On June 4, Beijing time, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement on the 30th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, saying: “Over the decades that followed, the United States hoped that China’s integration into the international system would lead to a more open, tolerant society.”
“Those hopes have been dashed. China’s one-party state tolerates no dissent and abuses human rights whenever it serves its interests,” Pompeo said.
“Chinese citizens have been subjected to a new wave of abuses, especially in Xinjiang, where the [Chinese] Communist Party [CCP] leadership is methodically attempting to strangle Uighur culture and stamp out the Islamic faith, including through the detention of more than 1 million members of Muslim minority groups,” he said.
Prior to that, US Department of State spokesperson Morgan Ortagus described the massacre as being “where peaceful demonstrators were violently suppressed.”
She called it “systematic” and “horrific” abuse by the CCP.
In October last year, US Vice President Mike Pence said: “For a time, Beijing inched toward greater liberty and respect for human rights, but in recent years, China has taken a sharp U-turn toward control and oppression of its own people.”
This is indeed what the ruling clique in the CCP is busy doing: running the country and the media, removing term limits, engaging in digital terror rule, threating to invade democratic Taiwan and attempting to overturn universal values.
However, this is not what 1.4 billion Chinese want. This is best symbolized by “Tank Man,” the man who singlehandedly tried to stop a long line of tanks on Changan Avenue in Beijing after the massacre.
Today, the CCP’s systematic abuse of power goes far beyond anything that the peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square ever imagined.
From this perspective, the deeper significance of the trade dispute, the high-tech war and the Indo-Pacific strategy initiated by US President Donald Trump is that the US is leading the democratic world in confronting the CCP clique and hindering their Animal Farm, 1984 ideology from spreading around the world.
Continued hopes for China and criticism of the CCP are interwoven in the US’ China policy. Many in Taiwan also repeat the mantra that the CCP is not China, but that shows a lack of reflection. In practice, under the CCP’s rule, a clique of leaders has monopolized power and privilege.
There is the phrase “befriend China” (“友中”), but if it is this power and privilege-monopolizing clique that is being befriended and no one else, then it would not be befriending China, but rather making Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) a buddy and meekly accepting his Orwellian nonsense.
Perhaps those who advocate friendship with China think that the CCP’s ways are in line with how Chinese for thousands of years have “followed heaven and the minds of the people.”
However, they are wrong. They ignore the fact that while common people were often killed, emperors seldom were.
The pursuit of democracy and science through the May Fourth and the June Fourth movements embodies the true spirit of those who embrace universal values and the ideal state that ordinary Chinese have never given up on.
Those who want to befriend it refuse to talk about a democratic China, revealing a blind spot in their argument.
As Pence said: “America will always believe that Taiwan’s embrace of democracy shows a better path for all the Chinese people.”
Taiwanese who advocate befriending Beijing completely ignore the 1.4 billion people who make up the nation and give no thought to aiding the birth of a democratic China.
During his eight years in office, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) rejected the Chinese democracy movement and sided with the one-party dictatorship, while hopefuls in next year’s presidential race who place the responsibility for maintaining peace on the shoulders of the government have never touched on the issue of China’s democratization.
Are they not accomplices of the CCP, helping it rule China? Are they not friends of the CCP and enemies of Chinese society?
It would not be at all incorrect to call such people enemies of both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
The fact that Xi’s friends call themselves “friends of China” to an extent highlights the absurdities of Taiwanese democracy. The people who opposed democracy in the past are now protected by that democracy, which they use in their quest against democracy. Transitional justice, pursuing the return of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) ill-gotten assets and pension reform have become targets in their attempt to overturn democracy.
At the same time, not only do they not criticize China, which has deteriorated from a one-party dictatorship to a totalitarian, digital dictatorship, they also have discarded the “Three Principles of the People” slogan and worked with the enemy to destroy Taiwanese democracy in the hope that they will completely destroy it by inviting in a new foreign regime.
There was a taste of this negative force from 2008 to 2016. If that occurs again, it will do even more damage. This is precisely why some people say that next year’s presidential vote will be Taiwan’s final democratic election.
Trump’s actions, Pence’s speech and Pompeo’s statement are evidence that the US’ China policy is changing. Taiwan must be included.
Xi is trying to change the “status quo” and include Taiwan in his one-party dictatorship. Facing this threat, Taiwan, the US and other like-minded nations must forcefully oppose China’s sharp power, which is trying to make Taiwan the first domino to fall in its war on universal values.
At the same time, they must direct their efforts toward improving the “status quo” and helping Taiwan improve its ability to defend itself, its economy, its national status and its international position to stabilize the situation in the Taiwan Strait and the region.
Even more fundamentally, it is not enough to passively resist CCP-led China. It is necessary to push for structural reform in China, where 1.4 billion people are longing for democracy. Whether it will be possible to build a peaceful, secure, stable, prosperous and mutually beneficial new order in the Indo-Pacific region is closely connected to a democratic China and the 1989 test paper that China has left unanswered.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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