MCLC: Tiananmen not a 'passing lapse'

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Paul Mooney (pjmooney at me.com)
Subject: Tiananmen not a 'passing lapse'
***********************************************************

Source: China Change (7/8/14):
http://chinachange.org/2014/07/08/tiananmen-massacre-not-a-passing-lapse-of
-the-chinese-government/

Tiananmen Massacre not a “Passing Lapse” of the Chinese Government
By Chang Ping

On June 4, Deutsche Welle published a piece by its China correspondent,
Frank Sieren, titled: “From Tiananmen to Leipzig” (German
<http://www.dw.de/von-tiananmen-nach-leipzig/a-17682980>, Chinese
translation 
<http://www.dw.de/%E4%BB%8E%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8%E5%88%B0%E8%8E%B1%E6
%AF%94%E9%94%A1/a-17683958>).  In this article, Mr. Sieren takes an
inventive angle on the bloody act which took place twenty five years ago
in Beijing. In angry protest, a number of Chinese advocates, including
student leaders Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi, human rights lawyer Teng Biao,
and the group Tiananmen Mothers, have issued signed statements. What
follows is my attempt to explain what prompted this outcry, and to explore
the issues at hand with Mr. Sieren.

Mr. Sieren writes that “We would perhaps never know what happened
twenty-five years ago in Beijing,” and that “for those in the West to
unilaterally exaggerate the facts in their description of the incident
helps no one. To do so would be as shameful as the ongoing silence of the
Chinese government about the 1989 incident.” He calls for “a pragmatic and
fair assessment of Tiananmen.”

The Chinese Communist Party itself has never denied the fact that the
army, doing its bidding, drove tanks onto the Square and streets of the
Chinese capital, to butcher peaceful student and citizen demonstrators.
Media around the world, including Deutsche Welle and the Party paper
People’s Daily, as well as the memoirs of Chinese leaders such as Zhao
Ziyang, Li Peng and Chen Xitong, have left us with a vast body of
documentary evidence. What is more, Tiananmen Mothers, student leaders and
participants are for the most part still alive; over the last
quarter-century, they never stopped seeking accountability for these
crimes.

Let us be clear on one point: when Chinese advocates call for making the
facts of Tiananmen public, it’s not because they “do not know what
actually happened.” Rather, they are fighting against the government’s
cover-up, distortion and dilution of truth. One of the goals of those
responsible for the massacre is keeping the theory that “the truth can
never be known” in circulation. This is precisely why each of the last
twenty-five summers in China kicked off with a crackdown: a large number
of dissidents are rounded up and kept at home or in prison, and censorship
keeps such a stranglehold over the Internet that euphemisms, cleverly
wrought and thickly veiled allusions, and even the vaguest associations to
the massacre are choked off before reaching the digital ether. The
expanding economic might of the Chinese government has also persuaded some
international media to self-censor in their reporting.

Under those circumstances, it is little wonder that Tiananmen Mothers,
banned from mourning their loved ones, or those driven into exile for
pursuing the ideals of democracy, or ordinary Chinese who, contending for
justice, must live with constant lies and fear, are outraged when they see
Tiananmen inaccurately reported by the Western media, and the Chinese
government portrayed as wronged, misunderstood, and in need of a champion.

What is especially important to note is how countless Western journalists
strove with all the means at their disposal to shed light on what
happened. For their pains, they were interfered with, blocked, harassed,
threatened, beaten and even jailed. If there be inaccuracy in Western
reporting of Tiananmen, by and large it can only be attributed to the news
blackout imposed by the Chinese government itself.

What protesters find hardest to swallow is that, on the one hand, Mr.
Sieren declares “we may never know what happened,” demanding that in
accordance with Western “concepts of law and justice,” observers strive to
distinguish between “momentary negligence and deliberate act, individual
culpability versus group collusion and, above all, avoid guilt by
association;” on the other hand, assuming both omniscience and
omnipotence, he sees fit to pronounce the last word on the incident:
“Indeed, 1989 is a passing lapse in the history of New China.” (In the
German version, this statement was deleted after the article was first
published, but remains in the Chinese version.)

Such statements exhibit sheer ignorance of contemporary Chinese history.
From the Anti-rightist Campaign, the Cultural Revolution, to the Tiananmen
massacre and today’s “stability maintenance,” or rule by secret police,
Chinese Communist rule been both consistent and continuous. Even Xi
Jinping, the new President, emphasizes that in no way can the first and
last thirty years of the Party’s performance “be cut off from each other
or set up as opposites”; no disavowal of what the Party ever did will be
allowed. During this reign, man-made catastrophes never stopped, where
even official records show that tens of millions died by violence. Not a
single one of these disasters can be termed “a passing lapse.” Rather,
they are the inevitable outcome of unfettered autocratic power and the
consistent practice of quashing all opposition. The Tiananmen massacre is
but one instance of this take-no-prisoners approach. Taking a page from
the CCP’s verdict of the Cultural Revolution as “Mao’s error in his
twilight years” and pegging Tiananmen as “a passing lapse in the history
of New China” may be ingenious, but frankly is rather dated as far as
tropes go.

Mr. Sieren, in quoting from East German official Zubovsky’s memoir, paints
both Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin as distraught and decisively penitent
over their “passing lapse.” Zubovsky recalls that “I was shocked by
(Jiang’s) admission of the weakness in the leadership…Jiang never called
the demonstrators counterrevolutionaries, but rather misguided students.”
He also quotes former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, self-declared close
friend of Deng’s who defended the Party’s Tiananmen decisions several
times, as saying that “Deng never gave Schdmit the impression he would
make the same mistake again. His overriding concern was how to return
China to the path of opening up to the world.” This assertion does not sit
well with the fact that the Chinese government never let up its brutal
treatment of dissidents.

Not only did he distort China’s history, Mr. Sieren also aired some
exceptional views on German reunification. To me, it is undeniable that
Tiananmen shocked the world and helped to dispel illusions the people of
East Germany may have entertained toward their Communist dictators. The
students and ordinary citizens in China made a significant contribution to
the changes which transformed the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, ending
the Cold War’s global threat. However, according to Mr. Sieren, peaceful
reunification was mostly dependent on the attitude of East German and
Chinese leaders, highlighting that “the effect of Jiang’s tone on German
reunification cannot be underestimated.” In my opinion, this is grossly
unfair to the East Germans who fought to the end and at great risk to
their lives.

Chang Ping (长平), former chief commentator and news director of Southern
Weekend. In April, 2008, Chang Ping was removed from his positions for the
article Tibet: Truth and Nationalist Sentiments, published in the
Financial Times Chinese edition. In August, 2010, ordered by the CCP
Propaganda Department, the Southern Media Group banned his writings from
the Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekend, and the ban soon
became nation-wide. Websites were ordered to take down everything written
by Chang Ping. In January, 2011, he was asked to leave the Southern Media
Group. He then worked in Hong Kong as the editor in chief of iSun Affairs
(《阳光时务周刊》) until the authorities denied him a work visa out of
pressure 
from the Chinese government. He lives in Germany now and is a current
affairs commentator for South China Morning Post.
(Translated by Louisa Chiang)

Chinese original 
<http://www.dw.de/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E5%B1%A0%E6%9D%80%E4%B8%8D%E6%98%AF%E4
%B8%AD%E5%85%B1%E4%B8%80%E6%97%B6%E5%A4%B1%E8%B6%B3/a-17711914>