The Tiananmen Knot

The recent comments by veteran Hong Kong
politician Ma Lik have reignited media interest in the events of June 4, 1989,
sometimes – though less frequently in these heady days of the China economic
miracle – referred to as the Tiananmen Massacre. Mr Ma’s comments may have been
inopportune and ill-considered, but the media interest in and subsequent public
debate on the issue have brought to light issues that laid buried in recent
years.

 

On May 15, Mr Ma, who is chairman of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and
Progress of Hong Kong, stated at an informal press conference that the June 4
crackdown was not a massacre because troops in Beijing did not fire
“indiscriminately” at the protesting students. It has to be said – there is not
point pretending otherwise – that these were foolish words. Mr Ma has seized on
the word “massacre” and, in denying that it can be strictly apply to events
that transpired on June 4, attempted to whitewash a very problematic moment in
recent Chinese history. It is small surprise then that Mr Ma has suffered a
fierce backlash from many quarters, including exiled dissidents such as myself.

 

I do believe, however,
that clumsy comments such as those by Mr Ma need to be considered, not only at
face value, but also in terms of the implications for all of us who have any
kind of relationship with China.

 

The truth is that China
is no longer the same country that galvanized the world with scenes of tens of
thousands of students and workers taking to the streets to demand change. For a
huge number of Chinese today, particularly the elite who have access to the
university system, that change has already taken place. Despite the manifold
problems – a precipitous wealth-divide, rural unrest and intolerance of
political dissent, to name just a few – China today is far wealthier and more
cosmopolitan than the country I was forced to leave in 1989. It is governed by
a new generation of leaders – technocrats who speak in terms of words like
“governance” – and the old-generation Iron-Curtain generals are gone.

In short, with the rise
of China as a global economic force, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics just around
corner, it comes as no surprise that businesspeople and politicians of all
stripes should be considering how to put the political bottlenecks of the past
behind them. Sooner or later, after all, the past has to take its place in
history so that we can all collaborate in making a better a future. It goes
without saying that this is something that occupies the minds of dissidents
such as myself who cannot return to their homeland.

 

I am sure that Mr Ma
too is one of those people. Like us, he would like to be able to move on.
Unfortunately, his remarks were so outrageous that mostly all they served to do
was to open old wounds rather than stimulate debate about what the
preconditions for reconciliation might be. Even, I am sure, most dissidents
would welcome reconciliation – indeed it is a necessary development. But until
this day, 18 years on, reconciliation has not taken place, and for the most
part the world deals with June 4 by pretending it did not happen. Mr Ma’s
comments were a reminder that, whatever we call it, it did happen, and that
ghosts of June 4 can still arouse powerful emotions. Amid widespread public
calls of “shameless” in Hong Kong, the Apple
Daily ran a front-page headline calling Mr Ma “a scoundrel”, while the
Tiananmen Mother’s Group accused Mr Ma of “helping evil people do evil”.

 

For me, these reactions
underscore the fact that, no matter how vital China has become to world economy
and how much it has changed with the times, the Tiananmen knot cannot be
unraveled either by ignoring it or by denying it happened. The truth has to be
confronted before reconciliation can take place. The question of whether it is
time to forgive and move on is on many people’s minds, including my own. But
forgiveness, like reconciliation, has as its precondition the truth.

 

To this day, the
Chinese government calls the Tiananmen student movement, a
“counterrevolutionary riot”, all the while denying the scale of bloodshed. This
is a convenient line that I’m sure many would like to go along with, but as a
falsehood it leaves no room for dialog. It is a position that asks us to
forgive by forgetting.

 

Forgiveness will come
with reconciliation, but for that to happen the Chinese government, and its
defenders such as Mr Ma, will have to extend the same goodwill to the victims
of June 4, and to those bereaved, imprisoned and exiled, that they are willing
to extend to China. That means confronting the truth. Reconciliation under any
other terms is nothing more than appeasement.

 

As I have said before,
I think often about reconciliation. Like many of us in exile, I would like to
be part of the new China. Unfortunately, the day for that to happen has not
arrived. The conditions are not right. And until Beijing and its champions are
willing to engage in open dialog about the events of 1989 that day will not
arrive.

 

 ——Published 2007.06.04, Asia Wall Street Journal