Prosperity tangible along Chang'an Ave
Source: The Global Times
[04:58 June 04 2009]
By Jiang Xueqing
Yesterday morning saw the usual crowds at Tiananmen Square. People came out to enjoy the sun, exercise and take pictures. A little girl in a rainbow-colored skirt stood by the Golden Water Bridge and smiled brightly for the camera.
Tourists, mostly foreigners, pointed their cameras up at Tiananmen Tower at the heart of Beijing, looking to capture something special.
Nearby, uniformed and plain-clothed officers, each wearing a pin of the national flag, stood along the path in front of the tower, watching the crowd closely.
“There are more policemen than usual these days,” said a local retiree who jogs around the square daily for exercise. He asked to remain anonymous.
By sundown, the crowd was gone. The square closed – blocked off to the public. People were still, however, able to watch the daily flag-lowering ceremony from just beyond the square borders.
Twenty years after the June 4 Tiananmen incident, public discussion about what happened that day is almost nonexistent in mainstream society on the Chinese mainland.
It’s still a sensitive topic. Scholars, officials and businessmen declined interviews with the Global Times on the subject. And searches for “June 4 incident” on the Chinese versions of Google, Baidu and Yahoo were blocked.
When asked to comment on China’s road to development in the last 20 years, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences cautiously responded with his own question, “Why the last 20 years (1989-2009) instead of 30 years?” After all, economic reform started in 1978.
People born in the late 1970s and after have little memory and vague ideas of the incident.
During a training session for 120 college volunteers before the Olympic Games in Beijing last year, Chen Ping, former deputy venue manager for Media Operations at the Olympic Green Tennis Center, told the volunteers that China failed its first bid for the Olympic Games in 1993 because international society was unfriendly toward China after the turmoil in 1989. He asked the volunteers, mostly sophomores aged 19-20, if they knew what he was talking about. They all looked puzzled.
Li Xiang, who worked as a computer programmer for a small IT company in Beijing, was 9 years old in 1989. He lived on Fuxing Road, a west extension of Chang’an Avenue. His memory? The primary school he attended near the China National Radio building complex on Nanlishi Road was closed for a week in June 1989.
“I was happy for no school and no homework,” Li said. “My parents watched news broadcasts on CCTV attentively with serious looks. I also took a few glimpses. The pitch-black burnt bodies of soldiers impressed me, but I had no idea what happened.”
As time moved on, many of the protestors at Tiananmen Square became university professors, industrial leaders, executive editors and government officials. Among those who went abroad after the incident, some have returned to China and reincorporated themselves into today’s Chinese society, while some are still sticking to their cause overseas. And, recently, relevant activities have been held in the US and Europe by former participants, according to overseas news services.
A Global Times reporter based in the US visited the headquarters for the China Democracy Party in Flushing, New York, a major residential area for the Chinese. The headquarters is located in a small, plain building with a cluster of doorplates hanging at the front gate.
Some local Chinese told the Global Times that there are quite a few similar organizations sticking to their old cause, but they have difficulties looking for financial support due to a lack of fame and influence. Many of them do not even have an office. With the economic development of China, these organizations attract much fewer supporters than before.
While putting aside debate on the June 4 incident for two decades, most people in China have devoted most of their energy and enthusiasm to economic reform, leading to continuous rapid GDP growth and causing foreign media to call China a “world power.”
“Chinese leaders insisted on not debating the June 4 incident or whether China was following a socialist or capitalist model of development,” said He Liangliang, senior political commentator of the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite TV.
“They had no intention of challenging the super-power position of the US, but they focused on maintaining stability of internal politics and domestic society, while keeping good relations with other parts of the world. In this way, China set direction and established a solid foundation for today’s peaceful development.”
Many other mainstream Chinese scholars share that opinion.
“Deng Xiaoping showed his wisdom by saying, ‘Do not debate (on socialism and capitalism)!’” said Liu Jiangyong, a professor of International Relations at the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University.
“History proves that we are on the right track,” Liu said. “As a model for development, socialism with Chinese characteristics has satisfied the interests of most Chinese people.”
The success of economic reform is widely witnessed and appreciated by the majority of Chinese.
“When analyzing an historical event like the June 4 incident, we’ll get lost if we become entangled in details,” said Jiang Lingfei, professor at the Institute for Strategic Studies at the PLA National Defense University. “By putting what happened in a grand background, we’ll get a clearer picture.”
After decades of development, socialism was at a low ebb in the late 1980s during its competition with capitalism. Economic laws were violated by the planned economy. Bureaucracy prevailed because of a high degree of centralization. The former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries entered a period of stagnation. Feeling a lot of pressure from within and outside of the State, socialist countries came to a crossroads of deep reform, according to Jiang.
“It would have been easy to overturn the boat if the reform was not handled well,” he said.
Under such a historical background, the Soviet Union disintegrated and Eastern Europe experienced drastic changes.
He Liangliang said that if the same thing happened in China after 1989, China would very likely have fallen apart because of political struggles, racial conflicts, and social and regional discrepancies, just as it did after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, which resulted in the collapse of China’s last dynasty.
“China would not have been able to achieve sustained and rapid economic growth, or become the world’s third-largest economy and a major trading partner of the US, Japan and the European Union, not to mention participate in the process of globalization as a WTO member,” He continued.
But, as it were, China learned its lesson the hard way from the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
“We know China can’t afford another big social turmoil,” Jiang said. “Ten years of economic reform since 1978 benefited the Chinese people in general and reinforced our faith in socialism” – the Chinese development model.
“Based on these factors,” he said, “the Chinese government made a sober and sensible decision to overcome hard times, restore social stability, and enhance economic reform in the 1990s. Thus, China didn’t miss a valuable historic development opportunity once again.”
New additions have been made to Tiananmen Square, which used to be the site for frequent political incidents in the old days. A new national flag-raising ceremony was introduced in 1991. Tens of thousands of people across the country make their pilgrimage in the early morning hours every day to catch a glimpse of the flag rising with the sun.
Prosperity is tangible along Chang’an Avenue, the capital’s east-west axis, which stretches in front of Tiananmen Square. China’s economic development has gained speed after Deng Xiaoping made his famous tour of Guangdong Province in 1992, in reality using the travels as a method of reasserting his economic policy after his retirement from office.
One year after his tour, the first club exclusive to the nouveau rich, Chang’an Club, opened along the avenue, adjacent to the square. Tycoons including Li Ka-shing and late Henry Fok Ying-tung all became members. It is not the big names, however, that grabbed the attention of outsiders, but the respect and tolerance for private assets the club stands for in the once egalitarian society.
Now, chic department stores along the avenue are also packed with common urban citizens, who also have a share in the economic boom. The famous Silk Market has become a must-see place for tourists from all over the world.
The Chinese people, especially the young, have become much more apathetic about politics than they were decades ago. Education, medical insurance and employment are among their top priorities today.
“Since the reform and opening-up, the living standards of the Chinese people have greatly improved, which easily explains their support of the government. But at the same time, we should also notice that the government has become more open and responsive,” University of Utah Associate Professor Tong Yanqi recently wrote for “Observation and Communication,” an academic journal at Peking University.
Recognizing the need to get in touch with the grass roots, Tong explained, the government began publicizing policies and legislation online in 2006 to solicit comments from the people. The response to a labor law before it was passed in June 2007, for example, totaled 170 million posts and required almost 30 people to categorize.
Twenty years later, “The government is responsive to requests of the people,” Tong said.
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