China's soft stance

Eight years after the students of Beijing University were chased from Tiananmen Square by tanks and machine-gun fire, China is a vastly different country from the one the young "counterrevolutionaries" sought to change in the spring of 1989.

The transformation that has taken place owes little to the sacrifice of those students and their supporters or any particular noble aspirations. Rather, it has been the mundane industriousness of the general population, inspired by the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's words "to be rich is glorious", that has turned China upside down.

Significantly, most of the issues the students demonstrated against -- corruption, inflation and state censorship -- continue to be a bane of life.

And the problems with the creaky communist political system -- in particular the lack of an institutionalized succession mechanism -- remain as glaring as ever.

Jiang Zemin, whose rise to the top of the Communist Party owes much to the backlash against the reformist movement, has ruled out any changes to China's one-party system.

Few observers of the situation in China see many prospects for reform under Jiang's rigid hand.

But a review of the "June 4 incident" would hold large benefits for China.

The rehabilitation and release of those still imprisoned because of their involvement in the 1989 protests would mark an important break from the past and perhaps set a new tone for China's often troubled relations with the West.

The main problem is the same one that brought the students into Beijing eight years ago, the inflexibility of China's political system. The Communist Party insists on unchallenged power, and allows for no compromise or dissent, and this applies both to international and domestic affairs.

As much as things change in China, others, too often the troublesome ones, remain the same.

-- The Nation, Bangkok