Impossible to praise impossible to condemn - easier just to forget it
Impossible to praise, impossible to condemn - easier just to forget it. This failure to discuss the past is intimately bound up with the unhealed wounds of Tiananmen Square.For students, let alone for ordinary Chinese, the traumatic events of Tiananmen do not top the current agenda. Even in private, former protesters talk of that period as a closed chapter. Partly, that is because of well grounded fear: those who launched petitions in the lead-up to yesterday's anniversary were promptly arrested. Partly it is because the brave new world of business offers opportunities for the well-educated to become prosperous, and thus bury the past.
Partly it is a waiting game.Chinese officials justify the suppression of discussion in two ways. First, "People do not want to talk about this, nowadays." Partly true. But this is often backed up, by a second, contradictory argument: "Everybody would argue about it too much. That would not be good for the country."And there lies the rub. The Chinese warn constantly of the danger of luan, or turmoil. The popular fear of luan is often quoted as a reason why nothing will ever stir.
And yet the official acknowledgement of the underlying restlessness - if the floodgates were opened tomorrow, then millions would be discussing Tiananmen and heaven knows where it would all end - is a reminder that everything might yet change. The Chinese authorities hope that the memories of Tiananmen will gradually fade like a forgotten scar. And yet a failure to address the past can itself be a recipe for luan.In the Soviet Union, glasnost without perestroika proved a spectacular failure. By 1991 Russians had almost complete freedom of speech but the Communist economic system was scarcely shaken or stirred It was a recipe for disaster. In China it is still unclear whether the reverse combination, perestroika without glasnost (copyright-holder: Deng Xiaoping), can work any better, in enabling a totalitarian regime to survive.
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Already the paradoxes are clear. One can sit in a Chinese factory listening to the director waxing lyrical about export-oriented production, the fabulous relationship with foreign partners, the joys of the market economy And then you notice the Communist slogans on the wall. Oh yes, says the factory director (and party cadre), the Communist Party is "very important" for the factory's work.