Robert Carroll
The annual June 4 marches are held here with several purposes in mind: to commemorate the deaths which occurred during the Tiananmen Square crackdown; to call for a reassessment of the events; and to ensure that those responsible are accountable. It also seeks to end the one-party rule regime and to democratize China. Are these realistic goals?
The Chinese Communist Party is far from being ready to overhaul its judgement, much less, to those responsible to account. Ending one-party rule is absolutely not on the cards, yet neither is introducing Western democracy and constitutional liberalism, which are considered problematic influences. On the contrary, the absolute and unchallenged nature of CCP official policy are remains stronger than ever. Given this situation, and that 26 years of these marches have not had any significant effect on a shift towards democracy in China, isn’t it about time the aims were made more realistic and less confrontational? The idea that Hong Kong would lead the way in democratizing the mainland was hard to swallow for many in the 1980s and 1990s and beyond, both here and abroad. But if we accept the notion that politics comprises of, in part, the art of the possible, isn’t it about time to change tack?
Of course, these events cannot be dismissed easily. The protests and subsequent violent crackdowns saw hundreds of mostly peaceful pro-democracy and anti-corruption protestors killed by the Chinese army. The authorities justified their actions as necessary measures in suppressing a dangerous counter-revolutionary movement, one which threatened to generate chaos and to compromise the core values of the Chinese political system. Domestically, there was widespread outrage, and internationally, China was treated as a Pariah state by Western nations. There must have been a vast number of senior officials however, who at some point disagreed with former leader Deng Xiaoping’s decision to declare martial law and send in the troops. This decision was supported by Prime Minister Lu Ping and some of the senior CCP officials.
If the protests had been quelled through diplomacy and negotiation and by employing realistic and empathic steps to address their concerns, along with non-fatal means such as tear gas, water cannons and forceful arrests, the issue would no doubt be less sensitive nowadays. However, the CCP leadership is not yet willing to criticize its former leaders for their action on that fateful day, and it’s not hard to see why. The party was split, and still is, into liberalist – both political and economic – and conservative camps. With the liberalists mostly outplayed in power struggles since 1989, the conservatives are unlikely to want to provoke the reformists until they have succeeded in introducing sufficient reforms to warrant a claim to be substantial reformers or show enough progress themselves.
The need to combat endemic political corruption is another task which Chinese President Xi Jinping has seized upon as one of his main plavtforms. This has been pursued alongside the introduction of numerous other reforms to address injustice. How far-reaching and successful he will be at these tasks, given China’s political precedents, remains to be seen, especially as he still has consolidated power in order to pursue these aims. These steps and his pronouncements do not appear to hail any significantly greater degree of civic freedoms.Developing the political climate for the kind of political reform advocated by the organizers of the June 4 marches therefore remains an elusive goal hardly to be expected in this president’s terms of office.
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