MCLC: Levine on Tiananmen Initiative

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Levine on Tiananmen Initiative
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (2/18/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/q-a-steven-i-levine-on-tiana
nmen-initiative-project/

Q.&A.: Steven I. Levine on the Tiananmen Initiative Project

This year will mark 25 years since the upheavals of 1989 in China, when
student protests prompted by the death of Hu Yaobang — the relatively
liberal Communist Party leader who was pressed into resigning in 1987 —
grew into huge, passionate demonstrations in Beijing and other cities
demanding clean government, democratic change and respect for human
rights. The party patriarch Deng Xiaoping deemed the demonstrations, based
in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, a grave threat to party power. He
authorized martial law in urban Beijing, ousted Mr. Hu’s successor as
party general secretary, the reform-minded Zhao Ziyang, and ordered the
People’s Liberation Army to end the demonstrations. The crackdown
culminated in troops taking Tiananmen Square in the early hours of June 4.
Across Beijing, many hundreds of protesters and ordinary citizens caught
in the wrong place died from military gunfire, and soldiers also died at
the hands of incensed residents. The precise number of dead has been in
dispute ever since 1989.

The Chinese government would rather let those events recede from memory.
But former leaders of the protests, human rights groups and academics are
memorializing the events and urging the government to acknowledge that the
crackdown was a grave wrong against a legitimate movement. Steven I.
Levine, a historian of China who is retired from the University of
Montana, has started a Tiananmen Initiative Project
<http://www.june4commemoration.org/>, which includes a petition urging
candid commemoration of the events that culminated in June 4. In a
telephone interview from his home in Stevensville, Montana, Mr. Levine
explained his project and the response it has received:

Q. Why have you undertaken this petition?

A. I undertook this because I have studied China all my adult life and
feel strongly about Chinese events, not simply from a kind of distance. I
guess I have an emotional attachment to China, as well as an intellectual
and academic one. I have a very clear memory of 1989. I was actually in
Tokyo when the suppression occurred, but I’d been following events since
the death of Hu Yaobang in April with mounting anxiety. So I’ve been
interested in that ever since. Last summer it occurred to me that the 25th
anniversary was approaching. I figured: Why not do something and take the
initiative here? I decided I would undertake two things. One would be a
massive letter-writing campaign to try to encourage academic institutions
and civic institutions, including Confucius Institutes [Chinese
government-supported Mandarin Chinese-language teaching institutes, in the
United States and many other countries], to hold some sort of meetings —
memorial meetings, lectures, teach-ins — so that that the Chinese people
who participated in 1989, as well as the Chinese Communist Party
leadership, would be informed that the world has not forgotten what
happened on June 4. Not only not forgotten June 4, but the whole movement
from mid-April until the crackdown. They tried to sweep this under the
rug, have false stories about what happened, and shut people up and all
the rest of that. The other part then was to use the Internet through a
website to have an appeal that people could sign, starting first with
academics — but it’s actually open to anybody. We’re also planning to
contact all the 50 state legislatures in the United States and ask them to
pass resolutions commemorating June 4.

Q. You mentioned Confucius Institutes as well?

A. I have great respect for Confucius as a moral philosopher, and
therefore I am irritated that the Chinese Communist Party has
misappropriated his name for these institutes that really have nothing to
do with Confucius. In fact, I was partly responsible for getting a
Confucius Institute at the University of Montana some years ago, before I
really thought about this very deeply. I thought that the Confucius
Institutes, which focus on Chinese culture and language, should expand
that notion of culture to include history, and the history of June 4 and
recent times should be part of that. I’ve heard secondhand that the
letters have, at least in the United States, created something of a buzz,
a kind of problem, among at least some of the Confucius Institutes. I have
gotten one or two responses from American co-directors of Confucius
Institutes indicating their sympathy for what I’m doing. But they’re in
situations in which they’re not free actors.

Q What do you think the universities housing these institutes should do?

A. I think the universities should really demand that the Confucius
Institutes show some independence and spine, and be willing to undertake
programs that are not dictated from Beijing.

Q. You’ve done this at a time when there’s an undercurrent of discussion
about how the Chinese government might be trying to shape not just media
coverage, but also academic research about China. Have you found so far
that has affected who is signing  the petition?

A. I think many of those who have signed are retired academics, like
myself, who no longer have any urgency to go to China, and who are willing
to then take what is not a risk at all by signing. I’m frankly
disappointed by the relatively small number of people — active China
scholars — who are willing to take the risk of signing their names to a
petition like this. I think that the more people who sign, the less risk
there will be. It was not unexpected, though.

Q. But, imagining yourself earlier in your career, do you think there’s a
legitimate case for saying, “Sorry, my research is too important, and
therefore I’m not going to put it at risk by signing something like this’’?

A. Of course, I understand that. Many people do field research in China
now that was impossible when I was at that stage in my career. And so for
people who are dependent on field research, I can understand why they
would not want to sign. And the same thing is true of overseas Chinese who
want to return to China to visit relatives and friends. I’m disappointed,
but I also understand people’s motives for doing or not doing certain
things. I’m not in a position in which I would want to condemn anyone.

Q. How do you respond to the argument that the Chinese government and its
supporters might make that the government’s actions in 1989 helped bring
the subsequent 25 years of growth and stability in China?

A. I don’t buy that argument at all, frankly. The experience of not all,
but some, Eastern European countries — for example Poland — and their
economic success and relative political stability, shows that you can both
have prosperity and political freedoms at the same time. The other thing
is that I think the Chinese people are much more capable of
self-government than the Communist Party is willing to admit.