silent, his person rarely seen. Today it is often forgotten that, as the demonstrations began in 1989, Zhao and his sons were actually a target of them. One early poster in the city of Xian had a jingle which rhymed in Chinese: "Mao Zedong's son went to the front, Zhao Ziyang's son speculates in color TVs, Deng Xiaoping's son demands money from everyone."

Zhao transformed himself from villain to hero because, as he tearfully showed in his last public appearance (before the students in Tiananmen, pleading with them to go home) he did what politicians are supposed to do: he listened to the people's views and adjusted to the developing situation. Ultimately, in one form or another, China will need -- and China will ultimately get -- more such politicians. But for the last 10 years China has been forced to adapt to the CCP's generally dogmatic version of reality -- rather than the other way around.

Zhao, of course, lost in the severe CCP faction fight which preceded the Beijing Massacre. Zhao has remained a non-person for 10 years, many student and other dissidents remain in prison or in exile, and there is no reversal of the original CCP verdict justifying the Beijing Massacre, all for the same basic reason: the party simply cannot accommodate differing opinions, or differing versions of reality.

Immersed in their Middle Kingdom complex, the Chinese authorities constantly reiterate that the current situation represents "stability."

There has been another wave of arrests prior to June 4, but dissidents have been arrested all through 1999. No news is allowed to appear in the controlled presses of the one place within China where a due commemoration was held, as some 60,000 Hong Kong residents attended a candle-light vigil in Victoria Park. In mainland China, there were massive security precautions taken to see that there were no June 4 commemorations anywhere. Tiananmen Square itself has been conveniently closed for renovations. CNN and other foreign satellite TV channels were switched off for the anniversary, so that no one would see the pictures of how the 10th anniversary was commemorate elsewhere in the world. And in the wake of the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the regime appears to be encouraging one more Chinese anti-foreign campaign, as it tries to stay ahead of China's nationalist yearnings. None of these trends suggests a condition of stability.

Sadly, the situation instead reminds of that World War I soldier who, when caught deserting his post and challenged by his superior officer, maintained "Sir, I am not retreating, I'm just advancing to the rear."

Ten long and wasted years after Tiananmen, China itself is still advancing to the rear.