|
The Liberty Times
Editorial: Tiananmen haunts Hong Kong
Tuesday last week marked the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Hong Kong residents played an active role in supporting the democracy movement
that swept through China in 1989, and they came to the assistance of protesters
both before and after the crackdown.
Hong Kong residents today still strongly support calls for China’s official
verdict of the 1989 events to be overturned. The massacre took place a few years
before the UK returned sovereignty of Hong Kong to China, and the shadow of
those combined events is a nightmare that has never ceased to haunt many in Hong
Kong.
In survey results published by the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion
Program on Thursday last week, 63 percent of respondents in Hong Kong said that
they were in favor of vindicating the 1989 pro-democracy movement — the highest
figure recorded in such surveys since 1997.
Hong Kong residents’ longstanding concern with the Tiananmen events is connected
with their anxiety over Beijing’s tightened control of Hong Kong, its delay to
making the chief executive and legislative councilors subject to popular
election and the introduction of Chinese patriotism classes in the territory’s
education system, which they view as “brainwashing.”
Hong Kong residents and Chinese democracy activists are passionate about seeing
the 1989 pro-democracy movement vindicated because to them the massacre, which
marked the end of the democracy movement, signified a bloodbath imposed on
China’s political reform by the nation’s ruling elite.
As long as the event evades transitional justice, the project of political
reform in China cannot possibly get underway.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General-Secretary Xi Jinping
(習近平) has taken over from predecessor Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). For a while, some
commentators said that Xi would be a relatively bold reformer.
Xi’s meeting with Hu Deping (胡德平), son of former CCP chairman and general
secretary Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), whose death marked the beginning of the 1989
democracy movement, gave people some hope that China’s authorities might finally
reassess the movement.
However, things have developed in the opposite direction, with reports about the
so-called “seven banned topics of higher education” detracting from the
international community’s first impressions of Xi.
The seven taboos refer to issues that teachers in China’s higher education
institutions have reportedly been told not to talk about: universal values,
press freedom, civil society, civil rights, the CCP’s mistakes, the rich and
powerful capitalist class and judicial independence.
Some people say that the imposition of these “seven taboos” signals a move to
revive former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) far-left political line, and it
runs completely counter to the dream of constitutional government that ordinary
Chinese people long for.
To put it simply, Xi still favors a one-party dictatorship, so the dream of
vindicating the 1989 pro-democracy movement will probably have to wait. Further,
since the Chinese themselves are not allowed to dream about constitutional
government, those in Taiwan who want to adhere to “the Republic of China
Constitution” or “constitutional one China,” are patently not just dreaming, but
deluded.
Some well-established figures in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have
proposed a resolution on human rights on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, which
calls for opening a dialog with China, taking the people as its theme and human
rights as its basis.
Judging by the standards of the “seven taboos,” there seems little point in
trying to launch such a dialog. If the DPP wants to talk about the very topics
that Xi has forbidden anyone mentioning, what chance is there that the Chinese
side would sit down and discuss them with the DPP?
The only interest that China’s dictatorship has in the DPP is what Yu Zhengsheng
(俞正聲), chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference’s
National Committee, recently reiterated: Contacts between the DPP and the CCP
can only take place if the DPP abandons the goal of independence.
Without this, any “noncommittal” terms the DPP may adopt to please China will
serve no purpose at all.
The Beijing dictatorship is currently acting out a “rising China” drama in the
East and South China Seas. It has long fancied China as a “big brother” country
with plenty of money that need not pay heed to anyone
On Thursday last week, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei
(洪磊) said that “the Treaty of Peace with Japan signed in San Francisco was
illegal and invalid and could under no circumstances be recognized by the
Chinese government since China had been excluded from its preparation,
formulation and signing.”
The 1951 Treaty of San Francisco is an international treaty that was signed by a
large number of countries, including Britain, France, the US and Japan, so how
can China unilaterally declare it to be illegal and invalid and refuse to
recognize it? Is China in charge of the whole universe these days?
China is a domineering country that has long been ruled by a domineering
political clique. Setting aside all the Chinese who are suffering under the
seven topics, Hong Kong residents are probably the ones with the most direct
experience of this kind of “red terror.”
Sadly, though President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was born in Hong Kong, his feelings
about China’s actions are quite different from those of most Hong Kongers. Ma
has praised Xi for having a good understanding of Taiwan and being pragmatic.
To prove his point, Ma said of Xi, “He said that the two sides of the Taiwan
Strait should exchange representative offices, and they are actively promoting
this. We want to expand exchanges between the two sides. We can welcome more
students and more mainland tourists, and they can talk with us about that.”
You would think that Xi was Santa Claus showering presents on Taiwan.
Ma deserves his reputation as a “bumbler.” If Xi wants to gobble up Taiwan, Ma
will be delighted to offer his head to Xi for chopping, and Xi would be a
bumbler too if he didn’t swing the axe.
What a genius Ma is. To think that he once declared, “If Beijing doesn’t redress
June 4, we cannot talk about reunification.” Yet four years ago, on the 20th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, he praised China for having
reformed and brought about big improvements in people’s lives, saying that the
Chinese authorities had paid more attention to human rights issues over the
previous 10 years than it did before.
The implication is that the massacre was justifiable and the loss of life was
necessary.
Xi became president in March and his government has already announced the “seven
taboos.”
Does Ma want to make the 1989 democracy movement and the massacre a taboo
subject? Or is he going to start claiming that the massacre set the scene for
progress? We will just have to wait and see.
Translated by Julian Clegg
|
