IT IS 20 years today since the crackdown on Tiananmen Square, which crushed China's fledgling democracy movement, but among Chinese youth there is a lack of knowledge, or plain indifference, about the events of June 1989, writes CLIFFORD COONANCoonan in Beijing
The new cars, state-of-the-art mobile phones and flash designer clothes favoured by Chinese young seem a million miles away from the white-shirted idealists on the square 20 years ago.
Most young Chinese are enjoying the fruit of strong economic growth and are very pro-government. They are proud of China’s increasing importance in world affairs, symbolised by the Beijing Olympics, and angry at what they see as western bias against China on issues such as Tibetan independence.
Strict control of online activity and the media means many are unaware of what happened 20 years ago. “As to the 1989 incident you mentioned, I am not clear about it. I’ve never heard about it. Sorry, I don’t know,” said Gao Lili (not her real name, to protect her identity), who was born on June 4th, 1989 and is a Shanghai university student.
“I recently applied to be a Communist Party member, because I want to strive for the great cause of communism. Also, it’s good for job hunting and employment.
“As to my future plans, I think my biggest hope now is to find a good, stable job in the future, and have a happy and beautiful family. That’s it,” she said.
The Tiananmen protests are taboo issues on college campuses. Few teachers who had supported the students kept their jobs.
When pressed on the subject, government officials say the crackdown was necessary for China’s prosperity and development, and no official investigation has ever been carried out.
The economic slowdown in China has led to some dissatisfaction among young people – over six million university students will try to enter China’s workforce this year, and many will have difficulty finding jobs in a tight market. Also, the number of people applying to go to college has fallen sharply as young people worry about their future.
The government has introduced plans to give graduates jobs in rural areas as schoolteachers, which might not appeal to web-savvy urbanites hoping to work in corporate finance.
Any major student movements tend to take place within the Communist Party framework. Students came out in big numbers to help earthquake relief efforts in May 2008, and tens of thousands signed up to be volunteers during the Beijing Olympics in August.
Wu’er Kaixi, one of the student leaders on the square in 1989, defends the younger generation against charges of apolitical behaviour. “The younger generation today was brought up in a very different environment. We were brought up in the Cultural Revolution, we were a generation of idealistic characters,” he said.
“The next generation, ‘the only children’ , they were not idealistic, they were actually brought up in a vacuum of idealism, the term that was used for them was ‘always look to the money’,” he said.
However, Wu’er said a look online shows that young people are still interested in serious issues. “There are values. And those values they got for themselves. They are quite critical,” he said.
In a dramatic departure yesterday, Wu’er flew to the former Portuguese colony of Macao to hand himself in to Chinese authorities. He said he wanted to see his parents, who he hasn’t seen for 20 years, and confront the government over the 1989 uprising.
Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities have rounded up dissidents and shut down blogs, web forums and social media sites in an apparent bid to stem online political discussion ahead of today’s anniversary.
China has nearly 300 million web users, and the internet has proven influential in spreading information about rural protests and isolated student uprisings, and the web is closely watched by the country’s “net nannies”.
Authorities have been steadily tightening surveillance over China’s dissident community ahead of this year’s anniversary, with some leading writers already under house arrest for months.
Ding Zilin, the leading figure in the Tiananmen Mothers group of people who lost children in the massacre, has reportedly left the capital, while Bao Tong, the 76-year-old former secretary to Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed for sympathising with the 1989 pro-democracy protesters, was asked to go to southeastern China for the anniversary.
No remembrance of the anniversary is expected to take place in Beijing today. However, a June 4th vigil in Hong Kong is expected to draw tens of thousands.