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Tiananmen Square Four Years Later (Part I)
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10721 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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6 / 1993 |
3,527 Words |
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Cynthia Grenier is contributing editor to the Arts section of
The World & I. |
THE WORLD & I: It is four years since the Tiananmen Square massacre. Is China closer to or farther away from the political reforms that the prodemocracy students demanded?
Dimon Liu: Their stated demands were very simple and actually quite moderate, but they have not been met. Other demands that were embodied in the movement without being spelled out, such as economic liberalization, have gone a pretty long way toward realization, but not, I think, by intention.
W&I: Just to ensure that everyone remembers, what were the stated demands?
Liu: The most important demand they made was for their own independent student organization. On that aspect they were very intelligent. They realized that they would have to have an institution--independent and not controlled by the government--in order to have democracy.
Democracy cannot be built in one day. Even if communism disintegrates, it doesn't necessarily mean that out of the ashes democratic structure and society will emerge miraculously. Democracy is not a phoenix. It has to be built.
Haipei Xue: I think we probably are closer to political reforms. Not closer in that a law has been published or an obvious big move has been taken by the leadership, but closer in the sense that in the past three or four years, the economic reform has created a lot of other, non-economic, demands, especially a stronger demand for legal reform.
We don't have yet the kind of political reform which we see in Russia, but if we talk about legal reform in a broader sense, the economic arrangement has spilled over into other aspects of society. There is a greater awareness among the people of the rest of the world; there is definite bankruptcy of the communist ideology.
Gang Ke: I understand democracy as having three parts. One is free elections, another is constitutional authority. You have to have constitutional authority to substitute for ideological and personal authority if you want to have political reform. Also you have to have freedom of association and a civil society.
In terms of free elections, I don't see international progress. But as an unintended consequence, the economic liberalization that is still continuing might create
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