吾爾開希的流亡筆記

Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the bloodshed in Beijing, when I first went into hiding, my mother had a stroke. It paralyzed one side of her face. I was 10 years in exile before my brother told me. I do not regret what we did in Beijing that year the Berlin wall fell, when there was so much hope of change in the air, but the deaths have haunted me for 20 years, and I want to hug my mother and tell her. “sorry”.
I can’t. China will not issue passports for my parents. China will not allow me to go home. It is difficult to explain the feelings I have at this moment to a world that has come to see China as a responsible member of the global community – the motor of global economic growth, the miracle that will re-jump-start global capitalism. But the feelings can largely be summed up as disappointment – disappointment that China’s “progress” has been so one-sided.
The crime we committed in 1989 was to hope for change. In 1919, students campaigned for change, for a China that was genuinely part of the modern world. In 1989, we did the same. In 2009, change has come to China. It is a country awash with foreign investment – a country that is superficially the same place that readers of Wall Street Journal live in. I have not seen it with my own eyes, but I know that China today has Seven-11s and Metros and malls and discos and outlets for Italian brand names … Hooters. China has walked in space.
In part, the change we hoped for has happened. When the people of Beijing took to the streets in 1989 –however people might read it today – they were acting out of frustration. In 1989, when I went into exile, I said the reason for the protests initially was that China’s youth wanted Nikes, wanted to be able to go to a bar with their girlfriend. Such things were not possible in the China I grew up in. They are possible today, largely because China’s university students rose up in 1989, and the workers’ unions and the common people joined them. The government realized It had no choice but to liberalize the economy, if it was going to keep popular discontent at bay.
In short, 20 years on, I believe the protests in of 1989 were a kind of tragic success. China got its Nikes and discos. Unfortunately, China did not get the other change we yearned  for – political reform. For many years, I have been of the opinion that a deal was struck with the people of China. The deal was economic prosperity in exchange for political quiescence and continued and unchallenged one-party rule. For years, I have been describing it as a “lousy deal”. But today, on the anniversary of the bloodshed that ended the protests, I would like to add that it is an illusory deal. 
For the past decade or more we have been hearing about China’s development. But shopping malls and designer brands that come at the expense of an open society is not, to my mind, development at all. What is more, China’s illusion of development comes at a cost not only to the Chinese people but to the global community. The result is that the world’s third largest economy is in the hands of a leadership structure that does not speak the same language as the rest of the modern world. Whatever critics might say the state of democratic politics in the rich world, neither the West, nor Japan – nor even Taiwan – routinely imprisons and exiles open debate.
China is with us on a daily basis – in television news reports, in the newspapers, in blogs and in movies. It is in your living room. But politically China is a man in an ill-fitting suit and he does not speak your language. He will not until he learns that there can be no true development until open debate and dissenting opinions are essential ingredients in the emergence of a developed society.
In 1989, as I said, we wanted Nikes and discos. But we also wanted to belong to a country that truly lived up to the heritage it is so proud of – a great nation with an important role to play on the world stage. We wanted China to allow open debate about its future, and we wanted to be part of that future. This has still not happened. If it had, I and all the many exiles like me, would be allowed to come home. At the very least my parents would have been issued passports and I would be able give my mother the hug and the apology she deserves for all the heartache and anxiety I have put her through.

This article is published today, 2009,06,04 at the Wall street Journal Asia