2005年1月18日 星期二

Zhao Ziyang Missed His Historic Opportunity


      The death of former Chinese Communist Party
Secretary-General Zhao Ziyang does
not mark the end of an era, but is rather a reminder of unfinished business.
That business is the democratic reforms and the end to official corruption we
students protested for in Tiananmen Square in
the summer of 1989. Nearly 16 years on, and from my exile in Taiwan, I
cannot but see Zhao’s lonely death as
further evidence that that the protests I helped lead won China neither
democratic reform nor an end to official corruption.


      The
obituaries for Zhao, whom I recall
as a humble, grey-haired scholarly man who spoke Mandarin with a folksy Henan burr, have made
much of his last public appearance. He had already been stripped of his
position by Deng Xiaoping when he came to us in Tiananmen
Square on May 19 with the words “I’m late, too late. Sorry.” Zhao’s arrival was unannounced and discrete, and like
most of the students in the square that day--less than three weeks before the
tanks and troops would clear us out--I wasn’t even aware that the man was
amongst us uttering those historic words. But, if I missed the opportunity to
be present when he spoke, I have often thought those words in the years since.


      Above all,
today it strikes me that the words, “I was too late,” might well serve as the
epitaph of a man who ended his life a tragic figure, who was offered a historic
opportunity to embrace reform but who did not come to the square and offer any
support until he had been stripped of his rank. Until the last of his days he
was a living symbol of much that is wrong in China today.


      In death
that symbol becomes all the more potent, which is why China this week
is in such a heightened state of alert, and why there will be no state funeral
service. It is also why former Zhao
aide, Bao Tong, who recently accused the state of trying to erase Zhao from history, was not allowed to pay his
respects, and Public Security Bureau thugs injured Mr. Bao’s 73-year-old wife while
pushing her into an elevator. That act of violence alone is a reminder that
while much has changed in China,
much also has not. Wracked by social unrest born of the world’s widest wealth
divide, China
is still a place where the response to dissent is sharp and brutal. It can be
no other way, because all dissent in China is a reminder that, despite
the economic changes that have swept the nation since Tiananmen, reform on all
other fronts is on hold.


      This, of
course, is the tragedy of modern China. The Chinese way is to
systematically banish all agents of reform. My generation of student leaders
lives in exile or in imprisonment, and Zhao
Ziyang passed his remaining days after being stripped of his job under police
supervision. I’ve often wondered where his thoughts led him when they turned to
the events of 1989. Many of us who survived the Tiananmen protests are haunted
by a sense of failure for not having accomplished what we set out to do, and by
feelings of guilt for the lives of those who perished in the effort. To my
mind, it’s hard not to imagine that Zhao
must have had similar feelings and have spent much of his “retirement”
wondering whether he could have done it differently.


      In my
thinking--and this has haunted me for close on 16 years--he could have. It’s
impossible for me to forget that spring and summer of 1989, when I was a
student barely into my twenties and I took the streets of Beijing. To be sure, I was idealistic, and
perhaps in some ways naïve, but like so many others in those heady days I only
took to the streets because I thought there was a real opportunity for change.
We would never have taken the chances we did if we hadn’t thought that what we
were demanding was possible. And we saw the possibility in reformist elements
in the government, chief among whom is the man China is quietly mourning this
week.


I say to history that at any time before he was
stripped of his position, particularly in the days after we started our hunger
strike on May 13, Zhao, as the
nation’s most powerful title holder, could have come to the square, or gone on
national TV, to at least acknowledge that we students had just cause for
complaint. It would have put him and other reformists in control of the
situation. Instead, he attended a meeting of the standing members of the
Politburo in Deng Xiaoping’s private residence in which he was stripped of his
rank. He did come to the square too late.


      To this
day, I cannot help but see Zhao as defined by that moment He missed his
historic opportunity, and in the end his most notable achievement was that he
did nothing. On this week of his death, my thoughts go out to his family and
all who loved him, and I say may he rest in peace. But at the same time I
cannot but wonder, as I have all these years, what if.


