Ten years after the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 I wrote a book, Bad Elements, about the fate of the protesters, dissidents and free-spirited Chinese who had wanted to change their country. Much had changed in those ten years, and even more has changed since. New buildings, ever taller, ever bigger, have made cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing virtually unrecognisable to anyone who has been away for longer than six months. Old neighbourhoods disappear overnight, to be replaced by high rises, shopping malls and theme parks, sometimes replicating in miniature, or in painted concrete, razed ancient landmarks. This isn't just a matter of economic growth; it is a transformation.
So was I wrong to detect a whiff of decay in the authoritarian one-party state when I travelled in the People's Republic of China ten years ago? Was I misguided in my belief that the dissident "bad elements" still mattered? It is not hard to find educated, prosperous citizens in the wealthier coastal regions who will say so. The foreign traveller in China today will often be told, sometimes in excellent English, that the country is not yet ready for the freedoms my dissidents demanded. China is too big, one hears, too large, too old, the Chinese masses are too uneducated, in fact, China is just too damned complicated for democracy to take root. The whip-hand of authoritarian rule is still essential to keep chaos at bay and enable prosperity. Democracy is a luxury to be enjoyed after wealth and education; first food and shelter, then, possibly, freedom.
These arguments will be expressed, usually with great conviction, while one's attention is drawn to those tall, glitzy buildings, and those malls stuffed with the luxuries of the modern world. Look at what China has achieved in 20 years! Don't the figures speak for themselves? So why should it matter what such voices in the wilderness as Wei Jingsheng, who spent 14 years in prison before being exiled to the US, still say about the lack of democracy in China? Or former student leaders of the Tiananmen demonstrations, some of whom now have business careers in the west. After all, their voices are no longer much heard in China. Those born around 1989 have barely heard of the protests, let alone of people who played prominent roles back then. Parents won't talk about it lest their children get into trouble. And the children have other things to worry about, like getting ahead in the exciting but often brutal world of authoritarian capitalism.
Critics point out that the exiled dissidents are out of touch with contemporary China. Since they no longer live there, and most are not even allowed to go back for family visits, memories are all they have left of the country they once sought to change. It is true that China has moved on since Tiananmen. But this doesn't mean that dissidents have disappeared. New people have emerged, lawyers who bravely take on sensitive cases of corruption, environmental damage, or workers' rights. There is even some room on the internet, or in scholarly journals, for serious discussions about democratic theory, as long as the supremacy of the Communist party is not directly challenged. Commercial newspapers report on scandals, news of which travels fast through cyberspace. In a one-party state, such scandals can be the closest thing to political reporting, since crime and politics are sometimes close relations.
Moreover, personal freedoms, in terms of sexual and romantic desires, private consumption, artistic expression, and religious practices, have been expanded. The deal made by the ruling party and the urban middle class is politically astute. Individuals are free to do or say a great deal more than they could in the past. They can own their houses. Up to a point, they can choose their jobs. But organised activity, by and large, is still subject to state control, even if such control is not always enforced. In short, for the sake of getting rich, people have agreed to stay out of politics.
The majority of educated Chinese, who are the kind of people who protested in Beijing and other cities in 1989, accept the deal. So it is hardly surprising that they are often the ones to tell enquiring foreigners that democracy doesn't matter, or doesn't fit the Chinese way. Worldly sophisticates are often first to dismiss dissident voices, or those who argue, at great risk to themselves, that China could be different, that political freedoms must match economic freedoms, and that a one-party state is unworthy of a civilised people. Such voices are dismissed with particular contempt when they come from abroad, from exiled protesters grown "out of touch." And the foreigner who points out China's political shortcomings can often count on a blast of sometimes peevish nationalism: who is he to comment on Chinese affairs, of which the meddling foreigner is bound to be as ignorant as he is arrogant?
Such a reaction is not always without foundation. Many foreigners are indeed arrogant, as well as ignorant, and far too prone to adopt the preaching tone of the missionary in colonial times. Yet I suspect that the hostility is not entirely divorced from moral unease about having accepted a political deal that is not entirely honourable. Many Chinese who have gone for the money after the tragic failures of 1989 cannot really have forgotten their earlier idealism. As is true everywhere, of course, idealism fades as people grow older. But the spirit of 1989, the desire for a freer, more open, less corrupt society, where citizens have rights and don't have to lie to stay out of trouble, is surely not dead. It could be revived very swiftly if circumstances change, as they surely will; no society, certainly not China, stays the same for ever.
In fact, circumstances are changing quite rapidly. China has not escaped from the world economic crisis. Newly unemployed workers are returning in huge numbers from the urban industrial zones and construction sites to their villages, where they won't find much work either. The poor, often cheated by corrupt bosses backed by local party officials, are not going to get richer soon. Their anger often explodes in riots. But these violent eruptions are local and can still be contained with force.
And what about the middle-class pact? The consequences of that unravelling are perhaps far greater, for it is hard to see how the Communist party can stay in power without the backing of the educated class. Even authoritarian governments need legitimacy to survive. Ideological legitimacy, already fading after the horrors of the cultural revolution, was lost in the Tiananmen crackdown. The promise of order and growth was the only legitimacy the party had left. Now this promise, too, is being lost, and the middle-class may not stick to its part of the bargain. They may not stay out of politics for much longer.
I am as loath to predict what might happen now as I was in 1999, but one can imagine certain possibilities. One is an old Chinese pattern of local rulers replacing a crumbling central power. Provincial bosses, like the warlords of 100 years ago, may take control of their regions. They are unlikely to be friends of democracy. Or extreme nationalism might be stirred by a fearful government, keen to deflect the middle-class resentment onto foreign targets. But this, too, is a tactic full of risk, as radical nationalism could be turned against the government itself, as a punishment for its weakness. Then again, China's army, anxious to restore order in the unruly empire, might step in and crush all dissent.
There is a more positive alternative to these routes of violence and oppression. It was expressed with great eloquence in a remarkable document, first signed by more than 300 Chinese citizens—law professors, businessmen, farmers and even some party officials. The 300 signatories of Charter 08, launched at the end of 2008 on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were soon joined by thousands more. It was drawn up as a conscious echo of an earlier charter by Czechoslovakian dissidents in 1977, seeking human rights in a stagnant satellite of the Soviet empire. It is not radical. The signatories demand free elections, an independent judiciary, free speech and basic human rights. But of course, in a one-party dictatorship, these demands are radical. And so one of the "bad elements" I wrote about 20 years ago, a quiet-spoken intellectual named Liu Xiaobo, who organised the charter, was promptly arrested and jailed. Others, too, were harassed, and interrogated. One thing is clear: dissidents clearly do matter to the rulers of the People's Republic of China.
To dismiss their ideas as merely "western" is wrong. There is no need for China to imitate the west. All the signatories to the charter want is to follow the examples of South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan; all of which have functioning democracies. The Communist party rulers might yet block the route to political freedom, but after Charter 08 (or the republican revolution of 1911, or the May 4th Movement of 1919, or Tiananmen in 1989) it can never be denied that many Chinese ardently wish for it.
Considering the alternatives, all of which mean more violence and oppression, this desire is not only justified, but the recipe most likely to result in long-term social stability, which is in the interest of all of us, in China and outside. This is why the "bad elements" still matter more than ever.
