30 years after the Tiananmen protest movement, Perry Link and other China-experts discuss then and now. What has this to do with the ratio of the present-day Chinese society to their government in 1989?
You may activate the sense of Possibility. What would have happened if? If the Chinese government Deng Xiaoping as the “architect of the economic reform” of the 80s, the pulled strings in the Background, and the then Prime Minister Li Peng as his Front-man – use it if you had not decided in 1989, the army against its own people? It could have talks to give, a round table, such as months later in Germany?
Could be made a fundamental political Reform with these young students, which were held by the power elite for anarchists,? Had to work the administrative institutions? Would have been a grass-roots process of reform is conceivable, starting at the municipal and County level, with democratic elections? And where China is still the most populous country in the world would be, today, if you answered Yes to all these questions?
The suppression of the protests was inevitable?
MERICS, a Berlin-based think tank on China, and the Federal centre for political education have exactly to the time 30 years ago, in Beijing, the tank in the direction of Tiananmen rolled, invited a star-studded panel of experts to answer these and other questions – or, at least, you.
“Was the suppression of the protests inevitable?”, the question is also presented to the expert audience of the event. Sure, no one can answer it, Perry points to the Link that carries on as an Emeritus Princeton Professor of East Asian studies and editor of the secret files-a collection of “the Tiananmen Papers” such questions for decades, scientifically and empirically. But: “I’m pretty sure it would have been below the top political level, a lot of people would have done in their respective institutions and work under a more open, more liberal leadership.”
Would have been able to decide the KP government differently, as the military against the students to use it?
Can only guarantee the KP stability?
The official Narrative of the Chinese government is also today: “The suppression of the protests was necessary to avoid Chaos, to preserve social stability and the economic reform hedge.” Not only many Chinese, and Western China-watchers and business people to share in the meantime this view.
Chaos as a result of the protests would have been quite possible to believe Link would be, how chaotic conditions after a societal transformation today also conceivable. But would it really be so threatening? “I cannot follow the Argument of the Communist party of China, that it was all along the line and at any time you keep in order to avoid Chaos. May be, that it is, but if you follow those, then it postpones the time for changes. Eventually, they will come.”
The Pact: consumer, instead of moral values
The social facts in China do not necessarily speak for the reasoning of the American experts. Because that was the Deal, believes MERICS expert Kristin copper, the KP government was offering its people after ’89: We provide stability, and you the people, give up all political ambitions, and every attempt to participate. “In hindsight, this Deal seems to have for the majority of the Chinese population works,” says the specialist in China’s media and digital policy.
East Asia-Professor Perry Link is not allowed to enter China
Also Perry Link holds the attempt of the CP to compensate for the ideological vacuum after ’89 by material consumption, for successfully. “Money and nationalism should replace the original moral Ideal, which is rooted in Chinese society, and unfortunately, it works.”
How long will the Deal still holds?
But this Pact today? Sandra Heep, Professor for the economy and society of China in Bremen, keeping him at present, for threatened. “The Problem with such legitimate adjustments based on performance, is that they make the Regime for economic shocks extremely vulnerable.” For the Chinese government, things have become since ten years, more and more complicated. During the period, unlocked in China, economically the world’s best, it was easy to achieve high growth rates. The was over, the Chinese economy was under a high pressure to restructure. The economic tensions between China and the United States have increased the risk of an economic shock for China.
Sandra Heep and Daniel Leese excited to follow the results of the audience survey
The increasing political repression since Xi Jinping came to Power, there might be partially explained by the fact that the government of this growing economic pressure. “You want to make sure that you can nip any approach to a large scale Protest in the Bud.”
May be repeated country-wide Protest?
It could come in China, however, once again, to country-wide protests, with the participation of different population groups? “The Chinese CP has invested a lot in surveillance technology, and in measures for the stabilization, I think it would be very difficult to organize again protests,” says the Freiburg-based China historian Daniel Leese. Only if the Central interests would be affected, as a private possession, or the unknown successors succeeded, then he would hold intra-party division is possible.
The future prospects for the Chinese makes were commander-in-chief to a large extent from the economic development, also believes the Journalist Felix Lee. The government have had plenty of hand to provide for growth. “Still there is sufficient potential for growth, because there are 400 million who have not made the rise of the Chinese middle class,” says the former China correspondent. “But then from an emerging country to a high-tech knowledge-based society, is much more difficult than the first step.”
The audience votes mobile during the discussion, “how Much space China’s society today?”
The change is coming?
The possibilities of control were now enormous, but also in China, new forms of protests would be conceivable. Felix Lee is optimistic: “I’m pretty confident that the change be organized if the majority of society wants it.” Hong Kong, and much more-Taiwan kept the memory alive, that democratic developments are possible.
China would be today a more liberal country if the protests would not have been down in the dumps? Just under half of the surveyed audience answered this question clearly with Yes. The suppression of the protests had been inevitable, holds a little more than one sixth is right.