South Korean students filling the streets of Seoul in 1986 could not have ended the authoritarian military government either. Again, it was a combination of events — pressure from the US, the impending Olympic Games and the presence of plausible opposition politicians — that did it.
The students in Tiananmen Square could not have known what was going on inside the closed regime. There were serious splits, but no one could have known exactly what the end results would be. In the event, Zhao’s conciliatory approach, which might have led to concessions — which in turn might have opened possibilities for a more open political system — lost out. Hardliners, who refused to give up their monopoly on power, won.
Would Zhao have prevailed, had the students retreated? Unlikely. In any case, it was not the place of the students, or the workers who supported them, to back any particular faction in the government. They lacked the authority. They were not politicians. All they asked for was more freedom. And this should be the main lesson to draw from those spring days in Beijing, and Shanghai and Guangzhou and many other places: Chinese have as much right as any other people to speak freely, without fear of arrest, to elect their own leaders, and to have laws that apply to everyone, even to the leaders themselves.
On June 4, 1989, thousands of Chinese were killed for demanding less than that. The best way to remember them is to reaffirm their right to liberties that millions of people, in the West and in many parts of Asia, take for granted. The worst way is to blame a few students who insisted on that right until it was too late.
Ian Buruma is a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism at Bard College.
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