Chinalbeit

Now that the day that shall not be named has come and passed, the time is upon us to reflect just what it means, both for Chinese at home and abroad, and for those foreign devils of us both living in China and those of us who have never been (Wing Wang’s Super Deluxe Chinese BBQ and Hamburgers doesn’t count as sovereign Chinese territory).  Of course, the original event occurred twenty years ago, though many people don’t know that the event was actually a culmination of a long process beginning with the death of Mao, continuing through the process of reform and opening, and finally resulting in a crushing defeat at the ends of the very same people who demanded China open up and modernize in the first place.   Chinageeks has an interesting translation up from a Chinese writer detailing some of the events leading up to the culmination at Tiananmen Square, and if you’re really interested, you can check out Chinese Lessons by John Pomfret, who witnessed firsthand both many of the events leading up to and including Tiananmen.  The point is that, at the time, mass student protests were quite common, and the riots at Tiananmen seemed an almost inevitable occurrence.  However, in the twenty years since then, there have not been any riots anywhere near the same scale.  Though there are tens of thousands of “disturbances” every year, they are normally quite small and focused protest.  Farmers demanding more pay or cleaner environments, workers protesting factory closings, migrant workers that haven’t been paid, etc.  Unlike 1989, these types of protests are not ideological at their base.  The people protesting are looking to obtain something concrete: thus it is not useful to compare these demonstrations to the events of 1989.

It is also useful to look at the darker side of the Tiananmen student protests.  Through the lens of history, we often gloss over and romanticize events by discarding the more sinister elements of the events.  As the Chinageeks links above shows, though we associate the Tiananmen protests with people crying out for freedom, liberty and democracy, these are not the things the students were exactly protesting in favor of.  Most of the protesters were young, urban, middle class Chinese who had had little to no experience with the deep levels of poverty in the countryside.  In fact, when questioned about their countryside compatriots, the students would often show a look of disdain, mention that they couldn’t be trusted and they shouldn’t be allowed to control the direction of the country.  The students were not crying out for an American one man one vote system.  If anything, they were looking more for an oligarchy of the middle class led by intellectuals.  Perhaps that would have been the best decision; who is to say?  The same divide between urban and rural still exists today almost as strongly as it did then.  Migrants from poorer Chinese provinces can freely move about and work almost anywhere in China: however, if the migrant laborers want to settle down elsewhere, say in Beijing, it is nearly impossible for them to change their residency status (Chinese Hukou 户口).  Without residency, the migrant laborers lack the same access to education, health care and social security that their resident neighbors enjoy.

These days, most Chinese don’t know too many exact details of the events that happened on the day that shall not be named, however almost all of them know that it did happen, and that whatever happened was not good.  A forum poster at Something Awful said that he tried to talk to a Chinese student at his university in America to inquire about his feelings toward the event.  The young Chinese boy responded that it was “a lie perpetrated by Western Media to make foreigners believe that China is weak.”  Obviously, it’s a ridiculous belief and can lead many others to believe that all Chinese people must feel like this.  I disagree, however, and I can honestly say that in my nearly four years in China I have never met someone who outright denied Tiananmen in such a fashion (though I of course have not asked every Chinese person I’ve met about this event).

In my experience, young Chinese youth that travel abroad (I used to work with them for a couple of years preparing them for the English university exam IELTS/TOEFL) are much more ridiculously nationalistic than normal Chinese youngsters that stay behind on the mainland. I can’t quite figure it out, though I have a few ideas. For one, it’s entirely possible that the young Chinese boy didn’t actually believe that, but since Chinese people tend to get very defensive about these things, in front of foreigners they will deny these types of events ever happened. It’s sort of akin to a liberal young American who travels abroad, meets some locals (say in France) who say some bad things about America, and this drives the young American liberal to defend America in ways he might not otherwise, such as defending Bush (though he would never do so with other Americans). Of course, it’s entirely possible the Chinese boy believes what he said, but I think if you were to place him in a room with only other Chinese people, he would not utter such a statement.  I was talking to my girlfriend about this the other day. I told her “Happy June 4th festival” She didn’t know what I was talking about. After explaining a bit, she understood. “Many students and people died right?” she asked. Her only response was a rather muted “oh” and that was about it. The fact is, most Chinese people know it happened, but they don’t know the details, and they feel it’s futile to try to do anything about it. It would only bring them trouble to try and find out more about it.

The government has certainly pulled out all of the stops to keep mention of the events to a minimum at this 20th anniversary.  As I sit here in Shanghai now, I am behind the most extensive use of the Chinese firewall I’ve seen so far.  The firewall has gone so far as to ban such innocuous websites as hotmail and twitter, which I have never seen banned before.  At the beginning of the year, almost everything was unbanned, but as such anniversaries as the “liberation” of T-land and the day that shall not be named have come upon us, the crackdown has gotten stiffer.  I expect it will last at least through the end of the year, as the 60th anniversary of 1949 will be in October.  How do Chinese netizens deal with the firewall?  For the most part, they don’t.  Most Chinese do not “approve” of the firewall per se, however it doesn’t really affect the lives of most Chinese people. The only sites that get firewalled are generally in English, and any Chinese person that can read English fluently enough to read those interested sites would know how to get around it. Getting around the firewall is incredibly easy. Lot up just about any proxy site and you can get around the firewall for free without downloading any software in about 15 seconds. Some proxy sites are banned, but for everyone that gets firewalled, ten more sprout up in their place. Granted, watching youtube through a proxy sucks, but it is possible.

An entire youth Internet culture has developed around bypassing the censorship on high. A good example…when the Chinese Internet police delete a blog post, for example, it is called “harmonizing” the blog. In Chinese, harmonize is pronounced “he xie” （和谐） However, there is another Chinese word that is pronounced “he xie”, albeit with different characters. This is the word “river crab” (河蟹). So, when Chinese netizens discuss a recent blog posting, they will say that the post has been “river crabbed” That’s just one example of many. This works to bypass the noses of the sensors for a while, but of course they catch on after ahile. Netizens, as we know, are usually one step ahead of the game though, and they find other ways to stay out of the watchful eyes of the Internet police.

Ultimately, as the anniversary has come and gone, I don’t think much of anything has changed.  The government has cracked down and the populace has barely even noticed, for the most part.  Westerners will harp on the horrible situation in China, feel reinvigorated for a few days about the many Chinese T’s, the media will show us the same old picture of Tank Man a hundred times, and two weeks later we’ll be back to discussing the latest winner of American Idol or fretting over the disappearance of some blonde girl in Florida.  The fact is, the Chinese people made a deal with the devil after the events of 1989.  For the sake of stability, they chose to let the government have their way, and in return the government has liberalized here and there, allowed some people to get rich, and allowed the rest of them at least the dream of potential riches.  They have to deal with that choice for themselves and find their own way, and no amount of New York Times news stories and retrospectives is going to change the situation.  The Chinese know better than anybody else the cycle of history, and that nothing lasts forever.