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.