——Published  2005.01.20.  Asia Wall Street Journal



2005年1月16日 星期日

「太晚了,對不起」



「同學們,我們來晚了,來得太晚了,對不起!」十六年前的一個料峭春寒的夜晚,一九八九年五月十九日,在滿是靜坐絕食的大學生疲憊的身影的天安門廣場,一個花白頭髮的人,滿臉誠懇,拿著擴音器,面對著電視鏡頭,以濃重的河南口音說了這麼一番話。這個人,就是在被軟禁十五年多之後,昨天早晨七點鐘辭世的中國共產黨前總書記趙紫陽。他的死,為中共總書記從無善終的魔咒又加了一個新的註解。






代表領導人善意回應

我在那群學生之中,我是他們的組織者,我是學生組織的主席。


學運開始時,我是個大一學生,趙紫陽是中國共產黨總書記,是垂簾聽政的太上皇鄧小平一人之下萬人之上的中國最高領袖,我們是對頭。


學生主張民主,痛恨腐敗,嚴討「官倒」,提出的訴求,衝著政府,當然也就是衝著最高領導人;而訴求內容中「官倒」名列前茅的正是趙紫陽的靠特權成為億萬富翁的兒子!我們的關係是對立而緊張的。


五月四日,我與十萬學生走上街頭,向世界光榮宣稱,我們是七十年前走在這裡的前輩們的傳承者,我們將勇敢地繼續舉起前輩們「民主科學」旗幟,追求中國人民的自主權力;這一天,趙紫陽在公開場合提出,政府應該更開明,政府應該與學生對話。


我們的聲音趙紫陽聽到之後作了善意的回應,極大地鼓舞了學生,極大地鼓舞了中國的民主運動。畢竟,自發的群眾運動得到最高領導人的善意回應,在中國歷史,並不多見。這一天起,趙紫陽不再是對頭,我們的關係不再緊張,趙紫陽在遙遠的高處回答了我們。







留住尊嚴失去了自由

學生追求的民主就是把希望建立在中國共產黨內部能夠出現積極的建設的力量,承擔起他們的歷史責任,把中國帶向自由民主,這個積極的建設的力量出現了,它叫作改革派,它的領導人就是趙紫陽!趙紫陽就是我們的希望!


然而,改革派,趙紫陽,並沒有承擔他們的歷史責任。他們躲在各種借口──社會安定,黨內程序等等──的後面,窺伺著鄧小平的一舉一動,生怕天安門廣場驚天動地的怒吼,震掉了他們的烏紗帽。


等待沒有結果,希望變成失望,五月十九日,趙紫陽走到廣場,神情哀淒的說了那句為世界所矚目的「我們來晚了!」


我們絕食五天之後,趙紫陽出現,說「我們來晚了!」當然我們深有同感,然而從後來的文獻中我們得知,那天下午,在太上皇鄧小平的家裡,一個小型會議或者說小小宮廷政變中,趙紫陽失去了它的權力。「我們來晚了!」後面跟著的那句「太晚了!」才是那天要來表達的唯一本意啊!


不久之後,政變的得勢一方,出動軍隊,血腥鎮壓了我們,我們中有的家破人亡,有的背井離鄉。當時的改革派,被逐出權力核心。而趙紫陽在血寫的現實面前,勇敢了起來,拒不認錯,留住了尊嚴,失去了自由,從此軟禁十五年餘。







可比為蔣經國葉爾欽

在這段時間,趙紫陽在想什麼?在最後的日子裡,他在想什麼?我猜,他還在玩味自己的那句話,「我們來晚了,太晚了,對不起!」如果在歷史給了自己機會的時候抓住那機會,趙紫陽應該是蔣經國之後的蔣經國,葉爾欽之前的葉爾欽,趙紫陽應該是一個可以改寫一段極輝煌的歷史的人。


可是「太晚了,對不起!」  


——蘋果日報,2005年01月18日