Let Us Come Home

At the age of 21, I was swept into the leading ranks of a
popular, student-led movement urging the government of China to
undertake democratic reforms. That movement was brutally put down by troops and
tanks in Tiananmen Square and nearby Chang'an Avenue on June 4, 1989. I and a
generation of fellow student leaders have been in exile ever since.

 

Fifteen years on, when I look at my homeland from Taiwan, where I
live, and from Hong Kong, which I was recently
allowed to visit, I wonder at how little has changed. True, public
demonstrations for more democratic freedoms in Hong Kong
have not been suppressed by troops
and tanks. But Taiwan's
democratic freedoms are thus threatened. Meanwhile, Falungong practitioners
continue to be arrested in China,
as are "bad" political elements, and my generation of student leaders
cannot go home.

 

China may well be the world's miracle economy--the sleeping giant that
has awoken. But let us not forget either that China's problems are immense. The
future of its 1.3 billion consumers
is bedevilled by outrageous extremes of wealth and poverty; unemployment in China's former
iron rice-bowl hinterland is dangerously high (unofficial sources put the
national level at around 15%); and China's banking system is teetering
on the brink of bankruptcy. Add to these problems a noisy democracy across the
Taiwan Strait that is clamouring for the ultimate democratic
freedom--self-determination--and
Hong Kong's demands that China genuinely subscribe
to the spirit of the Basic Law in its administration of the former British
colony. These are not problems that I believe can be solved by totalitarian
central power.

 

When I look at Taiwan, I am struck by how smooth
the transition from totalitarianism to democracy has been. That accomplishment
is at least in part due to the long-serving Kuomintang, which realized the
necessity for dialogue, and the necessity of allowing democratic reforms that
eventually handed governance to the people. By allowing dialogue in Taiwan, the KMT
allowed the emergence of a rational political environment. Indeed, democracy
begins with understanding the importance of dialogue.

 

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's recent visit to the United States
resulted in a cautiously worded
rebuke by President George W. Bush to President Chen Shui-bian for his plans to
hold a referendum during Taiwan's
March 20 presidential elections. The next day, Chen responded publicly by
asking: "What is the Taiwan
problem?" And he answered that question: "The Taiwan problem
is China's
inability to accept democracy, freedom of speech and human rights."

 

However we see Chen's plans to hold a referendum, it is
impossible to deny that he has truth on his side. Taiwan needs China
economically, and culturally it has much in common with the mainland. But
politically, China's
failure to engage in even-handed dialogue with Taiwan and respect the democratic
desires of the island's people has made China itself the obstacle in
achieving reunification. Its intransigence, its preference for threats before
dialogue, have produced radicalized opposition in Taiwan, so that now even its
long-time ally in the goal of reunification, the KMT, has turned its back on China and
accepts the Democratic Progressive Party's formulation of "one country on
either side of the strait."

 

Mao Zedong once said that power comes from the barrel of a
gun. Beijing
used that gun on my fellow students in 1989; it now suggests
it is ready to use it again on the people of Taiwan. Thus, I find myself facing
the same oppressor today that I faced 15 years ago. And 15 years on, I find
that my thinking has not changed. The solution to China's vast problems begins with
that seed of democracy: dialogue. Out of dialogue come ideas, inspiration and
solutions. Out of dialogue come rational opposition and a rational political
landscape.

 

When I arrived in Hong Kong
in January, I concluded a brief speech at the airport by saying to Beijing, by saying to
President Hu Jintao, "Let us come home." I repeat that request. At
the youthful age of 21 I led a peaceful movement embraced by an estimated 100
million people across the country. In the course of that movement we repeatedly
called on the Beijing
government for dialogue and were denied.

 

We called for it then in Tiananmen
Square; I call for it now in exile. Too many voices have been
exiled and for too long. It is time they came home. It is time Beijing accepted an alternative to the barrel
of the gun.

 

——This article was publishes on the Far Eastern Economic Review, Issue
cover-dated February 05, 2004.