Sixteen years ago, under the rapt gaze of the international media, students around China brought a ray of hope for Chinese democracy by launching a democracy movement and erecting a "Goddess of Democracy" on Tiananmen Square. But the movement was suppressed, leaving sighs of regret and questions regarding China's future development. Will China democratize? Are there other roads for China, besides democracy?
These are also questions that the people of Taiwan are asking themselves, because the question of whether or not China will adopt liberal democracy is an important benchmark for Taiwan as it considers its future relationship with China.
The third wave of democratization, which began in the mid-1970s, took different routes, but almost all routes had one thing in common: following economic improvements by authoritarian governments, people's incomes shot up, their education levels improved and their international experience increased, leading them to demand better opportunities for individual development and political participation.
Although not every democracy prospered and not every wealthy country became a democracy, the strong relationship between economic and political development cannot be denied. As calls for democracy and freedom grow stronger, authoritarian systems could choose to go with the flow of developments and gradually implement political reform, or oppose the democratic wave. This led to different roads towards democratization.
Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constantly developed the Chinese economy since the early 1980s, it may not have considered the fact that economic and social development will necessarily have a political impact. Regardless of whether it is ignited by economic and social issues in the countryside or in the cities, it is only a matter of time before China will see its next wave of democracy movements. The 1989 democracy movement showed us how that wave once again will become the focus of international media attention.
Some people may take an optimistic opinion that the fourth generation of CCP leaders will be more flexible and pragmatic, and that they will allow gradual liberalization and political reform. There is, however, a difference between expectations and real life.
At the fourth plenary session of the 16th Central Committee on Sept. 19 last year, the CCP leadership criticized the media. It said the party could not take a lenient approach toward the media and make the mistake of promoting Western bourgeois liberalization, and that it was therefore forced to strengthen the management of the news media and public opinion. Ten days later, an alarming instruction was issued in a document from the party's Publicity Department: "When managing ideology, we have to learn from Cuba and North Korea."
Then, in March, the same department issued regulations requiring all reporters and editors to affirm Marxism-Leninism, Maoism and the thought of the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (
There have also been several waves of suppression of academic research, including Peking University's firing of a professor named Jiao (
On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, the CCP prohibited a Chinese reporter from receiving the 2005 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. An international journalists' organization described China as the world's largest prison for journalists, and Freedom House in the US ranked press freedom in China 177th in the world.
The Chinese people may not even be aware that so many heartbreaking things have happened over the past few months. These worrying incidents cannot, however, stop a multitude of spontaneous protests. The frequency and vehemence of social protests in China is constantly on the rise, a result of the public's increasing self awareness, which in its turn is the result of economic and social development.
The CCP still has enough power to remain in control, and it doesn't show any wish to implement reform. But 16 years ago we saw how China's intellectuals gathered in Tiananmen Square, and how it is impossible to hide the Chinese people's unwillingness to live in a prison. The CCP government must also face up to the fact that the only way it can develop is to follow the road towards democracy. Only by learning from Taiwan's political development can the CCP build a new China.
Joseph Wu is chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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