Tiananmen, forgotten and remembered
When I moved to Hong Kong in 1992, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was still a fresh wound. As the colony prepared to rejoin China, and Britain’s last governor tried, 150 years too late, to bring some small taste of democracy and local rule to the city, Tiananmen was seen by many as a harbinger of things to come. Those in the democracy movement saw it as all the more reason to keep up the fight, while those who had begun cozying up to the incoming rulers saw the massacre as an example of why it was so important to stay on Beijing’s good side. And every year on June 4th, thousands of residents gathered in Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil in memory of the victims of 1989. Today, though I’ve long since left Hong Kong, June 4th remains an important date for me, and I can’t mark the day without reflecting on how much—and how little—has changed since then. In the intervening years, China has become a major manufacturing power, and one of America’s largest trading partners. While it was almost fashionable for Western magnates and politicians to rail against China in the early 90s (both Bill Clinton and Rupert Murdoch did it), today it’s increasingly rare for anyone in a position of power to levy more than token criticisms against the Middle Kingdom. Inside China, the crackdown that began with Tiananmen continues, though in a much quieter fashion. With the growing wealth of the nation, and a decade-long campaign to appeal to the nationalism of China’s youth, today’s students are more likely to fight for greater access to the latest cellphones than for democracy. Companies like Google and Yahoo, which once held the potential to bring freedom of information to the Chinese masses, have largely given in to the will of the Beijing government and, in some cases, have actually helped the authorities crack down on dissidents. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Beijing has largely left the British system intact. Though the government quickly wiped away Chris Patten’s feeble last-minute attempts at democratic reforms, it has, for the most part, allowed the “one country, two systems” policy to remain in place. Tonight, as on every June 4th since 1990, protesters gathered by candlelight in Victoria Park. This year, the numbers reportedly approached 50,000, up from 44,000 last year (the numbers are still down from the record 82,000 who turned up for the 15th anniversary of the massacre in 2004). The fact that they are still able to mass, unimpeded by the Chinese government, remains a sign of hope. Though the spirit of Tiananmen may have been largely crushed on the mainland by consumerism and nationalist propaganda, something of it survives in Hong Kong. One can only hope that, someday, this spirit will cross the internal border at Lo Wu and reestablish itself on the Mainland.
