The Tiananmen Paradox

Not a few people in China ignore what happened in Tiananmen in June 1989. Furthermore, many of those who know, to be objective, care very little, or not at all. In contrast, the authorities are very careful not to overlook the said date. This is how effective and contradictory oblivion can be. Those who make the most to erase what happened from the collective memory cannot forget it under any condition. After 25 years, the Tiananmen paradox resides on the fact that, even though the causes for that civic rebellion (corruption, nepotism, increase in inequalities, demands for political reforms, etc.) still prevail today, the commitment of the actors who took part in such tragedy is very different, most notably the students, originally the main drivers of the protest. Today, in China, students are not a reference about the state of public opinion and the country’s conscience anymore, as they traditionally were since the beginning of the 20th century. After the events of 1989, the intense combination of indoctrination and depoliticisation, mandatory militias –several weeks long– still prevailing today  to instil discipline, the proliferation of all sorts of controls, the gradual transformation of universities into economic management units by different means –either through the creation of companies or through the controversial “sale” of places to the children of the wealthy– or a public policy on increasing research that focuses on ideological loyalties and invites to massive auto censorship, complete the neutralising circle.

Apartados xeográficos China e o mundo chinés
Palabras chave China CPC Tiananmen 1989
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Not a few people in China ignore what happened in Tiananmen in June 1989. Furthermore, many of those who know, to be objective, care very little, or not at all. In contrast, the authorities are very careful not to overlook the said date. This is how effective and contradictory oblivion can be. Those who make the most to erase what happened from the collective memory cannot forget it under any condition. After 25 years, the Tiananmen paradox resides on the fact that, even though the causes for that civic rebellion (corruption, nepotism, increase in inequalities, demands for political reforms, etc.) still prevail today, the commitment of the actors who took part in such tragedy is very different, most notably the students, originally the main drivers of the protest. Today, in China, students are not a reference about the state of public opinion and the country’s conscience anymore, as they traditionally were since the beginning of the 20th century. After the events of 1989, the intense combination of indoctrination and depoliticisation, mandatory militias –several weeks long– still prevailing today  to instil discipline, the proliferation of all sorts of controls, the gradual transformation of universities into economic management units by different means –either through the creation of companies or through the controversial “sale” of places to the children of the wealthy– or a public policy on increasing research that focuses on ideological loyalties and invites to massive auto censorship, complete the neutralising circle.

Today’s Chinese universities, in their vast majority, are not a centre of intellectual effervescence, as they were in the decade of the 1980s. The controls over the professors have multiplied, say the most critical, and those who show non-conformist ideas, or any type of activism, are marginalised. For their part, students live under exam pressure, with their minds set to searching for a good career after their studies, and a strict control over their associations and meetings, at the expense of the outbursts imposed by the official agenda.

Part of this paradox is also related to the political conscience of many authorities, when appealing to an institutional reform that cannot be formally avoided, continue nostalgically recalling the figure of Hu Yaobang, the CPC’s secretary general, put aside in 1987 by Deng Xiaoping due to his poor handling of the student disorders of 1987. His death in 1989 was the trigger for the protest that started in his funeral and culminated in the June events, after almost two months of permanent assembly in the Tiananmen Square, which also destroyed Zhao Ziyang, his ephemeral substitute as CPC’s secretary general.

Hu Yaobangs memory is vindicated constantly by the most reformist sectors of the CPC, especially since 2005 when, in what would have been his 90th birthday, several hundreds of prominent militants honoured him in an unprecedented ceremony. Five years later, the highly favourable articles of Wen Jiabao, who collaborated with him in 1986, praising his vision, his proximity to society, his commitment to the thousands of Chinese prosecuted for their ideas in the Maoist years and rehabilitated thanks to his intervention, exemplify even today a real will for change, courage and audacity that not one of his successors as secretary general replicated. Everyone is very aware that it was nothing but his intention to accelerate the pace of change that resulted in his fall. And they take great care not to forget about it...

Relentless enemy of stagnation, Hu Yaobang was, without a doubt, the most ambitious Chinese reformers of the time of opening initiated in the 1980s. The current tandem Xi Jinping-Li Keqiang, which discursively joins an integral reformism with the economy as a focus, does not refer directly to his memory to root his political proposals, knowing that this could cause confronted reactions. However, in their effort to stop arbitrariness, especially in justice, and corruption, we can discern traits of a historical influence that does not stop increasing year after year. Conflicts of interest grow in a China forced to choose between the deepening of the reform, the political opening and the survival of the Party, the major challenge of its modernity, and one which does not seem to have a soon to be attainable solution.

A sincere political reform in China cannot be evoked without referring to Hu Yaobang’s ideas, thus avoiding the events of Tiananmen. In a large part of the upper strata of the CPC unconnected to the predominant monolithic system, this reminiscence reminds them of failed hopes, which grip their vigour and support the inevitability of creating a reforming consensus to preserve stability. Paradoxically, this obsession prevents radical advancements and leaves in the air more questions than answers. Among them, whether or not the CPC will one day be able to balance the books with its recent past.

 

 

Traducción: Laura Linares Fernández.