Communist Crowd Control

Communist Crowd Control

Mini Teaser: The secretly constructed record of the Communist Party decision to crack down on Tiananmen protesters rings true to an old China hand.

by Author(s): George Walden

Are we now in a more pacific stage of China's development? Some things have improved since 1989. Yet the very words used by the regime to dismiss this book--"Any attempt to . . . disrupt China by the despicable means of fabricating materials and distorting facts will be futile"--are so redolent of its catastrophic Maoist legacy that they suggest we have not come all that far since the government displayed the "counter-revolutionaries" it rounded up on television being browbeaten by soldiers for the delectation of the masses. It is high time things moved forward, and I would like to think that this will be a salutary book. Though the events are different in nature, my hunch is that these revelations could cause an intellectual ferment in China reminiscent of that which followed Khrushchev's 1956 Stalin speech.

The pity is that we are so often wrong on China, and confuse our hunches with our wishes. So we must allow for the opposite. As I read I tried to imagine how a middle-aged provincial Chinese--China does not consist entirely of Beijing students--might react. Far from being indignant and appalled, might he not sympathize with Deng's dilemma? Might he not admire him for giving Zhao Ziyang a chance and overlook the fact that, though Deng gave the order that "no one must die in the square", he and those about him knew what they were doing and were probably not unhappy at the prospect of a few deaths elsewhere, pour encourager les autres? And should our middle-aged Chinese be one of those who has profited from the new prosperity and relative freedom, might he not nod when he comes across Deng's warning about multiparty elections quoted above, and be wary of sowing luan--confusion--which is instinctively associated with the Cultural Revolution, even though that was the result of the Party making war on the people?

The answer, I suppose, could be that students and intellectuals might be stirred by the book, but not to the point of challenging the Party, if only for lack of popular support. More interesting is the possibility that its appearance might spark new thoughts of reform in high places. We are so in thrall to the myth that Reagan and Thatcher simply blew down the walls of the Soviet Union with a blast of their trumpets (if only we'd thought of it sooner!) that we forget the ferment among the more sophisticated senior party folk that antedated Reagan and eventually threw up Gorbachev. The fact that The Tiananmen Papers were compiled by a high-ranking Chinese official reminds us that the party whose general secretary was once Zhao Ziyang is capable of evolution, if only with the Burkean intention of self-preservation--though more likely with the aim of maximizing the country's wealth and power.

But this is divination, which this enthralling book inspires. Meanwhile, the regime's potential for viciousness is not in doubt, any more than the need for the West to keep up pressure for reform. If our policy is directed less at China than at our own gratification, we can cite the harsh side of The Tiananmen Papers--the paranoia about the West, the thuggish words about the students, the official murders and subsequent arrests--as conclusive evidence that the regime can behave in a repulsive fashion and ignore the rest. The trouble is, we knew that already. So what does this book change?

The Tiananmen Papers should help our China policy mature. The game of counterposing fearless democrats ready to "stand up to China" to sinocentric softies in the State Department or to the Foreign Office mandarins was fun in its time, but it has had its day. In Tiananmen, the crisis of a system, all that was unavailing. Nor is "standing up for democracy in China" a moral policy of itself, since true morality cannot be divorced from practicality. Indeed, it can be immoral if the grandstanders are more concerned with their own bella figura than with the fate of the Chinese people, or the results on the ground of the policy in question. I have no problem with a tough stance toward Beijing provided the fruits are clear, but China is a standing temptation for vainglorious politicians.

How far was the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, a notoriously self-regarding fellow, concerned with securing practical and lasting benefits for the Hong Kong people, and how far with re-launching his career after his rejection by the British electorate? And is President Bush responding to an increased threat, or playing macho politics? The competition he speaks of is implicit in the West's relations with China. How clever is it to force it to the surface, thereby inflaming nationalist sentiment among the Chinese people--a boon for Beijing's hardliners--not to speak of the risk of driving the Russians and the Chinese back together, and European and American policy apart?

Moralistic gesturing did nothing to help the students in Tiananmen Square and will help no one in the future. A truly ethical policy is incompatible with populist stances that dismiss anyone who knows anything about the country as kowtowing lackeys by definition. It means finding workable ways to advance Chinese democracy, alongside our legitimate interests, and staying the uphill, winding course. For all that they record a tragic setback, The Tiananmen Papers, a book whose very appearance gives hope, should encourage us to persist. God knows we are going to have enough trouble dealing with a more wealthy and powerful yet still aggrieved and resentful China without antagonizing it further, to no apparent purpose.

Essay Types: Book Review