Older people still remember the massacre that took place on June 4th in 1989 and the democratic movement that touched the hearts of people throughout China and the world. Twenty-nine years have passed and many young people may not have any impression. In short, it was a great democratic movement which ended with an extremely tragic massacre. The reason for its failure is still the subject of people’s thinking and discussion.
At that time, I was still serving a sentence in prison and I did not personally participate in this movement. In recent years, I often am recognized on the street and in restaurants. Yet many people mistakenly thought that I participated in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, even praising me as a hero of Tiananmen Square. Actually, I was just watching the news on Tiananmen Square in front of the TV at that time. Later, I listened to many witnesses telling the story of that year.
Although I did not attend in person, this democratic movement is indeed related to me, because it started with Professor Fang Lizhi and other celebrities in the scientific, technological, cultural and art worlds to wrote to Deng Xiaoping and asked him to release me. Therefore, the authorities treated all my relatives as “family members of turmoil” — refusing to allow them to study abroad and even sending special agents to monitor them day and night, which wasted a lot of hard-earned money by the Chinese taxpayers. According to reliable sources, the task force established in charge of my case since 1979 is still there. How much taxpayer’s money has been wasted? But this account should not be counted under my name. After all, I am a victim.
The old policemen who were accompanying me watching TV at that time were worried: how could the young students in TianAnMen Square be wasting their time there without taking measures? Do not they know that the Communist regime would open fire against them? They asked me: How could these young people be so ignorant that they may think that the Communist Party will really negotiate with them, and think that they are all good children? I was speechless. Was it not true that we were all so naive when we were young? These policemen also asked: Why are there are no adults helping them with advice and taking the helm? I was still speechless and had no choice but to say: I have been locked up for ten years. How do I know?
After a long time and some thoughtful thinking, I found that these old guys inadvertently told about the basic mistakes of this movement. The first was: Most people at that time had an illusion about the Communist Party, and thus adopted the strategy to reason with unreasonable authority. As Mahatma Gandhi once said: When a group of bandits enters the village, you cannot reason with them. But you can only use weapons to expel them. The objects of pacifism are gentlemen. The bandits only recognize violence.
The second mistake was the irresponsibility of the intellectual elite. They led the ideological trend of democracy and freedom. They were credited with setting off a campaign to strive for democracy and freedom. However, when young people were facing the danger, when the movement went further into the need for strategic guidance, they should not have just stood by watching the excitement going on and even declaring that they were only responsible for thinking and not responsible for actions. This kind of cowardly act of renunciation of responsibility is an important reason why this massive movement lost its direction.
Of course, cowardice was not just limited to the intellectual elites. The weakness and incompetence of the reformists within the Communist Party was also an important cause of the loss of direction of the movement and resulted in the eventual tragic ending. This group mainly refers to Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary who was continually being touted, as well as the officials in his faction. Among them, there were even informers who jumped into the opposite camp and thus got promoted and even made a fortune, which itself illustrates the unreliability of the people who are really speculators in the officialdom in China.
Even if it was not for the sake of democracy and freedom, and was just for the sake of survival and the interests of the reformists, they should not have given up their responsibilities. Their concessions to Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng led to the annihilation of all the reformists. The result was a political backsliding, an economic retrogression, and a backward of culture and arts, and even more retrogression of ideology and speech that resulted in terror in the whole country. The mainstream trend of China’s reform and opening up came to an abrupt end, with these reformists coming to a miserable end. So the weakness and incompetence did not only harm others and themselves, but also mislead the country and the people.
When we were called as the Sick man of East Asia, it was not referring to the physical body, but was referring to this kind of national wimp character. If this nationwide wimp character does not get reformed and making progress forward, then indeed this nation has no hope. With the past lesson so close to us, Xi Jinping dared to restore a set of policies for fascist autocracy. That is because he precisely knows the slavish nature of the Chinese people, along with their wimp character.
