A number of students have been taking part in a hunger strike as part of demonstrations organized by the pan-blues at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The Chinese-language media in the US have since printed sensationalist stories of how Wu'er Kaixi (吾爾開希) and Shen Tong (沈彤), both prominent members of the 1989 pro-democracy protests in China which ended with the Tiananmen massacre, participated in the hunger strike. The pair said that when they visited the scene, they felt something akin to the atmosphere that day in Tiananmen Square. According to Wu'er, the media and the law in Taiwan were being controlled by the government, and he wanted to give his support to the people.
I cannot help but pity Wu'er. The Tiananmen massacre happened 15 years ago, and he is now almost 40 years old. It seems that with the passage of time he has lost the ability to differentiate between dictatorship and democracy. He seems to think Taipei is Beijing, and muddles the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with the Chinese Communist Party. His values are utterly confused. After more than a decade living in the free world, Wu'er doesn't seem to have learned anything.
The students who gathered in Tiananmen on that day in June were protesting against a dictatorial government that had deprived more than a billion Chinese of the freedom of choice. Taiwan, on the other hand, has already had three elections in which its president was directly elected, in addition to countless democratic local and legislative elections. How is it possible to equate democratic Taiwan, in which the government is elected by the people, with China?
The students taking part in the Tiananmen protests resorted to hunger strikes because this was the only way to make themselves heard. The media and legal processes were completely controlled by the Communist Party. Taiwan, by contrast, is already well along the road toward a healthy democracy and enjoys freedom of the press. Sure, the government has its problems, but it owes its existence to democratic elections. Sure, there is room for improvement in the media and the legal system, but at least they are free and independent.
How can Wu'er justify saying that these mechanisms are being controlled by the DPP? It is common knowledge that a large part of the media is actually biased in favor of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party.
The US has also seen its share of chaotic elections, but the losers never provoked demonstrations, nor did students amass in front of government buildings and start hunger strikes. Everything was done through legal channels. In a society governed by the rule of law, people should act like citizens, not form mobs.
People like Wu'er Kaixi ought to count themselves lucky to have been able to move from a dictatorial system in China to a free Taiwan. Fifteen years later, Wu'er and others don't seem to understand the value of freedom.
It leaves me wondering: What exactly was it that they were fighting for in Tiananmen Square?
Cao Changching is a writer based in the US.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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